Work Text:
When Raphael opens their front door, Michael is struck by a wave of noise and the scent of freshly-baked bread. Raphael looks over their shoulder, laughing at something he didn’t hear.
The Raphael Michael half-raised would never have opened a door without knowing what was on the other side, but this new Raphael, who wears soft-looking dresses that bare their shoulders and braids that stretch down their back, turns to face him with a smile that slide away when they register his presence.
"Michael!” They step toward him and angle the door shut. They push the braids away from their face, fidgeting with the end of one for just a second before they catch themself. When Michael sees them for quiet breakfasts, they wear sweaters and button-ups like they used to, hair tugged into a discreet ponytail.
“I wish you had called. I have people over. This just isn’t a good—“ They stop. Michael's breath is coming quickly again, choppy like it was in the café parking lot, and Raphael's face folds up into something unwelcoming as they say, "Fine.” They turn away, practically stomping down the hall, and Michael follows even though he isn't sure this actually qualifies as an invitation. He ends up in what turns out to be the bedroom, dark and full of other people’s coats. Raphael's out the door quickly, but at the last second they turn back, flick on the light, gather the coats, and leave again, the door shut tight behind them.
Michael hasn’t been in this room since he helped Raphael move in two years ago. He comes over twice a month, but on these visits he walks a straight line from the front door to the dining room, spends an hour nursing a mug of French press coffee, and leaves.
The bedroom looks how he would have expected it to look, if it had ever occurred to him to wonder. Dark woods, dark fabrics, everything expensive and understated. The only odd thing: there are two bedside tables, and two phone chargers trailing off them.
Outside the door, he hears voices. Murmurs of concern and discontent, then Raphael, crisp and unapologetic: Yes. I know. It is inconvenient. I understand your frustration. Unfortunately—
The front door opens and closes, opens and closes.
When the apartment is mostly quiet, Michael struggles to make out a conversation between Raphael and someone whose voice is too unfamiliar to parse at such a low volume. "Something’s going on with Michael. I have to … No, I know I don't have to; I want to … I’m fine. … I said I'm fine!” Then, softer, so that Michael finds himself leaning forward, "I know. Just give me a couple hours, okay?"
The front door clicks shut again, but Raphael doesn't return to the bedroom right away. Michael sits on the edge of the bed and waits, trying not to think of Adam and the stricken look on his face.
Raphael opens the door but doesn't come inside. "I'm going to change,” they say, not to Michael but to the wood of the doorframe. "You can wait in the dining room. "
The dining room looks like the bedroom, full of dark, heavy furniture, but the curtains are pulled back to let in the dying winter light. A lacy white cloth drapes over the table. A crystal salad bowl sits in the middle, piled high with spinach and strawberries, flecked with cheese and meat. There are eight chairs, eight plates, but Michael must have interrupted early because most of them are still clean.
He sits in the chair he normally chooses—usually they sit at either end and watch each other in what he has always considered to be companionable silence—but Raphael has added a heavy wooden leaf to expand the table, and he doesn’t think he can bear to project. He moves instead to one of the chairs along the side. His new position leaves him staring at a massive vase of flowers, the petals a shock of color, the stems the same vivid green as Raphael’s dress.
Raphael comes out in a black button-up, hair swept back in a low ponytail, and Michael realizes they were wearing makeup because he can see now that they aren't, eyebrows sparser, eyes smaller and slightly wet-looking. They sit down across from him, their face fragmented by the stems of the arrangement.
"Well? Are you going to tell me what's going on?" They unfurl a cloth napkin and free a fork, which they use to poke at the salad.
Michael takes a breath and forgets to let it out, feeling like a balloon about to be punctured. He tries to remember the last time Raphael indicated a desire to see him, rather than the other way around. He has always thought of Raphael as like him, loyal and good. They are the two who understand what family costs, but he wonders now if he’s been clinging to something Raphael wants to let go of.
“I should leave.”
Raphael rolls their eyes. “Why? You’ve already ruined my night.”
Raphael is not a gentle person. Michael has never thought of himself as someone who requires gentleness, but now he wants someone to be kind to him. Unbidden, he thinks of Adam checking his temperature when he was sick, a cool hand pressed to his forehead.
“Okay.” He catches himself rubbing a bit of the tablecloth between his fingers, the lace scratches against his skin. “I’m sorry about your party.”
“Sure. Thanks.” Raphael’s fork plunges again into the salad bowl, and they say after a bite of spinach, “Michael, is this about Dad?”
Michael thinks of the overwrought messages he left on his father’s voicemail, frantic and now beyond memory. He called enough to fill the voicemail box, and then one more time, when he found that it had been emptied. He feels very alone, which isn’t fair because Raphael answered the door and cancelled their plans and is now waiting, if not kindly, at least patiently, for him to unburden himself.
“No. I haven’t heard from him in months.”
Raphael’s shoulders relax. When the fabric of their collar shifts, Michael can see the puckered scar on their neck from a childhood fight with Luke. “Adam, then.”
Michael flinches. “How did you know that?”
“Who else do you know?”
Michael doesn’t think he’s told Raphael much about Adam, but it still suddenly feels like too much. He wishes he had left when he had the chance.
Raphael reaches across the table and taps Michael’s wrist. Their nails gleam with clear polish. “Michael. Tell me what happened.”
It’s easier to do what he’s supposed to if it’s a command. “I had a strange conversation with Adam today.” He stares down at his hands. “He told me—“ He hesitates until he begins to worry Raphael will read something into the pause, then manages to spit out, “Well, apparently he has feelings for me.”
“Oh,” Raphael says. They pull their hand back and out of reach. Their shoulders draw together.
“He said he just wanted to be honest. Because he knew it might make me uncomfortable.”
Raphael drains the half-full wine glass in front of them and refills it.
“He only wanted— He said he felt dishonest. That he’d been flirting with me without me knowing it. Which I didn’t, of course. I mean, I did know he was—“ Michael falters, feeling like he’s come to the edge of something wide and dangerous.
“You knew he was gay?”
“He told me during confession.” Michael hesitates, then corrects himself. “Not during confession: in the confessional. He was very specific about that, that he wasn’t confessing it.”
“And that was just, what, fine with you?” Something has come loose in Raphael’s rigid posture, and they lean toward him, a strange expression on their face.
Michael shrugs. He doesn’t have an answer to this, or not one he can give. It shouldn’t be fine with him; was not, in fact, totally fine with him. He sometimes left the confessional nauseous with cognitive dissonance and assigning himself penance. More than once he swore he would do his duty next time, only to collapse in the face of Adam’s will and charm.
“It was complicated. Life—is complicated.”
“Well, I know that. I didn’t realize you did. You were always so upright, so uncompromising, so—“ Raphael stops, perhaps realizing that they are a compromise, that their Saturday coffees are a compromise, that even this intrusion is a compromise. They abandon their fork and pinch a piece of spinach from the salad bowl, washing it down with another swallow from their refilled glass. Their smile is bitter and unconvincing. “Forget it. We’re talking about Adam. What happened next?”
“I panicked. I left him there.”
“Why did you panic?” Raphael asks, their face carefully wiped blank. “You already knew he was gay, didn’t you?”
“I—“ Michael looks away. “Well, it was startling.”
“Sure. I guess priests don’t field a lot of gay love confessions.” Adam didn’t say love, and the introduction of the concept speeds Michael’s heart all over again. “And I’m sure it was uncomfortable for you. But why did it make you panic? Would it really have been that hard to remind him that priests are off-limits definitionally?”
Michael tries not to fidget. He feels like a child. “I was uncomfortable.”
“But you said you panicked. Even though you knew he didn’t actually want anything from you.” Raphael’s gaze is piercing and unrelenting. “I would like it if we could be honest with each other about this. Finally.” Michael thinks he would leave if leaving didn’t mean being alone. They’ve never talked about this, not even indirectly, not even when Raphael sent him a crisp email about pronouns and hormones that didn’t actually mention gender once.
When they were teenagers, Michael’s whole life was his family. He didn’t have or even really want friends, so he still doesn’t know what about his interactions with his peers gave him away, but something must have, because everyone seemed able to see the rot inside him and to name it in ways he couldn’t.
“I think it would help you. If you could—“ Raphael pauses. One of their hands shakes, and they press it flat against the table. Michael feels a burst of savage satisfaction that this isn’t easy for them either, even with their new life. “We both know why you panicked,” they say finally. A muscle in their jaw twitches. Michael feels the same rush of adrenaline that sent him fleeing the cafe. “Have you ever talked about it with anyone?”
Michael shakes his head. When he was sixteen, his father pulled him into his study and sat him down in the uncomfortable wooden chair on the wrong side of his desk. He tried to count the seconds of quiet but was gripped by nerves so strong that he couldn’t keep track.
Finally, his father said, “God sees you,” which sounded like a threat until he added, “He sees how hard you try, and so do I.” Michael knew crying would be a costly mistake, but it was a near thing.
He doesn’t share this memory with Raphael because it’s his; it’s precious.
His father reached across the desk and touched his face, thumb brushing against his cheek, fingers cradling the back of his neck.They hadn’t hugged since he was very small, and he cherished the touch for a long time afterward, that gentle contact, calling it to mind in the years later when his father was gone and he needed something to keep him going. It felt like he imagined the touch of God would, gentle but unyielding, and there had been the implication, of course, that he had to keep trying, that the wrong was visible and could only be forgiven as long as he tried to cover it up.
"You don't have to say it," Raphael says, still not gently.
"Have you always known?" Only when it’s too late does Michael hear this as the admission it is.
The wine in Raphael’s glass trembles. "I wondered– I hoped so.”
Michael can't help feeling hurt, like Raphael called some ancient curse down on him. "You hoped?”
“I didn’t want to be alone.” Raphael sets the glass down with obvious care, but a bit of wine splashes out anyway. They place a thumb over the spot, and for a second, the tablecloth is as good as new. “I always looked up to you. I thought you might—“ They have a newly-developed habit of not finishing their sentences, but they don’t trail off; they end decisively, as if the rest of the thought is beyond even attempting.
"I'm sorry I let you down," he says, regret churning in his gut. Michael feels Raphael’s childhood loneliness like his own. Raphael was a quiet, serious child, easy to miss between Luke and Gabriel. They were responsible and reliable, the only family member Michael could always count on. He hates to think of them, scared and alone, waiting for him to be brave.
Raphael takes another long drink, then fills their glass almost to the brim. “It doesn’t matter.”
Of course it matters, but Michael doesn’t say so. He’s desperate for even this forgiveness that feels more like dismissal.
“How do you—feel about it?”.
Michael has never been in touch with his feelings, but this is an easy one. “Ashamed. It’s a sin.”
Raphael twitches. “You seem to like Adam just fine. Do you think he’s a sinner?”
“No,” Michael says, surprising himself with the ease of his answer. He’s been thinking carefully around this for months. Adam is good and kind and generous, and it is impossible that he should be condemned. It’s blasphemous, but somehow he can’t help but believe it.
“Oh.” Then, with a hesitation that lets Michael know it isn’t a rhetorical question, “And what about me? Do you think I’m a sinner?”
“Of course not,” he says, though there’s no of course about it. As with Adam, he should, but faith, for him, is about rules, and the rule of family trumps all. Besides, without Raphael, he has no one. Luke is dead. Gabriel is gone. Raphael is different but still here, and he loves them.
Raphael ducks their head and smiles. Michael gets the feeling he isn’t supposed to see it. “Okay,” they say. “So what’s different about you?”
“I’m—“ Michael thinks about the sacrilege of his awe for Adam. “I’m—“ He thinks of trailing his father through life, correcting his behavior in a desperate bid for approval. “I’m—“ He thinks of how he’s never quite fit anywhere. “It’s me. There’s something inside me. Something wrong. It isn’t just—this. It’s something bigger.” He doesn’t know how to say what he needs to say. There’s no logic to it. It isn’t the neat, simple lines of right and wrong, clean and unclean. It’s about him and how he drove his father away and how he drove Gabriel away and how he drove Luke right into the grave. Rules are important. Rules keep people inside the lines, but they can’t fix the unfixable.
Raphael reaches across the table, and after a moment, Michael reaches out as well. They squeeze his hand and don’t let go. Their skin is warm and soft and slightly sticky. “You know, you didn’t invent feeling bad about yourself. We grew up in the same house; you think I don’t know how it feels to—“
“Dad treated us well,” Michael cuts in. “Everyone always wants to blame him. Gabriel, L—“ He chokes on his dead brother’s name. “It’s not his fault. It’s not fair. It’s not reasonable.” There’s power in this word, reasonable, and he feels himself clinging to it.
Raphael continues as if Michael didn’t interrupt. “You think I don’t know how it feels to spend your entire life trying to be perfect and good and yeah, reasonable, and then to start to suspect that there’s this—this thing inside you, and you aren’t ever going to be perfect and you aren’t ever, ever going to be normal because it won’t go away and you can’t shut it up and you’re afraid people see it when they look at you and it’s so—“ Their voice breaks. The hand in his starts to pull away, but he holds on. “It’s all so—“
“It’s awful,” Michael says, wanting more than anything to cover up this moment of vulnerability.
“It is awful.” Raphael clears their throat and nods jerkily. “But if you let it happen, if you decide to stop fighting or you just get to the point where you can’t keep going, after it sweeps over your head and you feel like you’ll drown—it’s not awful. Not at all, now.”
Raphael is happy. Even now, when Michael has appeared out of nowhere to drag them backward, they have the trappings of happiness. When they were kids, Raphael followed along behind him, modeling their behavior on his. They were quiet and serious and strong-willed, and sometimes this last was a problem, but mostly they did the right thing. And it made Michael feel good to have someone who listened to him—he sometimes thought—the way he listened to his father. Gabriel and Luke were both disobedient, though thankfully to different degrees. Quiet, diligent Raphael was a gift. But they were not happy.
“I’m proud of you,” Michael says, and this is true. He can’t say what he’s proud of Raphael for—not for escaping, because he still can’t see how there was anything to escape—but he looks around the apartment, decorated in a sparse but warm style that feels somehow like them, and his heart aches with pride.
“That means a lot to me,” they say, staring into their glass, swirling the liquid inside with their free hand.
Michael feels very young. It’s an odd feeling; he didn’t even feel young when he was young. As a child, he had responsibilities, three siblings to guide through life and the weight of a family on his shoulders. Now that family is split apart, and the only one within reach is beyond him. Raphael, his quiet, steady younger sibling, has grown past him somehow. He has nothing more to say. He wants someone to take this out of his hands, to make whatever decisions need to be made.
Raphael’s hand tightens on his. “If Dad comes back—“
“When Dad comes back,” Michael corrects, only to immediately regret it because the end of Raphael’s question is, “—will you still speak to me?”
“Why would you ask that?”
Raphael sighs. Their hand slips free. They tuck it into their lap. “Michael, I’m— Dad wouldn’t be happy with the way I’m living my life.” They pause. “You know that. That’s why you haven’t told him.”
“We’re family,” Michael says, as if that means anything.
“That didn’t help Luke.”
Michael flinches. “That was different. Luke was—“ He falters. “You aren’t Luke.”
“So if Dad told you I was a sinner. That you shouldn’t speak to me again. You would disobey him?”
Michael doesn’t say anything. This is one of many things he has been carefully not thinking about, one of many things he has been keeping in a box in a dark corner of his mind, one of many things Raphael has pulled out to look at and judge.
“Right.” Raphael smiles. “We can still—until Dad comes home, you’re still my brother, but I think it’s better if we’re both honest about it. About where we stand.”
They uncork another bottle of wine and pour several inches on top of what's already in their glass, the white and red mixing into a crystalline pink. They take the glass and disappear into the hall. Their steps are quiet. Somewhere a door locks.
Michael's phone is on the table next to a bit of goat cheese that fell from Raphael's hand. On the phone is a text from Adam, sent while Adam was in the coffee shop and Michael was in the coffee shop parking lot. It says, “im sorry, that was weird,” and it’s still technically unread. As far as Michael's phone is concerned, Adam still has something left to say to him.
The call is an accident. Michael picks up the phone on purpose, and he selects Adam’s name on purpose, and he presses the green button on purpose, but all along he’s certain something will stop him, some innate good sense he’s always believed himself to have. But the phone rings just like it's meant to, again and again, until it stops. A mechanical voice prompts him to leave a message.
Michael has never heard this message before, not Adam’s version of it, which is just like anyone else’s except with his voice, his name in the middle of it. You’ve reached— Michael still thinks he might hang up, but then there's a beep, shrill and demanding, and ever obedient, he starts to speak.
"Adam," he says, which is simple, easy. "I behaved poorly today." He becomes conscious of the fact that he's whispering, one hand cupped over his mouth. He makes a point of lowering his hand, sitting up straight, speaking normally. "What you said took me by surprise. I wouldn't have thought—“ But this is too close to the other question, buried beneath the self-doubt and the dread: why me?
“I do value your friendship very much." This doesn't feel strong enough, so he repeats, “Very much." Having spoken to Raphael, he knows better than to say that he panicked, knows what implications that carries with it, but he isn’t sure what to offer instead. "I wanted to speak to my father today. He's always been a — a guide for me. I’ve always tried to make him proud. But he didn't pick up. He got a new phone when he left, but he gave the number to me. Just me. It’s supposed to be for emergencies. Maybe he knew somehow that this wasn't a real emergency, but it felt like one. And I thought – I really never wanted anything but to be a good son. For so long, that was the only thing that mattered to me. But he didn't pick up, and I don't know why.” The silence of Adam’s voicemail feels different, more welcoming than his father’s. “When I was sixteen,” he starts, but catches himself in the middle of a mistake he badly wants to make. He feels known with Adam in a way he never has before. It’s not that Adam is watching him and picking him apart like everyone else; Adam just sees him. “You’ve been very kind to me. I don’t know if I deserve—”
He hung up on his father’s voicemail when he felt the threat of tears too strongly, and he hangs up now too.
He looks up and Raphael is standing next to him, one hand on the back of his chair, the other held out toward him. Without being asked, he places his phone on their outstretched palm. The screen is still lit up, so he can see that Adam hasn't called back.
“I’m going to hold onto this.”
Michael nods. Already the nervous energy is receding, and with it the memory of what he said.
Raphael touches his shoulder, his phone pressed between their palm and the fabric of his sweater. "You're going to be okay,” they say, their breath sour with drink. Michael nods, even though it isn’t true. As if they can read his mind, they say, "I used to think I was going to be unhappy forever.”
They tell him about their boyfriend, how gentle he is, how patient. How he brought with him a whole collection of friends who welcomed Raphael without question, who are charming and kind but still make them uneasy, so that they wonder sometimes whether they'll ever be comfortable anywhere. They speak slowly at first but speed up as they go, until the words blur and trip over each other, and Michael stares into the vase and doesn't look up once.
With his phone still in the space between them, he has no way of telling the time, but the window in Raphael's living room faces west, and he watches the sunset through it, early, beautiful.
When Michael runs out of the noncommittal responses that are all he can muster, Raphael asks if he needs to lie down, and he admits that he doesn't think he can sleep, his thoughts racing.
“I could give you something," Raphael says. “For anxiety. But only if we don't have to talk about it. "
Michael knows they don't just mean the pill, that they mean the steady drinking and the desperate stream of words. He still doesn’t believe there was anything in their childhood to escape, but if there were, he would know that Raphael hasn’t escaped unscathed. A better brother would insist on discussing it, but the brother Michael is nods and accepts the white tablet Raphael presses into his hand, washing it down with a swallow of lukewarm sparkling water.