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For the third time in a week, Kevin woke up with flames in his head. Satan’s voice still echoing in his ears, he took heaving breaths through his nose as he settled back into his body and took stock of his sweaty hair, twisted sheets, and snoring roommate. Enough was enough. It had barely been two weeks since the disastrous ordeal with the mission president, and yet in those two weeks Kevin had been awakened by hell dreams more times than he could count. Sometimes Jesus spat curse words at him, condemning him to being a dick, or a motherfucker, or a cunt when he was feeling especially unholy. Sometimes, Lucifer raised his hands and laughed as searing flames consumed Kevin. And on the especially bad nights, he felt the general’s hands on him again.
This night wasn’t the worst one he’d ever had, but it wasn’t good, either. It had been naive to hope that boldly announcing he was no longer following the rules of Mormonism would erase his upbringing in a day, and if anything, his guilt over sinning seemed to be getting worse. Slowly regaining control of his breathing, Kevin looked over at Arnold, somehow sleeping peacefully with one leg off the bed and his pillow over his face.
Smiling fondly at his best friend, Kevin considered laying back down to stare at the ceiling until dawn, like he had the few previous nights, but boredom got the best of him and he stood up, tiptoeing to the door and wincing at the many creaks and groans from the floor, his bed, and the door, almost in disbelief that a single room could possibly make that much noise. Thankfully, his mission companion slept like a rock, and he made it out the door and down the hallway without alerting anyone else in the hut that he was blatantly breaking curfew.
That was, until he reached the living room. Elder “Call me Connor” McKinley was sitting sideways with his feet up on the couch, face cast in a blueish flickering glow that made his pale skin seem almost ghoulish, harsh shadows slanting across his nose, wide eyes, and firmly pressed-together lips. The computer on his lap was emitting faint noise, likely the reason the district leader hadn’t heard Kevin coming. Kevin crept closer, not really sure why he didn’t want Connor to notice him. The boy was laser focused on his laptop screen, and Kevin wouldn't have been so interested if there hadn’t also been a tinge of guilt in his expression—easily recognizable for a 19-year-old (ex?)Mormon.
Closer, closer, until Kevin could see Elder McKinley’s individual eyelashes—he had long eyelashes, Kevin had never noticed that before—and then Connor’s eyes flashed up and locked with his. The district leader’s gasp was loud and guilty-sounding, his computer slammed shut before Kevin had time to blink, plunging the room into near-complete darkness. All he’d seen on the screen was flashes of color (maybe bare skin?) but the genuine fear in the deer-in-headlights stare Connor was giving him piqued his curiosity in a morbid way.
There were maybe five seconds of silence, the two young men just…staring at each other, eyes glinting through the Ugandan nighttime, the only light coming from faint stars out the window. Connor’s lips were slightly parted, as if he’d dug around his brain for an explanation to present but come up empty. Kevin blinked, attempting to adjust his eyes, and then spoke.
“What are you watching?”
A weak attempt to break the ice, akin to hitting the iceberg that sank the Titanic with a wiffle bat, and Kevin flattened his mouth into a straight line as Connor’s left eye visibly twitched.
“Nothing.”
“It wasn’t nothing. I didn’t know you even had a computer,” Kevin said, feigning innocence. Even in the dark, it was obvious how red Elder McKinley was getting already. It could’ve been frustration or embarrassment, but both were equally fun for Kevin.
Most of the conversations Kevin had had with the district leader up until that point hadn’t ended well for various reasons. It wasn’t that they didn’t get along—in fact, they got along so well they often ended up shouting at each other for seemingly no reason, Arnold and Nabulungi having to step in to separate them. They didn’t know each other that well, really, but right now, in the dark, the silence of eight sleeping men pressing in on them, Kevin figured they were stuck. Neither of them could yell their way out of this conversation without waking the whole house, and the dynamic had shifted into something more careful, a little bit charged.
“Of course I have a computer, Elder Price. It’s for emails and spreadsheets and things like that.” Connor rolled his eyes, light glinting off the whites as they moved.
“That didn’t look like a spreadsheet.”
“I was watching a movie.”
“Can I watch with you?” There was something about how clearly Elder McKinley didn’t want him to be there that made Kevin’s skin feel a little bit buzzy. He wasn’t used to people not liking him, and the slightly annoyed boy in front of him was such a far cry from the uptight, eager-to-please district leader Kevin had met only a few weeks ago.
“Why are you awake?” Not a yes, not a no, said with something akin to suspicion. As if Connor thought he was in trouble, or being made fun of.
Kevin considered lying, but could recognize that if anyone was going to understand, it would be Connor. “Hell dream.”
Predictably, Connor’s eyes shifted a little bit, his expression getting slightly softer. For a second Kevin thought he was going to ask if Kevin wanted to talk about it, but he didn’t. Instead, less predictably, he swung his legs down to the floor and shifted to the left, making space on the ratty, faded couch.
The energy had shifted a little bit, and Kevin wasn’t sure how he felt now that the jokingly-annoyed mood had gone from the air. Nevertheless, he stepped around the couch and sat down a respectable distance from Connor.
Without another word, the district leader reopened his laptop, and frozen in close-up on the screen was a sweaty, shirtless man, sun glinting off his broad shoulders as his mouth opened, probably to say something like “look how hot and shirtless I am.”
Kevin looked at Connor. Connor swallowed hard, looking up to the sky as if there was something God could do about the situation.
“It’s not what it looks like.” Connor was bright red now, although Kevin hadn’t said anything. The district leader’s sexual orientation was common knowledge, of course, Elder McKinley having admitted, in quite vivid detail, to “struggling” with things of the like within fifteen minutes of Kevin meeting him. Still, since they’d unofficially left the church he hadn’t mentioned it, and neither had anyone else.
Now, though, the abs and pecs and biceps glistening on his computer screen seemed to broach the subject wordlessly. Kevin pursed his lips and continued looking at Connor, whose blush had spread all the way to his hairline.
“Is that—”
“I’m watching Top Gun. It’s a movie. About military pilots.” Connor’s voice came out choked, and as he spoke he held down the fast forward button until every man in the frame was fully clothed. “It’s not all like that. Bad timing.”
“Never seen it.” Kevin tried to keep any trace of amusement out of his voice, unsure if Connor was ready to appreciate the objective humor of the scenario.
“You’d like it, I think. It’s very…” Connor glanced at Kevin for the first time since he’d opened his computer and briefly looked him up and down. “Hero-complex-y.”
Kevin deserved that, he guessed. Electing not to respond, he furrowed his brow and stared at the screen. The progress bar showed about halfway done. “Can we… start it over?” Connor shot him a look, and Kevin continued, “Or you could just tell me what’s happened so far,” flashing a smile that was more than a little bit malicious.
Letting out a breath like he’d just been asked to carry out Hercules’ ten labors, Connor exited the movie and clicked “restart”.
They didn’t talk much for the rest of the movie, but Kevin wasn’t sure whether to be offended by how accurate Connor’s prediction had been when he came close to tears quite a few times. Once or twice he saw Connor watching him, waiting to see his reaction to certain parts, but he didn’t acknowledge it.
The movie ended. Kevin said, “Wow.”
Then Connor smiled at him, and Kevin almost said “wow” again. Because, all told, he’d never really seen Connor smile before. It was… a nice smile.
Then both boys seemed to realize they’d been looking into each others’ eyes a bit too long, and both muttered stilted goodnights at each other in voices a little bit deeper than normal. Kevin slipped quietly back into his bedroom, not looking back to see if Connor did the same. Oddly enough, he felt more relaxed now. Sleeping didn’t seem nearly so scary anymore, and Kevin realized that he’d just had something resembling a good time hanging out with his district leader.
It was a shame they’d probably never do it again.
“OhmygoshnoJesusplease—” Kevin cut himself off with a gasp, finding himself sitting up in bed with his pillow clutched to his chest. Arnold rolled over and snored a little bit, mumbling something about Han Solo.
Fuck. Two nights in a row was bad. His heartbeat settled back to its normal rate and Kevin mentally weighed the pros and cons of exiting the room to get some air. Really, he was about to lay back down and stare at the ceiling until dawn when he heard a faint noise from the hallway. A door carefully being opened—floorboards hesitantly creaking.
It must have been two in the morning—at least. Kevin didn’t think very many of the Ugandan elders made it a habit of getting up in the middle of the night. Almost unthinking, Kevin’s legs carried him over to his door like something magnetic was pulling him out to the living room.
It was the district leader, obviously. They’d fought that day. Again. Kevin barely even remembered what about; it had been something to do with the chore chart. Kevin didn’t even really hate doing the dishes—better than somebody else doing them wrong—but something about watching Connor’s face get red as he got closer and closer to shouting was borderline-addictive for Kevin.
Whatever it had been, Elder McKinley still seemed annoyed when he noticed Kevin behind him, but he pointedly sat on the left side of the couch and tilted his computer screen politely so Kevin had a better view than he did. After about a minute of Connor silently scrolling through Netflix, he seemed to have a silent argument in his head, and evidently lost.
“What do you want to watch, Elder Price?”
Kevin gulped. “I… don’t watch many movies.”
Pursing his lips, Connor thought for a second. “Have you seen Titanic?”
“No.”
“The Princess Bride?”
“No.”
“The Matrix?”
“No.”
“Any Star Wars?”
“No.”
“Roman Holiday!?”
“No.”
Connor seemed increasingly desperate with every negative answer Kevin gave. His voice was verging on choked up when he said, “What movies have you seen?”
Kevin pursed his lips. “I like… Tangled. I’m a big Disney guy.”
“Of course you are.” Connor’s eyes were wide, verging on horrified confusion with a dash of I-might-cry. “What was the last movie you watched before Uganda?”
Kevin thought back, and winced before answering. “Um. Zootopia.”
“Oh God.” Connor looked so righteously judgemental that Kevin couldn’t even chide him for the blasphemy. “You’re not one of those straight guys, are you?”
With only a vague idea of what Connor meant by that, Kevin couldn’t help but feel offended. “No, my parents were just strict about what I watched, and I have three younger siblings. I didn’t watch many movies growing up that weren’t rated G or PG.”
He wasn’t quite sure why he was trying to justify himself to Connor. It used to be a point of pride for him, a way of saying to his classmates and church friends that he didn’t waste his time like that, on cheap violence and sex and blasphemy. Suddenly, though, it felt very embarrassing to have seen Frozen Two in theaters three times.
Connor raised his eyebrows as if Kevin had just admitted to not having heard of Brigham Young, and you’d think there was a fire with how fast he moved to place his hands firmly on Kevin’s shoulders.
“Kevin, we need to do something about this.”
It was such a heated declaration that the room suddenly gained an air of intimacy, and when Connor noticed this, he dropped his hands fast, but didn’t take it back. Kevin, however, was still stuck both on “we” and on the fact that he’d never heard Elder McKinley use his first name before.
“—vin? Hello?” Connor’s voice faded back in as Kevin’s brain came out of its bluescreen, and he registered Connor waving in front of his face.
“Uh, sorry, what?”
“I said”—annoyed district leader voice bled into Connor’s regular tone, a teacherish “I’ll wait” implication—“have you ever even seen an R-rated movie?”
Kevin gaped. “Of course not! Why would I—have you?”
“Elder Price, I am twenty years old.” Connor was looking at Kevin like he was a toddler who’d asked “why?” one too many times, and Kevin chose to believe that that was what made his face burn red hot, rather than the proximity of Connor’s blue eyes.
Finding himself at a loss for words, which seemed to be happening more and more since he’d lost the conversational safety net of religion to fall back on, Kevin chose instead to glare at the older boy.
Heaving a deeply affected sigh, Connor typed something and pulled up a movie that looked science-fiction-y and violent. The Matrix. “No time like the present, right?”
Embarrassingly, Kevin felt rebellious, like he was doing something he shouldn’t. As the movie started with a cryptic phone call and shot right into a rather violent fight/chase scene, he snuck a glance at Connor. The glance stretched into several seconds when the light from the screen reflecting in Connor’s eyes made them glint, and Kevin’s eyes felt like they were stuck on the image of Connor’s dimly lit cheekbones and lips, so focused on the movie that he didn’t even notice Kevin staring.
When Kevin looked back at the laptop, it looked like a whole new movie had started playing, but shockingly, he recognized the voice of the actor onscreen. “Hey, that’s the guy who played Shadow the Hedgehog.”
“I— wh— You have got to be joking,” Connor hissed. His face had turned four different shades of red and purple, which was almost better than the rapt expression he’d had only a moment before, and he turned bodily to face Kevin, nearly knocking the computer off his lap.
Confused, Kevin furrowed his brow and pointed at the screen. “Really, that’s totally him, I’ve seen that movie five times and—”
“THAT’S KEANU REEVES.” Abruptly losing control of his volume, Connor’s mouth hung open in sheer defeated disbelief, and Kevin suddenly realized he very badly wanted to be friends with the district leader, if only to see him make that face again.
“Elder McKinley, this is incredibly inappropriate,” Kevin choked. His hands were splayed over the lower half of his face, which he knew was burning red. On the screen, a man walked through a trashed hotel room wearing no pants and a shirt that just barely covered everything it needed to.
The devilish grin on Connor’s face, while subtle, gave Kevin a vague sense of deja vu—glitch in the matrix, he proudly thought to himself—something about red sparkles and a feather boa. “Huh, I guess it is,” Connor said, his tone light but obviously concealing his own scandalized feeling. “It’s kind of a classic, though.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
Connor shrugged, and Kevin found himself smiling more or less against his will. Exiting his room that night, strangely almost grateful for his hell dream acting as a sort of internal alarm clock, he’d found Connor waiting. The gesture lit up something warm in Kevin’s stomach, which had lasted about thirty seconds, right up until Connor had hit play on something called “The Hangover”.
Now, Kevin’s face was frozen in something adjacent to abject horror. And yet… “Is it crazy if I say that guy reminds me of Arnold?”
A laugh shook Connor’s shoulders as he put his hand over his mouth so as to not wake up the entire house, and Kevin was taken aback by how proud he felt to have made Connor laugh. Being the perfect Mormon boy his whole life, for Kevin, had been about being told he was good enough, that he was reaching some invisible threshold to be deserving of happiness. Now, he was getting the same feeling from watching Connor struggle to control his laughter, and if Kevin was honest with himself, it was a thousand times better than trying to show off for heavenly father.
“Oh, gosh, that’s funny. Oh!” Connor whipped his head around to grin at Kevin. “And that guy’s even got the same last name as you!”
“Yeah, this movie’s actually about me.” Kevin feigned seriousness, raising his eyebrows earnestly. “Didn’t you know I married a stripper in Vegas the summer before my mission?”
Connor snorted. Loud. Kevin suddenly felt intensely fond of the district leader. He continued, “Most LDS men get married right after their mission, but, you know, I’ve always gone above and beyond.”
Losing the fight against a wide smile, Connor giggled, “Oh, congratulations to you two. Baby on the way already, I presume?”
Kevin nodded solemnly. “Of course. I’ll send you the registry, and you’d better not be cheap about it.”
Connor was full-body laughing now, and Kevin almost said, “What’s so funny about me marrying a girl?” but, raking his eyes over Connor’s sleep-mussed hair, sparkling eyes, and parted lips, decided he might not like the answer to that question.
“Gosh, can you imagine me in Vegas?” Kevin’s stomach was bubbly now, him and Connor both laughing way too loudly for three in the morning, but neither stopping. The slightly-anxious, slightly-excited feeling that came from breaking the rules made Kevin feel a little bit like a middle schooler at a sleepover—not that he really knew what that felt like.
He hadn’t been very good at making or maintaining close friendships throughout his childhood. Even now, with a best friend and…well, whatever it was he had with Connor, it felt like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Like he’d had it too good for too long and one day he’d wake up and everyone would see him for the annoying, boring, self-centered jerk he really was. But, so far, he’d woken up every morning to Arnold’s smiling face, Naba’s teasing, and Connor ready to start an argument in the kitchen that would leave him grinning for the rest of the day.
Once in a while, he allowed himself to consider the possibility that he’d actually made real friends, the kind that liked to be around him.
Now, he gasped at the screen as a man made an obscene gesture with a baby’s hand. “How did your parents let you watch this?”
The air shifted, smile fading from Connor’s face, and fuck, there it was, the second he said something stupid and messed the whole thing up. Bracing himself for the worst, Kevin swallowed hard as Connor opened his mouth, expression a far cry from the glee there only a moment before, and said, “Um, they didn’t. Not really.”
“Oh.” Feeling suddenly like the worst person in the world, Kevin wished he had something better to say, but thankfully, it looked like the district leader wasn’t done.
Taking a deep breath, like he was steeling himself for battle, Connor said, “I’ve been doing this late-night movie thing for a long time. The hell dreams started in fifth grade, after I realized…um.” He looked down, twisting his fingers in his lap, seemingly not able to bring himself to true admission. Kevin felt a little crack in his chest at the fact that just thinking the word “gay” made Connor’s face twist into something like fighting off tears.
“My parents were okay with some non-Mormon stuff,” he continued, “but that, I mean, even before I knew that I was, well, I knew—thought—there was nothing that would send me to hell quicker.” He took a shaky breath, and Kevin, heart pinching at the weight of what Connor was confessing, suddenly had the strange urge to take Connor’s hand.
He didn’t.
Nonetheless, he tried to convey as much sympathy as possible with his eyes, chewing hard on the inside of his lip as Connor continued his hushed monologue in the heavy quiet of a Ugandan early morning.
“I’d watch movies on my dad’s computer. He had, like, every streaming service in the world, and I’d make a new profile, watch whatever, then delete the profile after. I guess I always figured, if I’m already going to hell, if I’m already committing the sin of all sins just by living, then an R-rated movie now and then wasn’t going to have too big an impact on heavenly father’s opinion of me.”
Connor took a shaky breath, and in the brief silence, faint shouting came from the computer speakers. Both boys glanced down, a little nervous, the spell holding their eyes together broken and snapping them like a stretched-out elastic band back to reality.
A sad smile ghosting across the corners of Connor’s mouth, he directed his gaze at the computer screen, but didn’t really seem to be seeing it. He paused, and Kevin watched the movement in his throat as he swallowed.
“I’ve never really liked watching movies alone, though.”
Kevin suddenly realized how much it meant, that Connor was letting him sit there, on the lumpy couch, how easy it would’ve been, despite Kevin’s tendency towards stubbornness, for Connor to shut him out that first night.
Quietly, carefully, stepping out onto the fragile bridge between the two of them, Kevin responded. “Thank you.”
The movie briefly faded to black between scenes, and for half a second, Connor and Kevin locked eyes in the faint reflection off the computer screen. And if Kevin thought he saw Connor’s eyes shining a little more watery than normal, he didn’t say a word about it.
Two nights later, Kevin didn’t have a hell dream. This was because he also didn’t sleep. There was a shitty alarm clock on his nightstand that was a quarter of an hour fast, and when it struck 2:15AM, he carefully stood up and left the room. It wasn’t really a conscious decision he’d made, to stay up and wait. It was more of a curious anticipation, seeing if the last few nights had been a fluke.
He’d slept soundly through the night the day before. No flames, no demons, no coffee cups doing jazz hands. It was maybe the best sleep he’d had since the flight had touched down at the Kampala airport, and he chose to believe it was from the exhaustion of getting less than four hours’ peaceful sleep three nights in a row.
There was Connor, computerless, for some reason. The living room at night looked wrong, without the glow from the screen. Cloudy, almost. Connor’s eyes were cast down, and he was chewing on a fingernail. When he saw Kevin, he jumped, and then tried unsuccessfully to hide it.
“Where were you last night?” A little too accusatory, worried, almost.
Elder McKinley had blue eyes. Eyes that Kevin had been looking at a lot more, lately, and there was almost always a worried note of I’m-on-the-verge-of-tears in his expression. That was kicked up a notch right now, and it caught Kevin a little bit off guard.
“Um. Asleep?”
There was a heavy pause, and Connor coughed awkwardly. “Oh. Well…good.”
With a jolt, Kevin realized how it must have looked—Connor’s confession, maybe the first time he’d ever told anyone that, after three nights of seeing Kevin in the living room at two in the morning and then—nothing. Kevin could’ve been disgusted, disturbed, even just bored, and decided not to go back. The voice in his head, sounding weirdly like Arnold, was suddenly screaming, tell him that’s not what happened! Tell him—
Kevin didn’t tell him. Somehow, the words he really meant always got tangled up in his throat and knotted around his tongue when it came to Elder McKinley, and so instead, it felt much easier to walk over and retrieve Connor’s laptop from where it lay on the table. He stayed quiet as Connor put on a movie—Superman, 1978—but the silence wasn’t awkward.
A little bit of warmth bloomed in Kevin’s chest when Connor grinned a little bit and said, “You’ll like this one.”
He did like it. He especially liked it when he snuck a glance at Connor and saw that his lips were pinched together as if he was keeping an expression off his face and his cheeks were a little bit flushed. Kevin wasn’t the most reliable when it came to understanding people’s facial expressions, but it was pretty hard to mistake the way Connor’s eyes lit up whenever Superman was onscreen.
Then he noticed Kevin looking, and his blush spread from just his cheeks to his whole face. “What?” he squeaked out, voice an octave higher than normal.
“Nothing,” Kevin said, but he couldn’t help letting a grin sneak onto his face.
“He’s a good actor,” Connor grumbled, but he didn’t seem ashamed to have been caught giving the man onscreen heart eyes, which prompted Kevin to continue his teasing.
“Sure he is. Acting’s all in the abs, you know.”
Now he was on the receiving end of a district-leader glare, but there was no heat in it, and Kevin snickered at the dreamy sigh that escaped Connor’s mouth during the next scene.
But when the 6’4” superhero onscreen picked up Lois Lane like she weighed nothing, even Kevin felt his heart beat a little bit faster, and he found himself avoiding Connor’s gaze for the rest of the movie, though he wasn’t quite sure why he did it.
A few weeks went by, and while it wasn’t every night, they’d fallen into a sort of routine. Connor didn’t ask Kevin for any input on what they were going to watch after what had been dubbed the “Sonic Incident”, but Kevin didn’t complain.
Sometimes he’d be waiting, movie already pulled up, sometimes he’d search around a bit before landing on a choice, and sometimes Kevin would be left waiting. There was an easy sort of push and pull—it was startling how well they got along, and Kevin often mused about how much duller his life would be if he had never met someone who could make him laugh as easily as the district leader could.
They got along so well, in fact, that during the day, it wasn’t unusual for Connor to put his hand on Kevin’s shoulder to whisper a joke in his ear, or for Kevin to lock eyes with Connor like it was a habit when Elder Neely said something stupid.
This kept going on until one day Arnold made a joking comment about Kevin’s “boyfriend” that made his blood run cold and hot at the same time.
Kevin’s sexuality was something that he had very purposefully Not Thought About since declaring that he no longer believed in the Book of Mormon. It wasn’t that he hadn’t considered the possibility that he might be gay, but whereas before he’d had a sort of safety blanket of religion around that line of thought. He couldn’t be gay, so it was okay to have gay thoughts every once in a while. Arnold’s bold declaration that now it was okay to be gay—more than okay, even, felt a bit like being thrown into the deep end of a pool.
Still, though, Kevin liked to think he wasn’t stupid. He knew that there was a possibility—maybe even a probability—that he had something akin to a crush on the district leader of the Ugandan mission district nine. But, he kept his mouth shut and his eyes (mostly) focused on the computer screen when they watched romance movies, telling himself it was stupid to think that just because Connor was gay he had to like Kevin.
He didn’t have hell dreams anymore, not really, but a few times a week (or more, if Connor was having a particularly anxious time), he’d stay up and wait for Arnold to go to sleep, or leave for the Hatimbi house, and tiptoe down the hall. He hadn’t said as much, but he was almost positive that Connor was in the same boat. Which felt—nice. The reciprocation, at least, proof that Connor was enjoying this at least as much as Kevin was.
That day, Kevin was, admittedly, exhausted. He’d been working outside with Ghali all day on a community garden thing they were starting for the village, and by the end of the day he’d been dead tired. But, walking back to the mission hut around dinnertime, he’d shuffled by the door of Connor’s room, debating whether he wanted to go in and bother him, and heard shouting. Curiously, guiltily, he’d slowed to a snail’s pace, unconsciously leaning a bit more towards the door. He hadn’t caught every word, but it had sounded like Connor was on the phone with someone, and he heard “Mom,” said pleadingly, small voice, perfect Mormon straight boy, followed by “not coming home yet.”
So, that night, Kevin made a pot of coffee and was waiting in the living room when Connor shuffled out, hair mussed and eyebags dark.
Kevin was beginning to expect Connor’s smile—it had come to him easier and easier recently compared to their first week there, and it felt a little bit like something was missing from his heart when he went too long without seeing it. Connor sat down heavily next to him, swayed a bit like gravity was acting a bit heavier on him than usual, then straightened up and opened his computer.
As he started Roman Holiday, his expression stayed dejected, and Kevin was seconds away from asking what was wrong when he said, “My mom wants me to come home. Says what we’re doing here isn’t the Lord’s work, not anymore.”
A breath caught in Kevin’s throat. “And…what did you say?” Trying to pretend he hadn’t overheard a little bit of the conversation earlier but still irrationally nervous that Connor was about to produce a plane ticket and a pink suitcase out of nowhere, the silence before his answer seemed to stretch into eternity.
“I told her no.” Hanging his head, Connor looked so close to tears that Kevin couldn’t resist pulling him into a hug.
Connor gasped a little bit, but Kevin hung on for several seconds, finally pulling back and breathing, “Thank G- whoever.” He knew the relief in Connor’s eyes was reflected in his own, and they stared at each other for a beat before both flushing and turning back to the movie that Kevin had, of course, not seen before.
It went by faster than any movie they’d watched yet, and Kevin didn’t breathe or blink for the last forty-five seconds. When it ended, his mouth fell open. Then, impassioned, he whipped his head around to Connor, who’d already been looking back at him, expectantly. “That can’t be the end.”
The side of Connor’s mouth quirked up, and he closed his computer and put it on the ground, not taking his eyes off Kevin. “No, seriously,” Kevin continued, eyebrows drawing together. “That’s so sad, I—I’ll cry, how could they end it like—”
Connor kissed him.
It happened so fast that it took Kevin’s brain a second to realize what was going on, but by that point, he was already kissing back. Connor’s lips moved against his, and his head felt floaty, as if the ground was drifting away from him. Connor tasted like toothpaste, and Kevin felt his own hands move up—like he was an outside observer to his own first kiss—until they were tangled in Connor’s hair, pulling him closer and closer.
When Connor was leaned over so far that he was practically on top of Kevin, their bodies quite nearly parallel to the couch, Kevin felt something wet on his cheek and realized that Connor was crying. Pulling back, he looked into the district leader’s melty blue eyes. “Are you okay?”
Nodding, Connor snaked his arms around Kevin’s waist, making Kevin’s entire body light on fire. In a good way, not in a hellfire way. “I haven’t had a hell dream in two weeks.” He blushed. “And I guess I just wanted to say thank you.”
Oh. Kevin beamed at Connor, melty warmth in his stomach.
“Oh my gosh, you have a crush on me.”
Connor snorted. “You’re so annoying.”
“Isn’t that why you like me?” Already leaning back in, the boys laughed quietly to each other. Then, everything else was lost in the rush of Connor’s lips on Kevin’s jaw, neck, mouth, Kevin’s hands on Connor’s waist, back, in his hair.
Although he was almost unable to conceptualize the fact that he really was making out with Connor McKinley, it was incredible how natural it was for them to be so intertwined. Kevin was suddenly hit with a rush of belonging, the feeling, in the early hours of the morning on an uncomfortable couch in a tiny shack in Kitguli, Uganda, coming to him as easy as if he’d been waiting for it his whole life.
Slowly, everything became softer, their movements slower. Horizontal on the couch, Connor pulled away from Kevin’s mouth like he was fighting the gravitational pull of the sun. “Kevin,” he whispered, their lips only inches apart, “we need to go to bed.”
Sticking his lower lip out, not entirely exaggerating his disappointment, Kevin whined, “Why?”
Exasperated, Connor extricated himself and sat up. “It’s four in the morning. We can’t sleep out here.”
Kevin blinked at him. “So you hate me.”
A look in his eyes that was somewhere in the intersection of regret and pure adoration, Connor grabbed both sides of Kevin’s face and kissed him one more time, hard, then stood up. “I’ll see you in the morning, Kevin.”
He was gone almost before Kevin whispered back, “Goodnight, Connor.”
Alone in the darkened living room, ghost of a smile on his face, and still feeling Connor’s hands on him, Kevin took a deep breath. The air around him felt buzzy, almost like the world was in sharper focus than it had been before. Still looking at the space where Connor had been, Kevin slowly began the walk back to his room.