Chapter Text
It should have been snowing. There should have been a howling dramatic wind. There should have been a Jacob’s Ladder shining through the clouds and highlighting his small little house, signifying something, anything .
But if Connor had learnt anything it was that Heavenly Father moved in peculiar ways, and that the world was not focused on his happiness or designed to satisfy his need for the dramatic. Or to satisfy him at all. It was enough that he was allowed to be.
It would have been nice if it were snowing though: that would have set the scene perfectly.
But it didn’t tend to snow in Bountiful, especially not during the mildest March that the city had known for thirty years. In the awkward dinner conversation that Connor had come to expect from his parents, his mom had talked about how she remembered summers even as mild as this, and that the cloud cover was like to continue. It would be a dull summer, she’d predicted. She didn’t talk about Church at the table any more.
He’d be lucky if it rained, that at least would break up the monotony of the day.
It wasn’t going to snow. And nothing was set to change any time soon.
Connor didn’t go out much, now that he was home. Before his mission he’d had a vague plan for how his life was going to go once he was back in America, fresh from two years worth of missionary work. He was going to go to college, and meet a girl – because, of course, he would want to meet a girl by then, the mission was going to do wonders for his own faith as well of those he was sent to proselyte – and then he would take off his gloves and have a soulmate. Well. At least one of those things had happened.
To say that his feelings were complicated about his soulbond would be a disservice to the multitudes contained within his own thoughts. The handprints reaching out across his face had reshaped everything.
He wasn’t ashamed of it. How could he? How could he be ashamed of divinely ordained love?
But it was hard. Harder than he had ever come to expect.
He couldn’t go to the Bountiful Tabernacle. He knew without being told, and despite the utter conviction and faith that had accompanied the instillation of The Book of Arnold he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to go back to that Church. It would be too cold, too formal, with too many rules and not enough laughter. And so much judgement.
Connor knew more about what he couldn’t do, than what he could.
There had seemed to be endless possibilities under the African sun, living in a place where soulmarks were free and everyone was happy and together and understanding.
He kept a copy of the book under his pillow. Prophet Cunningham had written on soulbonds too, and despite knowing exactly how this new gospel had been written – frantically, occasionally a group effort, with ideas being thrown around like candy and occasional brainstorming sessions, all overseen by Arnold Cunningham’s enthusiastic laughter and clapping – he still couldn’t help but sit and compare the passages from the book to The Book. Studying the two texts side by side, almost to ascertain meaning to the permanent pink prints. But the answer always came up the same. For, ‘the Lord so loved his people that He gifted them mortal understanding his divine love, and so came about the Mark’.
Love. The essence of it all, was love.
Sometimes it didn’t feel like love.
He had hardly known Kevin Price when the other man had touched him. It took Connor longer than he was proud of to have forgiven that first touch. It had not been the last.
His parents were more understanding than he could have ever expected.
Connor had to explain. He had had to come home. He had nowhere else to go, and after his mission had ended, unofficially as well as officially, he had had nothing else to do.
He couldn’t have stayed in Uganda even if he’d wanted to.
(Kevin had stayed.)
Without money and without worthwhile qualifications he’d had no choice but to go home. Arrangements could have been made from there, had they needed to happen. But he went home.
So he’d explained about Kevin, in the loosest way possible. Abstaining from as much of the blame as possible without throwing it onto Kevin’s shoulders. He was at pains to point out that he wore his gloves even through the heat of the summer, and that he had been running a failing district before his soulmate arrived.
“What’s his name, son?” His father had said, a man of few words, Connor’s father, “He owes us that much.”
“He doesn’t owe you anything,” Connor had replied, but even as he was saying it he understood his parents' point.
“Kevin Price, related to the Prices in Salt Lake City. But it wasn’t his fault, he was under a lot of pressure.”
Connor had also been under pressure, looking back on it, he had been under more pressure than he knew at the time. The chafing at his fingertips and the ache in his soul as he tried to be something that he wasn’t. But he wasn’t going to say that.
It was hard to put into words what had happened, or to justify all of his actions or even his thoughts. But he only had the consequences to live with.
He imagined that Kevin Price had had to have a similar conversation about his pink hands.
So his parents knew – but they didn’t know everything – they didn’t know what had come next.
He hadn’t explained the conversations, the closeness. Nothing had happened – despite the direction which his thoughts had sometimes wandered. There were unspoken suggestions, almost promises and the possibility of a perhaps.
But then Connor had come back, and Kevin had stayed. And Utah was huge and crowded and Connor was lonely. He was loved, which was more than he had expected, but he was lonely.
He couldn’t, or wouldn’t, go to Church with his mom and dad, at least not the Church where people saw pink and then looked right through him. Instead he looked up courses online, listened to the music that he had missed on his mission, and searched for Utah Pride on hidden browsing.
Didn’t know why he did it incognito.
His parents knew.
He couldn’t even blame his parents for their mindset, it had been their parents', and their parents’ parents. It had been his own for so many years. Such an isolated community, in the middle of a thriving, first world country. Sometimes he ached for the Mission Hut.
He should blame the Church. But while Connor kept his copy of The Book of Arnold under his pillow, his copy of The Book of Mormon was still on his desk, and still well read.
What if Joseph Smith had simply mistranslated the word of God, just as Elder Cunningham had done? There was a nugget of truth to the words, there had to be. But Heavenly Father was love itself, and Connor knew, despite the stares, and despite the scorn and despite the judgement, that Heavenly Father had never stopped loving him. It was not the revelation that Connor had expected. He had expected to shun the church that shunned him.
There would be a Church out there that didn’t know him. A progressive Church. A Church that would accept him, soulmark and all. Soul mate and all.
But that would be the future.
The present was loneliness. A trepid sense of acceptance, but it was as though a film had come over the world stopping Connor from interacting properly.
He needed to leave this city, weeks felt like months. Hours of silence felt like days.
He had texted Kevin four days ago and hadn’t had a response. He wasn’t sure that he had expected one.
Soulbonding was nothing like the films made it out to be. It was a start, not a solution. It wasn’t the happy ending that had been promised. It was a brand.
Arnold had made sure to put in his book that a soulbond was something that needed constant attention, you couldn’t imprint on each other and expect for the Angel Moroni to come down and solve all your relationship problems with a wave of his magic wand – he was just there to help you through couples therapy, you were next in line, right after Leia and Han.
Arnold’s stories were either incomprehensible or blatantly obvious.
He had expected Kevin to text him back.
Poptarts had sent him a vine of a cat stuck in a box.
He bookmarked the page and mentally thanked his Mission Companion. He would thank him in person next time they chatted on Skype. Chris was starting college, at BYU and happy and confident and dedicated to the Church, and still Connor’s friend. He couldn’t even find it in himself to be resentful. It wasn’t Chris’ fault that Connor was listless. It would take more than six weeks to restructure a life.
It was lonely when you weren’t on your mission.
The knocking had started an undefinable amount of time earlier, blending into the background sounds of Connor’s childhood home. He was in his small cupboard room, door ajar as it had been since he had been a child. He wasn't sure if he had ever closed it. Ironically.
He was half pretending to listen to music, more focused on the turmoil in his mind and the listless way time seemed not to pass, not knowing what was happening with his life when he finally noticed the knocking at the door. For a moment he had thought that thinking for a moment that the inconstant rhythm was part of the music. It was far too insistent for that.
They had a doorbell. He didn’t know why whoever it was didn’t ring it.
Idly he supposed that it could have been his mom coming back from her meeting. She hadn’t been shunned, for what her son was, surprisingly and Connor was pleased about that in a strange isolated way which he kept separate from the way that people he had known all his life refused to catch his eye. It was as though, in the minds of people who had seen him grow up that suddenly, Connor had never existed. That there was never a boy who loved superheroes, or a teenager who wore soft gloves, only a stranger with stranger soulmarks.
“- and on his face ,” he had overheard Mrs Talbot saying to Mrs Pingree while running errands for his father, “I mean, some nerve flaunting it around like that.”
He had said nothing, just walked away.
He wasn’t flaunting anything, he was existing. But for now he had nowhere to go. Yes, he avoided Church.
The knocking continued, and Connor pulled out one earbud. The knocking got louder.
His father was in the kitchen, and people always looked strangely in Bountiful when they saw Connor and his pink printed face. He could imagine their shocked faces even through the frosted glass of the door.
He left the growing pounding on the door to his father and looked out the window instead.
It was mild and gentle, a light breeze and the approaching dusk. It should have been snowing.