Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Barth never prayed.  

Barth had never believed in God. Not out of rebellion, but out of absence — the same kind of absence that defined his childhood home- empty corridors, dim lights, and a silence that wasn’t peace but neglect. He believed in certainty, in gravity, in the language of things that could be touched. Love had always seemed more fiction than fact. 

Until Tanrak. 

Barth arrived at the seminary like a man exiled from his own skin. His past was a catalogue of excess and defiance, nights drowned in city noise, a mouth too quick to mock what others called sacred. The seminary was meant to strip all of that away. Cleanse him. Break him down so God could be built in his place. 

He hadn’t expected Tanrak. 

Tanrak was younger, solemn in that radiant, tragic way that only those who truly believed could be. There was something devastating about the stillness of him, about the way he folded his hands to pray, like his whole body was listening. Barth should have known from the beginning that whatever this feeling was, it would not end quietly. 

It didn’t happen all at once. Love rarely does. It was in Tanrak’s quiet laugh, the way he sat, the way his voice stilled the chaos in Barth’s chest.  

It started in glances—quick and dismissed, until they weren’t. Until Barth found himself memorizing the slope of Tanrak’s neck, the moles on his cheek, the way his lips moved around hymns, the silent softness when he looked out at the world, as though speaking to something only he could see. 

Barth didn’t fall — he was pulled , as if love had hands and they had found his shoulders. 

And then it became too much. The dreams began. 

They crept in like smoke under a door, slow at first. Then overwhelming. Dreams that left Barth gasping in the dark, fingers clenched, spine arched with shame and wonder.  

In the darkness, he was the one who moved first, slow fingers tracing Tanrak’s skin, mapping out every inch as if learning a secret language only they shared. His hands were sure, possessive, pulling Tanrak closer until breath mingled and pulses raced. 

He kissed, lips claiming the softness of Tanrak’s throat, the curve of his jaw, the hollow beneath his collarbone. Barth’s voice was low, a growl that tangled with the quiet prayers Tanrak tried to whisper beneath the moonlight. 

“Don’t fight it,” Barth murmured, breath hot against skin in his dreams. “You don’t have to be afraid.” 

Each night, Barth woke aching for more—more of Tanrak’s breath against his skin, more of the fragile weight of him trembling beneath his hands, more of the impossible heat that tangled sin and salvation in one desperate thread. 

When morning came, Barth’s skin still hummed with the memory of those dreams, the echo of Tanrak’s soft gasps and broken whispers lingering like a secret carved into his flesh. The weight of it clung to him, a heat beneath his ribs that pulsed with each breath, each movement. He traced the invisible lines on his arm, fingers twitching as if they still remembered the touch, the subtle trembling of Tanrak beneath his hands. 

But still, when he passed Tanrak in the library or chapel corridor, his body remembered the dreams before his mind could stop it. 

He sat alone in the farthest pew, watching Tanrak move through the prayers with that impossible grace, unaware of the storm brewing just beneath Barth’s calm exterior. 

Every time Tanrak spoke, every quiet gesture, it was a live wire charging through Barth’s veins, setting his skin alight with a desire so fierce it nearly hurt. 

But pain and desire were two sides of the same coin. Barth had learned to wear both, heavy and burning, like a crown. 

He knew exactly what this was — raw, urgent, a hunger that clawed through every fiber of his being. 

He could feel the edges of the world blur around him. The cold stones of the chapel, the distant echo of hymns, even the weight of his own breath , all faded into background noise beneath the roar of wanting. 

He wanted Tanrak. 

He wanted him like the air he breathed, essential, impossible to deny. 

Then Tanrak changed. 

He must have felt it too—whatever electric thing passed between them—but he turned from it. He fasted more. Prayed longer. The distance in his eyes grew vast and desolate, as though he were mourning something no one else could see. 

Barth tried to ignore it. To focus. To believe, even if he didn’t know in what. But Tanrak’s silence ate at him. And the ache of not-touching became unbearable. 

Barth watched helplessly as the light in Tanrak’s eyes dimmed—flickering, then fading—until all that remained was a hollow, haunted silence. The warmth that had wrapped around Barth like a flame was gone, replaced by cold, distant shadows. Tanrak’s prayers stretched longer, his fasting became a harsh penance, as if he was trying to purge the very memory of Barth from his soul. 

His hands clenched the edges of his robe, knuckles white with the effort to stay steady. 

Maybe Tanrak was tired, or lost in some prayer Barth couldn’t understand. But as days turned into weeks, the distance between them grew. 

The way Tanrak avoided Barth’s gaze became impossible to ignore. His words were clipped, cold, and rare. Barth noticed the subtle tremble in Tanrak’s hands after prayer, as if he was fighting a storm inside. 

Barth tried to convince himself he was imagining it. Maybe Tanrak was dealing with something unrelated to him. But the truth settled in slowly, like a poison in his veins. Tanrak was pulling away — not just from Barth, but from what Barth meant to him. 

Barth didn’t understand God. Never had. Faith was a stranger’s language he could barely speak. But the intensity of Tanrak’s devotion now felt like a blade twisting inside him—a punishment he hadn’t earned but couldn’t escape. 

Barth tried to pretend it wasn’t real. Tried to tell himself that it was just the weight of the seminary, the burden of belief, something temporary. But every time Tanrak turned away, it was like a fracture spreading through Barth’s skin, a slow, grinding ache that refused to heal. 

But late at night, alone in his small room, the truth slithered through the cracks — unwelcome and venomous. 

It broke him. 

He was Tanrak’s sin. 

Not just a mistake. Not just something forbidden, but a sickness, a blight Tanrak desperately fought to purge from his life. 

Barth saw it in the trembling hands that clutched the prayer beads like a lifeline, in the hollow prayers whispered for forgiveness of thoughts Barth had given Tanrak. He saw it in the silence, a silence screaming louder than any accusation. 

And with that understanding came a pain so raw it seared his bones. 

He wasn’t love. He wasn’t light. He was shadow, a wound festering in the sacred halls Tanrak had sworn to protect. 

The realization tore at Barth’s heart until it bled. Every hope, every whispered longing, every reckless confession he wanted to make became a chain tightening around his chest. 

He wanted to reach for Tanrak, to claim the warmth between them, but now the touch would only burn. 

Because Barth knew, deep in the hollow of his being , that to Tanrak, he was a sin dripping in shame, a secret to be buried beneath prayers and penance. 

A silent shame Tanrak desperately prayed away in the dark, a forbidden desire he tried to smother. Barth saw himself as a wound Tanrak wanted to cover, a secret he feared to confront. And Barth was left shattered, aching in the cold. 

In Tanrak’s eyes, Barth glimpsed mourning — mourning for something he could never be. That silent grief tore through Barth’s hope like a knife. 

And that was the cruelest torment of all. 

Barth began to wonder if this — this slow, quiet devastation, was how God punished unbelievers. 

Not with plagues. Not with flames. But with hope. 

Not the wild, abstract hope that lived in fairy tales or prayers, but something real . Something Barth could touch — once. Something he could name- Tanrak.  

Because that was the cruelest part. God didn’t deny him love. No. He let Barth taste it. 

He let Barth feel what it was to be cracked open by another person’s presence, to ache in ways he never had language for. He let Tanrak’s laughter burrow into Barth’s chest, let his gaze settle on Barth like sunlight so warm, unafraid. God let Barth believe that maybe — just maybe — something sacred had chosen him too. 

And then He took it away. 

Tanrak began to vanish by inches. 

He had stopped meeting Barth’s eyes when they spoke. Stopped lingering in the doorway. Stopped laughing, even. He fasted more. Prayed until his knees were raw, forehead pressed to the cold stone floor like he was trying to scrape the want out of his body with penance alone. 

Barth knew why. 
Of course he knew why. 

He saw it in the way Tanrak trembled when their hands brushed. He saw it in the silence that followed too-long glances. Tanrak didn’t just fear his own feelings — he hated them. Hated that Barth had ignited something in him that couldn’t be named in scripture, couldn’t be cleansed with prayer. 

And Barth… Barth could do nothing but watch the man he loved fall to pieces trying to erase him. 

That’s when the thought came, cold and clear “This is it. This is what I get for not believing.” 

God, if He was real, He was punishing Barth. Not with death. But with Tanrak’s shame. With being made into a living sin — something precious turned poison in the eyes of the only person Barth had ever dared to want. 

Every time Tanrak flinched from his own desire, Barth felt it like a blow. Every whispered prayer, every stiff goodbye, every almost-touch that never came — it hollowed Barth out until he was barely even a person anymore. Just a vessel for longing. 

That to Tanrak, Barth wasn’t salvation. 
He was temptation. 

A test. 

A weight dragging Tanrak toward damnation. 

And if that was true, then what did that make Barth? Not beloved. Not even human. Just a punishment sent to test a believer’s faith. 

He hadn’t cried when his father died. The room had smelled of antiseptic and slow decay, and everyone else had wept — siblings, aunts, strangers. But Barth had stood at his bedside dry-eyed, teeth clenched, hands shoved in his coat pockets like fists of iron. He hadn't wept when his mother called him an abomination and slammed the door on the last sliver of home he'd had. He hadn’t broken when the priests cornered him in stone-walled rooms and told him he could be saved if he just repented hard enough, if he just hated himself more thoroughly. 

He had stood through all of it. 

Until now. 

This — Tanrak — this slow, aching exile from the only closeness he’d ever known — this was what broke him. 

Barth didn’t fall to his knees like the reverent did. He collapsed , sudden and graceless, like a puppet with its strings cut. His legs gave out beneath him, and he hit the floor hard, bone against stone, palms catching him at the last second. His breath left him in a shudder, like something sacred had been torn from his ribs. 

For a moment, he just stayed there, hunched and trembling, hands flat against the cold chapel tiles, his head bowed, not in worship, but in surrender. 

He was not praying to Tanrak. Tanrak had gone silent, retreated into fasting and scripture, into self-denial so fierce it felt like punishment. He had folded in on himself, had begun to treat Barth’s presence like a wound he couldn’t stop bleeding from. No, Tanrak was already lost, like he’d drowned in guilt and closed the door behind him. 

Barth had no one left to cry out to. 

So he turned to the only thing left. 

The God he never believed in. 

“If you’re real,” he rasped, voice frayed from disuse, “then listen .” 

It wasn’t reverent. It wasn’t even humble. It was anguish , torn straight from his chest, raw and blasphemous. The sound of it didn’t echo- it sank , heavy and broken, swallowed by the thick stone walls like even they didn’t want to hear. 

“You win,” he choked. “You fucking win. I believe. I have to. Because nothing else could hurt like this unless something bigger was behind it.” 

A sob wracked through him, sudden and sharp, and his hands curled into fists against the floor. “Is this it? Is this how You punish people like me? Just....this. Giving me something beautiful, something that made me feel seen , and then turning it into rot?” 

His forehead dropped to the ground. Cold tile kissed his skin. He stayed there, panting, shivering. 

“Why him?” he whispered. “Why did it have to be him ?” 

His voice trembled like a fault line. “He looked at me like I was something , once. Not a mistake. Just…someone. Someone he wanted. And then You twisted it in his head. Made him believe that what we had was poison. Made me into the thing that drags him down.” 

He could see it so clearly-  Tanrak on his knees in the dark, fists clenched, face streaked with tears he refused to explain. Praying to be cleansed. To be freed. From Barth . 

That image cut deeper than any blade. 

“You made me the storm in his soul,” Barth hissed. “You turned me into his damnation.” 

And now he was hollow. He had touched something sacred — not holy, not divine, but real . And now that it was gone, he felt like a cathedral after fire — blackened stone, charred silence, no voice left to echo within. 

“Don’t take him from me,” he pleaded, barely more than a breath now. “Please. I don’t need a miracle. I don’t need the world. Just…just let him come back. Let him look at me and not flinch. Let him love me , even if he never says it. Even if we never speak of it again. I’ll take the silence, I’ll take the shadows—just don’t let this be the end.” 

The bargain tumbled from him, wild and incoherent. He wasn’t even sure what he was asking for anymore. A scrap of affection. A return glance. A moment that didn’t feel like exile. 

And still, silence. 

Still, the cold. 

Still, the echo of nothing. 

He wanted to laugh — to spit at the heavens for making him beg. For dragging him this low. But there was no strength left to curse. Only this shattered, breathless thing inside him that hoped against all reason that maybe someone was listening. 

He clawed at the floor as if he could tear his way into the divine, as if pain could build a bridge where faith never did. 

His whisper was hoarse and thick with salt. “Please.” 

It wasn’t even a prayer. It was a sob — raw, human, the plea of someone who had never known how to kneel until now.  

“Please,” Barth said again, voice catching on the broken edge of hope. “Let me have him.” 

He tasted dust and salt and ruin. 

“Let him love me.” 

His fists struck the stone floor once, twice, again, as if the act could summon something holy, something kind. “Please,” he choked, louder this time, trembling with the shame of needing anything this much. “I’m asking. I never asked for anything before. I never believed . But I’m begging now. If You’re out there—if You’ve been watching—then don’t turn away now. Please.” 

His chest heaved. His face was wet. His hands hurt. Everything inside him was screaming. 

“Let me be his safe place , not his sin. Let him come back to me. Let him want me.” 

And then, lower, barely more than breath against stone
“Please… please let him love me. That’s all I want. That’s all.” 

The silence that followed was a kind of death. 

No light split the sky. No voice answered. Only the sound of Barth's ragged breathing in the stillness of a chapel too cold to ever hold warmth. 

But still he knelt there, eyes shut tight, hands curled in supplication — praying like a man who had faith, pleading to a God he still didn't believe in, for the one thing he’d ever dared to call sacred. 

Please. Let him love me back.  

Chapter Text

Journal Entry 4

I don’t get the obsession with Tanrak.

He’s so quiet, so serious...like he sees through everything and just finds it all beneath him. People call it mystery. I call it pretentious. He prays all the time, too. Like, really prays. The kind that makes people stop and stare like he’s glowing.

It irritates me. I don’t pray. Never have. My life’s already been chaotic enough without adding an invisible sky guy to the mix.

I thought I could tune him out. But then I started noticing him. In the chapel. In the halls. I didn’t want to...but it’s like he pulls my focus without even trying. He’s so still, like silence made a person.

It’s unnerving. It’s messing with me. I hate that it is.

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Journal Entry 15

Okay. So maybe Tanrak isn’t just some uptight religious kid.

He laughed today. Not a big laugh...just a soft one, like he was trying not to disturb the air. And for some reason, I felt it. Like it touched something in me I didn’t know was there.

I’ve started remembering things I shouldn’t. The way his eyes close when he prays. The shape of his hands. The mole on his cheek.

I keep telling myself to stop. This isn’t normal. I don’t even know what this is. But my body keeps betraying me.

I hate that I want to look at him.

Worse—I hate that I care what he sees when he looks back.

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Journal Entry 30

I keep dreaming about him.

Tanrak.

He’s always there. Sometimes he’s praying. Sometimes he’s holding me. Sometimes I’m holding him. The touch feels too real...it lingers after I wake, burning under my skin.

What is this?

I don’t know what I feel anymore. I just know I want him. Not just his face, not just his laugh...I want him. All of him.

And I hate myself for it.

Because it’s wrong, right? That’s what they say. That’s what he believes.

But still—I want him.

God help me, I want him.

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Journal Entry 42

Everything’s slipping.

Tanrak avoids me now. His prayers are longer. His meals are shorter. His eyes don’t meet mine anymore.

But I see him. I see the way his hands tremble when he thinks no one’s watching. I know that look...he’s fighting something.

Something that feels too familiar.

I want to reach out. Say something. Anything.

But I’m terrified that I’m the reason he’s falling apart.

Terrified that what I feel isn’t love. Just a curse we both got caught in.

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Journal Entry 51

I feel sick inside.

Like I’ve done something terrible just by existing.

I think I ruined Tanrak. I think I was the thing he was supposed to avoid.

He looks at me like I’m a wound now. Something he’s ashamed to have touched.

I never thought I’d believe in God, but lately I’ve been praying...to the silence, to the walls, to something...begging it to undo me.

Make me different. Make me disappear.

Anything but this.

Anything but being someone’s sin.

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Journal Entry 57

If God exists, He’s not kind.

He gave me something beautiful...Tanrak’s laughter, his presence, that quiet moment when I thought I wasn’t broken.

And then He ripped it away.

Now I’m just a scar on someone else’s soul. The thing Tanrak prays to forget.

Today I cried on the cold floor of the chapel. I don’t cry. But this… this broke me.

Why him? Why me?

I just wanted to be loved without guilt.

Now I’m nothing but the guilt itself.

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Dear God,

I’ve never written to you before. I don’t even know if you’re real. But I guess I’m doing this because I don’t know where else to go. My chest won’t stop hurting. It’s like there’s a weight pressing on me from the inside.

I met someone. His name is Tanrak.

And I think I loved him. I still do.

He made me feel like I was allowed to exist...as if I wasn’t a mistake. Like I could just be without hiding.

But then it changed. He changed.

Now when he looks at me, it’s like I’m poison. I think I broke something in him. I think I became the thing he has to fight to stay pure.

And it hurts.

Because maybe he’s right. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe I am sin.

But if loving someone can feel so much like truth, how can it also be evil?

Everyone says you love us. But they also say people like me burn for it.

So which is it?

Do you hate me, God?

Because right now, it really feels like you do.

I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want this. I just wanted to be close to someone.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I loved him.

I’m sorry I made him doubt himself.

I’m sorry I was ever born this way.

Is that enough?

I’d give anything to be different. To be one of those perfect boys who pray the right way, love the right people, and never have to beg for mercy.

But I’m not.

I’m just Barth.

And I don’t know how to live with that anymore.

If you're listening… please say something.

Please.

—Barth