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Chapter Text

Connor McKinley is 5 years old and he does not lie, because he is a good Mormon boy. He has a mother, and a father, but no brothers or sisters. He will have one soon, his parents have told him, for the Lord has blessed them again with the swell of his mother's stomach. His father says he wants another boy, hopefully one that’s better at baseball, but Connor doesn’t want to be good at baseball. Connor wants to dance.  

His father’s laugh is funny when he tells him that. His mother crouches down to his level, asks if he wants a little sister instead, but Connor doesn’t want a little sister. He already has Lizzie. She’s in his dance class, and is his very best friend in the whole wide world.  

Connor’s whole wide world isn’t really all that wide yet. He has his mother, and his father, and his grandparents who look after him sometimes, his teachers at chapel who he listens to very carefully because he is a good Mormon boy. He has his classmates at school and at dance class and at chapel, he has his aunts and uncles all the way in Salt Lake City who he can’t really remember but he knows he should love anyway, and soon his little brother or sister will be a part of it as well. Connor loves his mother and his father and everyone else in his whole wide world just, but he knows he loves Lizzie more.  

Lizzie has blue eyes like he does but her hair is long and blonde instead of short and red hair like his is. She’s already in Grade 1 and can do lots of sums (but is really only one week older than him) and, even though she is older than him and can do lots of sums, she still lets them have joint birthday parties. There’s a framed photo of them at their last birthday party, holding balloons and holding hands, sitting on the chest of drawers in Connor's room, the second biggest bedroom in the house. Connor can’t really recognise himself in the photo, although his mother says it’s him, but he would recognise Lizzie anywhere.  

Connor wants to be a good older brother. He doesn’t want to be like Laman in the stories, or like Lizzie’s older brothers who pick on her and steal her sweets sometimes. But it’s hard to imagine the swell of his mother’s stomach ever becoming a real person in his whole wide world, a real person that he could ever love. 

It’s late summer's day, just like in the photo, and Connor is letting something else into his whole wide world in the form of a small bug crawling across his palm. He loves the bug, just like he loves his mother (who is chatting away to Lizzie’s mother) and Lizzie (who is poking at another bug a meter or so away) and his father and everything else in his whole wide world. It’s a sunny day, and the blue shell of the bug is shiny and mesmerizing. He treats it with care as he is a good Mormon boy, just like he is taught to treat all of his Heavenly Father’s creations. 

But, as is with all young children, Connor is also an inquisitive Mormon boy, and so he prods the shell of the bug in his palm, curious as to exactly why he should act with such precaution; until it is done, until it is finished, until he has nothing but his shock at the stickiness on his palms and a bad, bad feeling in his heart. 

His mother strolls over to take his hand to lead him back inside, and Connor quickly wipes his hands on his shorts, instinct telling him that she can never, ever know about this, and takes Lizzie’s hand instead. Lizzie doesn't complain, her hands as damp with sweat as his, pigtails unravelling as she swings their arms. Their mothers share a look, and his own mother asks him if he’s had fun playing in the garden. He replies that he has, and does not tell her about the stickiness on his palms. He is not lying, he reassures himself, he is just not telling the whole truth, and hopes that his mother never asks him if he’s killed any bugs like she told him not to. 

He has been at his dance classes for two years now, ever since Lizzie began and he tugged at his mother’s skirts until he was allowed to go and spend even more time with his best friend in the whole wide world. He didn’t care about the dancing, in the beginning; he only cared about being with Lizzie. But, as with the bug, he was mesmerized; getting to jump about in class and on the stage of the local church hall with Lizzie was wonderful, but holding on the barre and concentrating with all his child heart on the positions, first, second, third, was even better.  

One Sunday morning, he tells this to a woman with a hand on the swell of her stomach just like his mother, pointing down the row of benches to his best friend. She's dressed in a pink frock, and she waves right back at him, big smile on her face. The woman coos, and says something about someone having a little crush on Lizzie, how sweet, which Connor doesn’t get. Why would someone want to crush Lizzie? Lizzie is nice to him. How could someone even crush her – like he could crush bugs between his palms – could their Heavenly Father pick up Lizzie and crush her between His palms?  

Connor runs his mother, plagued with this fear: her and her friends laugh at him, and his mother kneels to stroke his ginger hair and tell him that, as long as both he and Lizzie are good Mormon boys and girls, their Heavenly Father will not hurt them as He loves them as He does all his creations. But Connor remembers the bug that he crushed between his palms, and he freaks out because he loved the bug, and it had done nothing wrong. It hadn’t been bad, and he had crushed it anyway; it was Connor that was bad because he had disobeyed his mother and crushed the bug that his Heavenly Father loved so dearly, and no amount of gentle hair-stroking can heal this fear. 

That evening, when his mother is tucking him into bed, she isn’t smiling like she normally is, like she should be. What has Connor done wrong? He knows that he isn’t a good Mormon boy, knows he had to do better, be better, but he’s got have done something really wrong to make his mother so sad.  

“Connor, why aren't you happy?” she asks, and Connor is struck dumb.

What can he say? He feels happy – he is happy. He has his mother and his father and his dance lessons and Lizzie and he loves them all like he loves everything in his whole wide world, but – but. Sometimes he is sad. He’s sad when it’s raining and he can’t go outside; he’s sad when he’s speaking and adults are ignoring him; he’s sad when it’s time for Lizzie to go home and he won’t see her until tomorrow. He doesn’t know why he’s sad, he doesn't choose to be sad; he just is, and he doesn’t know how to stop it.  

“Heavenly Father has given you such a good life, so why aren't you?” his mother says, and Connor just feels guiltier.  

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, looking at his socked feet so he doesn’t have to look at the expression on his mother’s face.  

“Don’t apologise to me, apologise to Him,” his mother replies gently. "Have you been praying every night like I've told you too?" Connor shakes his head, "Connor," and feels even worse. "Connor, you should know better, letting people think you’re ungrateful for all He has given you by making such a scene in front of others, letting Him down by not praying. Your Heavenly Father has given you the gift of life, of a family and a church that loves you, and you’re throwing it away on feeling silly things like this.” 

“What do you want me to do, then?” Connor asks in a small voice. He’s confused, and he wants to cry, but he can’t, he can’t. He has to hold it in, pretend it’s not there, make his mother happy.  

His mother smiles, tips her head to the side, strokes his hair. “Do as you’re doing right now, my precious boy. Choose to be happy. Bring others up, don’t bring yourself down.” 

Connor blinks, wills his tears back into his eyes, and smiles right back at her.  

“You’ll try to be a good Mormon boy for me, then?” his mother says, and Connor nods his head vigorously. “And you are not lying to me?”  

“No, I’m not, I’m not,” Connor says, because he is a good Mormon boy, and because he wants to see the smile reappear on his mother’s face. It does and it is good and it is soft and Connor never wants to upset his mother ever again. She gives him one last kiss on the forehead before she stands to leave the room, telling him she doesn’t want to hear any more noise from his room, and closes his door. 

Hold it in, then, Connor decides, as he curls up in bed. Hold in the confusing thoughts in his head, hold in the feelings that make him want to cry and run to his mother like they did today, like Connor let them do today. He tells himself he can do that; he tells Heavenly Father he can do that; and feels a bit better about the half-truth he just told his mother. It’s not lying if he makes sure it becomes the whole truth.  

Only when he hears the door to his mother and father’s bedroom close does Connor reach for his reading light and turn it off.  

Chapter Text

Connor McKinley is ten years old and still he does not lie, because he is a good Mormon boy. He has his mother and his father and his aunts and his uncles and his cousins in his whole wide world, but now he has two baby sisters as well. Ciara says she isn’t a baby anymore, and Caitlín stamps her feet and says they’re almost five, but they’ll always be babies to Connor.  

His mother smiles, and his father ruffles their heads, which they never would have done if Connor had thrown tantrums like that, but Connor supposes that makes sense. They are much better Mormon children than Connor was when he was their age.  

He lies in bed and looks at the picture of him and Lizzie on his chest of drawers and wonders at how his baby sisters are almost as old as he was then, wonders at how bad a Mormon boy he was then. That Connor lied to his mother and his father. That Connor chose to be sad and clingy. That Connor would’ve thrown a fuss over being moved to the smallest bedroom, like he was just before he started 5th grade.  

He tells his parents he doesn’t mind being in the smaller room, and then he makes sure he doesn’t mind it. Every night he lies in bed and thinks about all the things he loves about his bedroom – the window facing west means it gets very hot in the summer, but he can read in natural light late into the evening. It’s size means he doesn’t have much space to play, but still enough space to do ballet drills and he can still fit a sleeping bag on the floor. He loves his room even though it’s little and annoying sometimes, and he loves his sisters even though they’re little and annoying sometimes, too. It’s better for them to have the bigger room. He really doesn’t mind. It isn’t a lie if he makes sure it becomes the truth, he tells himself, and turns off his reading light.  

* 

Connor wakes up first every morning to go through his ballet stretches: first, second, third. He used to do it downstairs, use the wood of the dining room floor as a stage while his sisters colored and read at the table. But his father’s forehead would crease if he came home early and saw him, his mother would frown and tell him that a good Mormon boy shouldn’t be putting his extra-curricular activities over taking care of his little sisters, Ciara and Caitlín would beg and wheedle at him to teach them how to do this, do that, so he wouldn’t be able to practise at all. He practices in his pyjamas in the morning light, now: fingers brushing the frame of his photo and feet brushing the floor, the only noise in the whole house. The carpet isn’t quite as good as the linoleum downstairs, but it’s calming in a way the dining room nor the church hall could ever be.  

Calming, that is, until 6 o’clock; until Ciara and Caitlín wake up and he’s too busy getting them washed, dressed, breakfasted and out the door to be driven to school by his mother that he barely blinks before he’s washed and dressed and breakfasted himself, cycling the long route as he's done since his second day of middle school. It’s not as good as dancing, but it’s good practise for his mission, he tells himself; and it’s always, always at it’s best when his best friend is beside him. Connor does miss Lizzie, he does, and he does feel a bit sad that they’re not really best friends anymore. He still loves her, as much as he can with his preteen heart, but when you only see someone once a week at chapel and you can’t have sleepovers with them because they’re a girl, Connor doesn’t really see how you can be best friends anymore.  

“Drills go that bad, huh?” 

“It was okay.” Connor wants to kick at the ground, stick his hands in his pockets, do anything to relieve this tight ball of something in his chest. But good Mormon boys don’t scuff their shoes, don’t slouch. Good Mormon boys hold it in, so he just shrugs, says, “Cait woke up early so I couldn’t get that much practise in.” 

But Steve – Connor sees Steve every day at school, Connor has sleepovers with him all the time, and Connor thinks that Steve is incredible. He has glasses and brown curly hair that frizzes in the heat. He’s one of the smartest boys in the class, and knows many things that Connor does not. He’s definitely the best speaker; Steve can argue his way into winning anything. He could argue that the sky was red instead of blue and Connor would believe him. It gets him into trouble with teachers sometimes which Connor knows isn’t what good Mormon boys do, but Steve isn't a Mormon so it probably doesn’t matter that much anyway. Connor is always told to choose friends who have high standards, friends who help him keep the commandments and motivate him to live righteously, and Steve is an Israelite. The Ten Commandments are the basis of Jewish Law: his standards must be the highest, Connor reasons.  

Besides, Connor tells himself, there's no "honour thy 5th grade teacher" in Exodus or the Book of Mosiah anywhere. 

Steve cycles to school with Connor every day, and shares the KitKat in his lunch box with Connor every day, and has blue eyes which mesmerize him every day. Connor doesn’t think all the prayers in the world could get him a better best friend. They have sleepovers every other week; one always has to cycle home early from the other's house to go to synagogue or temple, but it's worth it to have his best friend be the first person he sees in the morning. Connor's favorite sleepovers are when he stays over on Friday evenings, watches Steve's mother light candles and his father say prayers, watches Steve smile in the candlelight. He feels calmer breaking bread with Steve's family than he ever could at temple.  

The first time that Connor gets to stay for a sleepover (they end up having lots of sleepovers), Steve shows him Star Wars, which Connor thinks are quite possibly the most wonderful things he’s ever watched.  He especially loves Han Solo, and prays every single night up until Christmas (and makes sure to ask his parents very, very politely) for a Chewbacca backpack. The next Halloween, they both throw together Star Wars costumes (Connor as Luke Skywalker, and Steve as Han Solo) and are allowed for the first time to go out around their neighbourhood trick-or-treating without any parental supervision. 

They do have to take Ciara and Caitlín with them, but it’s worth having to follow two fairies (one pink, one purple: neither could be persuaded to dress as Princess Leia) who are as annoying as they are sparkly around the neighbourhood to see Steve all dressed up in his Han Solo costume, what they have dubbed Connor’s Chewbacca-pacca on his back and a huge smile on his face, making Connor feel things he’s barely on the cusp of understanding. Steve is – well, Steve is more than a little puzzled in the beginning, says he thought that Mormons weren’t allowed to celebrate Halloween, and birthdays, and basically everything fun in life. Connor just laughs. 

“Why wouldn’t Mormons love Halloween?” he says. “It’s basically devoted to all the things we love: sugar, neighbourliness, sugar, going door-to-door in pairs, sugar…” 

“Alright, alright, I get it, I get it, smartie-pants,” Steve replies, giving him a shove as they walk to the next house. “Why the going door-to-door thing?” 

“That’s what we do on our missions,” Connor explains. “When we go and spend two years in another country prosel – proselty – " 

"Proselytizing?" Steve says, because Steve is the smartest boy in the class and knows many things that Connor does not. "So you just go to people's houses, knock on their doors, and ask if they wanna be Mormons?" 

"It’s like a rite of passage. Best two years of our lives," Connor says. "All good Mormon boys do it.” 

"We don't do anything like that," Steve says after a moment. "Don't try and convert anybody." 

"Why not?"  

Steve shrugs. Connor can't imagine what it must be for him, to not have been taught since he was Ciara and Caitlín's age that he would be going on a mission when he is nineteen years old; to not have it as a constant, repetitive background noise from your parents, your family, your teachers.  

“I guess it’s because we don’t think you need to be Jewish to go to the world to come,” Steve says after a moment. “Or have a relationship with God. Just cause you’re not born a Jew doesn’t mean you can’t hang out in the Garden of Eden or whatever. Also, no Hell. I guess that changes things." 

But Connor, as he watches his best friend stroll beside him, watches his baby sisters giggle down the road in front of him, allows himself a moment to imagine what it must be like to live without the fear of the fire that never shall be quenched. Connor loves Steve as he loved the bug that was crawling on his palm, as he loved Lizzie as they clasped sticky palms together at their fifth birthday party, but no longer does he love all that’s in his whole wide world – spits and snarls and taunts that he doesn’t quite understand are thrown his way, boys mocking his hair and his dancing and, most hurtful of all, his treasured bond with Steve. 

He does his best to turn the other cheek and pray for them as he is a good Mormon boy, just like he is taught to turn the other cheek to all of the enemies his Heavenly Father will challenge him with. Any day he has a bad thought about the other boys, when he just wishes that he could – that he could just darn them all to heck, or even when he just feels hurt or scared, he kneels by the edge of his bed, murmurs his bad feeling or thought into the air as he prays, before he chooses to ignore those feelings, turns off his reading light, and goes to bed.   

So, no, he does not love all of his classmates, despite all of his praying away of his bad thoughts and feelings, but he does love Steve. He loves that Steve tells the other boys to do awfully vulgar things that Connor would never dare tell them to do, and he loves that Steve is still comfortable with changing next to him in the lockers before gym class when all the other boys will avoid him like the plague, and he loves that Steve still has his blue, mesmerizing eyes. During the day, he can brush it aside as friendship, the strong bonds of brotherly love he has never experienced before, and that’s why they’re so strange but he can find no God-given way of keeping the thought turned off overnight. 

One thing leads to another and one night his mother opens the door to his room, and Connor quickly wipes his hands on his sheets, instinct telling him that she can never, ever know about this. She asks him if he’s okay, says that she heard him cry out, and he replies that he is, he’s fine, he just had a bad dream, and does not tell her about the stickiness on his palms. He is not lying, he reassures himself, he is just not telling the whole truth, and hopes that his mother never asks him what he’s started having dreams about. 

Only when Connor hears her close to door to her and his father’s bedroom, when he presses his ear to the wall and hears not even a giggle from Ciara and Caitlín’s room, when he hears nothing but his shallow breathing, does Connor turn on his reading light, kneel on the floor beside his bed and pray. No – tries to pray, cannot get one word out before he’s crying into his cowboy bedsheets, shoulders shaking in confusion, exhaustion. Only when his knees are sore, when his eyes are stinging, only when he has cried himself empty and confessed it all, does Connor get to unsteady feet, get back under his shameful sheets, and turn off his reading light because he is a good Mormon boy. 

But, as with many young preteens, Connor is also an inquisitive Mormon boy. He's learned, instinctively, that there are some questions he cannot ask his parents, his family, his teachers; he is told to pray, he is told to consult his well-thumbed copy of the Book of Mormon; he is told that, if he is faithful enough, someday things would make sense. But there are only so many afternoons he can spend in the library waiting for Steve to finish another detention, there can only be so many times he can flit through a dictionary, and he is almost at the "i", almost at iniquity, before his hands are moving of his own accord, stopping one letter too short without even realising it and finding written on the page: 

HOMOSEXUAL (adj.): 

Sexually attracted to people of your own sex. 

It becomes harder for him after this to turn the other cheek at school when he is being taunted, being called “faggot”, “homo”, “queer”: it becomes harder for him to hide his feelings away when he realizes he is being taunted with words that were so close to the truth, to the whole truth. 

He is attracted to Steve, and he does not tell him. He is not lying because he is a good Mormon boy, he reassures himself, he is just not telling the whole truth, and hopes that no one ever pries any further. 

It gets to the point in which Connor becomes too scared to pray away his fears before bed; to whisper his bad feelings and worse thoughts into the night in case his mother could hear him. His thoughts were becoming so diabolical, so devilish, so wicked and twisted and perverted and depraved and such a betrayal of everything that he believes in that he knows on far more than instinct that she can never, ever find out. 

He is not lying, he reassures himself, for he is a good Mormon boy, he is a good Mormon boy, he is a good Mormon boy, he is just not telling the whole truth. Being – being – being what he is, that is bad, but lying is worse, and he hasn’t done that, not yet – no, not ever, he will not lie, he will not lie, he will just pray that he is never asked for the whole truth. 

He instead kneels down to pray when he is jolted awake in the middle of the night, when only the Lord can hear him; whispers his secrets under the stark white of the glow of his reading light, rays cutting through him as if they were the judgmental glare of his Heavenly Father. When he is finished, he gets to his feet, wipes away tears with nail-bitten palms, and, before he gets back to bed, reaches towards his reading light and turns it off, but the rays of the judgement follow him into sleep. 

He begins to get the Dreams, and he does not know which ones terrify him the most. 

The first set of dreams, with the island and the sea and body of the friend who was maturing much faster than he was, leaving him sick down to his stomach even as warmth coils in his belly; or the second, with the screams and the terrors and stench of burning, leaving him jittery and jumpy all day at the slightest loud noise, even the sound of his friend’s sweet voice. Both leave him sobbing for his Heavenly Father’s forgiveness, all damp sheets and nail-bitten palms, his thoughts a tar heart oozing black into his lungs and his feelings a demon in his stomach threatening to claw its way out dream after dream after dream.  

Chapter Text

Connor McKinley is thirteen years old and still he does not lie, because he is a good Mormon boy. He has a mother and a father from whom he feels more and more distant day after day; he has two baby sisters who are no longer babies, and he is terrified for them.  

He has two baby sisters who sing silly songs to annoy him, who wake him up too early in the morning because they want their hair plaited just so, who play with his tap shoes so he can never find them when he needs them. He has two eight-year-old sisters who sing like angels in choir, who wake him up with hugs and presents at Christmas, who beg him to plait their hair every morning because their mother gets it wrong every time and only their big brother can do it right.

Connor knows he was wrong, now. How could he have ever thought he couldn’t love the swell of his mother’s stomach? These two happy girls who make him want to tear out his own hair as much as plait theirs, these two funny girls who love him with all their child hearts and who terrify him down to the very bone.  

He would rather die than have his sisters -his happy, funny, baby sisters - turn off their feelings every day, every hour, every freaking minute like he has to. 

He would rather die than have his sisters be plagued by dreams as he is. 

He would rather die than have his sisters turn against him just like every single single kid at school.   

Well. Almost every single kid.  

He still has Steve, knows he will always have Steve: knows it from the smile Steve breaks into when he sees Connor cycling down his street before school, when he sees Connor has waited for him at the end of his detention, when he wakes up in the morning and sees Connor in the sleeping bag on the floor smiling right back at him.  

The sleepovers are becoming less and less frequent: Connor is plagued by dreams more often than not, now, and he is terrified of having one curled up on Steve’s bedroom floor. Connor can’t tell him about the Hell dreams because he just wouldn’t understand, and Steve can never, ever know about the other dreams. He has no one in his whole wide world to turn to for comfort bar his Heavenly Father, who turns out to be of not much use when in his dreams Connor is crushed in Satan’s grasp like the bug he’d killed all those years ago. Dancing becomes a relief; dancing becomes a release; dancing becomes the only thing to calm him down in the early mornings when Connor is ripped from sleep. Clutching at the side of his chest of drawers, fingers brushing the photo frame and feet brushing the floor, he feels closer to enlightenment than he ever could reading scripture; feels closer to the Heavenly Father than he ever could praying; feels closer to real peace than he ever could in a church.  

He wears himself ragged during term time, sometimes waking up at three, four, five o’clock and dancing until he has to start getting ready for school. Steve furrows his eyebrows and gives him the whole of his KitKat; Ciara and Caitlín are quieter when getting ready; his mother puts a hand on his forehead and asks him if he’s been praying every night. His days are good, are bright and happy and full of love when he lets them be, can fight through his fatigue at a smile from Steve, from his sisters. He has the thought of summer to keep him eager, the thought of high school at the end of summer to keep him studious, the thought of his mission at the end of high school to keep him holy. But it's the thought of Steve, the reality of him, that keeps him happy.

On the last day of summer term, Connor heads home straight away, the half an hour cycle seeming to drag without Steve by his side, and ends up falling asleep on the sofa at 5 o’clock, only waking up in his bed completely famished at 6 o’clock the next morning.  

Connor curls up into an even tighter ball. He can’t remember the last time his father held him.  

In the first dance show of the summer, James Bond theme tune is chosen to be the music for the primary segment. Connor, being the eldest boy, is given the role of none other than he man himself, and he is delighted. He gets to be center stage for so much of it, gets to take on a leadership role, and he could bathe in the praise of his parents, who invite everyone and anyone he can from their ward to go see him. Even Lizzie and her parents come to see him perform, and it's nice to see her outside of Sunday School for once, even if it's a bit weird to see her and Steve interact. All she does is congratulate Connor on his performance, give them both weird looks, and disappear back into the crowd, clutching her Young Women's Values necklace the entire time. 

Teenage girls are weird.

The best thing about it by far, though, was now he has the excuse to watch the James Bond movies. Even better, an excuse to watch the Pierce Brosnan ones, which he is very excited about – even if his parents only rent one for him to before they decide that they’re “unsuitable”, filled with far too much language and violence and inappropriate content. He agrees that they shouldn’t rent anymore, because he is a good Mormon boy. 

He gets to watch the other ones with Steve, of course, who has borrowed them from his older sister whose borrowed them from her boyfriend. He does not tell his parents – he is not lying, he reassures himself, he is just not telling the whole truth, and hopes that his parents don’t ask him if he ended up watching any more. He would feel guilty, but there is only so much that can be crammed into one dream. Steve's parents who are a lot less strict about this kind of thing – he says they complain about him watching inappropriate movies, but never anything more than that.  

“Besides,” he says at lunch once, hidden in the bike shed away from all the other kids. “Our lives have adult themes, so why can’t we watch movies with adult themes?”  

So he’s more than happy to watch them with Connor, even if he himself doesn’t completely understand why Connor likes them so much. 

“I still don’t get what the big deal is.” They’re halfway through Die Another Day, and Steve seems more intent on watching Connor watch the movie and laughing at his reaction than on actually watching the movie half the time. 

“The big deal?” Connor says. “They’re incredible. Pierce Brosnan is incredible.” 

Steve shrugs loosely. He's sat next to Connor on the couch, legs swung up so that they’re tucked in next him and his toes are pressing into Connor’s thigh. He pokes him with them whenever Connor gets a bit too excited, and it’s a testament to how much Connor likes these movies that he barely even notices. “If you say so. They look fake to me. I thought you didn’t like this kind of movies, anyway? I thought you liked – the Wizard of Oz, and stuff.” 

“I can like action movies if I want to,” Connor replies, squirming and far too defensive . “I liked Indiana Jones, didn’t I?” 

“Yeah, probably a bit too much, but you like fantasy and golden age musicals and stuff. I didn’t think that spy movies would be your sort of thing. Wait,” Steve breaks out into a grin, and his blue eyes practically sparkle, and if Connor stares a bit, well. “It’s the girls, isn’t it? You like the girls, don’t you?” 

“Shush,” Connor grumbles, still squirming, and so on and so forth, a gentle back-and-forth of bickering between friends as they watch the movie. 

This, at least, is a blessing in disguise. It is easier to claim that he likes to watch James Bond because of the girls instead of Pierce Brosnan, and that he continues dancing because of the girls instead of because dancing is the only way he feels like he can be himself. 

He is not lying, he reassures himself, he is just not telling the whole truth, and prays that no one ever asks him what the whole truth is. It is easier to cling the remaining shreds of the presumption of heterosexuality that still linger even as the playful nudges between the two boys every time a girl appears on the screen escalate into a play-fight, poking feet and jabbing elbows and prodding fingers and then, oh gosh, oh gosh, oh gosh – he doesn’t know which dream this’ll end up in, but it’ll come back to haunt him anyhow, heck – 

Oh, and how he tries to suppress it, but the tidal wave of disgust still floods through him when he is kept awake by the thought of blue, blue eyes and by a painful throb that no amount of recitation of verses can reverse, and when the energy spent on trying to hide the feelings becomes the sole source feeding them: making them more noticeable, more intimidating, more powerful, even as he scrabbles desperately to conceal them like the good Mormon boy that he wants to be. 

But, as is with all young teens, Connor is also an inquisitive Mormon boy, and so he finds himself practically pinned under the boy with the mesmerizing eyes, once again curious and once again so, so forgetful as to exactly why he should act with such precaution, until it is done, until it is finished, until he has nothing but his shock at the dampness on his lips and a bad, bad feeling in his racing heart. 

He freaks out, tar heart leaking into his lungs and up his throat, and he could vomit, he really could, goodness knows he’s done it before and badness knows exactly the reasons why. He claws desperately to get out from under Steve, his gentle touch now worse than the grip of the Devil himself, and ends up on his feet as far away as the little living room will let him, all panting breaths and nail bitten palms, and he knows he cannot escape Satan’s hold. 

Steve is staring at him with his blue eyes, and Connor finally thinks he truly understands why he should act with such precaution: holding the bug too tight lead to its demise, and holding Steve too tight would end no better. 

“Connor, are you… are you okay?” Steve has curled himself up on the couch, his eyes wide and scared and as annoyingly blue as ever. “I didn’t mean to freak you out, I just thought…” he trails off, eyes dropping to his lap. He’s bright red, but Connor doesn’t know if it’s because of embarrassment or because he just – because they just – 

"What have you done?" is all Connor is able to get out, his chest tight, his hands shaking, because Steve couldn't have been thinking properly, thinking straight, thinking that – that – that was any way okay, because it's not, it's not, it's not. It’s all tricks, all gimmicks, stones into bread and Connor failed.  

"I'm sorry," Steve says, and Connor thinks he might be able to forgive him, even if he can never figure himself, "I'm sorry, I just – I thought you liked me as well," and Connor knows he'll never be able to. 

He's been told time and time again that one day he will feel a certain way which will tell him the gospel is true. That if he is faithful enough, someday things will make sense, but nothing he has ever learned at church has ever made as much sense, nothing he has ever felt at church has ever felt as true, as the feel of Steve's lips on his. 

He was doing so well. He says it once, quiet, then repeats it, out-loud, broken, "I was doing so well," and it's both a lie and the truth. He had been doing so well to keep to the gospel, because he had never acted on his thoughts; and he hadn't, because he should have never have had those thoughts in the first place. "What have you done?" 

Steve rises from the couch, takes a step towards him, and Connor takes a step back, his body acting of its own accord yet again. His vision is becoming blurry, and he's shaking, just a bit, black tar heart pumping. He wants to go home. He wants to pray. He wants to kiss Steve again, and again, and again. He’s just standing there, within arm's reach, within heart's reach, biting his lip. Connor wants to puke. 

"Look, if you're not gay, or – don't feel ready to say it or whatever, that's fine, but please – " 

"I'm not," Connor tells him, tells himself, and it's not a lie, not a lie, not a lie, but Steve, oh, Steve – smart Steve, witty Steve, Steve who always has an answer for anything has to say it.  

He has to say it, has to say, "Connor, you were the one who kissed me." 

"I'm not," Connor repeats, and he can't even say it, can't even say the word out loud, because that would make it an identifier, not something he can change, he can overcome. "I struggle with same-sex attraction, but I'm not – that." 

"Gay?" Steve repeats, and Connor flinches. It hurts when it leaves the mouths of students at school, hurts when he hears it on the radio or on TV, but not as much as it does from Steve, from someone who is closer to the truth than any of them. "You are, aren’t you."  

It's not a question. Connor has never felt this transparent in all his life. Not in front of his parents, not in front of his bishop, not in front of his God, and this, this – this feeling, this panic, this swell of his heart at how confused Steve is looking, does not comply with how he should be feeling, goes against everything the gospel has ever told him, and he needs to turn it off right now.  

"It's okay," Steve says, and he smiles, and not for the right reasons; the smile he gives when Connor wakes up from a nightmare; the smile he gives when he finds Connor hiding the school bathrooms cradling books and hidden bruises; the smile that says, it's okay, I'm here, it's all better now. "It's okay," he repeats, because he doesn't understand, because he doesn't understand how not okay it is at all. "I'm gay too." 

"This is not okay," Connor snaps, because he can't stand it, the smile, the soft tone in Steve's voice, the sacrilege he is speaking. "It's not okay to be gay, it's not okay for me to be gay, nothing about this is okay." 

"Why are you doing this?" Steve says, and his voice sounds a little broken, too, and it's all Connor's fault, it's all his fault. "You're the first person I've ever come out to. I've been keeping this a secret since third grade, and you're the first person I've ever trusted enough to tell. I get it, I shouldn’t have – we shouldn’t have – ”  

“No, we shouldn’t.” 

“I thought you of all people would understand,” Steve says. “You’re my best friend, and you're – you're acting like a bible-basher. You're acting like I just admitted to murder." 

"It's a sin, Steve –" 

"Jesus Christ," Steve scoffs, and Connor flinches. "Yeah, yeah, whatever, he's not my Lord and Saviour." 

"Leviticus 18:22," Connor recites, because this is the only thing he knows, the foundation he knows to be true. No ambiguity, no way it can be wrong. "Thou shalt not lie with mankind –" 

"As with womankind, it is detestable," Steve finishes for him, spitting the words as if it were a commandment of the Devil himself, not an eternal covenant of the Heavenly Father that Connor knows it be. "It's not only you who studies scripture. It's not only you who believes in God." 

"Abomination," Connor says in a small voice. He has read that chapter, that page, that line, enough times to know Steve has gotten it wrong. "It's an abomination." 

"So's eating shellfish," Steve says, expression hardening, and he's seen this face, seen it dozens of times, but it's never been aimed at him before. "And so what if it is? I'm gay, and I don't want to marry a girl. I have 611 commandments left, for Christ's sake." He doesn't notice when Connor flinches, this time. "I'll keep kosher and put a mezuza on my front door. I'll put on tefillin and pray three times a day. If I pray, if I give to charity, if I live a godly life, whose He to kvetch if I break two of His commandments?" 

"It's the most abominable of all sins save the shredding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost," Connor says, and Steve scoffs again. Steve, who claps and yells mazel tov whenever a dish breaks; Steve, who sways when he prays; Steve, who doesn't eat meat and dairy together, is scoffing at his religion. "The Old Covenant isn't the only scripture that should be obeyed." 

"Jesus Christ." 

"Steve." 

"I deny him as well. I deny your Jesus, I deny your Holy Ghost, and I deny your stupid Book of Mormon," Steve snaps. "Everything you’re saying is stupid." 

"The Church is true." 

"Your Church is stupid," Steve says. "Do you think I'm an abomination? Do you think I'm detestable? You were the one who kissed me. Take your stupid self-righteous Mormon piety and aim it at yourself."  

"I have." It tears its way out of his throat, the confession, because it has to, because it's the only way he might get Steve to understand, by telling him the truth. "I have dreams where I am burned, or am about to burn, or still on fire, in a fire that will never be quenched. I know I'm an abomination, I know I deserve to rot in Hell, and that's why I need to turn it off, that's why this is not okay." 

He doesn't tell him about the other dreams, and he's not lying, he's just not telling the whole truth. Steve knows enough, knows too much, as it is.  

"I'm sorry," Steve says, and it's softer, more sympathetic, than he has been the entire conversation. "You don’t deserve that. I shouldn't have said what I said."  

"You’ve got nothing to apologize for,” Connor says, and then smiles, draws himself to his full height, tucks his hands behind his back. His nails dig into his palm, a reminder that he cannot use them how he wishes, and he focuses on that, instead, the lesser pain. “I’ve only got myself to blame. I allowed myself to be tempted, and I yielded." 

It's Steve's turn to take a step back now, his face disturbed more than anything else now. Connor doesn't look at him, focuses on a point just above his left shoulder, wills his mind to go blank, turn it off, turn it off, turn it off.  

"Do you think I should go to Hell?"  

Connor wants to say it. 

"Do you think I deserve to?" 

Connor wants to say that Steve is good, that Steve is worthy, that Steve has more light in his countenance than any Mormon he has ever met – that he won't be banished to the outer darkness, just the spirit prison, where he will be taught the gospel and, following his repentance, he will be resurrected to the degree of glory of which he is worthy. 

"Say it. Say you don't think I should go to Hell." 

But Steve denies Jesus Christ, denies the Holy Ghost, denies the restored gospel, and therefore – and therefore. 

Connor wants to turn the clock back four minutes and stop this conversation from ever happening. 

Connor wants to turn the clock back four years and never let himself be tempted in the first place. 

Steve's mouth twists in a snarl. Connor wants so, so many things. 

"Jews don't even have a Hell, dumbass," he snaps. "Get out." 

"Steve –" 

"Get out!"  

And so Connor gets out. Connor cycles home in a daze. He does not tell his mother the truth about why he has left early, because she can never, ever know, but he is smiling, and he think he's done it. He thinks he’s finally done it. He still cannot find any God-given way to keep it turned off over night, still wakes up screaming in the small hours, but in the day he is in control. In the day he is a good Mormon boy – all bitten tongues and blood stained palms, but he is smiling.

Chapter Text

Connor McKinley is 16 years old and he does not lie, because he is a good Mormon boy. He no longer has to. He doesn’t lie to his mother, he doesn't lie to his father, and he certainly doesn't lie to his little sisters, for there is nothing to lie about. Holding it in isn't enough anymore, was never enough. 

Every good thing he has experienced has come from the gospel, and he rejected it. Every good quality that he has came from the church, and he threw it back in the church’s face. This is the eternal gospel of Jesus Christ and he is not walking away from it. 

He isn't gay anymore – he was never gay to begin with. He did struggle with same-sex attraction, but now it's a non-issue because he has turned it off. Steve was a test, he knows that now, a test that he failed, and it can never, ever happen again. He waters the tree that sprouts into the gospel's fruit; he turns to the tree that sprouts into temptation and rips it from its roots. It's a non-issue if he stays in the Church, stays celibate, stays committed to the gospel: he has safety within the bounds the Lord has set, and that is where he will stay.  

His whole wide world is reduced to his school, his high school without Steve; his meetinghouse, where he spends more and more of his time; his room at home, the smallest bedroom with the photo of him and Lizzie on the chest of drawers, the photos of him and Steve shoved into a box at the back of his closet; and the blistering pits of Hell every single night without fail where he has never felt more welcome. 

He reduces his whole wide world to be within those boundaries and those boundaries alone, and that is where he will stay: throwing himself into the scripture, more than he had even done when he was preparing to be baptised. He abandons his ballet practise in the morning: he wakes up early to go to his morning seminary classes instead. He goes to school: doesn't speak up, doesn’t swear, struggles to stay awake when the nightmares have been especially bad. He goes back home; does his homework for school and seminary, memorises scripture. He goes to bed; the dreams worse now that the Devil has Steve to play with, to torture and torment through the force of his mind and his mind alone. 

For Connor, this is – this is fine. His life has become going to seminary, going to school, going home, going to bed, and going to hell; going to seminary, going to school, going home, going to hell; seminary, school, home, hell; seminary, school, home, hell; hell, hell, hell, hell, and it is fine. He is still smiling, after all, because he is a good Mormon boy: a good Mormon boy, soon to be a Mormon man.  

Connor has spent his entire life preparing for it, preparing for his mission, but it only begins to loom when he enters high school. He turns 15 during his first week as a freshman; he cycles to school by himself, eats lunch by himself, goes home by himself.  It’s been four years since he last spent a birthday without Steve, since he last cycled to school without Steve; four years until he finishes high school, four years until he goes on his mission. It only really hits him that morning when Ciara and Caitlín kiss his cheeks goodbye, wear their matching gold-and-green CTR necklaces and sports shorts under their skirts, cycle two-by-two to school.  

They look like missionaries. They look like they don’t need him anymore. They don’t ask him to plait their hair, don’t need him to help them get ready for school, don’t disturb his dance practise in the early mornings – not that he dances anymore. It’s too risky. By October, Connor is already known for being the weird Mormon boy who smiles too much – for being “the redhead whose really nice to everyone, walks a bit like a duck, never ever swears” – never mind the boy who dances. Never mind the boy who can pirouette, can tap dance, can recite the entirety of Electricity from Billy Elliot from the top of his head. He can’t be known as anything more, anything worse than that.  

No one calls him a faggot anymore; no one calls him a queer: people call him nasty things, yes, but they don’t make it their one and only mission to seek him out and tear him down as they did in middle school. So things are better, for all that they’re worse, especially now he doesn’t have a friend in the world that would stand up for him, but Connor still wants to be seen as straight, needs to be; and that means no more dance lessons. His tap shoes get hidden away just like the photos of Steve Blade, as if Connor can pretend they’re never there, can pretend it never happened, if he can just keep it in the closet. Besides – he doesn't feel interested in it anymore. He doesn't want to dance, doesn't want to play baseball, doesn't want to do anything. There’s an emptiness where his tar black heart used to be: he has turned off all his bad feelings, and has been left with little else. 

He looks down the lists of sign-ups, of singing and science and sports, and he doesn't want to do any of them. He can go to chapel just fine. It's easy to keep up a certain image there in the safety of the boundaries: to look like this, act like that, only say this and that and hold back everything else. But Connor struggles to keep up the enthusiasm, keep the smile on his face, the joy in his countenance during normal lessons, never mind after-school.  

It only takes his father asking him during dinner one evening if he's joined any clubs for Connor to straighten his shoulders and sign up for one. He has an image to uphold: a perfect Mormon teen from a perfect Mormon family and a perfect Mormon church. Not joining any school clubs did not comply with that image.  

He tries out the drama club first – yes, he knows the stereotypes of actors, especially in musical theatre. Catty and effeminate, campy and flamboyant – he knows them all. He is some of them, even: he can dance, he loves golden age musicals, he’s a bit judgmental (that might be the Mormonism, he isn’t sure), and his penchant for brightly coloured socks (striped, tartan, polka dots, he has them all) could probably count as a bit camp. But he misses the stage, misses the attention, misses dancing, and if he can’t express this thing that is becoming frustratingly more and more an intrinsic part of him in the way you’d expect, he can sure as heck express it in ways that don’t necessarily mean he’s a flaming – whatever. And it's fun. He's done this sort of thing at church before, silly improvs and sketches all rated Universal, PG at worst, but this is funnier, sillier, ruder, better until – until.  

He discovers that one of them is gay, and that’s – that’s fine. He nods, says nothing, keeps smiling, and it’s all fine. Another one comes out a month later, a girl this time, and it is still completely fine, and then a third comes out the week after that, and Connor would be fine if it wasn’t for the said gay kid thinking it was a wonderful idea to tell him personally that he was glad he was one of the cool Christians who didn’t care if people were gay or not.  

Perhaps snapping that just because he doesn’t say anything doesn’t mean he doesn’t like it, and he is a Mormon, thank you very much, not Christian, and then going off and having a panic attack in the boy's bathroom isn’t the best of reactions, but it becomes very clear soon after that he isn’t welcomed amongst the drama kids anymore and so it doesn’t really matter anyway. 

So drama club is out, and the glee club, and the dance club, all firmly entwined with each other, all look at him with scorn or pity, and Connor can't explain himself. He can't tell them the truth, the whole, not even a half-truth, so he says nothing, and it only takes until Christmas until the whole year group knows him as "the homophobic Mormon".  

It's safe to say he isn't invited to any New Year's Eve parties. Connor is just glad that it has –phobic tacked onto the end instead of anything else. 

Connor considers all the other groups he could join. One that wouldn’t reject him for being a bit odd and overly cheerful, but also wouldn’t reject him for thinking he was homophobic. He joins the debate club: a way to be the centre of attention without any gay clichés attached, but then topic of gay marriage is brought up a few weeks after he joins and, well. He slips out of the group as unnoticed as when he slips in, and no one seems any worse or any better for it, including himself. He joins another, at random – the chess club, which is a lot of fun, really, once he gets into it, but there’s a girl there who always tries to pair up with him and flutters her eyes at him, so he panics and doesn't go the next week. He tries the art club, but there’s a boy who smirks constantly and gets paint all over his face and once spills a whole cup of paint water down his t-shirt and, nope, Connor is definitely not continuing at that club. 

He sees the members of the GSA loiter in the corner of the school, all dyed hair and piercings and sad, hateful, wounded looks, and he feels so – not angry, but how can they feel so sorry for themselves when they have food, and money, and love? 

So, perhaps he isn’t part of any clubs, but it’s not as if he does nothing. He goes to Mutual every week, gets hand-on practise doing things he learns about in Sunday classes – makes crafts, plays sports, learns life and leadership skills. He writes for the school paper, still plays piano. He gets a job delivering papers before seminary to start saving money for his mission, because he has a bike and has normally been woken up by nightmares that time in the morning anyway. Sometimes he and the other teenage boys in his ward go out as a group to Jamba Juice, or to see a movie, or to the park on sunny days, and Connor supposes they're his friends.  

It’s only when he returns back to school at the beginning of sophomore year and not one student comes over to say hi throughout the entirety of his first day back that Connor realizes that he perhaps might not be happy. 

It's only when his 16th birthday rolls around without any fanfare that Connor realise he doesn't feel anything at all.   

He has turned off all his bad feelings, and has been left with nothing else.  

Connor would have been perfectly fine with it continuing on as such, really: going to work, going to seminary, going to school, going to bed and going to hell, if he wasn't called in for a random worthiness interview with his bishop. He's been called in before, once every six months since he was 12 years old, and his bishop always asks the same things, and Connor always answers the same things. He's become good at saying what his parents, his teachers, his leaders want to hear, can answer the questions by rote now.  

Yes, he believes in God. Yes, he has a firm testimony of the restored gospel. Yes, he sustains the President as the prophet, and the other authorities of the Church. Yes, he lives the law of chastity.  

There's a pause. 

"How would you say you're doing with personal worthiness?" 

Connor ducks his head, looks at his hands, and reminds himself exactly why they can never, ever know. 

He ends up telling the truth, because of course he does. Question by question, guilt trip by guilt trip, it is forced out of him: he tells his bishop that he struggles with same-sex attraction, has done since he was fifth grade, has been abusing himself since seventh, and he doesn't feel better at all. Telling the truth, spilling his guts on the floor in front of his bishop doesn't make him feel cleansed, feel purified. How can be forgiven for this, for the most abominable of sins, if his leader and his Heavenly Father know what a terrible person he really is? 

Connor doesn't tell him about Steve. He's not lying, he tells himself, just not telling the whole truth. 

He tells his parents, as well, and it goes better than expected. It probably helps that he tells them that, although he struggles with same-sex attraction, he is very committed to the gospel and to not living the gay lifestyle. That he will be celibate if he has to be, that he will spend his life alone, that he will sacrifice all this and more for the gospel, because that's how true the gospel is. That his Heavenly Father has given him the gift of life, of a family and a church that loves him, and he won't throw it away on feeling this kind of attraction.  

He tells himself he can do that, that he can hold it in, pretend it’s not there, turn it off to make his mother happy. He tells his parents he can do that. He tells Heavenly Father he can do that. It’s not lying if he makes sure it becomes the whole truth. 

Connor doesn't tell his parents about Steve. From the look in his mother's eyes, he doesn't need to.  

So he's a sophomore, so he's 16 years old, so he's old enough to date without a friend in the world, never mind a friend he can ask out on a date. He is never told overtly that he needs to change his sexuality, but he knows he has to, knows he has to try, but the girls at school look at him with pity, with scorn; they aren't Mormon, aren't approachable, aren't attractive. He studies his scriptures daily, marking every age and searching for ways to feel the inner peace everyone talks about, while only feeling more and more unworthy.  

The only place where he can find a little respite from it all is Mutual, a tender mercy. There's no students constantly misbehaving, a teacher always yelling like at school – instead, he and the other boys plan the activities themselves. The leaders don't tell them what went right or wrong, they ask them questions until they figure it out themselves. Connor leaps at every opportunity to answer questions, set goals, plan activities, solve problems. It's like all the silence he keeps at school, at home, at chapel pours out in that one evening every week, where he feels safe, where all the other boys understand. It isn't exactly inner peace he's been promised, but it's peaceful in its own way. 

It's the summer before junior year that he meets her.  

She saunters across the lovingly cultivated garden of the meetinghouse to say hello. She laughs with his mother, makes pleasantries with his father, discusses Sunday School with his sisters, and Connor just stares. He’s seen her since they were small, of course – across the pews at sacrament, across the field at summer barbecues, across the hall at Mutual – but she looks so different, sounds so different, is so different, that Connor may as well be meeting an entirely different girl altogether, an entirely different woman.  

Lizzie stands up straight, smile quaint; she speaks softly and asks only appropriate questions. She laughs, sometimes, and seems shocked by it: covering her mouth and ducking her head. She wears odd wide pants that look like a skirt when she is standing still and jar with the long skirts that float around them. Her hair is the longest he's ever seen it, tied up in a side braid, the rainbow of the Young Women's Values adorning her neck, her wrists, and Connor's mind trails behind their conversation in confusion. 

He knows her, but he doesn’t recognise her.  

He recognises her, but he doesn’t know her. 

When her brothers and sisters finally pull her away, Connor is left in a daze by it all, by the little tug in his heart. His mother gushes all the way home, does not seem to notice how clearly it irritates Ciara and Caitlín to hear her praise the model Mormon girl they have spent their entire lives trying to be. It takes all he has in him to make dinner with his mother, lose at chess to his father, let his little sisters win at board games; to not go to his room and stare at the picture on his chest of drawers for the remainder of the day. He goes to sleep that night with her still on his mind, and finds the dreams are a little easier to deal with in the morning.  

He chalks it up to nothing more than the comfort of seeing a childhood friend, who knew him and loved him before any of this all happened, but then - then he talks with her the next week, and the next week, and then it hasn't even been a month and it's a part of his Sunday routine, to seek her out before and after service, to talk about nothing at all.  

The first time he sees her outside of service, it's a Wednesday, and he's taking the wheel at Mutual for once, teaching the youth in his ward how to cha-cha as much as his memory will allow. For the whole week previous, Connor had been practising back up in his bedroom for the first time in two years, and it's a relief, how much it all flows back to him: flows through his arms and legs and feet, out through his smile and his speech as he teaches.  

It's even better to be teaching Lizzie, laughing with her as she trips over her own feet and gets the rhythm wrong. Connor nudges her towards it as much as he can, as much as he always does, because – because it feels good, to make her laugh. To make anyone laugh, really, with him instead of at him. Why should it be such a shock to hear herself laugh when Lizzie deserves so much happiness? It tugs at his heart, feels safe enough, so he chases it as they dance, as he walks her home. The activity went well, he knows it did, gives him a little sense of elation he hasn't felt in years.  

Lizzie certainly had fun; she tells him as much as she glances up at her home, says goodbye just before her front gate, and suddenly she doesn't look anything like the little girl he played in the garden with. That little girl was happy, for starters.  

There’s something not right here. Something missing, something left to understand. He doesn’t understand much about teenage girls, thought he understood Lizzie until she turned her face back down at him with sad eyes and the same, small smile she always carries, realises he doesn't understand her at all. She doesn't want to go inside. She doesn't want to say goodbye, she doesn't and there's something missing here, she's not quite telling him the whole truth. 

The whole truth for him – or, as much of it as he can give her – is that he doesn't want her to go inside either, doesn't want her to say goodbye either, and maybe this is it. He has been told time and time again that one day, if he is faithful enough, he will feel a certain way towards a girl that will make everything make sense, make everything feel true, and maybe this is it. Maybe she is it. Not his eternal companion, exactly, but a stepping stone to heterosexuality, to his true happy obedient self that he was meant to be.  

She's really pretty. Connor thinks she's really pretty. This must be some version of heterosexuality, he tells himself, and ignores everything else that is saying otherwise.  

And then there's only one thing for it, really. It might even move the sadness from her eyes, make her smile for real. 

"Lizzie," he says. "Do you want to go out with me?" 

He knows she'll say yes. He's never been surer of anything else in his life. He's the right age, right religion, right background. She'll say yes, and maybe Connor will learn to like her, to like girls. She'll say yes, and Connor will finally, finally be able to turn it off, once and for all.  

Lizzie stares back at him for a long while – like she knows him, but suddenly doesn't recognize him. Like she recognizes him, but has just realised she doesn't know him at all. 

"You're asking me to go out with you." 

"Yes." 

"You," Lizzie says. "Want to go out with me?" 

"Yes," Connor says, sounding slightly less sure. "Is that okay? I mean – do you want to?" 

He looks at her and she smiles, says, "Yes." The smile wobbles. "No. I don't know," she says, and the smile breaks. 

“Lizzie –”  

“Please don't,” she snaps. Her back stays ramrod straight, she doesn’t move to wipe away the tears running down her cheeks, and Connor flinches, jerks his hand away. Her face softens. “Sorry, I just – my parents can't see that I'm crying. They can never, ever know about this, okay?" 

She sounds like she’s apologising for it, apologising for being upset, for feeling emotion, for causing a scene. Connor would be apologising, too. " 

"Am I really that un-dateable?" Connor says weakly, even as the tightness in his chest eases, just a little. He hadn't even noticed it was there. Not a crush, then; there's something else that draws him to her, saying that his is someone who will understand him. 

"No, no, of course not, don't be stupid," Lizzie says, and Connor smiles at the insult despite himself. "I'm the stupid one, here, I should be the happiest girl alive right now, it's just – I didn't think you would like me like that. Could like me like that, and I want to be happy, but I'm – and you're – your friend." 

"Huh?" 

"Your friend," Lizzie says, not making any more sense. "The friend who came to your ballet show, the one from your school, the – curly haired one." 

"Steve," Connor says faintly, his head spinning enough as it is without thinking of that, without thinking of him. "His name was Steve."  

Steve feels like a distant memory, now, no matter how he counts the days – this would've been when Steve started freshman year. This would've been Steve's fourteenth birthday. This would've been when Steve started sophomore year, would've been Steve's fifteenth birthday. He speaks of him as he would of the dead, no matter how alive Steve still seems in his fading memories, in dwindling dreams.  

Connor knows he's dead to him. 

"Has Steve ever gone out with any girls?" 

"I don't know," Connor says, and doesn't tell her the whole truth. "I haven't seen him in two years." 

"Oh." There's still tears on Lizzie's cheeks, and she's shaking, just slightly. Connor has seen this feeling in the mirror, has felt it in his gut: wishes he didn't have to see it on her, to know it rests so firmly in her gut, too. "Why?" 

"We fell out," Connor says, and this is someone who understands him in a way he never wished he'd be understood.  

"Why?" Lizzie asks, and if she understands, why is she pushing? Pressing buttons that are so painful, forcing the truth out question by question, word by word.  

But then Connor remembers the whole truth, what it really is, and why she can never, ever know. Remembers this feeling is not one he should be feeling, is guilty and selfish and wrong, and straightens his back, digs his nails into his palm, smiles. "We had a disagreement over our separate religious beliefs. He was Jewish and denied Christ. What more can I say? 

He isn't lying, he tells himself, he's just not telling the whole truth. Protecting himself, protecting his friend, protecting her. 

Lizzie is still staring at him. 

"He didn't," she says, stops, swallows. "Like girls, did he?" and that's when it all clicks into place. 

"Lizzie," he says, stops, swallows. "Are you," he tries again, but loses the words, loses the language somewhere in his throat. 

“Are you?” It’s pointed. It’s hopeful. It’s desperate, because Lizzie – Lizzie who knows him, Lizzie who recognises him, Lizzie who can do both these things because she is like him – is just as unable to say it. "I thought there was no one else like me. I thought I was the only one who – who struggled –" 

"You're not." That's the whole truth, or as much of it as he can give her. He doesn't know what he is, if he even is anything, but he knows he struggles. He struggles with school, with getting up in the morning, with every aspect of his life – and with this, with his attraction, the snaking, twisting thing round his guts, his spine. ` 

“What’s it like?" Lizzie says, sounding as terrified of the answer as she is the question. "For you?" 

“Terrifying,” Connor admits. “I shake so much sometimes I feel like I might explode.” 

"Is that what it felt like," Lizzie says. "With him?" 

"Yes." He couldn't bare it if he heard his name one more time. "It ended badly. I – he –" 

"It's okay," Lizzie says, and Connor bites the inside of his mouth until he's sure no noise will sob from his mouth. “It gives me butterflies,” she says after a long while, the world silent around them. “But in my lungs, not in my stomach, and I can’t breathe, like my body knows what I’m doing is wrong and it’s trying to punish me for it,” and Connor recalls the tar heart that still beats deep in his chest and the monster curled up at the base of his stomach, and he says nothing.  

"You're the first person I've talked to," she continues, voice very, very small. "Who's like this." 

The 'like me' goes unspoken, the loudest thing in the summer evening heat.  

"Same." He’s talked about being gay before this, of course – with Steve, with his parents, with his bishop at chapel. But Connor finds now, for the first time in his life, he actually wants to talk about it, with someone who will actually understand, although he utterly lacks the vocabulary to do so. “How did you know?” 

Lizzie blushes, turns her face away, and the smile is real, this time. "There was an all-girls production of Bugsey Malone at my school, and –"  

Connor gasps. “I love that musical,” he says – he says, he does not squeal – and Liza gives him a look. "Sorry." 

"As I was saying, there was an all-girls production, and I. Sort of. Forgot that they were all girls.” 

“That might not mean anything,” says Connor reasonably. “If you thought that they were boys, then it might’ve just been a circumstance thing.” 

“No, it,” Lizzie huffs. “It wasn’t like – it continued, and I just sort of – well, how did you know, then?” 

“Well, I,” Connor pauses, thinks about Steve, says, “I looked it up in the dictionary when I was 12, and just sort of. Realized.” 

“You looked it up in the dictionary?” Lizzie splutters, eyes wide. “When you were 12?” 

“Well, excuse me for wanting to know what the slurs kids at school were yelling at me meant,” Connor says prickly, and she quietens. 

"I should probably go inside," she says, glancing up at her still-dark house. "My mom's gonna be worried." 

"It's okay," Connor says, even though it isn't okay at all, and watches her say goodbye, stays until she's reached the safety of her porch before beginning to turn away. 

"Look, Con, about that date –" 

She looks so uncomfortable in the light of her front door in it all, in her modest skirt and her sensible shoes. The only thing about her that seems to fit, that seems to make sense, is the rainbow jewellery around her neck, around her wrists, and only because she's forced it to. How had Connor not noticed it before? That his friend, the only person who understands him, had been hurting this entire time?  

"You'll call me, right?"  

But then again, he tells himself, only she has noticed that he is, too.  

"Yeah, I'll call." 

Lizzie gives him one last smile, a weak wave, and closes the door behind her. 

* **

They do end up going on that date, and another, and another. All very PG, all very platonic, mostly taking place in the local park and the gardens of their respective houses, lying on the grass and pointing out shapes in the clouds. They never do any more than hold hands and exchange chaste hugs, and never want to do anything more, to Connor's immense relief. He's curious, he is, as to what kissing feels like, what proper kissing feels like, but he's happy to wait, happy to wait for the urge to catch up to him, happy to high-five her more than anything else.  

He meets all her family, properly – as a potential boyfriend, not just as a family friend – for the first time on at her 17th birthday do, and enjoys himself more than he would expect to, more than he's enjoyed himself in years. He's never been any good at mini golf, but the giggles he gets out of Lizzie when he hits the ball out of the course, the nods of approval he gets from her father when he actually putts something decent, the teasing he gets from her mother and three little sisters (he thought two was bad), and the instant camaraderie he gets from Lizzie's older brother for being the only other boy now her eldest brother was on his mission – they're worth more than first place could ever be.   

He expects his own 17th to roll around without much fanfare as it has done the last three years, but when Lizzie – wonderful, wonderful Lizzie – shows up on his doorstep that afternoon with a deep-dish pizza and a copy of Moulin Rouge!, the place where his tar heart used to be feels a little less empty.  

He has a friend, he tells himself that night, grinning like a fool at the ceiling. Not only friends, but a best friend, someone who may be even a girlfriend. His whole wide world has been blown apart because of this, because of her: he still goes to seminary, goes to school, goes to temple, goes home and goes to hell, but then there's more. He goes to seminary, yes, but now Lizzie has chosen not to home-study he can sit next to her; he goes to school, but he can always study in the evenings with Lizzie; he goes to temple, and spends as many Sunday afternoons as he can with her; and even on days he doesn't see her, even on days when he wakes up wanting to vomit, wanting to stay in bed, wanting a car to hit him on the cycle to school, she's always just a silly text away. He didn't realise how lonely he was until he met her again, how miserable he was until he wanted not to be.   

His parents take note of course, and gently remind him that to keep it casual, but they mostly seem relieved he's finally showing interest in a girl, showing interest in life. His mother invites Lizzie to Family Home Evening and to dinner on Sundays after service; his father drives him and his new friends to anywhere he can't cycle. So he honours their wishes, and makes more of an effort to like people, to let people into his life.  

He joins in with any and all outings the boys in his ward arrange, even arranges a few himself; doesn't flinch away when they go ice-skating, lets one of the older boys teach him how to ice skate, holding his hands as he leads him around the rink and leaving his dreams very, very cold. He goes on as many group dates that he and Lizzie get asked on as he can, even asks out a few of the other girls in her Young Women's. He's not attracted to them, and never has as much fun as he would with Lizzie, but it's nice to be casual, to be friendly, to not think about his future and his heterosexuality that seriously.  

They kiss, sometimes, and sometimes it's good: when they haven't seen each other for a while, when it's a celebration, when one of them is just particularly cheerful. Close-mouthed and simple and good, so full of affection that Connor can kid himself is romantic. Sometimes they kiss, and he feels lost. He thinks of the cavity in his chest where his tar heart used to be, and imagines what real, romantic love for her would look like in it. Would it be emptier then? But if he can do this, if he can make this work, if he can turn it off well enough, he'll be saved. He won't be separated from everyone you've ever loved for all eternity, and so stops questioning. 

He still studies his scriptures daily, marking every age and searching for ways to feel the inner peace everyone talks about, but he no longer feels the anxiety, the unworthiness he would have once felt.  How can he be unworthy when he has friends and a family and a church who love and accept him? 

He feels happy. He feels better. He feels straight. 

In a year and a half, he'll be going on his mission. In year, he'll have almost finished high school, and in half a year –  

"So you'll be going, then." 

His voice sounds very, very small. 

"Yes," Lizzie replies, and the sad eyes are back. "Come fall, I'll be at reading at Breed 'Em Young University." 

"Liz –" 

"I don't actually want to go there," Lizzie says. "I want to actually get an education, not to be engaged by the time I'm nineteen to the first returned missionary who looks my way and leave school to pop out half a dozen kids." 

"So why are you going then?" 

"It's cheap," Lizzie says, staring down at the acceptance letter. "And I guess part of me still wants to prove I'm good enough for the 'Lord's University'." 

"Liz, I understand what you're saying, but –" 

"But I really think that kind thinking can be dangerous," she drones, dropping the acceptance letter on the coach. "I know, Con, you've said it a million times already. I wanna focus on school, on journalism, stuff other than housewife training, not on my stupid future spouse and stupid eternal salvation." 

“Don’t you want to marry a man someday?” Connor asks. “Have children?” 

“Do you really want to marry a woman?” 

It's usually the end of it; they've had this exchange more than enough times to know it is. Either Connor will say, I'd want to marry you, and Lizzie would not reply, not look him in the eye, and change the subject: or Connor will not reply, not look her in the eye, and change the subject. It has never gone, or ended, any other way, but now – now.  

Now Lizzie's eldest brother has become disaffected with the church since he's come back from his mission, and he knows he could never disgrace his parents like that – his parents who have raised him with such love and affection – by not marrying a woman when he returns from his mission. Now he's been semi-dating a girl for six months and realised the happiness that obedience can bring him. Now he has proven to himself that he can turn it off. He's not going to throw that all away on a silly trick question. 

“I’d like to get married as soon as I can after I get back from my mission," he says. "I think that if I stay true to the gospel and go on my mission, when I go to BYU God will provide me a ram in the thicket for me to marry.” 

"A ram," Lizzie says, voice dead. 

"Yes." 

"In the thicket." 

"Yes," Connor says, slightly less sure.  

"You do realise the ram dies, right?" Lizzie says. "You do know what you'll be asking whatever poor girl agrees to marry you to give up, right?" 

"I’ll be a great husband and a great father," Connor says. "I'm a great boyfriend, aren't I? I’ll never have any – extra-marital relations, or whatever." 

"Yeah, with women," she says, in what is probably supposed to be an undertone. "And will you fulfil your husbandly duties?"  

"I'll make sure to tell her!" 

“Oh, hi, I'm Connor, I’m gay and I’m never going to be attracted to you, or really love you, but I would love to marry you and take you to the celestial kingdom with me," Lizzie says.  "You really think that's gonna work? A faithful Mormon girl is still going to think she can change you.” 

"Maybe she can." 

"Have I?" Lizzie says, and Connor thinks of the cavity in his chest, says nothing. "It’d be a straight Mormon girl’s fantasy, to save you from a life of AIDs, loneliness, spiritual death, to show you the love of a woman. You, who needs atonement more than anything. It's fine for you. It's your choice to give up being – emotionally and sexually fulfilled in a relationship, or whatever but, yeah, you're gonna make sure the ram is fine with being sacrificed."  

"What do you know of – of – sexual fulfilment anyway?" 

She ducks her head, looks at her hands, and Connor knows this feeling, has felt it in his gut: wishes more than anything that he didn't have to see it on her.

The room goes very quiet. 

"What have you done?" Connor says. "Lizzie - what have you done?"

She ends up telling the truth, because of course she does. Connor doesn't have to say anything more, does no more than hold his tar heart in his hands out to her and her own guilt drives her to it. She tells him that she was sleeping with her best friend from school before they made it official, and she was her Steve, and it ended badly. She tells him she loves him but she can't make this work for him, she can't give him what he deserves, she wants to be with someone who's attracted to her. She tells him they can still date until she finishes high school or goes off to college if he wants, that she's sorry she couldn't be straight for him, and that she understands if he can never, ever forgive her. 

"I thought you were happy," he says weakly, and she finally looks up. "I thought I made you happy." 

"Con," Lizzie says, not unkindly. "You're not the only one who turns it off, you know." 

They don't kiss again after that. Don't really see each other at all, outside of seminary and chapel, due to both their respective school loads, his junior exams and her senior. They agree to stay official until her senior prom, and stay friends throughout the summer. 

They probably spent too much time together anyway, Connor tells himself as he does up his tie, it's probably for the best – and it's fine. Really. Honestly. It's fine. He let her be a part of his whole wide world, let her expand it to more than the church, more than his misery, more than thinking about how it'd be just fine if a car slammed into his bike on the cycle to school. He let her because he knew she let him do exactly the same for her. 

Connor can still be friends with the boys in his ward, can still lead them on activities, can still blossom into the best Mormon boy he can be without her. Connor can still be better once she leaves for college. He can still be straight – straight, except for how he knows he was never attracted to her, no matter how lovely she looks in her dress for senior prom. Straight, except for how he more than happily uses the excuse that they're Mormon to not kiss on the dance floor. Straight, except for how he finds himself in the boy’s toilets of her school gym hall, kissed filthy by one of her friends.  

It only takes one boy, after three years of resisting temptation, after over half a year of dating a girl, to break him. It only takes one suggestive look, one deserted room, one weakened self-restraint and he's forgotten why he should act with such precaution, forgotten he has a so-called girlfriend, forgotten the cavity in his chest where is tar black heart is beating anew. It makes him feel sick, makes him want more, and he chases it, chases his mouth, the guilt, the shame, because he wants it. He wants to feel bad, he wants to be punished, guilty and selfish and wrong.  

He cries, afterwards, because of course he does: reels his bike off the road, weeps on his handlebars to the sound the cars around him, the sound of his own tar heartbeat.  

Come fall, Lizzie will leave, and maybe things won't stay the same.  

Lizzie will leave, and maybe he'll never be able to turn it off.  

That's it, he tells himself. No more boys, no more broken commandments, and no more heartbreak. Lizzie may have condemned herself to a life of loneliness and spiritual death, but Connor refuses to let them same happen to him.

Chapter Text

Connor McKinley is 19 years old and he still does not lie, because he is a good Mormon boy. He has his mother and his father back, at the cost of his weakened mental state, but they are no longer part of his whole wide world. He has not seen them in three months, nor his little sisters; a fact that aches away quietly inside him, somewhere below his ribcage. He no longer has Lizzie, no matter how often he writes, and he certainly no longer has Steve: all he has now is his nametag, his companion, and his belief in a loving God.

It's not the early starts than bother him: Connor has been up before the birds for as long as he can remember. It isn't the stuffy cinderblock and brick classrooms; he's only just out of education, after all, so it's nothing he isn't accustomed to, even if the industrial carptets and fluroescent lights of the center make his high school look like a palace in comparison. With communication limited to snail mail, exercise limited to an hour per day, and lives limited by such strict schedules, it's no wonder they all get a bit cranky sometimes, but it isn't that. Connor has worked harder than this before, Connor has given himself more rules than the MTC could ever manage, so he smiles and tries to stay sane. 

After all these years of waiting, it's really the proselytising that gets to him. Their teachers stand behind door after door, pretending to be strangers, and invite them both into the cinderblock classroom set up like someone's living room, someone's home, and let them teach the first discussion, and sometimes it is good. Connor didn't love Mutual for nothing, after all, and being able teach the testimony he was raised on, to answer questions like he was born for it, gives him such a sense of elation. Most of the time, though, they knock on the door and it all goes downhill from there: the red eye of the video camera blinks at them in the corner like the judgmental glare of Heavenly Father Himself, and Connor watches himself fail, week after week.

His dreams morph into something a little different: apparently a subconscious can tire from the same old fire and brimstone night after night. Now, Connor opens the door cinderblock classrooms and sees Lizzie, sees his bishop, sees Steve, and their questions laugh at him and snap at his ankles, rip his tie from his neck and his book from his hands as they chant over and over again, do you think I deserve to, do you think I deserve to, do you think I deserve to? 

*

“Hey, you," is the first thing Lizzie says when she picks up the phone, and her voice is so fond and so, so familiar that it's all Connor can do to not melt into the bathroom wall.  They may have gone their separate ways more than a year ago, and she may disapprove of his way as much he does of hers, but teen hearts heal fast, and he doesn't think there's been a fortnight since she first flew to Provo where one of them hasn't picked up the phone. She doesn't sound any closer than she normally would in Chicago, but it's a comfort, anyway, to know she's less than kilometer away, instead of the usual thousand. Her voice is sleepy, even though it's past 10am: probably early for her, being at college and all. Connor doubts he'll ever not be an early bird at this rate, but the other BYU kids are already grumbling about the 6.30 starts.   

"How're you finding it?" she asks, and there's muffled yells of laughter and life in the background, jarring with the quiet of the MTC. 

"I've been here for about a week now," Connor says, pressing his forehead against the side of the stall. "On the second day, I got called to be district leader. On the fourth day, I started noticing my District's various flaws and shortcomings and, on the fifth day, I started wanting to kill people in my District."

Lizzie laughs, like he'd expected, and she doesn't sound shocked by it but he knows she hasn't found happiness yet. She's itching to get out of Provo as much as he is.

"It's crazy, Liz-Liz. They want us to be 10 minutes early to everything except lunch, which you should only rock up to after they've stopped serving food," Connor continues. "Also, you can't leave a class until five minutes after the next class starts, so I guess I just need to have more faith."

"And time travel?"

"What they didn't tell us in Sunday School is that, on the 8th day, Heavenly Father made the TARDIS," Connor says, and is rewarded with a snort down the line. "Seriously, though? It is literally impossible to get everything right. Like, oh, laundry is broken this week. You'll get in trouble for having dirty clothes, so wash them in the sink. Also, you can’t wash clothes in the sink. It's stupid."

"They probably do on it purpose," Lizzie replies. "They used to do that kind of thing at Young Women's Camp. Pull fucked-up stunts like hide our food and only give it back if we prayed. Sorry, shouldn't have sworn. God, Con, what are you doing there?"

"Because I know this Church is true," Connor says and all the rush he had, the joy at hearing her voice, at being able to complain, fades away. "And because I’m grateful and excited for the opportunity to serve the Lord and help others learn of Christ."

"Con," Lizzie finally says, and she pushes because she understands. "Whatever it is, whatever it is that is really bothering you - you can tell me. You know that, right?"

"Uganda," Connor says, and his voice is very, very small. "Liz, I'm going to Uganda."

Lizzie does not reply for a long while. There’s just so much to say. No one else is jumping for joy, sure. Connor knows the other elders well enough by now to see the worry in their eyes, in the smiles, in their pale faces over breakfast. But when they speak at the dinner table, when they sit in those cinderblock classrooms to learn about culture, they sit and fret about what they'll eat and drink and wear, they fret about sunburn and scorpions, mosquitos and muggers, and Connor wants so scream. He feels one, perched right under his chin, because - because - but he can't. They can't know. They can never, ever know. 

Connor was scared of people finding out, before. He was scared of sharing the same room, sharing the same life with someone every single second of every single day, before, because his companion would want to know the reason for his nightly tortures, and Connor would have to answer truthfully, the whole truth, for that’s what good Mormons do. His deepest fear was that they would all know that he has committed a sin, the most abominable of all sins, and they would all see him as a sham of a good Mormon, and ostracise him again and and again and again. 

All those reasons seem laughable, now. All those reasons pale in comparison now he knows where he is going, worse than the weeping and gnashing of teeth for people like him. During the day, he studies at the training centre; he gets his shots, one by one by one; he holds himself together. At night, he admits to himself, the horrible, horrible truth. His body trembles under his blankets as if freezing in the Utah fall, and he is terrified. His chest heaves to the point of vomiting, and he is terrified. The tar black heart beats wildly against his ribcage, and he is terrified.

When Lizzie finally, finally speaks, there’s no words of comfort. Nothing to placate him, nothing to dismiss his fears, nothing to remind him that these are supposed to be the best years of his life.  

She simply says, “You must be terrified.” 

Connor breathes for what feels like the first time since he stepped through the doors of the Mission Training Centre. “Yeah, I am.”  

* 

His companion is a boy called Elder Thomas, sweet and bumbling, who has a high voice and an iPhone he lets Connor borrow for that one phone call he makes to Lizzie, the night before they fly out. His hands are soft, a little pudgy, and often either a bit sticky or dusted with sugar depending on his most frequent snack. Said frequent snack is generally Poptarts. He takes four whole boxes with him to Uganda; against rules and regulations, of course, but Connor promises he won’t snitch if he’s allowed one (he is). 

Conversation is light and boring on the flight, the small talk Connor has come to love, how easy it is not to stray off the road of appropriate conversational topics if all parties don’t want to. Elder Thomas seems as content as he is to stick to the road, even makes Connor laugh once or twice. He's constantly on his technically-forbidden iPhone; taking pictures of the sky from the window, playing Candy Crush, showing Connor pictures of his cat. They chat about their hometowns and their families, Connor gushing about his little sisters and how much he misses them already. When Connor asks him if he has any little sisters, Elder Thomas shakes his head, looks a little sad, and smiles, and Lizzie's words ring in his head: you're not the only one who turns it off, you know. 

When the topic of Uganda comes up, Elder Thomas says he was a little disheartened when they were told their mission location, but Connor makes sure he comes off a little more enthusiastic. Sure, it isn’t the ideal place, but he'll be the District Leader. It's a wonderful opportunity to follow the footsteps of so many praise-worthy Mormons before him by helping lead the other members of their District in spreading the good word, he tells Elder Thomas. 

This is not the whole truth, of course. Connor wasn’t exactly going to say it was because he liked bossing people around (although it is a plus) or that it has been deeply ingrained in him to take pride in having things under control so dang if he wasn’t going to at least enjoy doing so. Elder Thomas tells him that he will do an incredible job and that he must be one heck of a Mormon if he’s been assigned such a prestigious role, and Connor tries not to squirm in his seat. Everything that is really stinging at his mind, everything that makes him cry himself to sleep at night, goes unspoken.  

When the lights go down, Elder Thomas is quick to turn both his overhead light and his phone off, before pulling his blanket a little farther up him, putting his head on his pillow, and promptly turning himself off. Connor is unable to follow suit, with cramped legs and a dizzy head from the whole newness of the plane and the thrum of the engine. At first, he reassures himself it was just down to his new friend having been on flights before - except Elder Thomas falls asleep on the bus as well, despite the heat and the babies crying and the adults yelling and the small animals making a whole variety of weird sounds. Connor is barely able to cope with being awake, never mind able to drop off in the middle of it all. 

It becomes very apparent very quickly that it’s most definitely not only his emotions that Elder Thomas will turn off: he can fall asleep anywhere and everywhere if he so wishes. It’s not that he will accidentally fall asleep at the kitchen table, more that if there is an opportune moment for a nap but the only place available is the kitchen table, he will be able to simply lay his head down on the surface and nod off, just like that. Which he has done. More than once, in fact, although only if they had finished lunch early and they had a while before they needed to go out to start another useless attempt at proselytizing. It’s really quite impressive. It would be enviable if envy wasn’t a sin, but Connor does seriously consider adding the hope to be able to fall asleep at whim just like him to his nightly prayers. Another elder asks him at lunch, a joke, nothing serious, how he’s able to nod off so quickly, and Elder Thomas shrugs, says he’s spent a lot of time in hospital chairs and waiting rooms, and looks a little sad, before smiling and demonstrating his trick to the team once again. 

Little is done during the first month or so in Uganda. The main priority at the start is to figure out how they’re actually going to survive and work together as a team, never mind thrive and begin a fully-functional meetinghouse. Connor isn’t entirely sure why a team of missionaries with little to no previous experience have been assigned to a location of such discrepancy to their hometowns, but he’s learnt to not question the Church by now. Elder Thomas immediately calls dibs on the grocery shopping every Preparation Day, says that it used to be a big family thing for him when he was a kid, plus he’s an expert at healthy eating. When asked why that is, he waves it off as needing to counterbalance his sugar consumption somehow, looks a little sad before smiling and continuing on with assigning chores.  

Of course, this means that Connor is inevitably dragged along with him every week, which he had not taken into consideration. Darn Rule 72. But he doesn’t regret it – Elder Thomas does really know what he’s doing, and he cooks a fair bit as well. It takes a month or so (that is to say, after his Poptart stash runs out) for him to realize what Elder Thomas’ intentions really were: to be able to control the food budget so that he can fit in a box of Poptarts every now and again. Needless to say, it wasn’t at all surprising that he quite quickly picked up the nickname “Elder Poptarts”.  

And then – well. Then there's the whole proselytising thing they have to do. Their first attempt is quite literally on the first person they meet: Middala Hatimbi, who was clearly either paid to introduce them to Ugandan life, the only man in the area who was willing to do so, or both. He's as cheerful as you can get, even when he asks them what exactly a district is, even once they've explained it's just the name of the area they've been assigned to proselytise in.   

“You can never be too careful in these parts, with people calling places their land, or their property," he explains, waving his hand at the squalor that surrounds them. 

“I see,” Connor says.  

(He doesn’t see.) 

"You are very funny, even for white boys," Middala says. 

(Middala very clearly sees that he doesn’t see.) 

"Mr Hatimbi, sir," Elder Thomas says at a later point, once he has led them to their mission house. Middala's eyebrows rise so high they would hit his hair if he had any. "Is it true that everyone hear can speak English?" 

"Our understanding," Connor says, a little more smoothly, "is that Swahili and Luganda are the regionally important languages, but there are around 40 languages commonly used throughout the country, including English." 

"Ah, well, I myself can speak half a dozen languages, Mister McKinley,” Middala says, like it’s absolutely nothing. “And on a good day I can get by in about another, oh, perhaps half a dozen more. But, yes, most people around these parts can speak English."  

His feet are bare and dusty, and he is quite possibly the most uncomplicated person Connor has ever met. He has his hardships, yes. But he doesn't turn it off, he doesn't deny it or pretend it isn't there: he accepts it, he recognises it, and he quite simply copes. Of course, one of his ways of coping was by saying more swears in one sentence than Connor has ever heard in his life, but he takes a copy of his book cheerfully enough, says he'll ask his daughter to read him a bit.  

The first time they knock on a door doesn't go quite as smoothly. No bell, no proper lock, and opened only a little until the woman inside is convinced that they don't have a gun, Connor has to resist the urge to say that this is just as awkward for him, that he would never do this in any other circumstance. Instead, he elbows Elder Thomas before he can say it either, keeps his face a façade of smiles, and repeats what he learnt by rote at the MTC. 

When the door slams in his face, he even finds it in himself to chirp, "Have a good afternoon!" 

Elder Thomas drops his head, doesn't say anything when it happens at the next door, and the next door, and the next door, but Connor takes the needle of his thoughts, places it on the record of justification, and moves on. He strikes up a conversation with a woman at the marketplace, Thomas entertaining her many children, and she agrees to balance a copy on top of the other children books she’d haggled for. He uses his chorus line smile to win some over, even if it takes hinting that if they take a book they'll leave for people to accept a copy. He does his best to keep team morale up: after half a decade of waking up before sunrise and lasting days and days and days on very limited sleep, the 6:30 sharp starts affect him much less than his fellow elders.  

He can see how it drains on the other missionaries: to drag themselves out of bed so early only to be rejected again, and again and again. To have people laugh at them and slam doors in their faces. One elder came back reduced to tears when he saw a copy used as kindling at a campfire. Elder Church looked no less miserable about it, hand on his companions shoulder they told their tale, and Connor has no way other to cope than smile, keep smiling.  

One morning, just after the two month mark, they get a ring at the door. 

“Is that,” one elder says. “I didn’t even know we had a doorbell,” says another.  

When Connor opens it, the woman standing on the doorstep narrows her eyes at him. She is holding a copy of the Book of Mormon, a toddler at her hip.   

“You’re him, right? The boy who stopped me? Elder Mackle-boy or something?”  

“Yes, that is me, Elder McKinley,” Connor says, all grace and as much charm as he can manage in his shock. “How can I help you? It’s so good to see you again.” 

Kimbay, if he remembers correctly, ignores his pleasantries, goes up on her toes to look over his shoulders at his fellow missionaries clustered around the main living area. Right, earlier this month, at the marketplace. She’d been struggling enough with carrying her wares in the crooks of her arms with a baby strapped to her chest, never mind with four more kids scampering about the place. Connor had helped her carry her things home, even after she’d yelled at Elder Thomas for talking to one of her daughters. It's still the most rewarding conversation he's had here, talking about his little sisters and hearing stories about her daughters in return, and she takes a copy of the Book of Mormon, to thank them for their troubles 

“So there are a lot of you,” Kimbay says. “I thought people were just saying that, and it wasn’t just the same pair going around annoying everyone.”  

“No, no, there are more than two of us,” Connor jokes, looking back with her at his fellow elders. He hopes his smile is reassuring – from the look on his companion’s face as he gets to his feet, Connor doubts it is. “I’m sure you remember Elder Thomas, my mission companion.”  

“Eh, you all look alike. Here,” Kimbay says shortly, sticking the book in Connor’s direction. “You can have this back now.” 

“But we don’t want it back, ma’am,” Elder Thomas says. “It’s yours to keep.” 

“I wanted to use it to teach my daughter to read,” Kimbay says. “But I don’t want her adsorbing that sort of thing. Please. Take it back.” 

“Perhaps it isn’t suitable teaching material for reading, ma’am," Elder Thomas says, straining to keep this voice bright. "But it’s certainly very suitable for teaching the proper ways to live your life!”  

“Perhaps where you came from it is,” Kimbay replies. “But here it is of no use. I’m sure you can find someone else who will want it more than I do.” 

“Ma’am –”  

 “Stop calling me that! I am not married,” she snaps, losing all veneer of sympathy. “If you won’t take it, who the fuck else will?” 

Unable to argue anymore with that, Connor’s hand, traitorous thing, automatically grips onto the book placed into his palm. Kimbay hovers on their doorstep for a moment more, on the edge of another apology, before she gives them a brisk nod, turns on her heel, and strides away.  

It is during his first three months, that Connor discovers that it was not only him who has the Hell dreams. His bishop had told him that it was perfectly natural for one who had yielded to temptation or had otherwise committed a sin to have the dreams, and that they were to be interpreted as warnings from the Heavenly Father to turn from the path of wrongdoing, but he had never really known anyone else who had had them. 

Lizzie had certainly never had them – she’d claimed to have something similar, had sat quiet and patient as he edged out the details of his dreams, but her tension whenever he did so, and her seemingly subtle aversion to the topic every time it came up had him petering off those conversations before they’d even started. Connor had resigned himself to an existence of believing it was only he who was capable of atrocities that garnered him a nightly trip to all nine circles. 

He finds out by nothing more than the gentle look in Elder Thomas’ eyes when he shakes Connor awake one night, telling him that he was sorry to have had to have woken him, it just sounded like he wasn’t having all that fun a time down there, that he is very, very wrong. Elder Thomas doesn’t tell Connor that it’s okay, he doesn’t tell Connor any words of false comfort, and he most certainly doesn’t tell Connor that he’s had them as well, but his voice and his smile and just his everything was filled to the brim with such understanding that there was no doubt that he knew what Connor was going through. 

So, no, they don’t speak about it, and they certainly don’t let all their feelings out, but Elder Thomas does sit on the scarce bit of floor between their beds and use Connor’s calf as a pillow until Connor feels grounded and simply just safe enough to slip back into another uneasy sleep. They don’t mention it the next morning, or the morning a few days after that, or indeed any of the mornings after either has to shake the other from their sleep, but Connor does buy a box of Poptarts for him whenever his parents send him some more money, as a thank you. 

He’s a little less worried about the others finding out, now. 

So, overall – it is fine. It’s almost easy, in fact. The other boys are all lovely, but that – that is it. They are lovely. They are lovely and they a good and they are – none of them are Pierce Brosnan, and that’s all Connor has to say about that. Sometimes his breath may hitch a little if he is caught by surprise by a look from a blue-eyed Elder, and he isn’t exactly going to be the first to pipe up about outfit regulations if one of his fellow Elders loosens his tie and undoes his first few buttons when the heat just gets a bit too much, but they are lovely, just plain nice and hospitable, and that is that. Even if they weren’t just that, even if he was having strange feelings for any of them, it wasn’t as if there was anything he could do about that.  

He would never infringe upon any of his fellow elders like that. Could never – he wouldn’t even know how. He doesn’t know how to – flirt, or – not the point. So it’s fine, is the point: it’s all fine. All fine in District 9! – he may have begun using that as a bit of a slogan, but all the other elders did admit that it was catchy. 

As for the Ugandans – well. They love boisterously. They love from every pore, through every insult, in every argument. They fight in it and they die in it and even if they were all speaking perfect English it would still be in a language that Connor wouldn’t understand.  

They’re all trying to be welcoming, even if the way they go about it is so different to anything he has ever experienced before, but he can’t – he’s not friends with any of them, barely even has any conversations with them that don’t end with him being laughed at (even if it is good-naturedly). Some of the men may be tall and strong and handsome in a way he’d never seen before, but he can’t exactly think of any of them like that. Besides, there’s the whole, well, AIDs thing, and although they are all nice they are also very – brash, to put it lightly. And a bit frightening sometimes, if he is being perfectly honest (which he always is). That’s not even touching on the man with maggots in his scrotum (which he would never do, not even with a ten-foot pole, not even if he was attracted to him, not even if he was attracted to him and was also in possession of ten foot pole, and he definitely isn’t attracted to him because, 1), turned it off, and 2) maggots).  

He never gets any despite from the hell dreams, but he does get a respite from the other dreams, a tender mercy. The rare nights he does have them, he is haunted only by vague shapes, more by the idea of being attracted to men than a man he is actually attracted to, and those are easier to deal with. Easier to wake up and turn off, push aside and pretend they're not there, when he isn't haunted by them when awake. Even the boy from the prom who had been a starring role for months afterwards has been reduced to a faceless, loveless demon Connor can easily dismiss during the day.  

He's growing up. He's been told he would, that his mission would change his life in more ways he could recognise, but he didn't think he could feel it happening as it happened, know he was changing even as he was mid-transformation. They'd had plenty of arguments during his senior year, Lizzie saying again and again and again down the phone from Provo that there's no reason for him to go. That he already knows he's gay, that he's not going to end up in the church, that he may as well get out while he can, before he's married, before he has children, before he throws away two years of his life on a religion that is never going to accept him. That it's not going to change his sexuality, that God is not going to make him straight because he goes and baptises a bunch of people for The So-Called Church- and Connor d been just as stubborn back, arguing about the gospel down the line until they were both sick to death of the whole topic and purposefully talked about anything else the next time they talked, and the next time, and the next time, until one of them accidentally brought it up again. He has no hard feelings, because he adores her, and there's no one else in the world he can to talk to about this. When he reads the rare emails they're able to exchange, and there's no trace of argument, only support and sarcasm about how BYU still sounds way worse, he knows she's grown up, too; that she has no hard feelings, for exactly the same reasons.  

Connor knows he’s going to have to deal with these questions about his sexuality when he gets home. These two years, as wonderful and terrible an experience they are, are a buffer to real life, to making decisions, no matter how much he thinks they may be curing his curse after all. Two years, and it'll always be in the back of his mind: it's not going to change him. 

Chapter Text

Connor McKinley is nineteen years old and he still does not lie, because he is a good Mormon boy, but apparently they are all as far from being Latter Day Saints as it can get so it probably doesn’t matter anyway.  

When enough weeks had passed and their lives before the possibly-Third-possibly-Fourth-or-perhaps-even-the-Fifth Great Awakening had become no more than a faded memory, they sometimes discussed the hodgepodge of a leading up to it. Elder Thomas maintains it all started when the Mission President flew in, but Connor says it started long, long before that. Before the MP paid them a call, before the baptisms, even before Elder Cunningham had begun prophesizing, but instead when they first got that call saying they would be receiving a new pair of missionaries at the end of their third month.  

They were told he has a GPA of 4.0, an unbelievable clock of community hours, and prospects that stretch even to Stanford or Harvard. They were told he shows a lot of promise, a lot of enthusiasm and dedication to his service. They were told this greenie could do a whole lot of good in helping them get some more baptisms in this area because they very clearly need it.  

What Elder Price actually does is screw everything up royally.  

He should have been with his companion at all times, as per the rules, to prevent him from telling such lies. He should have not tried to abandon them right before they were about to be evaluated by the Mission President. He should have been the wonder boy that they were promised, the Mormon who turned the whole District on its head and did something incredible to save the souls of the fine Ugandan people through baptism using nothing more than the Book of Mormon, his charismatic charm, and a message about finding true happiness.  

It’s easier to blame Elder Price for the whole catastrophe, of course, instead of Elder Cunningham, who is far too sweet and naïve and so, so very well-meaning to point the finger at. 

Elder Thomas says that if Connor wants to take a broad view of the thing, it really started with Joseph Smith. If he hadn't dug up the golden plates that were buried by the tree on the hill in his backyard, he would have never founded Mormonism and the LDS movement, and where would they be if he hadn't?  

"Not being bitten to death by mosquitos, for one," Connor says, to tired laughter at the dinner table.  

It’s easier to blame Elder Price than to blame the catastrophe on himself, on his own lack of faith, on his own doubt that God exists, on his own inability to inspire others to rejoice in the word of the Lord. 

They all end up staying, in the end. 

"There's no arguing with that!"  

Elder Thomas stays because he says his home still reminds him too much of his sister and no one minds if he eats too much sugar here.  

"I feel like I'm being eaten alive!" 

Elder Cunningham stays because, well, it wouldn’t be of any use if the new prophet bailed just as soon as his following began. Elder Price stays because not even a ticket straight to Orlando could tear him away from his best friend now.  

The rest all make vague excuses: dedication to the people of Uganda, not wanting to throw in the towel, but it doesn’t matter why they stay. All that matters is that they stay. 

As for why Connor stays – well. He has his father and his mother no longer once again (he’s not certain of this, but he has received a lot of emails with subjects along the lines of “come home right now” and “very disappointed” that he’s all ignored), he can hardly say he has Lizzie when she's 13000km away, and he certainly doesn’t have Steve, but now he has more sisters and brothers than he can count on his hands and his toes (all of the original elders, plus the 20 more and counting baptized Ugandans) and it – it makes sense now.  

Everything that Lizzie had told him, about living at college, about living independent of parents, about truly, truly living, makes sense now. Abandoned by his parents, abandoned by his church, but never, ever abandoned by his God, Connor feels freer than he has ever felt in his entire life. His nights are still caged, still inescapable, but now there's nothing stopping him from staying in bed past 6.30am and getting a few more hours sleep. There's nothing stopping him from cursing his Heavenly Father's name after a particularly bad spell. There's nothing stopping him from sneaking out of the Mission House when spooked from sleep to find solitude with the stars.  

Standing under the sky's glowing vastness makes him feel what he had expected to feel at temple: awe, peace, and calm about his place in a world so much bigger than he is. It's calming in a way he hasn't felt since cloud-gazing with Lizzie on fall afternoons, since cycling to school with Steve, since dancing in his bedroom as a lonely child. Privately, secretly, he tells the stars, it started the second he laid eyes on Elder Price standing in the hall of the place he now calls home. 

He can’t stop thinking about Elder Price, and he does not tell him. He's not lying, just not telling the whole truth, and hopes that no one pries any further. The stars shimmer in sympathy and for once Connor couldn't care less if his Heavenly Father was listening or not.  

"Holy moly, Elder McKinley, you scared the crap out of me!" 

He does, however, care just a bit if Elder Cunningham is.  

"What are you doing out of bed before 6:30?" 

"What are you doing out of bed before 6:30?" Cunningham shoots right back, and Connor deflates. It can't only be him, he reminds himself, who struggles with sleeping. "I was gonna go watch the sunrise with Naba." 

Connor nods, turns his head back to the stars. Nabulungi's sweet, a soul that didn't need saving and very clearly her father's daughter. One day he'll learn to look her in the eye and not be wracked with guilt.  

"Can I ask you something?" 

Her boyfriend, however, is another kettle of fish entirely. He’s enthusiastic, Connor will admit to that. Smart, as well – perhaps not academically, but certainly creative. Always willing to learn more about the church, loyal to a fault – and there Connor runs dry. Perhaps he just hasn’t gotten to know him well enough yet. 

"Are you still turning it off?" 

The world goes very quiet. Connor closes his eyes, very slowly, concentrates on his breathing, but does not duck his head. He knows this feeling, has felt it in his gut for as long as he can remember, but he refuses to let the stars judge him for it.  

"Elder McKinley?" 

Connor turns back to face him with a pleasant smile, because he refuses to let a liar judge him for it either. "I don't really see why that's any concern of yours, Elder." 

"Oh, my gosh, can you please start calling me Arnold already," he blurts, and Connor turns back to the stars. "And it's my concern because I'm concerned about you!" 

Even if he does want to District to grow together as a sort of family, the formality of the title Elder had always been a bit of a blessing, a reminder that he cannot get too close, and he’s not entirely sure if he’s ready to break from that yet.  

"I mean, it was you who was stressing that we should be comfortable about letting our feelings out," Cunningham says when Connor doesn't extend the same courtesy. "Was that actually for real, or are you the one making stuff up now?” 

"I'm not lying," Connor tells him, just not telling the whole truth. "It’d be better for all of us to share how we feel than to keep it all bottled up. There are number of issues we could be tackling as a team to make the entire experience more fulfilling for us as a whole.”

He falls back onto his training, now, on his rote learning and years of experience at Mutual. It's helpful. It's efficient. More than anything, it's a little numbing.  

"Including your issues? Like, you know,” Cunningham makes some very loose hand gestures which Connor doesn't know and doesn't want to know how to interpret. “The whole gay thing?” 

“Elder, I told you, I’m not –” 

“That’s what I’m trying to say,” Cunningham interrupts, grin wide and wild, glasses a little askew on his red, round face. “You don’t have to be not anymore! Isn't it worse to lie about being gay than be it at all?” 

Connor bites his tongue in attempt to not make a very uncivilized sound of annoyance, focuses on his breathing again. When he's confident he's got it under control, confident his voice won't crack and throat won't go dry, he says, “You do realize where we are, don’t you?” 

Cunningham glances around him, confusion clear on his round face, says, “Uh, outside the Mission House? I really don’t see your point.” Connor raises his eyebrows. “We’re in Uganda? Come on, am I at least getting close? Don’t leave me hanging here.” 

“Yes, we are in Uganda,” Connor replies, voice sharp even as he’s careful to not let his sham of a smile slip. “Where it is illegal to be like that, where I could be jailed for life. Don't insult me, Prophet Cunningham, by thinking you can wave your magic wand and say everything is all better now when you're talking about something that could get me murdered." 

Every single one of his good qualities comes from the church, Connor reminds himself. And if this, if the break in Cunningham's bright, joyful face, isn't proof enough, guilty and selfish and wrong, then what is? 

"Oh, Arnold, I'm so –" 

"It's okay, I get it," he says, and his voice is very, very small. "Just – we're your family. You deserve to be able to be yourself with us." 

To be himself – but this is who he is. A not-gay man who wants to go to BYU and get married and father children. Connor has never been anything but a child denying, a child hiding, a child struggling and pretending and faking. He wouldn't know where to begin with being honest with himself, never mind with others; has never really known what parts of his personality are Mormon doctrine and what parts are truly, wholly him. 

“I saw you try to kiss him, you know,” Arnold continues. “And he was covered in blood, I mean, man, that’s dedication. Gross, but dedication.” 

Connor blinks. It takes a moment before – ah, rats. 

It wasn’t – it wasn’t his finest moment, that’s one way to put it. But Elder Price’s hands were so warm on his face, and his body so, so very close, and it wasn’t – Connor couldn’t – he just – okay, fine, it’s certainly not the case that he couldn’t have helped himself, but it certainly would’ve been very difficult to.

“I think you might be mistaken, there, Elder Cunningham, I would never infringe upon another elder –” 

“Come on, Connor, I saw you, with my own eyes!” Arnold points up enthusiastically at his spectacled face. “I mean, I might wear glasses and all but I’m not that blind.” 

“I – I didn’t –” Connor clears his throat, a feeble attempt to stop his voice from rising embarrassingly high. It wasn’t as if he seriously wanted to kiss him, just that – and he is stopping that train of thought right there.  

“Well,” Arnold lets out a blow of air, “It sure looked like it. Your foot practically popped up and everything. Okay, that bit might be a bit of an exaggeration, but everything else is on point.” 

“Elder Cunningham,” Connor says through his teeth, sing-song. “I don’t think that this is an appropriate topic of conversation.” 

“So I finally tell the truth and now you’re getting mad at me?” 

“I’m not mad at you, I just –” 

“Yes, you are, you called me Elder Cunningham! Everyone knows that full naming someone means that you’re mad at them,” Arnold adds, wise despite his fumbling as he pushes his glasses back up his nose. “And you did try to kiss him, I can see it, you’re blushing.” 

“It’s just because it’s hot,” Connor blurts. “In Uganda, it’s hot in Uganda, I’m not saying that the thought of kissing Elder Price is,” he stops, and Arnold laughs. 

“You are, you are blushing, man, you’re as red as your hair, this is great. Look, I’m not gonna push you any further,” Arnold adds, raising his hands. “Not gonna push. Your decision after all. But you said it yourself, be better for all of us to share how we feel than to keep it all bottled up. I’ll see you around, friend,” and he saunters off after giving him a light punch on the arm, leaving behind a bright red Connor. 

*** 

When Connor shudders awake his room is hot and sticky and he rues the days he ever cursed Chicago winters. He repeats his name, the date, and location until his heart rate is no longer racing, his breathing is no longer ragged, and the monster in his gut has curled up and fallen asleep again. There's little chance of Connor following suit, and he's already resigned himself to another night of tossing and turning when he hears the scrape of a chair. Someone’s up. Connor sighs. He’s hardly likely nowadays to be reprimanding an elder for being out of bed when more often than not it's him haunting the halls of the Mission House.  

He lies in bed and stares at the ceiling, wishes he could see the stars. Is he so much of a coward he cannot even face one other soul suffering in silence? Yes, he tells himself, he is terrified, but Arnold was right. So he gets up, puts some pants on, and sneaks out of his bedroom. 

He discovers none other than Elder Price sitting at the kitchen table, staring into the darkness. He has pants on as well, thank goodness, and his garments, but not his shirt or tie. His hair still hasn’t been cut since they arrived and it practically looks like it hasn’t been brushed since then, sticking out in all directions in a greasy mess. He’s slumped over in his seat, only wearing one shoe, and he looks – well, he looks like crap. He looks like crap, and he looks like he hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in a week, and that’s all Connor’s concerned about right now. He doesn’t even think he’s seen Price look smart, all crisp white shirt and precise hair and good posture, since they refused to let themselves be shut down.   

Not even since then, since before the baptisms, since before they chose his companion over him, since before the night he ran out on them, and there's something not right here. Something missing from his tale, something left to understand about his dramatic fall from grace. Connor doesn't know much about Elder Price, for all that he can't stop thinking about him; seeing him now, seeing him like this, he realises he doesn't know him at all.  

“You had the Hell dream again, didn't you?” Connor says quietly, and tries not to laugh as Price nearly falls off his seat in shock. It’s not a great conversation starter, he knows, but it’s not as if he has a book titled “Conversation Starters When Your Fellow Missionary is in a State of Complete Emotional Distress 101” that he can refer to. 

“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” Price snaps, righting himself before running a hand through his hair, which only causes to make it look worse – a feat Connor didn’t even know was possible. 

“Sorry. Do you want me to go?" Connor asks, and he wants to go, wants to run away from the look on his face and the haze in his eyes. Would Elder Price even want to talk to him? It was Connor, after all, who brushed him aside when he was terrified, for the sake of the Church, of the mission, of himself. "I can go." 

"No, it's fine," Price says, "you can stay," and Connor knows he of all people does not deserve to hear the whole truth.  

"Can I sit?” The groan Price makes is incomprehensible but he waves his hand at the seat opposite, so Connor takes it as a yes. “I bet you’re wishing you could take a leaf from Elder Poptarts’ book.” 

“Hell no. He got that leaf from years of having to sleep in hospital chairs. I’d prefer this shitty,” Connor blinks, but Price just plows on, “to that shitty. Besides, I want the complete opposite; I don’t think I want to sleep ever again.” 

Connor stares. He's had dreams that have had him wake screaming with scratches on his body he doesn't remember waking, dreams to all nine circles and further, but he has never had dreams that have made him not want to sleep at all. "That bad?" 

“Believe me, you have no idea.” 

“Oh, I think I might,” Connor says; maybe it's because, deep down, he's always known he deserves them. Price stares at him, all blood-short eyes and fluttering lashes and, geez, he really does look awful. "Why do you think I'm awake? I have them nightly.” 

“Nightly? Hell, now I really do feel like as ass,” Price whines, to phrase it as succinctly as possible, putting his head back down on the table. 

Connor purses his lips, grateful for the darkness and the fact that his fellow elder is seemingly far more interested in the table instead of him. He’s sure that said elder would not appreciate being laughed at. Of all the things he might’ve expected Price to be, a whiner was not one of them. “And why, may I ask, do you feel like an ass?” 

“Because I’m sitting here whining over dreams I’ve been having for the past week, whereas you’ve been – you’ve been having them nightly.” 

“Elder, these are – sorry, what did you say?” 

“Kevin,” he mumbles, lifting his head enough so he’s actually reasonably intelligible. “Name’s Kevin.” 

“Kevin, these are clearly not your run-of-the-mill Hell dreams,” Connor continues. “They’re having a serious toll on both your mental and physical health. You’re allowed to not suffer in complete silence.” 

Kevin rests his head on his forearms, stares up at Connor with bleary eyes. “How come you’re able to manage coping day by day when you’re having them nightly?” 

Connor folds his legs, crosses his arms over his knees. He doesn’t want to seem like he’s closing himself off, he really doesn’t, it’s just – it does make him uncomfortable. It does make him uncomfortable, and it does make him want to run and hide, a bit. But he's Kevin's friend, or at least he wants to be, and he would take a little discomfort if it meant being of aide to a friend. “I’ve been having them nightly since I was 14 years old, you kinda get used to it.” 

Kevin’s mouth drops open, and if Connor’s gaze flicks down, then, well. “You can get used to those things?” 

Five years and he still wakes screaming, five years and he still wakes wanting to vomit, wanting to tear his eyes out of his skull but he still shakes it off, waits until he's sure he's awake and this is real life and then he lives it. "You get used to the aftermath, more than anything.” 

Kevin hums, a short sound, his eyes flicking around the room, asks, “Why do you have them nightly?” 

Because he isn't faithful enough. Because he needs the atonement more than anybody. Because he, guilty and selfish and wrong, deserves to be punished. “Apparently my subconscious is not a fan of my,” Connor lifts his hands in the air to wiggle his fingers and widens his eyes as he finishes with “gay thoughts,” and it has the intended effect: Kevin smiles.  

It’s a weak one, no match to the sparkling smiles he sent Connor’s way when they first met, and he furrows his brows immediately after, but a smile nonetheless. "I thought you’d turned it off?” 

“Can’t turn it off at night, I’m afraid,” Connor tells him, smile small. “Very much only a conscious thing.” 

Kevin doesn’t say anything for a while, although he clearly wants to. His jaw is tight, Connor can see the movement of his tongue running over his front teeth, and he seems to be – twitching slightly. But it’s fine. All Connor can do is wait until he boils over. 

“You’re a lot better at turning it off than me.” 

“Yes,” Connor agrees. It’s not as if he can exactly deny it – lies and humility are not what Kevin needs right now. “I've been faking it for as long as I can remember. It doesn't always come easy, you know." 

Kevin considers this for a moment, foot tapping, says, “I’d never met anyone my age who was better than me at something before all this. Or, at least, better at things that I wanted to be the best at than me. It didn’t bother me much before, when you told me and Arnold about it when we first arrived, that I wasn’t able to turn it off as well as you. Heavenly Father gave us this full spectrum of emotions, right? May as well feel all of them. But now – now it does. I’ve got all this doubt in and anger and it just won’t go away, and I –” Kevin breaks off and his gaze focuses back on Connor, distress in his eyes. “I think I'm jealous.” 

“You shouldn’t be." 

"I know, it's just that –” he breaks off. “It’s just that –” and he breaks off again, takes a deep breath, and starts again, slower. “When I was a kid I thought that, when I went on my mission, I would do something great. I thought I’d do something incredible,” Kevin says, makes a noise of derision. “Hell, I still thought that a couple weeks ago.” 

“And when I was a kid, I thought I’d grow up heterosexual,” Connor says drily. Kevin gives him a look. “I don't know what point I'm trying to make either." 

“Does that mean you’re – you’re still gay?” Kevin edges out and then, at Connor’s hesitation, he adds, “Come on, I’ve been spilling my heart out here. You’ve got to give me something back. It must be worse to lie about in that to just be it, right?” 

“You know, Arnold said the exact same thing to me,” Connor says, and Kevin sighs. 

“Of course he did. Still not an answer, though.” 

He's never really – been able to admit it to himself. Gay is an identifier, gay means something he is not something he does, and he's never been able to do it. Never been able to look in the mirror or up at the stars and say it for what it really is. The closest he has ever gotten was that fateful day in 6th grade when he looked up 'homosexual' in the dictionary and known it was so close to the truth, the whole truth. The word sounds clunky, sounds clinical as if he's diseased or disordered, fits closer under his skin than 'gay' ever could.  

"I still struggle with same-sex attraction," he says carefully, finally, numbingly. "I've never been able to turn it off completely, never been completely cured, no matter how committed to the gospel I am. Satisfied?" 

“Not really,” Kevin says, then continues his jittering as Connor sits and waits. “You know, I actually have no idea if that’s discouraging or encouraging. The fact that you’re the best at it but still haven’t been able to successfully turn it off completely is discouraging because it means that I probably won’t ever be able to turn it off completely either. But it's also encouraging because at least, if I don’t, I won’t be the only one that’s failed. No offense.” 

“None taken. Not that I’m encouraging you to turn it off. The complete opposite, in fact.” Connor gestures towards himself. “I've pushed my unhealthy coping mechanisms onto too many people, never mind you." 

"Better than my coping mechanism, that’s for sure," Kevin says drily, and Connor laughs.  

"You're practically the all-americano prophet, at this point." 

"I literally can't believe you just said that," Kevin says after a long moment, "I'm going to bed, I hate you," as Connor continues laughing. "Why did you – I mean. Tell us? After keeping it under wraps for so long?" 

That stops his laughter real quick. "After Elder Michaels and Thomas shared what they turn off, I thought it was right that I, as District Leader, did the same," Connor says, and it's as honest he can get. " No one’s actually bought it up except for you and Arnold, so I’ve taken that to mean that they’re okay with it. None of them have asked me if I like them, thank gosh.” 

“And do you?” 

Connor blinks. “Sorry?” 

“Do you like any of them?” Kevin asks, no judgement, just all plain curiosity, and Connor shifts a little in his seat again. 

“Geez, I feel like I’m thirteen again,” Connor mutters, before straightening (ha) a little, smiling, and saying a little more articulately, “No, Kevin, I don’t like any of them and, even if I did, I wouldn’t impose myself on any of them like that.” 

“What if you really liked them?” Kevin presses, and Connor winces. 

“Kevin, I really don’t know how to break it to you, but Arnold has a – thing going on with Nabulungi, and I really don’t think –” 

“What, me and Arnold? No. No. Noooo," Kevin says, eyes widening. “He’s my best friend. Besides, I couldn’t really see it working out for us, can you?” he adds thoughtfully, and it takes a moment for Connor to realize that he’s not being serious. “For one thing, he snores like a freight train. I mean,” he lets out a whistle. 

“A guy needs his beauty sleep, right?” Connor teases, and Kevin gives him a dozy smile. 

“Yeah, that’s it, that’s exactly it,” he says, as if Connor had just revealed some great truth of the universe. He continues smiling dopily for a bit, almost swaying from lack of sleep in his seat, and Connor thinks that the conversation might be drawing to a close when he says, a twitch of a smile at the corner of his mouth, “What about any of the villagers?”   

“One of them has maggots in his scrotum, Kevin. I mean, they’re all lovely, but maggots,” Connor says, as Kevin breaks into quiet giggles. “I mean, I’m not sure if you know, as he does try to keep it under wraps as much as possible, but I’d like to think that I have higher standards than that,” he continues as Kevin loses it even more, lightly stamping his one-shoed feet on the ground and clapping his hand over his mouth as he progressively becomes redder and redder.  

When he finishes – when they both finish, in fact, his laugh too infectious for Connor not to join in – it’s on a grand note: a yawn possibly louder than his snorts of laughter, and Connor claps his hands together. 

“Right, I think that’s the cue for bed. Don’t look at me like that, Kevin Price,” he chides, rising to his feet. “Don’t think I won’t deduct points from your star chart, I am still District Leader, after all.”   

“We don’t have a star chart,” Kevin mumbles as he rises as well, with more than a little difficulty, swaying on his feet. “We should definitely have a star chart.” 

“It’s decided then, we are definitely not having a star chat. Do you need any help there?” Connor adds, and Kevin looks down at himself as if he didn’t even notice he was wobbling. 

“I only have one shoe on,” he says, perceptive as ever. 

“Yes, yes, you do,” Connor agrees as he walks around the table, intending on doing – something, he’s not sure what, but Kevin just puts an arm around his shoulders as soon as he gets close enough. Connor freezes, because of course he does, starved of even platonic touch, but he allows himself to relax just as Kevin allows him to gently lead him back to his room.  

“Why do I only have one shoe on?” 

“That’s just one of life’s great mysteries, I’m afraid,” Connor says lightly. 

“Thank you,” Kevin says, sliding his arm off from his shoulders when they reach his door, "for all that, holy moly am I tired.” 

Connor rubs the back of his neck. “It's the least I can do, and you look it, so pip-pip." 

“Like a freight train, Elder,” he repeats with a groan, and they both break off into giggles again. 

“Just one of the many challenges our Heavenly Father has faced you with,” Connor replies, as somberly as he can through his snorts of laughter. “Stop giggling, you might wake him up.” 

“Anything to stop the snoring,” Kevin replies, and Connor gives him a light shove. 

“Go. I’ll see you in the morning,” Connor says, and Kevin sighs, but opens to the door to his room and, geez, he wasn’t lying. “Night, Kevin.” 

“Niiii…” Kevin trails off, followed by a small thump, and Connor brings his hand up to his face to hide his smile, even if there’s naught but his Heavenly Father to see it, and makes his way back to his room. 

Chapter Text

Connor McKinley is twenty years old and he thinks he never wants to grow any older. His family is growing week by day by day, week by week, more and more Ugandans dropping by the meetinghouse (as the Mission House is now known, sometimes colloquially called “the house of those weird white boys”) to listen to the slightly-adapted word of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Heavenly Father, and the Prophet Arnold Cunningham. Eight more one week, five the next – the number doesn’t matter. What matters is that they come.

He and the other American elders (generally referred to as either that or, well, “the weird white boys”) don’t do so much of the proselytizing anymore. The Ugandans know the area and the people far better, after all, and they’re busy enough as it is. They’ve set up their own worship center now, a shaded area by the meetinghouse. It’s nothing extravagant – a cover for sufficient shelter from the sun, several rows of roughly hewn wooden benches (with one being added every couple weeks to compensate for their growing membership), and a whole wall of the meetinghouse covered in doodles of Jesus, various elders and sisters of the District, and the Starship Enterprise. Elder Davis turned out to have a real knack for drawing it from memory. It’s not much, but it’s home, and that’s the important thing. 

Connor and the other senior elders (not just the Americans, but also Nabulungi and most of the other original twenty to be baptized) spend most of their time out there now, or in the main room of the meetinghouse talking with investigators: those intrigued about their work, those who come for guidance, or even those who just want someone to talk to. They also organize future sermons, chores, and duties, very much like when they all (bar Kevin and Arnold) first arrived. The adaption of passages from the Bible (all three sections) to give them a little “Arnold Cunningham flair” was a bit of a new addition to their daily schedules, but accepted completely nonetheless. In the beginning, it was only Arnold occasionally scribbling down his ideas to add to a later sermon and elders sitting at the side jotting down the new Biblical truths that he would make up on the spot. It only took Kevin suggesting the idea of Jesus speaking through toys to help guide the smaller children (they all caught on pretty quickly that it was a Toy Story reference) for all the American elders to begin chipping in. 

Some of them have even begun assisting in farming and selling wares at markets with the Ugandans. The second is especially common, as the folk who come over just to gawk at the white boys generally end up buying something, so at least one of them is dragged along with the villagers every market day.       

The villagers trust them, now – trust them and accept them and welcome them wholeheartedly, and Connor is more grateful for it every day. He never in a thousand years would've expected to be allowed to integrate so wholly into the community when they first arrive, but they have, they’re becoming more and more a part of the community and he doesn’t think he’ll ever get over it. They trust them not only with their hopes and their dreams and their confessions, but with their sick and their elderly and their young, as well. At this point, Connor’s had more than one child plonked on his lap who would then poke at his white skin and tug at his red hair as he chatters away to the various parents. It’s a bit overwhelming, to be honest – it always has been, life, but this time he couldn’t be happier for it. 

Elder Thomas is the best with the children, especially the little girls when he teaches one of them how to dance on his feet. After every Sunday morning service, there are at least four or five children who will race over to him for a go. It surprised them all at the start as he’d politely but steadfastly refused any offers to hold one – all bar Connor, that is, who remembered his sad look on the plane when they were talking about not having any little sisters, and what he’d said when Kevin and Arnold first arrived, and the sad looks he gave Connor every time he saw him rocking a baby on his lap. But when one got finally plonked on his lap he took to it like a duck to water, and it’s now rare to see him out and about without a baby in his arms or a toddler pulling at his shorts or a kid on his back. 

Whenever the ache in his chest, somewhere below his ribcage, gets a bit too much to bear, Connor finds himself joining his companion. He wonders at how Ciara and Caitlín are doing, if they're enjoying their Mia Maid classes and high school, if either of them have rebelled like he would never have dared do at their age. Although, he considers, looking over the makeshift pews of the meetinghouse, he's probably more than making up for his lack of teenage rebellion right now. He wonders at how his kid sisters probably won't even be kids when he gets back. The children in the community can never replace them, Connor knows that, but he's grateful for them in their own way.  

It isn’t long before they decide to give Elder Thomas his own service for all the children of their little congregation. Every Sunday and more, they'll find him sat cross-legged on the dusty floor reading from a copy of a children’s bible, with several of the Ugandans helping to translate and adding in their own two cents (well, more like two dollars), and answering questions from the children clustered before him. It’s gotten to the point that some of the elders, not just the Americans, have brought up the idea of setting up a day care more than once – him looking after four or five kids throughout the day so that parents can have someone to look after their kid if they work, and he can help teach them at the same time.  

Arnold is a little less enthusiastic with the kids, but no less kind. He seems to enjoy how all of them don’t try to revere or glorify him, just treat him as another adult to use as a climbing frame. Kevin, on the other hand, just laughs at Connor whenever he sees him carrying a baby until he inevitably gets one shoved in his own arms. Then, it’s Connor’s turn to laugh. 

“I was the youngest in my family,” Kevin says, his affronted expression a bit subdued by the baby giggling in his lap. “My entire family, no younger first cousins or second cousins or anything. I don’t know how to deal with babies.” 

“You seemed pretty okay with the baby you got handed on our first day here,” Arnold says. He’s sitting on the ground nearby in the clearing outside of the meetinghouse in the middle of one of his Luganda lessons, Nabulungi as his sweet and ever-enthusiastic teacher. That’s another thing the American elders have been doing – learning Luganda. Their attempts generally only result in good-natured laughs from the villagers, but it’s better than nothing, in any case. 

“No, it was awful, I thought it was going to throw up on me,” Kevin protests, doing his very best to keep the baby stable on his lap as Nabulungi giggles.  

“Actually, you’re right, it was pretty bad. He was running around like a headless chicken trying to find someone to give it back to,” Arnold says to Connor. 

Kevin rolls his eyes. “Oh, come on, it wasn’t that bad.” 

“Oh, I wish I had seen that,” Nabulungi says.  

“Naba, you were there,” Kevin says to her. She had swatted Arnold lightly on the arm after he’d mispronounced her name for possibly the billionth time and told him to call her Naba, and it was very quickly picked up by most of the other elders. 

“Oh, I was more focused on other things,” she responds, turning to smile at Arnold, and Kevin groans. 

“That’s gross, and you’re gross.” 

“He can talk,” Arnold mutters to Nabulungi, who just giggles more, and Connor blinks. Sure, Kevin’s hair can get pretty greasy nowadays, and not a day goes by that any of them doesn’t sweat like heck, but that doesn’t make him gross. 

“Not you, of course,” Kevin adds to the baby as if Arnold hadn’t spoken, who just continues babbling up at him (the baby, not Arnold). “But them. That’s Nabulungi,” she waves at the baby, “and that’s the Prophet Arnold Cunningham whose supposed to be my best friend but they betray me by staring at each other dopily all the time.” 

“I think the baby might be a bit too young to start learning the works of our Prophet Arnold Cunningham, Kev,” Nabulungi says, but she repeats it in Luganda for the baby’s benefit anyway. She’s the only one with nickname privileges so far. Not even Arnold is allowed to call him Kev – well, he would be Kevin was allowed to call him Arnie, which he is not, so they made a deal and thus only she can call him Kev. “Now your turn,” she says to Arnold. 

Arnold is looking between them, mouth open. “Did you just call Kevin a – a – something I really don’t want to repeat?” 

“That’s not true, don’t listen to them,” Kevin informs the baby. 

Nabulungi just laughs again and gives him a nudge. “See, you are learning!” 

“I am learning!” he says incredulously, and Kevin lets out a sigh which is as exaggerated as it is exasperated as they slip back into a whispered conversation. 

“Were you not like that with any of your girlfriends?” Connor teases. It’s a risky route to go down, he knows, but, well. There’s no harm in it, after all. 

“I’ve never actually had one, so,” Kevin replies. His head stays ducked, looking resolutely at the baby. Connor has a feeling that he’s blushing. 

“Neither have I,” adds Arnold, and Nabulungi tilts her head. 

“Would you not consider me your girlfriend?”  

Arnold breaks out immediately into that stunned, elated look he gets about four or forty times a day as if he can’t even believe a girl like Nabulungi would ever look his way, never mind date him and do increasingly Law-of-Chastity-breaking things with him until he's arriving home most mornings with hickeys on his neck and a spring in his step.  

“Of course I would consider you my girlfriend,” he says, reaching out to take her hands. Kevin gives Connor a look. 

“Haven’t had much practice hanging out with couples either?” Connor teases as said couple continue on their hushed conversation. 

“Well, couples generally only hang out with other couples,” Kevin says, and he's getting anxious again, fingers fidgeting and eyeline dancing. “I went on a lot of group dates with the other kids in my ward, of course, but I never had a girlfriend cause –" 

"Steady dating at an early age leads so often to tragedy," Connor recites for him. "I know, I know, you don't have to tell me twice." 

"Yeah, exactly! And cause there was never a girl who felt right," Kevin continues. "Who I genuinely thought, yeah, I like you - who I felt a spark with. I mean," he shuffles his feet, rubs the back of his neck, and they all take care not to stare.  "Why I couldn't find the right girl then makes a lot more sense now, but honestly? The thought of being in a relationship kind of terrifies me. Being so dependant on someone, being so close to them - sounds awful. I don't think I could do it. No offence."

"None taken," Arnold replies waving a hand dismissively.

"Oh, no, I am terribly offended," Nabulungi says. "You will have to do something very nice for me to ever forgive you."

Both her boys laugh, Kevin a little more nervously than Arnold - but, then again, Kevin is always a little more nervous than Arnold, nowadays. Especially now, after one of his big speeches which he gives so rarely and so unwillingly, so timid in his trust. Connor wonders if that was always the case: how he fixes his hair, hunches his shoulders, plasters on fake smiles; how he holds himself so tensely all the time. If it's due to being here, being now, or just to being him. 

"It's not really that bad," Connor tells him before he can stop himself, before he can think about anything other than reassurance. "It's pretty much just like having a best friend who holds your hand and meets your mom, if you're lucky."

There's a moment of silence.

"You dated a girl?"

Which is very loudly broken by Arnold, as if he hasn't been doing the exact same thing for the last three months.

"Yeah, so?" Connor says, all fake nonchalance, keeping focused on the baby steadily dropping off in his lap instead of the incredulous looks he knows are being aimed his way.

“Oh, that’s wonderful!” Nabulungi says, oblivious to the shock on both Arnold’s and Kevin’s faces. “I want to know everything.” 

“Well, her name was Lizzie,” Connor begins lightly, steadfastly not looking at the two other boys. “She was in my ward, met her all the way back in Sunbeams. We dated for about six months during my junior year and her senior year –" 

"She was older than you?" Arnold says, as if it's the most scandalous thing he's ever heard.  

"By like a week, Arnold, she wasn't exactly a cradle-snatcher," Connor says. "We broke it off for good after her senior prom, and… that’s about it really.” He shrugs loosely. 

“Is that all?” Nabulungi asks, a little crestfallen. 

Kevin and Arnold seem just as bemused as before. Perhaps even more so; the former hadn’t even noticed that the baby on his lap was steadily working its way through pulling the buttons out of the holes of his shirt. Good job, baby. 

“Well, I’m not really sure what you want me to say,” says Connor. “It was over two years ago now.” 

"What was she like?" Arnold asks, and Connor can't help but smile. 

"She couldn't dance for toffee," he says. "No matter how hard I tried to teach her a simple Box Step. She was obsessed with her hair. It was way past her shoulders when we first got together, but every time she came back from college for the holidays it was different. Her mom was so mad when she got a mullet like Joan Jett that one time. She studies journalism, she's a vegetarian which makes sharing a deep dish with her really annoying..."  

“Why did you break up?” Kevin asks, his eyes fixed on Connor. 

"She was going to college that fall, and we thought it'd be better to spend the summer just as friends," Connor says lightly, and he isn't lying. He's just not going to tell the whole truth – that they weren't attracted to each other, could never be attracted to each other, could never make it work no matter how hard they tried – when it's only half his to tell. "And we still are. I email her a lot even now." 

He does not add that after the first time he told Lizzie about Elder Price, a long email about how royally he and his companion had screwed everything up, the only response he got at first was a no-subject email saying "he cute tho". Not lying, etc. etc. 

“You seem pretty blasé about it,” Kevin says, and he’s still looking, why is he still looking?  

It’s not as if it’s a bad look, it’s just – it's like he's just realized he doesn't know Connor at all. But Connor is blasé about it: teen hearts heal quick, and there was almost no difference at all between them dating and them hanging as friends. They just didn't kiss, didn't hold hands, didn't make promises they couldn't keep, which was an improvement if anything. If he misses her now, it's nothing compared to how he missed her when she first moved to Provo all those years ago.  

“Well, she wasn't exactly the love of my life," Connor says. 

"You were not in love with her?" Nabulungi says. 

"He didn't say that," Arnold says, and she shushes him, impatient.

"Yes, he did," she says. "His eyes did. You were not in love with her."

Her dark eyes are fixed on him, and Connor's been stared at before. By Ugandans, curious at markets and grateful at church: by Lizzie, when there was something missing, something wrong, something left to understand no matter the tugs in their hearts; by his bishop, his cold looks dissecting, discerning, damning; and, all those many, many years ago, by Steve; Steve, who still exists in those fading memories and dwindling dreams, gazing like he was Heaven-sent and glaring like he was Hell-bound. But he's never been stared at like this before, by a girl who neither wants to marry or mother him, by a woman who wants no more than for him to be candid and uncomplicated. It's tender. It's tentative. It's terrifying.

His own eyes duck down before he can help it, his heart tugging and tugging and tugging.

"I - I'm sorry," she says, pulling back, tumbling over her words. "That was not very tactful of me. It is - it is none of my business."

"She was my best friend," Connor says; the whole truth, or as much of it as he can give her. "She was my only friend a lot of the time. She was very important to me – still is – but I was never in love with her." 

“So there is no chance of you reuniting with her after your mission?” Kevin asks, and Connor laughs. 

"My gosh, no. She's made it more than clear that she's not gonna wait around to be the perfect Mormon wife for some kid she dated when she was seventeen to return from his mission," Connor says. "She has this whole huge plan to get her degree and move to San Fran or Brooklyn and work for some new media online magazine type thing, not even think of marriage until she's, like, at least thirty - "

He's so awash in his memories of her, in his fondness, that he doesn't realise he's put on her voice, that he's saying the words he's heard her so hundreds of times, until they're already out of his mouth: 

" - if it's even legal then." 

"Oh my gosh that's so old," Arnold says in hushed, hurried tones, and Connor thinks he might have gotten away with it. "Wait, what do you mean by legal?" 

“She didn’t go to BYU, did she,” Kevin says, comprehension dawning on his face (not about the baby still unbuttoning his shirt), and Connor knows he's busted. 

"She did, she did, but, only because it was cheap." Connor stifles a laugh. It's a lot funnier now, thousands of miles from home. "She liked to call it Breed 'Em Young University and swears it's worse living in Provo than here." 

"Ooh, don't let Elder Michaels hear you say that," Arnold says, wincing slightly. 

"Wait, what is Provo?" Nabulungi says, looking between all three of them in confusion. It's all flying over her head, the little cultural things that Kevin has clearly clued in on about Lizzie, about him, about their sham of a relationship. 

"It's a city in Utah," Arnold explains. "It's like the cool, hip Salt Lake City. It has the coolest bands there. Like Neon Trees, oh my gosh they are so cool." 

"Wait, you've listened to Neon Trees?" Kevin says, finally looking away from Connor.  

"More importantly, it has the Missionary Training Centre," Connor says, a little more smoothly. "And –" 

"Oh, yes, MTC," Nabulungi interrupts, turning back to Arnold with a grin. "That place you really hated!" 

When she turns back to Connor, Arnold immediately leans back to have another one of those weird mind-meld best-friend conversations with Kevin which is made up entirely of progressively weird facial expressions.  

Not even trying to understand what they're on about, Connor tells her, "It's also the home of Brigham Young University, where almost all Mormons are expected to go to school." 

"It is named after the warlord, yes?" Nabulungi says, to Arnold's shere delight. "With the clit face?" 

Connor gets the distinct impression that, when and if he ever goes back to the States, he will accidentally call the second President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Saints exactly that and not even realize it. Kevin has a look on his face that implies he's thinking the exact same thing. Connor prays for their mothers, he really does. 

"Does that mean that you and Lizzie are not from Utah?" Nabulungi asks once she's finished having a little moment with Arnold. She has still not mastered the first syllable of the state, and Connor loves her as candid and uncomplicated as he knows how.

"No, I'm from Chicago, Illinois," Connor replies. "Chicago is the city, Illinois the state. Do you want me to draw you a map?" 

"Oh, yes, please!" 

"This should be fun," Kevin mutters. 

"Oh, make like a tree, Kev," Connor says, sliding of his chair and onto the dusty floor beside her. Kevin groans, but still scooches forward to watch his attempt. "Oh, gosh, now I've got to remember what the US looks like." 

In the end, it's mostly bickering between the boys that gets the job done, neither geography or drawing being Connor's strong suits, and they're able to make some sort of map on the dusty ground. They point out upstate New York (hard), Jackson County (harder), and Salt Lake City (hardest), but it's pretty easy to show her whereabouts Chicago would be once he's drawn out Lake Michigan. 

"There's an album about it," he says at one point. 

"Why did you not live in Sal Tlay Ka Siti?" she asks, tracing a line as the crow flies between the Windy City and the Holy City.  

"My grandparents were converts from Catholicism –" 

"The great and abominable church," Kevin adds under his breath. 

"Thank you, Kevin," Connor says, tries not to smile. "After my dad met my mom at BYU, he didn't really want to leave his hometown, so she moved back to Chicago with her." 

Nabulungi traces the line again and again and again, as if questioning why anyone would ever, ever move from the city of her dreams, and guilt curls around Connor's throat. But then she draws a smiley face on the map, over the southern states, and he can breathe a little easier. 

“I do have family in Salt Lake City, though, so I've visited loads," Connor continues. "My parents considered moving there when I was about 13, 14, but it never ended up happening.” 

“Why not?” says Kevin. “Salt Lake City’s fantastic.” 

“Better than Orlando?” Arnold teases. 

Kevin points a finger at him. “Now that’s uncalled for.” 

“What, you mention Orlando all the fricking time,” says Arnold, pushing his glasses up his nose. None of them have gotten around to break the swearing taboo yet – except Kevin, who is perfectly happy to cuss like a sailor whenever they receive an angry letter from their former Mission President, which pleases Connor to no end – but it seems to amuse the heck out of the villagers when they use their substitute swears, so it’s really a bit of a win-win. “It’s not that uncalled for to ask whether you prefer Salt Lake City or Orlando.” 

Kevin squirms a bit in his seat – perhaps for the benefit of the now-giggling baby in his lap, who stopped the valiant attempt to unbutton his shirt (three buttons down; go, go, go, baby), or perhaps because it really is that hard a decision, Connor isn’t sure.

“Fine,” he says, with a great sigh. “I prefer Orlando.” 

Connor gives him a faux-judgmental look, before he notices Arnold doing the exact same and they both start laughing.   

Kevin sighs again and, addressing mid-air, says, “Heavenly Father, why does it always feel like I’m the butt of all the jokes around here? At least you don’t make fun of me,” he adds, looking down at the baby. “Wait, what are you doing to my buttons?” 

*** 

The next time they speak of it – or, at least, Kevin dares to bring it up – its several nights later. 

Connor wouldn’t like to say it’s become the norm for him to get out of bed just to go and see if Kevin’s also awake when he’s wrenched from sleep by bad dreams, but, well. Most nights that he does venture out, Kevin isn’t there and that’s okay. More than okay, in fact, it should be a very good thing: it should hopefully means that he’s sleeping through the night, and that at least serves as some sort of comfort. Sometimes Connor gets out of bed to find that Kevin isn’t there, but Arnold is, and a few of the other elders: it’s morning, and he’s slept through the night. 

He’s stopped having the Hell dreams. 

Not all nights. Not every night. But first he gets one dreamless night a fortnight, then a week, until he’s having more nights without Hell dreams than with. It’s honestly made falling asleep a little harder, always on edge with worry about if he’ll have one or not. In any case, if he has one, he can count on either the comfort of Kevin's company or the comfort that, even if Connor was having a bad night, at least Kevin wasn’t. 

What they do varies, if he is there. The first night after they first start being given lessons in Luganda, a very excited and possibly slightly manic Kevin had said he had a great idea, waving a sheet of Luganda phrases in the air. It wasn’t long before Elder Neely shuffled out of his room, yawning and just a little irritated that they were laughing so hard that they'd woken him up. It turns out that hearing each other’s terrible attempts at 2 o'clock in the morning was more than a little amusing. 

Sometimes they clean, working side by side to sweep the floor and clear any surfaces and plates that had just so happened to have been forgotten about during the day. Connor quite likes most of the small rebellions against the Missionary Handbook, but not keeping the Mission House clean is not one of them. 

One night, Kevin will not stop blowing his fringe out of his eyes and so Connor gently pushes him into a chair, fetches a pair of scissors, and cuts his hair, despite his good-natured protests and complaining. It turns out in the morning that it wasn’t exactly as precise a haircut as they both hoped, being more than a little lopsided, but they just laugh about it and Connor promises that he will never cut it again.  

Sometimes Kevin already has the Bible (all three parts) in front of him when Connor slips into the room as well sheets of paper covered in his neat, precise handwriting: adapted verses to add to Arnold’s sermons and teachings (a lot of these), translated verses for Nabulungi to check over the next morning (less of these), and little doodles of Mickey Mouse (more than of these than there probably should be). At the end of days when they’ve been told that one among their congregation has passed away, days which occur more often than any of them would like, more than once has Connor seen Kevin place aside a Bible with conveniently placed bookmarks before he has headed off to bed. Those nights, they don’t speak: Kevin simply hands him a piece of paper and a Bible, and they sit next to each other working in silence bar the pencils and the rustling of paper. 

Sometimes they just sit and talk – that’s it. Just talk. Connor tells him about deep dish pizza and the Cubs and the album about his state, and Kevin tells him about his hometown and Orlando and swimming in the Salt Lake, and they share little things about their days or bits of gossip they’ve picked up from the others. Anything and everything lighthearted enough to distract them from why they’re actually awake. 

The best nights are when Connor can drag him out into the night, and they lie on the ground arguing about if the brightest things in the sky are stars or planets and if that is actually a shooting star or not. Scout training or not, Kevin's only able to pick out Cancer, Leo, and Virgo, but they make up their own constellations, their own stories, until their sides are splitting.  

The worst nights are when Connor barely takes one step into the kitchen and Kevin is already up and out of his seat, storming out into the night or past him back to brood in his room and Connor can do nothing but let him go.  

The first time he finds Kevin already slumped over the table, snoring, Connor just gently puts a pillow under his head, drapes a blanket over him, and sneaks back off to bed. When Kevin spends most of the next day rubbing at his neck and making quiet noises of pain, Connor decides it's perhaps better to wake him next time. 

Also, funnier. 

Since the change, they’ve all become a bit lax with the sleeping and waking rules, although not by much. It’s still definitely preferable to rise before it gets too hot, some of them still like nothing more than to watch the sunrise (including Arnold, who can be found most mornings sat outside hand-in-hand with Nabulungi), and Connor has given more than one of them a chiding for staying up unnecessarily late and spending the entire next day yawning. Nevertheless, it still isn’t unusual for a morning call to be greeted with a bleary “five more minutes”: hence the reason why Kevin mumbles it every time Connor wakes him from his kip at the table. 

“You fell asleep at the table again,” Connor tells him, giving him another gentle shake. 

Kevin burrows his face further into the pillow that is his arms. “I can sleep on the table for another five minutes, then,” he counters, and Connor pursues his lips in attempt to not laugh.

“Fine, but when you have a crick in your neck tomorrow, don’t come whining to me.” 

Kevin lifts his head from the table now, if only to fix him with an irritated look. It's subdued a bit by the fact that his hair is sticking up in several directions. “I don’t whine.” 

“It’s only with the fondest of affection in my heart when I say that you, Kevin Price,” Connor pokes his arm, “definitely whine.” 

“Oh, so, what, you’re full-naming me now?” Kevin grumbles. 

Connor raises his arms. “Case in point.” 

“Very funny,” Kevin snaps, and Connor frowns. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, taking a seat across from him. “You seem a little more grouchy than usual. Not that you’re normally grouchy,” he adds when Kevin makes another face. “Just than you can get a bit grumpy when you’re tired.” 

“Yes, Elder McKinley, I’m fine,” Kevin responds sarcastically, and promptly drops his head back into his arms. 

“More bad dreams?” Connor asks gently. 

“It's the same dream,” he says, into the table, and his voice is hard and tired. Connor’s jaw aches in sympathy for how hard he must be gritting his teeth. “Every single night it's the same damn dream, and every single damn he –"  

Kevin's fists clench, his shoulders shake, and all Connor can do is wait. When he has finally composed himself, lifted his head and wiped the tears from his eyes, Connor can barely look at him.  

“You?”  

“Not so often now, actually,” he says, feels guilty for even admitting it. Why should he, breaker of the most abominable of sins, get any respite, when Kevin does not? “It’s taken a bit of getting used to, but it isn’t exactly an unwelcome change.” 

“Good,” Kevin says forcefully. “You don’t deserve them.” 

“Oh, there are some who would think otherwise,” Connor says lightly; omits that it includes himself.  

“Frick them,” Kevin says, except he doesn’t say ‘frick’, and there’s the slightest possibility that Connor blushes a little bit. “You do realize that we are allowed to swear, now? Nothing against it in the Book of Arnold – at least, not yet.” 

“The Book of Arnold?” Connor says, and Kevin gives him a look. 

“Yes, the Book of Arnold, what do you think we’ve been writing almost every single damn night?” 

“Wait, so he’s actually making it into a book?” and Kevin, wide eyed, makes a noise, a quick huff of confirmation. “Oh-em-gosh. I thought he was joking. Now, that is exactly what the congregation needs.” 

Kevin huffs again. “Not just them. But yeah, he’s really excited about it. So am I, to be fair, but definitely not as much as he is.” 

“He does generally tend to get a bit more excited about things than most people,” Connor agrees thoughtfully. “Not that that’s a bad thing, of course. Makes him a very good public speaker, if he knows more or less what he’s about to say before he says it.” 

Kevin sighs again. “Who’d have thought, out of the two of us, he’d end up being the better speaker? I mean, it’s not that I wish he hadn’t done all of this, or that I’d done all of this, God forbid, just – I don’t know.” 

Connor knows him well enough by now to know that telling him that he is special (just not as much as someone else is) and that he has done something incredible (just not as much as someone else has) is not what he wants to hear, and definitely not want he needs to hear.  

But, for all that he's gotten to know him, he doesn't know what Kevin needs to hear, if he could ever even be the person to give him that. So instead he says, “On a scale of 0 to you when you’re talking about Orlando, how excited is he?” 

Kevin makes yet another face. “I don’t get that excited about Orlando.” 

“Kevin, just last week you spent an entire half an hour just talking about the food," Connor says. 

Kevin looks as if he’s about to protest, then clamps his mouth shut again. “Okay, you have a point.” 

“Always do,” Connor says. “That’s not to say that you should stop talking about it,” he adds, and Kevin looks up at him: eyebrows a little furrowed, head tilted to the side a little, and, rats, Connor can feel his heartbeat quickening a little. “I like it. To see you talking about Orlando. It’s nice.” 

Almost all of his facial muscles seem to be at sorts for a moment, caught between a smile and a shocked drop of the jaw, Connor thinks, before Kevin sighs and they relax once more.  

“There’s really no point in lingering over it still,” he laments. “Is it weird to miss something that lasted for so short a time?” and Connor remembers the dampness on his lips and a racing heart, his back pressed against a cold bathroom wall, and says nothing. “I suppose I’ll just have to accept that I’m stuck with not being in Orlando for the foreseeable future.” 

Connor just rolls his eyes. “With all due respect, you are such a drama queen. Ouch!” 

“I am not a drama queen,” Kevin says. 

“The fact that you just kicked me says otherwise,” Connor replies. 

“I poked you,” Kevin insists. “With my foot.” 

“Fine, you poked me with your foot, but it was still unnecessary.” 

“You wouldn’t think it was unnecessary if you’d been to Orlando,” Kevin says, and then sighs again (overdramatically, Connor might add). “You don’t understand, it was most perfect place on Earth – after the Garden of Eden, at least. It might even beat the Garden of Eden: it had all the rides, and all these people dressed as the characters, and so much cotton candy that you could swim in it. I mean, I’ve never been to the Disneyland in Florida, but I bet Orlando’s way better than that one.” 

“I’ve never been to Disneyland,” admits Connor. “In Orlando, or California, or anywhere else.” 

“You’ve never been to Disneyland?” Kevin gasps. “But it’s the best place on this planet!” 

“Oh, really? I would’ve never guessed you felt that way about it,” Connor says, and Kevin gives him a look. “I went to Six Flags with Lizzie for her eighteenth birthday, though, if that makes up for it?” 

“Lizzie,” Kevin says quietly and Connor draws away from him, just a little, not a lot, and hopes that Kevin doesn’t notice. “She was your girlfriend, right?” 

"We dated, yes,” he replies carefully. “We'd already called it quits for a couple months by then, though." 

“You said that you,” Kevin says, stops, swallows. “That you struggle.”  

“Yes,” Connor says; gives him as much of the truth, the whole truth, as he can. 

“Did she?” 

“Yes,” he says, slightly less sure. “No. I don't know. She embraced it more than anything else.”  

Kevin stares at him. "How? How could she –" 

"Believe me, I wish I knew." 

Part of him was jealous, as much as he tried not to be. Jealous of how she could do anything, kiss anyone, be whoever she wanted. She snuck girls into her dorm room and snuck herself into gay bars while Connor screamed himself out of sleep thousands of kilometers away.  

Part of him still is. 

"Why did she even date you, then," Kevin asks. "If she knew she couldn't make it work?"   

"Am I really that undateable?" Connor teases; Kevin immediately begins to groan in protest. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding. No, I think – I think she thought it could change her, or that she at least needed to try, like I did. She might've even thought she could save me, in the beginning," could save him who needs atonement more than anyone, "even if she couldn't save herself. But she couldn't. She said nothing could. Not even getting married, not even – she broke up with me because she wanted to save herself from a life without emotional and –" he swallows around the next word, ducks his head, looks at his hands, " –  sexual fulfillment. And the worst thing is, I think she broke up with me because she wanted to save me from that life, too." 

"What did she know of – fulfillment?" Kevin says, and Connor wants to laugh, for all that he knows it'll sound hollow in his bones.  

"She'd already broken the Law of Chastity with some girl from her high school," he says, and it sounds ludicrous, even to him. "She was basically dating me out of guilt. I know - my mom would've thrown a fit if she'd known I was practically dating Babylon the Great." 

"How does that even work," Kevin says, when he manages to snap his jaw back shut again. "Between two girls, I mean." 

"I did not wanna know," Connor replies, "But apparently it was more than enough to give up on her Victoria's Sacreds for good," and it only takes a split second of eye contact until they're splitting themselves laughing, shock and exhaustion and pure, pure misery. 

"Victoria's Sacreds," Kevin says, spluttering for air. "Oh, I am so telling Arnold that." 

"I'm just imagining her telling her bishop," Connor says, not any better. He manages to withdraw his best impression of his best friend when sarcastic from buried within his memory once again when he says, "Yes, bishop, I've decided to leave the Church because I want to lie with other women and the Jesus Jammies are really killing the mood." 

"Was that supposed to be an impression?" Kevin says. "Because that sounded exactly like you," and they're both off again.  

"Oh, she's going to love this," Connor says. "She's going to hate me, but she's going to love this." 

It dies down quite quickly after that, as Connor thinks of his best friend all those thousands of miles away, and Kevin thinks – well.  

"What was it like?" he says, sounding as terrified of the answer as he is the question. "For her?" 

"She said it was like taking her first breath," Connor says, voice very, very small. "When she realised she didn't have to marry a man, it was like taking her first breath after being buried alive." 

"I always knew my mission was going to change me," Kevin says, and it's a huge change of subject for all that it isn’t. "But I never knew it would be like this." 

"I always knew my mission wasn't going to change me," Connor echoes. "But I wanted it to, more than anything." 

"So, does that mean," Kevin stops, clears his throat, worrying at the tabletop. "If you tried to make it work with a girl and it didn't work, you'd be open to dating men?" 

"Why, you interested?" Connor teases, and immediately freezes. Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh, he just flirted, with Kevin. But Kevin doesn't shove him away, doesn't spit on him, call him all manner of horrible things – all he does is laugh. Honestly, he's so straight it's enviable. "I don't know," he says after a long moment. "No. I don't know," and the truth hurts less than he thought it would.  

He still aches in his tar heart for the boy who could only stay in safety of the boundaries, could only look like this and act like that and be ignorant of everything else. But the truth, the whole truth, or of much as it as he can admit to himself, is that he wants to save himself from that life – that he's not willing anymore to sacrifice his humanity, and more, for a religion he can't even back up. Connor knows can't just wave a magic wand – can't just rub a frog on his face and expect himself to be all better now. But in this moment, in the small hours, with only the stars and his heart as witness, he feels like he's breathing for the first time.  

"When?" Kevin is smiling at him, that big dopey one that isn’t at all like the one that he greeted Connor with when they first met, and it hits him all at once. What he's saying, what he's admitting to, what he's even beginning to consider.

He wants to date men. 

"Oh, I don't know," he says, shifting in his seat, rubbing the back of his neck. "When we go home, I guess." 

He's been told time and time again that one day he will feel a certain way which will tell him the gospel is true, but nothing he has ever learned at church has ever made as much sense as knowing he wants to date men, and he's telling Kevin that that's okay. He's telling Kevin that that's okay, cannot believe the sacrilege he is speaking: cannot believe the smile on Kevin's face, the soft tone in his voice, like he thinks it's okay as well. When he goes back to the US, he'll want to date men, and he'll have to watch as Kevin marries and receives all the blessings of the gossips whereas all he'll receive is a life of loneliness and social exclusion; a life without the gospel, without the church.

“Thank you, Connor,” he says, and his tone of voice is so sincere that Connor wants to shake him, wants to tell him that - that - 

He ducks his head, looks at his hands, when Kevin tells him he's going to try catch a few more winks, tells him he should do the same, thanks him again before leaving the room, can feel his tar heart dripping down his spine. For the first time in as long as he can remember, he wants to dance: wants something to relieve the tension thrumming his body, something that does not involve thinking about Elder Price. His main go-to nowadays for relieving tension involves far, far more than just thinking about him, even if it leaves him red-faced and so very, very ashamed when he first sees him the next morning. Oh, and how he tries to suppress it once more, but the tidal wave of disgust is little more than a trickle now in comparison even if he continues to scrabble desperately to conceal his feelings like the good Mormon boy that he still wants to be. 

It should have felt right. If the Church was right about this, about his path and what he's supposed to accomplish on earth, then dating Lizzie should have felt right. What else is he supposed to do? He's tired. He feels exhausted by his life, even here, so far from home, from the real church. He’s unhappy in the church but he would be just as unhappy if he left it, and he knows in his tar heart that he is nothing without the gospel. He has no hope, no choices. He can't do what Kevin does: look between coffee and God and choose coffee. He can't do what Arnold does, and just create a whole new religion, and he definitely can't do what his ex-girlfriend does. Lizzie can shake off the influence of the gospel.  Lizzie can choose a life outside the Church and then live it, can embrace a life of sin and sexual fulfilment, but Connor – Connor doesn't think he could ever be that strong. No matter what has happened on this mission, no matter how much he has been changed for good; to go home, and tear himself away from the gospel, make a mark on his parent's posterity, break up his eternal family, to look in his mother's eye and watch her heart break  –   

When he finally falls back asleep that night, he wakes up screaming. 

Chapter Text

Connor is twenty years old and he does not lie to himself anymore. To his mother or his father or his Lizzie or his Steve or his family in Uganda or the rest of the whole wide world he will not tell the whole truth, no, for they can never, ever know – but now he can now finally tell the whole truth to himself.

He wants to date men.

He stands under the sky’s crackling and raging vastness, Heavenly Father and the Devil himself raging war in the lightning bolts, and shakes more from awe at his place in the world so much bigger than him than from the rain drenching him to the bone and he wants to date men.

He attends the party the villagers throw on the half-year of Arnold’s arrival, a celebration that's irreverent and beer-soaked and rowdy and yet still includes children, and wonders what’s so wrong with events that are gaudy and loud and actually feel celebratory. When he's dragged to dance with Nabulungi and Darlesia and Asmerat, he swings the women around like he was born to do so and he wants to date men.

He wakes up screaming and shaking and sobbing, Elder Thomas kneeling next to his bed and rubbing soft circles into his back until he is still and quiet and feels as if nothing is ever going to happen again, and he knows more than anything that he wants to date men.

It may be a small step, but a step it is, on a road paved with bad intentions.

Arnold, being Arnold, had insisted that reaching the first half-year mark of his arrival was really not that big of a deal, and they didn’t have to go to any trouble. Kevin, being Kevin, encouraged each and every antic with every fiber of his being. The highlight of the night was, of course, the reenactment of The Story of Joseph Smith the American Moses. On a second viewing, Connor finds it as stomach-achingly funny as Kevin did all those months ago, clutching on to each other in a futile attempt to suppress their giggles and not end up rolling around on the dusty ground laughing. It’s a testament to how beautifully bizarre the play was once again that the press of Kevin’s arm wrapped around his shoulder and the feel of Kevin’s arm under his hand was not in fact his favorite part. 

Kevin says the reason he was so insistent on the celebration was entirely due to his belief that Arnold deserves recognition from the whole wide world for his achievements. Connor says it’s just his pigheadedness talking, to a jab of elbows from Kevin. They end up squabbling on the dusty ground until Arnold is able to break it up by saying it’s the ultimate eff you to their former Mission President. Nabulungi, her adoration no less candid for being drunken or for the hickey on her neck, says she doesn’t care and she loves him anyway.

If Connor was as candid and uncomplicated in all his loves as he is towards Nabulungi, he would have agree with her, too. His only comfort is, well, at least he still does not lie.

He doesn’t. He can’t. He can’t turn it off anymore because, as much as he hates to admit it, he likes Elder Price. He like-likes him. He likes him Leviticus-style, he likes him biblically, he likes him in every single freaking way that opposes his Heavenly Father’s plan, and he cannot deny it to himself any longer. He wants to date men, but he wants to worship Kevin Price.

It's teasing. It’s torturous. It’s terrifying. Particularly when Kevin thinks it’s an absolutely wonderful idea to have three of the top buttons of his shirt undone so that Connor can see more of his collarbones than he could have ever hoped to see, all of the elders having long given up on wearing their garments.

If there is a non-quite-so-innocent reason he is currently walking over the yard to where Poptarts watching over the kids tussling and playing in the open sun instead of inside in the relative cool of the Meeting House, he can hardly be blamed or shamed for that. He is only human, after all, and very, very, very – Connor sighs deeply as he decides that train of thought is best left unfinished, as the best possible way that it could end is with the word ‘gay’ and the other alternatives are not worth thinking about.

Said sigh attracts the attention of none other than said Elder Poptarts, who glances up at him, pushing his glasses back up his sweaty nose.

“What are you doing out here? I thought you’d be inside on a day like this.”

“Oh, you know, just wondering if you needed any help or were getting a bit bored out here,” Connor says lightly, and he is not lying, he is just not telling the whole truth, et cetera et cetera. “Besides, every day is a day like this. I guess you could say that I am starting to get used to it.”

“I’m not,” Poptarts says, not that it isn’t blatantly obvious.

He still gets sunburned even now, his nose and ears red and flaking. Sweat is dripping down his forehead and he’s not even doing anything but sitting looking a bit mopey on his daily babysitting duty, so Connor takes it upon himself to join his companion and drops on the dusty floor beside him. Between the hotness of the sun and the hotness of Elder Price, he’d choose the sun any day.

“You don’t have to join me if you don’t want.”

“Of course I want to join you,” Connor says, and now he is certainly not lying. Thomas is still his favorite, despite (or perhaps because of) the infuriating existence of Elder Price. The comfort that he offered during those early months of unfamiliarity in Uganda is not something he will easily forget. “I mean, if that's all right by you."

“Its alright by me, I just don't see why you'd want to," Thomas grumbles, wiping the sweat off his forehead. Connor gives him a look. “What? I know exactly why I put up being roasted alive, but I know why you would.”

“Just because I haven’t taken to looking after children like a duck to water, doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it,” Connor says. “Some of us aren’t a born parent like you.”

“I’m not a born parent,” says Thomas. “When you grow up with a baby sister and about a dozen baby cousins, you get a lot of practice.”

Connor almost argues that he does have baby sisters, thank you very much, but the subject remains fraught even now.

Instead, he says, “I bet you can’t wait to have children."

From the huge beam that appears on Poptarts face, he knows he’s hit jackpot.

"Course I can't, are you kidding me?" he gushes. Connor smiles and leans back on his hands, happy to watch his friend babble on. “Taking them to dance lessons and sports clubs and teaching them Mormon stories and giving piggy backs and baking cakes with them and – and – and I know that being a stay-at-home dad isn’t really the accepted thing, but that’s honestly all I can see myself doing in the future.”

“I’m sure you could be a stay-at-home dad if you want,” Connor says, and Thomas gives him a grateful smile. “I mean, we’ve broken enough rules out here as it is. Have you decided how many you want yet?”

“No, it’s the hardest decision in the world to decide how many you want." His hands are flying everywhere as he talks, often to his nose to push his glasses back up again. “More than one, definitely, but I could – I could have five, that’s a whole basketball team – not that I can play basketball, but it would still be an option – and they say that two is good as it’s an equal ratio of parent to child, but they say the more the merrier, as well, I mean, I only have one sibling, and – had. Had one sibling.” His hands drop back down to his sides, and he falls quiet. “I had one sibling.”

Connor reaches out and pats his back as he deflates, but says nothing. What would he even say – what could he even say to try and help to mend a wound so deep?

Thomas just pulls his knees up to his chest and stares out over the playing children. “She’ll never get to meet my kids. I’ll never get to meet her kids.”

“I’m sure they would have loved her,” Connor says quietly, hoping at least to offer some comfort.

Thomas smiles weakly.

“What about you?” he asks, tipping his head to the side as he looks over at Connor. “Would you like to have children someday?”

Connor drops his hand back to his side with a weak smile. “Well, it would be sort of difficult for me to have children in my situation."

“Oh?” Thomas blinks up at him before his eyes widen slightly and his gaze falls again into his lap. “…oh. Right. Yes. I forgot. Sorry.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” says Connor. “I sort of prefer it like that.”

"I thought you wanted us to be okay with sharing things like that?”

It’s a little pointed, almost sassy, very unlike his friend’s normal countenance, and Connor really hopes that he hasn’t picked it up from him. In all fairness, he could’ve picked it up from Kevin, although he’s more sarcastic than sassy – or, indeed, Arnold, but then again he’s more naively wise than sassy. In any case, Connor isn’t quite sure when exactly he managed to accumulate such sassy friends.

“I am, I am, of course I am, it’s just that,” Connor waves his hands. “It’s a little different in my case. It’s not something I’m generally comfortable with people knowing about.”

“Well, I’m not exactly comfortable with people knowing that I – that my sister – with people knowing what I did wrong, but I –” Thomas pauses, sighs. “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

“It turns out saying that we should talk about our feelings is a lot easier said than done,” says Connor. “Who’d’ve guessed?”

“I would’ve,” he says quietly but, when Connor tilts his head and waits for him to continue, he just waves him off. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Connor says, placing a hand on his arm. “If you have something you want to share, feel free. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t tell me things, even if it is hard, because that is not true."

Thomas nods, shifts a little where he sits. He makes a move as if to speak, but it’s a good half a minute before he finally edges out, “Are you sure?”

“I’m your friend, of course I’m sure,” Connor says. “Not that it’s likely that I’m going to understand, as I’ve never lost someone close to me – at least, not like that – but I can at least listen. Not that I want to put pressure on you, but the option is there if need be.”

“Okay,” Thomas says. "Okay," a little firmer this time, as if preparing himself for the words to come, slow and careful and true. “After my – after my sister died, some people tried to get me to talk about her constantly, said it had something to do with helping me get through the five stages of grief - but the thing was I didn’t want to talk about her all the time. Even when I did, I only wanted to talk about the nice parts, the happy parts, not everything else. Trying to talk about her constantly just made me feel – it just –”

“Made it feel like it was something you couldn’t accept in your own time because you were being constantly reminded about it?” Connor says dryly. 

He nods. “It just made it hurt more. So that’s why – that’s why I get what you mean about the whole easier said than done thing.”

They drop off into silence once again, now, watching the kids scittering around on the dry earth, That’s why Connor thinks he likes him so much, really. He’s coped with enough awkward silences in his life that to have a friend he can slip into the most comfortable quiets with is such a relief.

“My temple leader was the same,” he says after a while. “When he found out that I was, well, having gay thoughts, he would try to talk about it with me every time I saw him, and it just made it a whole lot worse. It just kept reminding me that I needed to try harder, that I needed to forget harder and pretend harder. The only thing that did was keep on putting me back at square one.” He lets out a deep sigh: then pauses, winces. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make that about myself.”

“It’s fine. You weren’t. Not really. It’s nice to know someone feels the same way, I guess,” Thomas says. “The silliest thing was they said that, if I didn’t speak about her at all, I would be stuck in denial because I would be refusing to accept that she existed, never mind that she was gone, but they were – they were doing the same thing. They were in denial as well, as if she wouldn’t be dead anymore if they talked about her enough.”

“Responding no better than those who refuse to talk about it at all,” Connor murmurs 

“Speaking from experience, I take it?” he ssys, his voice bitter but no less soft.

“My parents,” Connor admits. “They didn’t want to speak of it at all – not directly, anyway. They would ask me if I’d met any girls at school but that was about it, as if it wouldn’t exist – or, at least, they could pretend it didn’t exist – if they refused to talk about it hard enough, but it just made it the loudest thing in the room.”

“It was the same with mine,” Thomas says. “My cousins were better, more willing, but they would just get so upset – and my parents are the one who knew her best, and –” he breaks off again, lets out a deep sigh, before continuing slower, steadier, “I just wanted to be able to talk about her when I felt like it, and not when I didn’t, and no one would let me do that.”

“You can talk about her with me if you want,” Connor says gently. “Not constantly, just whenever you’re reminded of her, you can tell me. You don’t have to hold it in.”

Thomas smiles. “Thank you. I’m glad I got paired with you by the Mission Centre. You’re definitely the nicest person I’ve met here.”

Connor smiles back at him, properly smiles, and nudges him with his elbow. “I’m glad I got paired with you too – and I would say the same, except for the fact that I’ve also met Elder Cunningham and Nabulungi here.”

“You’re the nicest person I’ve met here except for Elder Cunningham and Nabulungi."

“And Elder Price,” Connor adds as seriously as he can.

“Definitely Elder Price,” Thomas agrees.

They look at each other solemnly for a moment before they both burst into fits of giggles that last longer than probably necessary. Connor does feel a bit bad for making fun of Kevin so often, and behind his back, but, after such a pompous arrival all those months ago, it’s hard not to.

“But really,” Thomas continues, attempting in vain to keep a straight face. “In all seriousness now,” he adds, and Connor does his best to not keep giggling, he really does. “I really, really appreciate the offer, and I think it’s only fair that I extend the same to you.”

“What do you mean?”

Thomas shifts a little where he sits, drawing circles in the dusty ground with his forefinger.

"Talk about your feelings,” he says, and Connor definitely isn’t laughing now.  “Your gay thoughts, I mean. Nothing too, um, detailed, but –”

“Look, that –” Connor pauses, takes a deep breath, then continues a little calmer, “That’s very sweet of you to offer, Elder, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary.”

Thomas blinks at him. “Why not? Have you – have you stopped having them?”

“No, no, I,” Connor’s mind flicks back to the night before, and he lets out a weak laugh. “I have not stopped having them, unfortunately. It’s just that I don’t particularly want to talk about them.”

“Oh, no, I’m not saying that you should tell me about the boys you –” Thomas grimaces a little, rocks back and forth where he sits, “– like, I suppose – no offence, but I really don’t think I’d be comfortable with that –”

“Don’t worry,” Connor says drily. “You’re not the only one.”

“See, that’s exactly what I mean!” Poptarts blurts, pointing at Connor almost accusingly. “You still obviously feel bad about having those thoughts so, if you want to talk about how they make you feel bad, I am here for you.”

“With all due respect,” Connor replies, doing his best to keep his tone from becoming a little frantic because this is bad, this is a bad idea, because then he might accidentally let slip his little thing for Elder Price which, no, no, can't happen won't happen can never happen and basically everything is going terribly very quickly. “I really don’t think that that’s a good idea.”

“Okay,” he says, deflating a little despite also looking as relieved as Connor feels. “Can I… can I ask why?”

“It’s just that you talking about your sister and me talking about my… thing are just a little different." 

“How?” Thomas says, blinking at him. “We’re both just talking about how they make us feel bad.”

“It’s different, Elder Thomas, because I deserve to feel bad about it,” Connor says. “It’s my own fault for letting my thoughts consume me and therefore I do not deserve to complain about it.”

“It wouldn’t be complaining!” he says quickly. “And it’s not – it’s not your fault.”

Connor gives him a look. “You don’t sound too sure."

Thomas shrinks a litte under his gaze. “Okay, maybe it is your fault, I don’t know. But if you deserve to hold your feelings in, why do I deserve to talk about mine?”

“Yours wasn’t your fault,” Connor says gently. “You couldn’t have controlled whether or not your sister died.”

“I could’ve controlled whether or not I was with my sister as she lay dying instead of out buying a stupid iPhone that ended up being taken by the soldiers of General Butt-Effing-Naked anyway."

“No one can blame you for trying to find a little joy in such a dark time in your life."

Thomas is steadfastly refusing to look at him as he replies, sharp, sharper than Connor has ever heard him speak, "I should've been finding joy in being with my family. I prioritized material goods over my own sister. What kind of Mormon does that make me?”

“I like men, Elder,” Connor says, and freezes. He said it. He actually said it - but that is not what is important right now. His friend is what's important right now. “What kind of Mormon does that make me?”

“It’s different!"

Well, at least he agrees with me, Connor thinks. 

“At least you have the chance to fix yours!"

Connor takes his previous thought back quite quickly.

“I can’t go back in time and stop myself from leaving my sister with me," Thomas continues, voice dripping with bitterness. "But you can - I don't know - "

"It's not different," Connor snaps. "I can't be fixed. The day I cease to be gay is the day your sister rises from the dead. I'm sorry to say it, but it's true."

When Thomas raises his head again, his eyes are red-rimmed behind his glasses. “Couldn’t you at least try to like girls?”

“I have.” Connor’s mind flicks back to all the times he held Lizzie’s hand, all the times he would place his lips on hers, all the times he so desperately wished to feel something, anything other than boredom, uneasiness – repulsion, even – and failed. “Trust me, I have.”

“What’ve you done? Have you held hands with a girl?”

“Yes, yes, I have held hands with a girl,” Connor says slowly. That was nice. He liked that. Her hands were soft, a steady anchor if he ever happened to panic.

“Have you kissed a girl?”

There must be a twitch in his body language or facial expression  because Thomas gasps and says, “You have kissed a girl, haven’t you?”

Connor groans, puts his hands over his face, says, “Yes, yes, I have. It was only pecks for show, but it was still awful and I never want to do it ever again.”

“You didn’t like it then?”

“Not. At. All,” Connor says. “I liked holding hands, but that was it, nothing else.”

“Still, you could grow to like it, couldn’t you?” he says, and he seems so terribly serious, mulling it over as if it could one day be a real possibility, that Connor would want to laugh if he didn’t also want to, well, cry – neither of which he’s going to do as, 1), he hasn’t let himself cry in years and, 2), inappropriate, if anything. “It could be an acquired taste. Like caviar.”

“Elder, for one who says he’s okay with me being like this, you seem pretty set on convincing me otherwise,” Connor says.

Thomas reddens. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t, I just –” he lets out a quick huff, “If I can’t fix my past, I thought at least I could see if I could try fix your future.”

“I told you, it’s not going to happen,” Connor says. “Goodness knows I’ve tried. In any case, would you want your sister to have married someone like me?”

“No, I suppose not. No offence, but I would’ve wanted her to marry someone who – someone who actually liked her.”

“None taken,” says Connor. “I would’ve wanted the same thing for her. Is it just - is it just you who feels like this? “No one’s really brought it up and it’s a little worrying, to tell you the truth.”

Thomas immediately looks away, which is not the best of signs, if he had to be frank. “I think no one’s brought it up because you haven’t brought it up. It’s not exactly an easy topic to talk about.”

“No, it’s not, and that’s why I’m so scared to mention it at all,” Connor says slowly. "I'm even worried about what you're going to say."

Thomas is still avoiding his eye, again, and this, this is exactly why Connor has kept his mouth shut. To avoid the awkward silences,  the odd questions. It took him many years to learn that the only thing worse than rude glares is not being seen at all. All this, and the dread that creeps up his spine at Thomas' continued silence.

"Elder?"

“I’m not okay with it,” he bursts out – it’s quiet, as he always is, but no less a punch to the gut, even if one he had been expecting.

“Not completely, anyway. It’s not that I think you’re a bad person, or you deserve to have spooky hell dreams, it’s just that it’s difficult to be completely okay with something that I’ve been told is wrong my entire life,” he admits in one long, quiet, stuttering breath as Connor just sits staring at his hands, at his fingernails biting into his palms. “I want to be okay with it because you’re my friend and because you’ve gotten so much happier since,” he clears his throat, “since, uh, since Elder Price arrived, it’s just – difficult.”

Connor does not reply, and he does not look at Elder Thomas. He’s confused once again and, although this is nothing new, he doesn’t think he’s ever been this stumped before. For one, he knows exactly how Thomas feels. He’s spent the last ten years struggling with to be okay with it. He doesn’t particularly want to hate himself, and knows he’d be happier if he was at peace with himself and his, well, his sexuality. But it is as he said: to do one thing when the Church has twisted his mind into wanting to do the other, to want to grow and learn and change when continually held back by the steadfast influence of the Church and his own internalized self-repression, is no easy task. If it was, all Mormons would do it. So he gets it, he does, he really does but, on the other hands, he’s also – he’s also mad.

“Elder McKinley?” Thomas edges out. “Connor? You alright?"

No, not mad, exactly but – he’s had to cope with a lot of differing opinions on his sexuality over the years. Steve, with his sharp tongue and shy curiosity that Connor was in no way ready to deal with. His parents, with their steadfast denial and self-blame. His priest, with his prying eyes and damning words. Lizzie, with her attitude that screamed that she knew it was wrong but had resigned herself to eternal damnation and decided it was either go big or go home, at this point. Arnold, with his wise words and innocuous interest. Kevin, with his – well. Connor honestly has no idea how to interpret how he feels about it. Now Poptarts, with his – he’s okay with it, he is, and Connor knows that and appreciates that completely, but he still can’t help feeling a little let down. Not mad, but let down, which he also has mixed feelings about: yo-yoing in between being grateful and wanting to shout, no, no, what are you doing, you shouldn’t be encouraging me.

It would be an understatement to say that he’s not entirely sure what to think at this current moment in time.

It takes him a moment, but in the end Connor just smiles. “No, I’m not mad, and I don’t judge you for finding it difficult. Believe you me; you’re not the only one who has trouble being okay with it.”

“I think – I think that’s why I want to be okay with it.”

Now it’s Connor’s turn to blink owlishly at him. “I. Um. What?”

“That’s why I want to be okay with it,” he repeats, straightening and looking Connor dead in the eye. “All I know is that you’re a nice person and you don’t deserve to feel bad about having gay thoughts. So if the Church says otherwise then I think the Church can go… eff itself," he finishes firmly, and actually says eff unlike some other elders that Connor is not going to name. He dithers for a moment before meekly adding, “More than I already want it to.”

Connor smiles. “So you’re going to be okay with it, at least?”

Thomas hesitates a little again before he replies, “Yes, I’m going to be okay with it. As long as – as long as you don’t – try anything,” he adds hastily, and Connor bursts out laughing.

He honestly cannot help himself. Thomas is blinking at him, as small and soft and sweet as ever, so different from the roguish Harrison Ford and the suave James Bond and the cheeky Steve Blade, and the tall, handsome, if slightly arrogant Elder Price. The mere idea of being attracted to him is just so ridiculous that Connor is almost clutching at his sides with it.

'Sorry, I’m sorry,” he says breathlessly. “I don’t mean to laugh, it’s just that you’re really, really, really not my type.”

Thomas blinks. “I,” blinks again, “Um,” adjusts his glasses, “I’m not sure if I should be offended by that.”

“If you also had gay thoughts,” Connor says, “I would probably take it as an insult but, as you do not, best not to worry yourself over it.”

“Oh, no, I’m definitely,” his voice goes a little funny, his eyes a little dazed, “I’m definitely straight.”

“Oh, no, I know you’re straight, I remember what you said about the Playboy,” Connor says, and Thomas turns bright red.

“It was an accident,” he protests. “I was playing hide and seek at my aunt’s house and I just sort of found it under my older cousin’s bed!”

“And then you read it for the articles,” Connor teases. “I will say that, if you ever want to talk about accidentally reading that Playboy made you feel bad and guilty, I would prefer it if you didn’t go into any explicit detail.”

“I didn’t –” he blurts, pauses, and then the corner of his mouth twitches into a smile. “You can get magazines like that for people like you, you know."

Connor groans. Oh, he knows, alright “And we are changing the route of this conversation right now, thank you very much. So, we have a deal, then? You can share with me things about your sister, and I can share with you things about my… alternate thoughts?”

“That sounds good,” Thomas says. “I'd like that."

"I would say you could talk to me about girls but I doubt I'd be any help in that particular field.”

“But don’t they say that gay men are more in-tune with women’s feelings?” Thomas teases and Connor whacks him lightly on the arm. “Thank you for the offer but I’m, ah, not sure if I’ll take it up here.”

“Why not?” Connor says. “Arnold and Naba seem to have a pretty good thing going.”

Thomas laughs weakly, rubs the back of his neck.

“What?”

“Well, it's all sort of… a bit intimidating here, really,” he confesses. “Especially as I’ve never actually had a girlfriend before.”

“Never?”

“Girls don’t generally like it when you spend all your free time in a hospital,” he says with a sad smile. Connor nods, remembers how ignored he was when he was constantly exhausted in sophomore year, says nothing. “I would really like to find someone when we get back.”

“I’m sure you will,” Connor says. “You’re sweet, kind, caring - girls will love you.”

The smile turns a little cheeky. “I thought I told you not to come on to me.”

Connor just puts a hand on his chest, gasping melodramatically. “I wasn’t coming on to you! How dare you suggest such a thing?”

They pause in their mirroring shocked expressions for a moment before they both break into snickers, and it’s if a huge weight is suddenly lifting from Connor’s chest. He might not have spoken confirmation from all the other elders that they’re okay with him being gay, but he has it from his companion, from his closest friend, and that’ll be okay for now.

They lapse into silence once more before Thomas finally asks, “Do you think you’d want to do that?”

Connor says, “Do what?”

“Settle down,” Poptarts replies quietly, drawing shapes in the dusty ground again. “Start a family.”

“I don’t know, Elder. I know I want to date men," Connor says, the truth of the words spoken under the sun bringing a smile to his face, “but I'm still struggling with accepting the fact that having gay thoughts might not be so bad, never mind that acting on them might not be too awful as well.”

“It’s a shame,” he says, and Connor catches a glance of a little stick family in the dust – a mother, a father, an older brother, and a little sister – before Thomas brushes his hand to remove all four figures. “You would make a good dad.”

“You’d make a better one,” Connor tells him.

“But Elder Cunningham would make the best one,” is the response, followed by a cheeky smile and a, “Not sure about Elder Price, though.”

Connor tuts. “Now that’s just mean. I’m sure he’d make a great father, we really shouldn’t be making fun of Elder Price like that.”

“Why are we making fun of Elder Price?” comes a voice from behind them.

They both turn to see Kevin himself standing over them looking vaguely disgruntled, as per usual, but fortunately with all of his buttons done up this time.

“Kevin, Kevin, we were just making fun of you: please, sit, sit,” Connor says, patting the dusty ground next to him

“We were talking about whether or not you would make a good dad,” Thomas as Kevin flops on the floor next to Connor; whose heart just carries on beating as per usual, of course, and doesn’t do anything peculiar in the slightest.

“Now, that’s not entirely true,” he says. “Not about you specifically. We were talking about who among District 9 in general would make a good dad, and you just happen to be one of them."

Kevin eloquently says, “Oh,” and then repeats it, eyes a little wide. “Oh. Well, I’ve never really thought about having children, to be honest – for myself, at least. My ambitions for the future have always just been centered round my mission and not much else."

There's a slight pause before he smiles. "But if I was with someone who wanted children, I would love nothing more than to be a parent with them." 

His smile is bright and beaming. Connor can't help but be drawn like a moth to a flame.

“Oh, that’s really sweet,” he says, and Kevin just smiles wider. “But that’s not for years and years, so there’s no point in freaking out about it now.”

“No, no, there is not,” Kevin says, looking a little relieved.

“Agreed. For one, I’ve already got enough children to worry about,” Thomas grumbles, standing up and brushing himself off at the sight of a small kerfuffle across the yard. “I’ll be back in a moment – or, well, maybe not,” he adds, giving them a look before scampering across the yard to the two children currently on the edge of a tussle, and Kevin laughs.

“Wow, am I glad that I don’t have that role,” he says as Thomas quickly gets to work solving the issue. “He would make a good dad, though.”

“He really would,” Connor says. “He’s a little worried about it, though: says he’s not sure how easy it’ll be to find someone to settle down with back home. Told him it was ridiculous, of course.”

“Of course it’s ridiculous,” Kevin agrees vehemently. “He’s lovely, I’m sure he’ll meet someone in no time,” he says, and then smiles at Connor. “I’m glad I don’t have to worry about that, though.”

Connor rolls his eyes and shoves him. Typical Elder Price, thinking that girls will just be falling at his feet just by virtue of being him.

“You’re such a snot, Kevin Price,” he tells him as he lets himself be tipped over into the dirt, laughing. Well, at least he took what Connor had said about him getting his chance to heart.

“Now that’s just rude,” Kevin says, a little over-pompous, brushing himself off as he pushes himself upright again. “I would never have expected that sort of behavior from a District Leader.”

“You’re the rude one interrupting a very important conversation between a District Leader and his companion,” Connor says pointedly. “What is the reason you came over, anyway?”

Kevin says, “Oh, um,” ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck. “Just wanted to see if you were okay, is all. You took off pretty quickly back there.”

“What, me?” Connor says. “Oh, no, I’m fine. It was just getting a little hot in there.” Well, he isn’t exactly lying, he's just not telling the whole truth - in particular, what (or who) was making it so hot. “Turns out I probably should’ve stayed inside, seeing as I ended up just getting interrogated on how many children I want to have.”

“Oh, don’t get me started,” says Kevin. “Arnold will not stop getting on at me about that kind of stuff." Connor raises his eyebrows, and Kevin adds eloquently, "Romance stuff.”

Connor huffs a laugh. Kevin might now be so much more certain that he’ll find someone that he thinks he won’t have to worry about it, but he still hasn’t gotten any better at talking about it. “You think he would be more focused on his own 'romance stuff'.”

“Oh, I wish he was,” Kevin whines. “I’d way prefer for him to talk about Naba than constantly badger me about my stuff because at least I actually like talking about her.”

“You want to save those conversations for me and me alone,” Connor teases, and Kevin nods.

“Exactly,” he says, and then smiles. Connor would want to ask how the heck he keeps his teeth so nice if he wasn’t, well, if he wasn’t a bit distracted. “Oh, on the topic of Arnold, the actual reason I came out here –”

“Oh, so you didn’t just come out here to ask after me? Kevin Price, I am shocked.”

Kevin rolls his eyes. “As I was saying, it was because Arnold says we have a few things we need to get from the market tomorrow, and I was wondering…” he smiles sheepishly, rocks a little where he sits, “If you wanted to go with me?”

“Of course I would!” Connor says, and Kevin's smile brightens, his hands drumming a quick pattern on his knees.

“Fantastic, I’ll just,” he gestures loosely between the Meeting House and Connor, “Go tell Arnold,” and scrabbles to his feet. “Tell Poptarts that I hope he’s not getting too bored out here.”

“I will!” Connor says, giving Kevin a little wave.

He does the same, and Connor does not smile dopily at how cute it is, before he turns to walk back to the Meeting House. Connor only notices now that he’s barefoot, kicking up little clouds of dust as he goes like one of the children would.

Children. Children. He thinks back on what he and Thomas had been discussing not long previously – could he ever see himself having them? Having a small Mister or Miss McKinley, a child with his nose or his smile or his hair running around his feet and pulling on his pants leg and begging for piggy-back rides?  

It's not as if he hasn't had much interaction with children. His baby sisters were his world, for a while, the world and everything in it. He did so much that a parent does and more, but to have children of his own had never occurred to him. Why would it, when ir would never have seemed a realistic option? The moment he knew, the moment he opened that dictionary age twelve to look up the word homosexual, was when any thought of children had gone flying out the window.

Children were a product of marriage only, and marriage was an option for heterosexual couples only: a truth he had accepted unquestionably throughout his life.

Sure, he could have children if he so desperately wanted. He knows there’ve been plenty of Mormons like him who’ve done it. He could marry the first nice Mormon girl who took a fancy in him when he returned home and then – no, no, no, the thought was too awful even bear considering it. Besides, as he said to Thomas earlier: he would not force a woman into a loveless sham of a marriage for the sake of adhering to the Mormon custom, for the sake of staying in closet, even if it would deny his parents the grandchildren he knows they’re desperate for, deny himself the joy of being a father.

No. He was not destined for fatherhood, a truth he had accepted unquestionably. Even if he had done so before all this, before Elder Price: even if he had questioned it, he would have barely had the head space for it.

The mere mental effort it takes day after day to hold in his gay feelings, to turn them off and suppress them until there is barely an inward hint of them, never mind an outward one, is strain enough that he often struggles with holding his relentless cheer together throughout his day as it is, ever mind whilst planning out his future at the same time. At least, it used to take, he thinks, gazing after his friend’s retreating figure. It used to take a lot of mental effort as clearly he isn’t even trying anymore. (He would feel terrible about it but, well. He decides that’s an issue for another day.)

Just as with Elder Price, his life had been centered around his mission, including maintain the visage that he was straight needed to be permitted to go on it, and very little besides.

But, unlike Elder Price, he couldn’t see himself as a dad. Kevin he could. Kevin would be firm, gentle, a constant source of encouragement, and always, always proud – and, of course, would take his kids on trips to Orlando, Florida, every single summer. No, Connor reiterates, they would live in Orlando, Florida. He gets a few kicks out of imagining Kevin in a Prince Charming costume before deflating a little when a pretty woman in a princess floats into his imagination and link arms with Kevin, who just smiles and leans down to – whoa.

Best not to think about that, then, he thinks, and promptly turns it off. There, it’s gone.

So, yes, Kevin could start a family, and Kevin could have children, but that would involve him being, well, intimate with someone and Connor very much continues to really, really not want to think about that, ever, at all.

So, him and all the others will have their chance to settle down and make big Mormon families, but Connor?

He knows he could theoretically get married one day – and not just to a woman, but to a man. More and more states are allowing it. Civil unions are allowed in his home state of Illinois, now, and New York made marriage legal not long ago, although both luckily while he was at the Mission Training Centre.

He is not sorry that he missed out on the snide conversations that must have occurred between his parents in the weeks following. But he's also not sorry at the quickstep in his chest at the email he received from Lizzie soon after, rejoicing more than she ever would've in a chapel.

But, of course, just as with Elder Price, to be in a position to marry someone, or even be in a civil union with someone, would involve him being intimate with someone and, well. He remembers the stomach-rolling fear whenever he happened to bump into one of the few out boys in his high school and he can’t expect that to have just gone away now that he’s become a little more comfortable. Besides, all the other elders would expect him – expect them to get together, or something along those lines, and Connor honestly doesn’t think he’s ready for that at all.

Yes, he’s been in a relationship before and, yes, he’s had his first kiss (if you count a dry, chaste, close-mouthed that could’ve been from his grandmother if he didn’t know better as a first kiss), and badness knows he’s done enough, well, experimenting, for want of a nicer word, with himself to know that he would probably know thereabouts what to do – would probably be able to – if he was in a situation in which – but that’s not the point, and definitely a bad road to go down, Connor McKinley, he tells himself firmly.

The point is that, although he has had a little experience relationship-wise, he doesn’t think he would be comfortable with being a man, with opening admitting his feelings to someone else when he can barely admit that he’s having them to himself. His disgust may be fading little by little, day by day, but would not, could not, should not burden any other man with that, not when there’s a chance it would be aimed at him as well.

That’s why Elder Price is safe to like, is safe to dote over, is safe to fantasize about, because he can learn to feel more comfortable with his – with his alternate thoughts, if you will, without any fear of his thoughts being reciprocated. Without his reoccurring fear that any close bond he forms with a man will crumble in on itself due to his own discomfort and self-hatred just like it did with Steve.

No, he would not do that to someone else: to force him to be with someone who might not be able to reciprocate his feelings.

Besides, he doesn’t even really know how to be gay. He’s sure there’s more to it than liking boys. There’s being a part of a – a part of a community, for one: some gay community that’s he’s heard mentioned before he has had little interaction with bar glances at the GSA during high school. He’s heard of roles, gay roles, something to do with tops and bottoms and – other things. He’s tried researching before, he has. When he was in sophomore year, he’d go on the school computers during the lonely lunches and free periods, tentatively googling for the answers for the questions he didn’t even know how to fully form. But he kept on having to constantly glance over his shoulder in case anyone was there, in case anyone saw, and he became so nervous that the librarians thought that he was looking at – at dirty pictures that he stopped.

The school firewall seemed to consider what he was searching up dirty, anyhow. Countless links he tried were blocked for containing “Gay and Lesbian Material”: even the firewall screen seemed to be judging him. So he stopped: so he stopped, and he took what he had managed to learn and shoved it all into that tiny box in his head to be hidden far away in a dark corner.

What little he did learn was not much use, anyway. There was something about bears, and being a friend of Dorothy, and handkerchiefs in back pockets to signify – something. Something to do with what they liked, which was thrilling and terrifying in a whole number of different ways. He didn’t realize, would never have realized that – okay, yes, Connor had figured out a while back how sex between two men might work, mostly gleaned from the more popular anti-gay phrases and from, uh, a little more experimentation- that there were so many different – that there were roles, and – and Connor – and Connor is stopping that train of thought right there, thank you very much.

So, no, he cannot marry: not a woman, and most certainly not a man, and thus he will never have children and that is that. That is final. He can be the best man to Poptarts and the godfather to his children, and be an honorary uncle to the children of any of the other elders, but he is not destined for marriage, he is not destined for fatherhood, and he is not destined for happiness. Although this, and in particular the last, is nothing new for the young man, he can feel the tendrils of black tar drip, drip, dripping back into his lungs, the remnants of the former hatred that used to consume him that he can’t quite get rid of – and so he stands up, shakes it off as best he can, and goes over to help Poptarts instead.

Chapter Text

Connor McKinley is still twenty years old and he does very much lie, for he fears that the consequences if he told the whole truth would be disastrous. He no longer has his mother or his father or Lizzie or Steve, but the sweltering heat of the Ugandan sun and his whole new family, Ugandans and Americans alike, more than make up for it. New is perhaps not the right word for it, now. They’ve been here for just over thirteen months at this point, over halfway done with their mission – the congregation has swelled to almost two hundred and fifty, now.

The temple is finished, after months of blood and sweat and toil, months of singing Mormon hymns the Americans knew off by heart and the local ditties as the steeple grew closer to God, and they grew closer to each other. Both the inside and the outside of the Meeting House are still open for business all days bar Sunday, filled with the elders who are not doing chores or proselytizing, but on Sundays they can all be found in that church joining together in praise that makes Connor’s heart swell far more than it had ever done in his temple back in Chicago.

They’ve lost a few of their congregation, of course. More than a few – Connor thinks at least four dozen people that they’ve baptized have died over the last ten months. Sometimes a family previously dedicated to the church will suddenly cease to show up, or cease to show up bar one or two family members who continue to steadfastly visit each Sunday with red-rimmed eyes. Sometimes someone from a few villages over will arrive almost on death’s door with the last wish to be baptized, and then not show up the Sunday after, and they will all just know. Occasionally, their family and friends will silently join their congregation: more often than not, they will never see them again.

(It’s on these days that Connor knows to slip into the main room in the middle of the night).

Arnold preaches. The American elders adapt and collect together all the passages and verses that they want for the Book of Arnold. The Ugandan elders and sisters proselytize. All the elders and sisters baptize. Poptarts teaches the children. Kevin has his Hasa Diga Eebowai moments whenever they receive a letter from their former Mission President (well, a Hasa Diga Mission President moment, in any case). Arnold and Nabulungi sneak off to break the Law of Chastity in new and more inventive ways, from what Connor can decipher from when he overhears her and Kevin chatter, loud and laughter-filled. The days blur together in a similar way that they did in high school until Connor only thinks of days as either Sunday or Not-Sunday, although not in a bad way.

He’s surrounded by love, this time: he’s surrounded by the people he loves, and that’s where the only problem lies.

He’s falling in love with Kevin Price, and he does not tell him. He isn’t lying, he’s just not telling the whole truth, and hopes that nobody pries any further.

For one, the dreams are starting to come back. Not the hell dreams – the other dreams, except now starring Kevin Price in the lead role. To call them frustrating would be an understatement: what is frustrating is what little he can do about it. He can slip his hand under the sheets as often as he wants (he wants, he wants, he wants) but that can’t stop him from feeling like a ten-year-old with their first crush when he’s around him. It’s not as if he can ignore him: Kevin’s his friend and, well, they live together. No way to stop them from bumping into each other, and it would be very, very obvious if Connor began to start avoiding him.

Besides – it’s so very hard to avoid someone who you want to spend all your time with.

Okay, perhaps not all of his time. Kevin’s still enough of an arrogant snot sometimes than he’ll grate on even the most patient of elder’s nerves – who, in any case, is definitely not Connor. He himself has suggested more than once than he should go and play with the kids until he’s mature enough to have an adult conversation. So, perhaps not all of his time, enough for Connor to feel appropriately ridiculous about it.

Still, they all have their flaws. Arnold will speak too quickly and be high-pitched and needy if he wants attention. Elder Church will hide himself away in his room for hours on end and refuse to come out on the rare occasions that there is a bit of a spat between any of the other elders. Connor knows he can certainly be irritating when he starts nagging at the other elders for bad upkeep of the meetinghouse. Kevin says that’s all part of being a big family, but Connor has never had that before. The country, the customs, the companionship, it's all still so new to him, and Kevin - what he has with Kevin is familiar, from the long gone days of Steve Blade, but Kevin still manages to surprise him with something new every day. 

But that’s the only problem, really, how he feels about Kevin. The only problem. Nothing else to worry about at all. None of them have a care in the world other than one pesky feeling that Connor has. Everything else is Uganda is going perfectly. All fine in District 9, as they say.

Okay, even he knows that that’s not the whole truth, but it almost is. It’s still terrible in Uganda. There’s still so much poverty, and so much famine, and so little that they can do about it except give guidance and hope (and occasionally food) to those suffering. But no warlords have dared approach the village, or any of the ones nearby, since Arnold and Kevin scared General Butt-Effing-Naked away, so Connor takes life as it is and thanks his Heavenly Father all the same.

“I still can’t believe that Arnold scared them all off by threatening to turn the General into a lesbian,” Kevin comments one day, although possibly for the millionth time.

It's one of the conversations he likes to have again and again and again. He'll never mention the General under any other context, clam up if anyone else brings him up, but he will mention this, how cool he thinks it was, how funny, at a drop of a hat. He probably finds it a comfort, Connor thinks; the reaffirmation that yes, he's gone, you're safe now. They're sitting out in the shade of a sweltering summer's day; he has red and peeling shoulders from the singlet he's been frustratingly wearing, and, for all his sins, Connor wants to taste the sweat that is running down Kevin's neck.

“One of the only good things about being gay,” he says lightly. “The ability to scare away warlords. That, and the ability to control the weather.”

“Gay people can control the weather?” Kevin says, and then adds, “Oh, very funny,” as Connor laughs.

Of all the rules in the Missionary Handbook, the one that they’ve been breaking the most as a District broken itself is Rule 72 by far. They all sleep in the same pairs, as always, but the American elders generally go off and group with whomever they please during the day, American and Ugandan alike, and it’s more likely than not that they do not stay with their mission companion. It’s a bit of a relief, actually. Connor is very fond of Poptarts, far more so than he is of any of the other elders, considers him a brother in every sense of the word – but it is nice to not have to spend almost every waking moment with him. As ridiculously domestic as it sounds, it’s nice to go to bed every evening and hear the stories of what his best friend did that day without him, and to share his own tales in return.

The only exception to this is Kevin and Arnold, of course, who still completely live in each other’s pockets. That’s not to say that they don’t hang out with anyone else; just that, where one goes, the other one is sure to follow.

Well. At least, where Arnold goes, Kevin is sure to follow. One day, Elder Michaels jokes that they’re practically Harry, Ron, and Hermione, which shocked some of the elders (“you were allowed to read those books???”) but which Arnold takes to like a duck to water.

“That’s actually more accurate than you’d think,” he tells them later that summer afternoon. Kevin and Connor had spotted them at a short distance, returning home from a walk and seemingly having a debate over whether or not to come and say hi. “I mean, Hermione is described as having really bushy brown hair, and you can’t really get any closer to that than Naba.”

It's nice that they came over to chat, in the end; its always nice to be around them. If it was anyone else, Connor knows that he would selfishly, selfishly be less keen, but Kevin's face lights up, and Nabulungi gives him little cheeky smiles as they talk. Connor wants to see every single smile that crosses Kevin's face, no matter who or what brought it there 

“Who are Harry, Ron, and – I have no idea what the last one was,” says Nabulungi, and Arnold takes her hand.

“Don’t worry, it took me years to figure out how to say her name properly,” he tells her. “But you really need to know about these guys. See –”

“Wait, does that make me Harry?” says Kevin as Arnold and Nabulungi stroll off, leaving a trail of excited chattering in their wake (most of it from Arnold). “I’m not really sure how I feel about that. He’s a bit whiny.” Connor gives him a look. “What?”

Connor just says, “So, you’ve read them as well, then? I have to say I’m surprised. I didn’t take you for the type to read anything that wasn’t 100% Mormon-approved.”

“Hey, they actually are, they teach morality and –“ Kevin stops and narrows his eyebrows at him. “You’re trying to wind me up again, aren’t you?” 

“No, of course not, why would I do that?” Connor replies, the perfect picture of innocence.

Kevin clearly sees through him, though, as he rolls his eyes and says, “I read the books, had them in the library at school, but only up to the fifth one.”

“Sirius Black?” Connor says sympathetically.

“Don’t you dare say a word about Sirius Black,” Kevin says, pointing a finger in warning at him. “What about you? Did you read the books? I can imagine you liking the Weasley's, what with all the red hair.”

"My hair isn't that red," Connor says, running his hand through it, a movement followed by Kevin's eyes, and, oh, gosh, does it need a cut. He's not exactly wrong, though. It's gotten redder and redder ever since the first moment he stepped down from that plane, burning just as his skin does under the Ugandan sun, to the delight of every small child in the village insistent on tugging at his hair whenever the opportunity arises.

"It really is," Kevin says with a grin, then adds quickly when Connor opens his mouth to object, "No, no, it's not a bad thing. I like it." His smile becomes a little softer. "I really like it. It suits you."

“I read all the books in freshman year,” Connor blurts, trying to distract from his face turning the exact shade of his hair. “But my… my friend Steve got me to watch the first two at his house and then insisted on dragging me to go and see the third and the fourth with him.”

There’s a pause as Kevin rubs the back of his neck. “Steve-Steve? The same one you told us about on me and Arnold’s first day here?”

“The one and the same,” Connor says lightly and Kevin nods slowly and things don’t become awkward, of course they don't become awkward, why would they become awkward?

“Must’ve been friends with him for a while then,” Kevin says after a moment, and Connor really wants to change the subject as quickly as possible. Fortunately, none of the other elders and sisters milling in the around them seem to be the slightest bit interested, all having wandered off to go watch Arnold’s exuberant re-telling of all seven books and eight movies.

“Oh, I suppose. Three years or so." Three years. Was it really only that long? Three years, and he hasn’t spoken to him in over twice that time. “Besides, I thought the boy who played Cedric was cute, so it wasn’t exactly a burden.”

“Isn’t he in the Twilight movies?” Kevin says and Connor purses his lips. “Oh, gosh.” (He actually says gosh this time). “Don’t tell me you’ve watched those.”

“They were terrible,” Connor admits. “Absolutely awful. I only watched the first two in the cinema, and I had to pay for Lizzie's Jamba Juice orders for a month for each movie. Not at worth it at all.”

Kevin raises his eyebrows. “Why did you have to pay for her orders?”

“Well, I couldn’t exactly go and watch them by myself, but a date with Lizzie made it the perfect excuse to go see them,” says Connor. “She understandably loathed them so I had to do something nice for her in return. Don’t look at me like that, Mr. I-saw-Toy-Story-3-in-the-cinemas-five-times-and-cried-every-time.”

Kevin sighs. “I knew I shouldn’t have told you that. I bet you’ve watched the Twilight movies more than once,” he adds, and Connor bites his lip. “Wait, really? I was joking!”

“In my defense, they’re really, really good at making you feel better,” Connor says. “They’re so bad that you can’t help laughing at them, and it’s not as if I went and bought them myself. My mom owns them, and all four books. She says she’s just supporting a fellow Mormon -"

"But we both know better," Kevin finishes off for him, and Connor laughs. “I think my mom knows the writer – or at least met her once,” he adds quickly when Connor’s jaw drops. “Part of the package of being a Mormon who lives in Salt Lake City.”

“Huh. I’ve never met anyone famous,” Connor says. “I suppose it doesn’t make much of a difference, really, but it would be nice.”

“We know Arnold,” Kevin points out, and they both look over to see him gesturing wildly in the air, reenacting some bit from the Potter series to a laughing Nabulungi (and a few others) sat on the ground a few feet away. “I wouldn’t give him up for the company of all of Hollywood.”

They sit in silence for a few moments, Connor gazing adoringly at Kevin who’s gazing adoringly at Arnold who’s gazing adoringly at Nabulungi who’s gazing just as adoringly back at him. Connor would feel as if he had the short stick if he didn’t have such a nice view.

“Okay but seriously though,” Connor says after a moment. “If you had to choose three people to have dinner with, who would it be? And you can’t say Jesus, Joseph Smith, or Moroni, because they don’t count.”

Kevin grins. “I wasn’t actually going to say any of them; I was going to say –”

He’s broken off by a groan from Connor. “Don’t you dare say –”

Kevin’s smile turns a little sheepish. “Walt Disney?”

“Oh-em-gosh,” Connor says, and he knows there’s more adoration than exasperation in his voice, he knows there is, but he just can’t help it.

“You did ask,” Kevin points out. “But seriously? Right now, I think I would choose you three.”

Connor raises his eyebrows. “You three?”

“Arnold, Naba, and you, of course,” says Kevin, and Connor’s heart does nothing unusual in the slightest. Nor his throat. Nor his face, in fact, which definitely does not turn bright red. “And we’d go to Jamba Juice, instead, not for dinner. I mean, for starters, I’ve never actually been to one, and you mention it so often that I have to find out the appeal someday. Plus, I could drink an entire Jamba Juice in this heat and - you’re all, at the moment, the most important people ib my life and that’s worth at least ten Walt Disneys.”

That? That right there?

That’s what’s changed.

At first, Connor and Kevin’s interaction was limited to little more than the casual chit-chat that would happen between all the elders on a day-to-day basis, no more. Sure, Connor would’ve liked to have gotten to know him a little better a little sooner, there’s no way he can deny that. But he still felt pretty bad for blowing him off so abruptly after Arnold revealed that he’d gotten some of the villagers interested in the Book of Mormon, and Kevin was pretty dedicated to hanging off Arnold’s figurative coat-tails for a while after their separation from the Church, so it’s not as if they were immediately best buddies.

Yes, they did have their night-time chats but, at the start, they never acknowledged them in the morning as if they only existed in those twilight hours. They certainly never gave any sign of it to the other elders, as if they’d made some silent pact to pretend they never happened. Connor had decided not to question it. Perhaps Kevin didn’t want the others to know he was still having bad dreams, didn’t want them to think that he was weak (not that they would’ve, of course). Perhaps he wanted a safe space in which to talk that wouldn’t be infringed upon by anyone else. Perhaps he didn’t want any of the other elders to think that there was – that there was something going on between them, which there is not, and which Connor isn’t even going to entertain the thought of.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t Connor’s concern: his priority was the well-being of his fellow elder.

It’s not as if none of the other elders seek him out to unburden their worries. Connor’s sort of become the unofficial Mom of the group, it seems – he’s not exactly sure why, but he has. He hopes that it has something to do with him being the District Leader but it’s probably more likely due to his good listening skills, which isn’t a bad thing, and, uh, some of his other more stereotypically feminine traits he’s been associated with, which he had mixed feelings on as a whole. Connor prides himself on it and simply presumed that Kevin was just doing the same as all the others – even if he did pine for more, just a little bit more: looking up every time Kevin entered the room, begging for scraps of attention.

So, no, he didn’t think into the night-time chats too deeply – but perhaps he should’ve, for then, oh, then he didn’t just get his little bit, he got his whole bit more.

Kevin began seeking him out. Intentionally.

At the start, it seemed nothing more than Kevin using him as a substitute best friend when Arnold was otherwise occupied. (Or Connor convinced himself that that was the case in order to not get his hopes up too high. He’s still not sure which.) If Arnold was busy with a service or some other prophetic business that Kevin was not involved in, he would wander over and see what Connor was up to. If the spaces either side of Arnold were already taken up at meals, Kevin would go sit next to Connor. When Arnold was given a place of importance in the audience during Joseph Smith the American Moses: Part 2, it was Connor that Kevin went and sat next to. If Arnold and Nabulungi went for a stroll and made it clear that Kevin was not invited, he would seek out Connor’s company. 

To say that Connor didn’t mind this would be an understatement. Yes, there still remains the remnants of his more logical and turned-it-off side that would have preferred for them to stay mostly professional, or as professional as the casual environment would allow as he still remembers what happened the last time he had a very close friend, and yet – and yet. The long-awaited admittance to himself that yes, yes, he does fancy the heck out of Elder Price all those months ago have done little to hinder his ridiculous infatuation.

It isn’t as if he’s persistent. It's just that his face will light up whenever he sees Connor, and he’s always so interested in what he’s talking about, and it’s just been a very, very long time since Connor has met someone who has been so invested in befriending him for no other reason other than that they genuinely like him, because that’s what they are, now. Friends. Nothing more (certainly nothing more), nothing less. Perhaps not the best of friends that he and Poptarts are, or that Kevin and Arnold are, but Connor feels like there’s starting to be something special between them – something special among a whole lot of other special, but something special nonetheless.

At least if Kevin was still a little snot, Connor could have that as his saving grace as another reason for why anything more than friendship can never, ever happen between them. But he had to go and be so sweet, and so kind, and so attentive (when he fancied it) and so unbelievably dorky, and it was just making everything far, far worse.

“Well, five Walt Disneys,” Kevin continues, then pulls a face. “Okay, four. Three and a half. Three Walt Disneys and a Robin Williams.”

Okay, he’s still a bit of a snot, but that’s not the point. “Well, I’m glad you think I’m worth three quarters of a Walt Disney and one quarter of a Robin Williams, in any case,” Connor says, and Kevin just smiles a little brighter.

“Besides, can you imagine taking Naba back to the States with us?” he says. “I mean, the look on her face at the inside of a plane will probably be one of the best things I’ll ever see.”

Connor tilts his head to the side as he considers this. “You think she’d actually come with us?”

They don’t talk about it, really. Going back. Going home. They’ve talked about abstracts, vague thoughts about the future, yes: Poptarts with his wish to have children, for one, or Arnold with his ambition to study Creative Writing at Brigham Young. But never in detail, and never particularly openly. It’s hard for Connor even now to refer to it as going home. It’s only been thirteen months but it’s difficult for him to believe that there ever was anything else bar the baking hot days and the weekly Sunday services under the sky and the hustle and bustle of languages he’s understanding a little more of day by day that he’s called home.

They know that they would have no trouble getting back. One word of hesitation, reluctance, or regret about continuing to stay would be leapt upon immediately by their parents and by the Church: plane tickets bought, lickety spit. And they know they will, one day. They can’t exactly spend the rest of their lives here and, besides: they all miss the USA too much.

Arnold misses his mom and dad, and his Star Wars box set. Kevin misses his mom and his siblings and his collection of Disney DVDs. Elder Church misses his mom, he worries a lot about her and asks if she’s doing okay if every single letter they send. Poptarts, of course, misses poptarts, and his little cousins to boot.

And Connor – Connor misses his mom, he won’t deny that. He misses Jamba Juice. He misses clean streets and soft beds and ridiculous knitted sweaters and Chicago pizza and watching the Tony’s. He misses Lizzie. He misses his baby sisters so much that it's all he can think about, sometimes. 

They can’t exactly grow old here, but they’ll be leaving so many people who may never even have the chance to grow old.

They’ll leave, and perhaps things will still not get any better.

They’ll be leaving so many of their friends behind.

“Of course she will! I mean, have you seen the way he looks at her? More importantly,” Kevin adds, breaking Connor from his thoughts, “Have you seen the way she looks at him? They look at each other the way my mom and dad look at each other – and you think of the unlikelihood of them ever having met if we hadn’t gone on this mission? Heck, it’s practically fate.”

He does actually say heck this time, although Connor’s long since given up on being bothered by his swearing. He does scold him for it, though, if only to see Kevin’s smile and eye roll after.

“Heavenly Father’s plan,” Connor murmurs.  

“Exactly,” Kevin agrees.

“Do you think she’ll say yes, though?” Connor says. “If Arnold asked her to leave the only home she’s ever known, to leave her friends and her family?”

Kevin deflates a little before his eyes. “I don’t know,” he admits after a while. “I hadn’t thought of it like that. I’d like to think she would, though. Say yes.”

Connor nods. “So do I.”

“They’d have to get married, first, of course,” says Kevin. “And officially, with a license and everything so that she’d be able to be accepted into the US.”

“Well, I guess that’s just another thing she’ll have to say yes to,” Connor says, and Kevin gives a snort of laughter.

“So what about you, then?” he says after a bit, and Connor snaps out of the little doze he was drifting off into in the afternoon heat.

“What about me, would I… say yes?”

“Who would you pick for your three people to have Jamba Juice with?” Kevin clarifies, turning even redder under the baking sun. 

“Oh. Oh.” Connor lets out a quiet sigh of relief. “Well, I think I would pick the same as you – except with you instead of another me. Although having Jamba Juice with myself would admittedly be an interesting experience, I’d definitely choose you over anyone else any day.”

Connor lets of a whispered stream of faux swear words in his head after this, oh, gosh, he really hopes that Kevin doesn’t accidentally think he was flirting with him, or flirting with him any more than he usually is, oh gosh, but Kevin just smiles cheekily and says, “Even over the guy in Twilight?”

“Even over the guy in Twilight,” Connor says. “Although my teenage self might’ve said otherwise.”

“What?” Kevin makes a pffff of disapproval. “I find it hard to believe that I would lose to him,” and Connor feels perfectly justified in kicking him under the table even though he knows that he’s being purposefully over-pompous.

“In your dreams,” Connor says. “Have you actually thought about it, though?”

Kevin’s eyes immediately widen slightly. “About... it?”

“Yeah,” he says, leaning forward to put his elbows on the table and his chin on his hands. “Have you?”

He knows Kevin would have. They might not talk about it too openly, but he’s come across elders whispering between themselves only to leap apart and look vaguely guilty more than once, and what else could they be talking about?

“Well, I mean, I haven’t thought about it in too great a detail, so,” Kevin babbles a little, red tinging his cheeks more than it already has. “I mostly just want to – I don’t know. Do things with you. Take you to Orlando. I know that's a big first step, and pretty unconventional, but none of this is exactly conventional - you can show me Chicago, maybe? I mean, only if you want to, obviously. I wasn’t joking when I said I’d never been serious with someone before. I really have no idea how any of this works.”

“Of course you can come visit me in Chicago,” Connor says, eyes fluttering closed as he tilts his head towards the sun, barely listening to the rest of his babble as his mind follows his heart to his hometown. "Elder Church has already promised to go see at least one Bulls game with me, and Poptarts is probably going to end up living on my couch at some point. You’ll always be welcome.”

“Oh,” Kevin says; then again, a little quieter, “Oh. Okay then. That’s – that’s good to know.”

“Something wrong?” Connor says airily.

“It’s just that you said that.” Kevin stops short, starts again. “You said that, when we get back to America, you were going to start dating? Men, I mean. And, I don’t know, I kind of hoped that – but it’s fine, it’s cool, whatever, I get it.”

Connor breaks him off with a laugh. “Kev, just because I said I want to date men, doesn’t mean I’m actually going to.” He’s in such a good mood, with the sun beating down and his friends having fun and being in the company of such a handsome man, that even this sudden reminder can’t bring him down – and honestly, it’s laughable, the idea that he could just jet back home and hop straight from the plane into the nearest gay bar like the first two decades of his life never happened. “I may have rejected the Mission President so we could go off and do our own thing, but I’m not that much of an apostate.”

“But, Con,” Kevin says, voice hesitant. “You are gay. You’ve said so. Multiple times.”

“Yeah, that doesn’t mean I have to act on it, or even should,” Connor says. “You said so yourself, it’s okay to have gay thoughts as long as you never act on them.”

“Yeah, well, that Elder Price was wrong about a great many things, and that was one of them,” Kevin says. “You still think being gay is wrong?”

Kevin is staring at him with such confused eyes, and the sun is so warm, and Connor is so, so tired, and it’s just so easy to go with rote. To follow his thoughts so manipulated he doesn’t know what originated from him and what originated from the Church, and say, “Of course.”

“Okay,” Kevin says, a strange tone in his voice. “Okay, that’s,” and Connor realizes it’s some sort of nonchalance, thick and heavy, “That’s good to know, I mean,” layered on top of ice-cold rage. “Hey, no offence, what the fuck?”

The swear hits him like a punch to the stomach. “Kevin –”

“The difference between you and me, Elder McKinley,” Kevin cuts him off, hard and cold, and he’s calling him Elder, why is he calling him Elder, “Is that when I hit rock bottom, I tried to change. And you know what? I did. Thanks to Arnold, thanks to Naba, thanks to you, I changed – but you? You, you prink, and you preen, and you pretend you’re floating among the heavens whereas in reality you hit rock bottom and you kept digging. I may be a self-righteous asshole who doesn’t care about anyone but himself, but least I’m not a liar. At least I don’t make people believe they have good in themselves when behind their backs I’m damning them to the seventh circle. At least I’m not the biggest sham of District 9. I can’t do this. I can’t. I can’t look at your face one second longer, I can’t –”

Kevin stands so abruptly that Connor jerks back, almost falls out of his seat in shock. “Kevin, I don’t –”

“I’ll see you in hell, Elder,” Kevin yells over his shoulder, storming across the yard towards the Meeting House as far as he can without full-on sprinting.

Connor looks around to see if there’s anyone around him who might know what the heck just happened but, bar the little crowd that’s now formed around the still-performing Arnold across the yard, there’s only him and, for some reason, Kimbay. Smart, witty, determined Kimbay, with a baby on her hip and a scowl on her face.

“What the fuck is going on here?”

Connor just blinks at her as his life crumbles around him and the world spins madly on.

“Oh, you stupid boy,” she says finally. “You stupid, stupid boy.”

“What have I done,” Connor says, and he can barely hear his own voice. “What have I done?”

Kimbay shrugs loosely; the baby on her hip giggles, and it sounds so wrong. How can there be laughter, in a time like this? How can there be laughter, when Connor feels like he will never laugh again?

“How should I know? Perhaps consult your book – it always has such smart things to say in there. Perhaps the story about the tiny man who defeated the big man and his friend – or perhaps you will read your Book of Mormon again, realize that Brigham Young and Joseph Smith were actually gay lovers.”

Connor stares at her, his mind contemplating panic. It doesn't quite make it, made sluggish by the sun and Kevin's smile, whichever's brighter; tar beginning to snake up from his heart, curling around his throat, the demon restless at the base of his spine.

“What? You never know.” Kimbay stares right back at him resolutely, not giving into his bullpoop, not giving into his downward spiral, not giving in at all, and Connor is so pathetically grateful that he has to look away. “I presume this means you cannot babysit, yes?”

When all Connor can do in response is nod, she shrugs again and walks off towards the crowd, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t worry so much, Elder McKinley. I’m sure if you believe hard enough, you will get everything you dream of.”

There’s never a lack of sarcasm in her voice, even after all these months of dedication, but there is a kernel of truth there. Everything he had said, everything he had done in those short few minutes – he had broken Kevin’s belief in him. The Mormonism in which they believe, the world of which they dream, and with Connor’s words it all came crumbling down. Kevin pushed, and pushed, and pushed, and eventually something gave – and then there’s Connor, standing in the sun, gaping like a fish, and thinking of nobody but himself. 

Connor doesn’t think he’s ever ran this fast in his life. Into the meetinghouse, go go go - his surroundings, his home, the place where he lives and loves and works becomes nothing more than a distraction, an obstacle. He almost runs into the door of Kevin and Arnold's room in his haste, because he needs to talk to Kevin, see Kevin, be with Kevin now, now, now,  and i door rattles when he tries to open it, shaking and shaking and shaking. Kevin’s locked the door, locked him out.

“Let me in.”

“No.”

“Kevin, please –”

“Fuck off.”

“You are not running away from this conversation.”

“Just like you run away from everything?”

“Says you, Mr. I-Can’t-Survive-In-Uganda-For-Three Days-Before-Abandoning-My-Mission-Companion!” It’s a low blow, and he knows it, but if Kevin’s just going to act like a child then he mightn’t well bother.

“Fat lot of good you were when I returned.”

“Returned?” Connor splutters. “Kevin, I found you. I made sure you were alright.”

“Yeah, and then you abandoned me for your new and improved prophet like I was dirt on your shoe!” Kevin yells back. “And we all know how well that ended.”

“You didn’t give two hoots about me then, either, and you know it, so don’t act like that was some major blow,” Connor snaps. “As for your brilliant idea to go swanning off to those camps, that was your idea, that was your fault, so don’t you dare try to pin that on me.”

There’s a strangled noise somewhere in that sentence, not quite a sob, not quite a snarl, and then everything is very, very quiet.

“I’m sorry,” Connor says. “That was too far.”

“You care about this stupid mission more than you care about anything else combined,” Kevin says, and his voice is flat and dead. “The So-Called Church and your desperate, pathetic need to please it, even if it means ruining the lives of everyone who has ever cared about you.”

“I hate this religion,” Connor says. “And I wouldn’t spit on it if it was on fire. Let me in.”

There’s more silence, more gut-wrenching silence, and then the click of the lock. Connor is shocked it’s all he can do to stand there, staring at the closed door in front of him. The room is a mess, when he's recovered enough to step inside. Blankets and bedsheets are strewn around on the floor, bedside lamp knocked of its table and blown out, by the looks of it. Pages and pages and pages are scattered about like the leaves of fall, thin and white and broken, and there in the eye of the storm is Kevin; the biggest mess of it all.

“What do you want?”

Kevin’s hands are flexing into fists again and again, clutching at his pants legs and scratching at his palms. His gaze is dropped, staring at nothing: his shoulders are hunched, and he’s holding himself so, so tensely, and something in Connor gives.

“I don’t know,” Connor admits, and he can’t move, can barely breathe, for the fury coming off Kevin in waves. “I want to see if you were okay.”

“Well, I’m fine, so you can go now.”

“Kevin.” Connor stops, sighs, clasps his hands together to stop them from shaking, stop them from reaching, stop them from doing something very, very stupid indeed. “Look, it’s clear we have a problem here, and –”

“Oh, so that’s what you see this as.” Kevin looks up at him finally now and Connor really, really wishes he hadn’t. His eyes aren’t red, but his mouth is twisted into a snarl and all he can think of is fifth grade. “A problem that, at the end of the day, you can just turn off and pretend never happen. Fantastic, that’s just fan-freaking-tastic.”

Connor tries to keep his voice collected and composed, even if it’s not only Kevin’s expression that’s reminding him of his childhood now. A familiar tightness in his chest that he’d hoped was long gone is creeping upon him once again, reminding him exactly why they should not be having this conversation. “Well, what do you consider it as?”

Without a sound, without even conscious thought, Kevin’s shoulders slump. All tension drains from him, slowly, painfully, and he does not look his twenty years. He doesn’t look like himself at all.

“I want to tell you that you’ve failed this District,” Kevin says. “I want to tell you you’ve ruined all our lives, you’ve screwed us all over, you’ve made us all believe in a false god, in a false church, in a false District Leader. I want to say so many things, pretty much all of which aren’t true, and pretty much all of which I don’t give a shit about. Cause the truth is, Connor, that I am an asshole who doesn’t care about anything other than himself; and the truth is that you’ve failed me. Every good thought that I have about my sexuality has come from you, and you have thrown it back in my face. You may as well have been a golden calf for all the good it’s done me.”

“Kevin,” Connor says, voice as blank as his mind. “What are you talking about?”

“I wanted the first time I told someone to actually feel celebratory,” Kevin says. “And it was. I told Arnold. The first time I properly saw him cry was the first time I told anyone, and it wasn’t cause he was sad, or cause he was scared, but because he was happy. He was happier than I have ever seen him, and now I’ve got to tell you – you, who should understand more than anyone – and all I’m gonna get is disgust. So thanks. Thanks for that.”

“Kevin, I don’t get – I don’t understand.”

“Connor, I’m gay,” Kevin says. “And you know what? I’m pretty okay with that. I’ve made my peace with it, and it’s all cause of you.”

Connor’s thought about this, those first terrifying few nights on his mission – and, to be honest, on many nights long before and after that. All the way back to Provo, to Chicago, he’s lain in a succession of beds, alone and afraid, and thought about what would happen if he was exposed. If he would be rejected, renounced; if he would be excommunicated, imprisoned. Lifetimes seem to separate those nights and this – this, the worst-case scenario. At least with Steve they were children themselves, at the cusp of puberty with only the beginning hints of wanting to – wanting to experiment, and there was a chance that Steve could get better, could be cured, but he’s really done it this time.

“What have I done?” he says, and his thoughts are very, very loud. “What have I done? I’ve –” he tries to answer it, this question that has been snapping at his heels for years, and Kevin’s words ring loud and true. “I’ve failed you. I’ve failed you as a District Leader, and I’ve failed you as a friend.”

“Yes, you have,” Kevin says, although there’s not quite as much venom in his voice, now.

“I’ve corrupted you.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

When Connor’s eyes refocus its back on him, it’s always on him; running his hands through his hair, tugging and tugging and tugging, and Connor wishes Arnold was here. Arnold would know what to do, Arnold always knows what to do, what to say to Kevin when he’s like this, when he’s starting again, before it ends with tears and tufts of hair in his hands. Connor just wants to run, he wants to get on his bike and cycle home, but he isn’t thirteen anymore and he isn’t lying to himself anymore, so he, fingernails digging into his palms, stands there lets him continue foolishly on.

“I’m not gay because of you,” Kevin says. “I’m gay because – because – because I am! I am that I am, and I’m okay with that because of you. I believed that I have good in myself – I believe that I have good in myself not in spite being gay, but because I am gay, because of the encouragement, and the acceptance, and the hope that you have been preaching ever since the day the Church abandoned us. And if you think that means you’ve corrupted me, then clearly we own different dictionaries. But none of that matters to you, does it? The fact that I’m less selfish, less arrogant, the fact that I am a better person because you’ve been on my case every other second about it –”

“Of course it matters to me!” Connor snaps. ““And just because I maybe point out when you’re being a bit self-absorbed every so often, and probably not even nearly as much as I could, does not mean I’m on your case –”

“Okay,” Kevin interrupts with a huff, hands dropping to his sides, and he sounds like he was all those months ago when he first arrived, before he became the man that Connor unfortunately had the audacity to fall for. “Maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration, but you do it far more with me than you do with anyone else!”

“Oh, so you try to reassure me that I haven’t mucked up,” (he does actually say mucked up, even though he suspects he’s done much worse), “my entire thirteen months here by telling me that I’m annoying and overbearing. Has anyone told you that you would make a good therapist?”

“It was supposed to be a good thing!” Kevin says. “And that’s not even the point because none of that matters to you. I can do all these good things, I can be all of these good things, and you still think I am the lowest of the low because I am gay. I can be the most pious prick on planet earth, and because of this one, small, insignificant thing –”

“Small?” Connor can feel his whole body shaking, as if that word flipped a switch and he is as mad as Kevin, a snaking snarling aching rage at his struggle, his entire life for as long as he can remember being dismissed, being brushed aside like it never existed in the first place. “Twelve years old, Kevin. I was twelve years old when I first started having the hell dreams, so don’t you dare dismiss it as small, as insignificant –”

“Yeah, and I was nineteen when I was raped,” Kevin says. “You think you know repression? Cry me a fucking river.”

There’s a moment of silence.

The whole room holds its breath.

“You can close the door now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t care,” Kevin says. “Close the door.”

Kevin isn’t looking at him, now: he’s picking up the lamp and placing it back on the table, collecting scattered scraps of scripture off the floor, draping the blankets back on the beds, and Connor doesn’t know what to do. Kevin is standing there within arm’s reach, within heart’s reach, and Connor wants to puke. So he does what he’s told, he always does what he’s told, and he closes the door behind him.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, and it sounds pathetic even to his own ears.

“Don’t be,” Kevin says, short and sharp. He’s curled up on his bed now, legs tucked in as close as they can. He’s holding his socked feet, holes in the soles, and a laugh bubbles up in Connor’s throat, escapes as a choked sob.

Kevin still doesn’t look at him.

“This is my fault,” Connor says. “I lied to you for months.”

“Yes, you did, now could you just please just sit down?”

Connor wants to apologize, again and again and again, but he doesn’t want another confrontation, doesn’t want to disappoint Kevin more than he already has done; so he takes a seat, at the end of Arnold’s bed, as far away from Kevin as the scarce bit of space allows them, and waits.

He waits for a long, long time.

“I hate this,” Connor says finally, and it sounds no better in his mouth the second time he says it, for all the truth it contains. “I hate this religion, and I hate how – you say you’ve made peace with it because of the hope I’ve given you but, Kevin – I didn’t have anyone. There was no one else like me – there were no other Mormons like me, no experiences or voices I could draw from. I hear these words leaving my mouth, talking about abominations and sins, and they disgust me. They disgust me, but I don’t know how to think any other way. This – this thing –”

“Being gay, you mean,” Kevin says, and Connor flinches. “You’re allowed to say it, you know.”

“Fine, my homosexuality, then,” Connor replies, just as sarcastic. “My homosexuality is not small. It’s not insignificant. As cliché as it may seem, it’s a fundamental part of me, now, no matter how much I’ve tried to deny it.”

“Well, it is for me, too,” Kevin says, and he sounds so stubborn, so unflinchingly sure of himself, of his place in the world. Connor wishes he could just keep him like that forever: that self-certainty that comes and goes so sporadically but had drawn Connor in like a duck to water (or perhaps a moth to flame would be a better analogy, but there is still the slightest chance that this won’t end in pain).

“What about your hatred of it?” Connor asks, gently, gently, gently. “Is your hatred of it just as fundamental? Just as built into your bones? You say you know repression and I believe you, but you have no idea what it’s like to deny something so intrinsic about you, for so long. You have no idea what it’s like to be like this, to learn how to live with not only society and Heavenly Father damning you but knowing your friends and your family, your loved ones, are doing the exact same thing. Not only that – to learn how to live with yourself, knowing what kind of person you are. I don’t think you’re an abomination. I don’t think you should go to Hell. I definitely don’t think you deserve to. But I will always, always think I deserve to.”

“You don’t deserve to,” Kevin says forcefully. “And you’re not going to. I get that you feel like you can’t separate what they told you from what you know in your heart – I get it, I really do, but I –”

He breaks off now, swallows like he’s having trouble breathing, like he has his own tar heart beating just as sluggishly as Connor’s. When he lifts his head and finally, finally looks at him, Connor cannot remember the last time he felt this transparent.

“If there’s anything I’ve learned over the last ten months, it’s that I matter. My life matters, and I don’t know if there’s a God or not, but I don’t care anymore. Funnily enough, I don’t really want a life without emotional and sexual fulfillment. Relationships scare me but, my God, a future without them? A future where I sacrifice my humanity like that just for some dude in the sky scares me even more. I kinda do want to know what dating guys is like, and I definitely want to find out what sex is like. When you said you’d be open to dating men, it gave me hope, more than you could ever imagine, because if you could – you, who had struggled more than any of us – I could. And maybe, eventually, I don’t know –” Kevin drops his head again: not from anger this time, but from something softer than that. “It’s stupid.”

“Nothing you say is stupid,” Connor says, and Kevin gives him a look. “Okay, most of things you say aren’t stupid. Some of the things you say aren’t stupid?” When Kevin remains as unconvinced, Connor finds it in himself to crack a smile. “I promise not to laugh, how’s that?”

Kevin snorts. “That’ll do. I don’t –” he swallows, looks at his hands. “This has never happened to me before, this sort of thing. I’d never even thought about it. It’s all just sort of been background noise. I mean, there’s a reason why Toy Story and Oliver & Company are my favorite Disney movies. I’d never felt anything for anyone and –” he breaks off with a groan, running his hands through his hair, “I had to ask Arnold about it. I had to ask Arnold why I felt so – so weird around you, do you know how embarrassing that was? None of the girls I'd gone on group dates with in high school ever sparked anything in me and, if I'd like any of the guys, I was so, I don't know. Repressed, I guess, that it didn't occur to me that it could be anything more than friendship. Realizing I was gay was like putting glasses on for the first time, and seeing the leaves on the trees, but, man. Putting glasses on and then seeing you?" Kevin breaks out into another smile, as beautiful as it is terrifying. "They weren’t wrong when they said your mission changes you.”

“Kevin, I don’t –”

“What I’m trying to say is that – when you said you’d be open to dating men, I was sort of kind of hoping that maybe that meant you’d be open to dating, uh.” He gestures wildly at himself. “One man. In particular. Me, I mean me.”

“You – you like me?” is all Connor is able to get out, his chest tight, his hands shaking, because Kevin can’t be thinking properly, thinking straight, thinking that – what has he done?  

“Yes, I like you! I more than like you, I want you,” Kevin explodes, like he’s been holding his tongue and holding his heart for so long that it had become physically painful, because he loves like Nabulungi, candid and uncomplicated, and there’s a chance he might love Connor, too. “I want you when you’re dancing and singing and playing with the kids, and I want you when you’re grumpy in the mornings and complaining about the heat and banging on my bedroom door yelling to be let in. I want you when you’re hanging on to my every word, and I want you when you’re dismissing every single thing I say. I want you so much it terrifies me, and I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you like this.”

“You shouldn’t have told me at all,” Connor says, and it’s almost a shriek, because if – if Kevin likes him, and Kevin wants him, that means – this isn’t how this is supposed to happen. Gay men don’t get romance, don’t get love, don’t get happy endings, but Kevin – Kevin is looking at him as if, despite everything, they could get one. As if, despite everything, they deserve one. How does he stop this? How can he stop this – this, this terrifying warmth in his heat, this downward spiral into the inevitability that is Kevin Price saying I want you. I want you. I want you. “Why do you always... why can’t you just leave things be?”

“Because I want you to be happy,” Kevin says.

“And you think this would make me happy?” Connor says. “Abandoning everything I believe for –” And then he gets an idea. Oh, gosh, it’s an awful idea: a terrible, terrible idea that will just end in pain, but it’s a way out. He can stop this, he can escape this, can deny himself once again what he has been told his whole life he shouldn’t want, yet while still claiming he has come to terms with his sexuality.

He can blame it on Kevin.

“– for a fling?”

Kevin’s face immediately falls and this might just work. He’s not entirely sure how he feels about this, but he certainly doesn’t have it in him to feel guilty; not when all he can focus on is stop this stop this stop this.

“You think that’s what I want?” he asks quietly, and Connor thinks he might just prefer the snapping. “You think I want a fling? Is that what you think of me?”

It’s not as if it’s completely inconceivable. It’s hardly unheard of for such things to happen between fellow missionaries, despite the rules and regulations. Goodness knows that Connor was scared enough of someone proposing such an arrangement in the months leading up to embarking on his mission. Sure, when it came to Kevin the suggestion was contrary to every single little thing that Connor had come to learn about him over the last ten months but once again he’s not lying, he’s just not telling the whole truth. These two years, as wonderful and terrible an experience they are, are a buffer to real life, to making decisions, and he is not letting Kevin Price use him as a buffer to accepting he’ll have to marry a woman when he returns home.

“I’m not going to allow myself to be some gay experiment of yours,” Connor says, almost a snarl across the small space, “Only for you to go off and settle down with best Molly Mormon of the BYU as soon as we go home, which is what you should do anyway, and – I can’t do that. I can’t.”

Kevin just gives him a long, hard look. “That’s pathetic. No, Con, it is and you know it. You’re grasping at any and all straws you can to try and – I don’t even know what you’re trying to do but, whatever it is, it’s pathetic. You’re not an experiment.”

“I know how easy it is, Kevin, to date a girl just for the sake of dating a girl," Connor says.

“And how do I know you won’t hop straight from the plane to the nearest gay bar, just because you can?” Kevin shoots straight back. “Just because we were stuck in Uganda and I was your only option?"

"Kevin, I would never -" his breathe catches in his throat, not at the idea of going to one of those bars, but at the idea of leaving Kevin like that, of using him - him, this sweet, kind boy; this infuriating, ridiculous man - as just a fling, as just a thing to kiss filthy in secret and in shame before abandoning him for someone better. "I would never do that to you."

"How can you promise that?" Kevin says, voice thick. "How can you promise that you won't leave me when you're acting like you don't want to be anywhere near me? I know what I'm scared of, Connor. I'm scared of facing my parents after all this, I'm scared of the General's soldiers coming back here, I'm scared of waking up one day to find out you can't stand me anymore, but I'm not scared of being happy, whether or not it's happiness that the Church approves of or not. Arnold's taught me that much. You've taught me that much. You make me happy, and I think I could make you happy, too, and I just -" Kevin tugs at his hair, "I don't understand what you're so scared of."

How can he say it to him - how can Connor even begin to explain that he has been scared for his whole entire life? Ever since he arrived in Uganda, knowing their strict laws; ever since he and Lizzie broke it off for good, doubting he’d ever find another girl who he could even nearly convince himself he liked; ever since he kissed Steve Blade, ever since he looked up the word homosexuality in the dictionary; ever since he first learnt to fear his Heavenly Father. It may not always be at the forefront of his mind but it’s always been there, the motivator behind more of his choices than he can count. It’s so tightly entwined with all the other aspects of his personality – his caution, his captiousness, his compassion – that he’s not sure if he’d even be really himself without it. To throw caution to the wind and the rulebook he has been following his entire life out the window so as to be with another man could hardly be easier – and the he remembers middle school.

He remembers middle school, and how Steve would always stick up for him in the playground, and how he would bump shoulders with him and offer him half of his Kit Kat whenever he found him hiding out in the toilets, and would without fail walk to school with him every morning he could, and it was easier. It was easier to with someone, to have someone beside him like that, and he wants to put this into words, wants to say how turning it off is so much easier than struggling by yourself but struggling with someone else was the easiest of them all.

All he can say is, “I used to get bullied a lot in middle school.”

Kevin stares at him. “You used to get bullied? But – why?”

“Middle school kids can smell queer even better than they can smell fear and, believe me, I wasn’t in short supply of either,” Connor says drily, and of course it surprises him. He doubts Kevin has been picked on in his entire life – or, at least, realized he’s being picked on. That’d be one bonus of being a little too self-absorbed, he supposes. “Like moths to a flame.”

“I’m so sorry,” Kevin says, but Connor just waves him off.

“It’s fine. It was a decade ago. I’m over it. I’m over it,” he repeats when Kevin still doesn’t look all that convinced. “I promise. Besides – I had Steve.”

Kevin makes a noncommittal noise, but his eyes are wider now, concentration clearly heightened, and Connor knows it’s ridiculous, an adult reflecting over a childhood crush like this. But knowing that his infatuation over Elder Price has been ridiculous from the get-go hasn’t exactly done anything to prevent basically everything that has happened over the last ten months, so he does it. He lets his heart return to how it was half his lifetime ago as he has never done so before, fluttering at the memories of Steve’s smile and Steve’s hugs and Steve’s everything, memories that only still remain stored away in a box deep in his mind because he was so scared of approaching it that he could never bring himself to crush it.

“He used to say such vulgar things to the boys who used to make fun of me, even when they were insulting him as well, and he was – he was –” the smile slowly slips from his face. “He was there for me in every single way a friend could be. But I wasn’t there for him.”

“Just because you had feelings for him doesn’t make you a bad friend," Kevin says, so sure in himself.

“It wasn’t that. He – he had the same feelings for me, and I – I –” and this, this, this is the reason why Connor’s been so scared to approach that box, and he’s forgotten why he should be so cautious once again, and he can hear his voice choking up as he talks but he owes it to himself, he owes it to Steve, to tell the whole truth. “I completely rejected him, and said some things which I now really regret, truly awful things, and – gosh, it wasn’t even his fault. I was the one who kissed him. All he was trying to do was make me feel better, and I humiliated him beyond belief. I told myself I was acting how I should, saying what I should, but I've never felt more hell-bound than when he was asking me if I think he deserves to join me down there."

Kevin is looking at him sadly once again but, gosh, now it looks like he understands: like he knows exactly how it feels to lash out at someone who is just trying to be his friend, and it just reminds Connor just how little he actually knows about his friend, how he still aches to know so much more.

"I'm not going to leave you," he says gently.

"How can you promise that?" Connor repeats, voice thick. 

"I mean, as you said, you've already lied to me for the last ten months." The problem with Kevin is, and always has been, everything. "You're gonna have to do something a lot worse than that to sway me."

"Oh, you are such an asshole," Connor says. "Why do you always have to make things about yourself?”

“I wasn’t, actually, trying to make this about myself,” Kevin says, a touch of irritability back in his voice. “But I can, if you like. So you spurned someone when you were in middle school, big deal. Do you want me to tell you sob stories about what’s happened to me in the last, I don’t know, ten months to make me terrified of relationships? Terrified of sex? You said that you had Steve, and he helped you. Now you have me and I can help you, if you want me to, but you have to let me. We can help each other. If I’m making things about me, it’s because your feelings are about me. You say I have no idea what it’s like to be like you – to learn how to live with yourself, knowing your friends and family are damning, knowing what kind of person you are – but I am willing to learn,” Kevin says, and there it is again: that unbridled, idealistic optimism that Connor had fallen for, again and again and again. “I’m willing to learn how to do that because I want this, and I want you. I've said it before, and I'll say it again; I want you. I am ridiculously attracted to you, honestly, it's kind of embarrassing, and I'd hazard a guess and say you feel the same way about me. Is that what you're scared of? Wanting and being wanted?"

"Kevin -"

"Please don't lie to me," Kevin says. "I've been delusional about a lot of things and, if this is one of them -"

"I don't want you to leave me," Connor says, and he can hear it, the desperate hitch in his voice as he holds out his tar heart, begging him to be gentle. "I failed Steve, and he left me; I failed the Lord, and He left me, too. I know you can't promise that you won't, so don't even try, but I want you, and it terrifies me, and that's it. That's the whole truth. I don't - I don't know how to do this."

"We could just be like friends who hold hands and meet each other’s moms," Kevin suggests. “Actually, no, never mind, the thought of meeting your mom is terrifying.”

“It’s my baby sisters you’ve got to watch out for,” Connor says, “They come armed with hockey sticks, they’re a force to be reckoned with,” and Kevin smiles.

It’s not one of the sparkling, spurious smiles he sent Connor’s way when they first met but instead one that he’s picked up over the last few months, warm and candid and uncomplicated, and it’s the loveliest thing Connor has ever seen. Of course, the only sensible response to it is groaning, reaching over to grab the pillow at the top of Arnold’s bed, and promptly throwing it at him. The beam he receives after it hits him square in the face must be another punishment, for how it aches in his ribs.

“I want to kiss you,” Kevin says, sitting there holding his pillow like he isn't the beginning and the end of Connors world; he looks terrified, for a moment, then elated, just pure elated, just like he did after he vulgarly dismissed the Mission President and Connor just – well, Connor just flinches. "I'd also like to do a lot more than that," he’s smiling, red as a beetroot and all the more handsome for it: how can he be smiling, how can he be so happy about this, even though Connor knows exactly gosh dang why, "but I mostly just really, really want to kiss you. I mean, have you seen yourself? Have you seen how kissable you are?"

“Have you considered the fact that not everything you think has to be said out loud?” Connor says, and, gosh, he didn’t flinch, he did the opposite. His breath may have hitched and he may have started but, gosh, does he do anything but recoil. “That not everything that goes through your mind is so important that everyone needs to know?”

“I don’t care about anyone else knowing,” Kevin says. “I want you to know. I’m not gonna lie to you, not now, not ever.”

“I don’t want to lie to you either, but just because I want to kiss you too doesn’t mean that I’m going to blurt it out for the whole world to hear like a –”

“Wait,” Kevin interrupts, and his grin grows that little bit wider with wicked delight. “You want to kiss me too?”

“Heck,” Connor breathes. He does actually say heck, surprisingly, although with all the power as if he had said something completely different entirely. “Oh heck, oh heck, oh heck, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean –”

“Please don’t panic, please don’t panic,” Kevin says quickly. “We can forget it, if you want, if it really makes you that uncomfortable, I really don’t want –”

“I’m not panicking,” Connor says, panicking. Oh, gosh, he wants to kiss him. He wants to kiss Elder Price, and he can’t breathe, and he wants to kiss Elder Price until he can breathe again, and he can’t breathe, and this is Steve all over again, this is Steve all over again, and all the years he’s spent trying to better himself haven’t helped at all. “I should probably –”

He starts to scramble to his feet to get out, get out, get out, the room far too small and the air far too hot -

“You were right.”

“What?” It takes a moment to get the word out, throat closing as he struggles to calm himself down, and it feels different, somehow, this panic, to any other before, but he doesn’t care why that it is because he still can’t breathe.

“I shouldn’t have mentioned it.” Kevin’s on his feet now, too. Connor hadn’t even noticed he’d stood up, and his hands out in front of him as if trying to calm a startled animal. “You were right, I was only thinking about myself and how I feel, I wasn’t thinking about how it might affect you, and I’m sorry,” he finishes, voice soft and eyes wide, and his smile and his charisma and just his face was why Connor began to like him, but how he showed he could be humble, and selfless, and sweet, and kind, and attentive, and so unbelievably dorky was why Connor began to fall for him and that, that, is why this is okay.

He takes a deep breath. Then another. He can do this. He can tell the truth. “It’s okay.”

“Are you sure?” Kevin says, and Connor thinks about it. He really thinks about it.

He thinks about his blue eyes, and he thinks about his pure, unrelenting optimism when he and Arnold first arrived, and he thinks about his hands on his face the day after they met and how even then he already wanted to kiss him, and he thinks about Elder Price sat at the kitchen table that first night they properly talked, and he thinks about Kevin’s first admittance of weakness that same night, and how he could barely breathe when he thought about Kevin getting married, and – but that was then, and this is now, and now – well. He focuses on his breathing, focuses on keeping his heart steady, because he isn’t thirteen anymore and he won’t let his tar heart consume him once again – but that’s it. That’s why it feels different.

It isn’t tar this time. It’s butterflies.

It’s butterflies, and they’re in his lungs, not in his stomach, and he remembers what Lizzie said about how she had the same thing like her body knew what she was doing was wrong and was trying to punish her for it – but that’s the thing, isn’t it? He’s not thirteen anymore, and he doesn’t think that what he’s doing is wrong anymore, and, most of all, even if it is wrong: he doesn’t want to punish himself for it anymore.

“I’m sure. I’m okay, and it’s okay that you mentioned it. I’m okay,” Connor repeats when Kevin still doesn’t look all that convinced. “I promise. I’m,” and he feels it, the beginning of a smile, and, gosh, how did he spend so long denying himself this? Badness knows he’s felt love-struck plenty of times before but never like this. Never without an underlying bad, bad feeling in his heart, never without the fear that something bad is going to happen to him, because he knows now that the only thing that’s going to happen to him is going to be very good indeed. “I’m better than okay, actually.”

“Okay then. Okay. It’s also okay that you do too, as well, then,” Kevin says and licks his lips, and Connor thinks that’s just completely unnecessary. “Want to kiss me,” he adds, and Connor makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “As long as it’s fine with you, of course.”

“That would be – I mean,” Connor splutters.

“Because you’ve made it really clear how you feel about this kind of thing,” Kevin says, nodding at his hands. Connor didn’t even realize he was wringing them together. He drops them to his side as Kevin takes a small step forward, then another; very, very slowly, oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh. “So, you know, I just wanted to make sure –”

“Oh gosh, please stop talking,” Connor whines, and he would cover his face with his hands if he didn’t want to miss out on the sheepish grin currently on Kevin’s face as he pauses - and his pupils. Connor has spent far too much of his life thinking about Kevin's eyes, but they have never been more mesmerizing than now; wide and dilated and fixed on him, only on him.

“Is it cliché to say ‘make me’?” he asks, and Connor groans. “So I’m not making you nervous?” he adds, and Connor feels like he should be asking him that, but it’s fair to say that they’re both equally flustered messes at this point.

“No, you are making me embarrassed with the fact that you’re still talking,” Connor says a little huffily. He’s been dealing with thoughts about boys for ten years, thoughts about one boy in particular for ten months, and yet it is still so, so terrifying, but now it’s not – it’s not bad, this time, somehow.

For the first time, he actually kind of likes it.

“Are you sure?” Kevin asks again. “Because I don’t want to ever, ever make you feel uncomfortable, so if I am –”

“Oh, of all the times you don’t shut your big mouth,” Connor says. There’s no tar, now: just a little light-headedness, a little breathiness, and he could giggle, he really could.

“Please, you like my mouth,” Kevin says, and Connor groans once more, but Kevin just begins his slow approach again, which is all that matters, really.

Connor could love him for that, if he didn’t already.

Connor could kiss him for that, if he wasn’t already.

His lips are chapped and dry and so very, very gentle. His breath is warm, a little shuddery, and oh so very useful as Connor highly doubts he could breathe by himself. His lungs aren’t working, butterflies going haywire, but it’s not a bad thing: his stomach is flip-flopping, but there’s never been anything better; and his lips are – oh gosh.

It only lasts for a few seconds, Connor thinks, he’s not sure. But Kevin certainly pulls back far too soon; to judge his reaction, presumably, and Connor inwardly berates himself for how his arms and lips (and, apparently, brain) have seemingly ceased functioning as per as Kevin looks – well. He looks a bit pathetic, really. He has a sheepish grin on his blushing face again, a did I do okay grin, and Connor honestly does not think he can cope with how cute it is.

“Was that… did I do… was that good?”

“Oh,” Connor breathes out, his brain still not completely caught up with current events. “Oh, fuck.”

Kevin turns an even brighter shade of red, Connor didn’t even realize that was possible, and drops his head, rubs the back of his neck. “Well, I didn’t realize it was that good.”

“Well, it wasn’t perfect,” Connor admits, and Kevin glances up, his face fallen a little, and he just wants to kiss the worried look from off his face before he realizes that he – that he can, and, there, it’s gone.

The fear, the anxiety, the demon in his stomach and the tar in his lungs not merely turned off, but gone for good, and he’s not sure what other aspects of his personality will remain without it: perhaps not his caution, he thinks, as he tangles his hands in Kevin’s soft hair, or his captiousness, as he kisses him sloppily and messily and smiling, as he doesn’t care one bit that their noses are bumping and their teeth are clashing, but if what is left is his compassion and his happiness which threatens to burst from his chest in any moment and his love for one Elder flipping Price then, well, he can definitely count himself as all better now.