Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2010-09-08 01:05 pm
ptahrrific) wrote2010-09-08 01:05 pm
Fake News: Five Ways Stephen Reconciled His Faith And His Sexuality
Title: Five Ways Stephen Reconciled His Faith And His Sexuality
Rating: PG
Characters/pairings: past "Stephen"/Jonathan; a cat named after Ronald Reagan; "Stephen"/Lorraine; OCs; P. K. Winsome; angel!Feist; Jon/"Stephen"
Contents: varying religious views; rapid tense shifts; lots of tears; mystic poetry. Emotional abuse in #2 (of the ex-gay flavor). Self-harm in #3 (of the canon flavor).
Disclaimer: Two.
For the Report characters: They and their universe are property of Stephen Colbert, the other Report writers, and of course Viacom. Not mine. Sue me not, please.
And for the real people, the poem:
Please, make no mistake:
these people aren't fake,
but what's said here is no more than fiction.
It only was writ
because we like their wit
and wisecracks, and pull-squints, and diction.
We don't mean to quibble,
but this can't be libel;
it's never implied to be real.
No disrespect's meant;
if you disapprove, then,
the back button's right up there. Deal.
This follows an unclaimed![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
lgbtfest prompt: "2575. RPF - Pundits, "Stephen Colbert"/Jon Stewart - Stephen struggles to reconcile his faith and his sexuality." The operative word here being "struggles."
The poem is translated by Coleman Barks in The Essential Rumi; full text can be found here. Shortly afterwards, Stephen quotes this treatise on sin by Richard Simpson.
Author's own religious views do not actually appear in this fic.
One: He didn't.
Jonathan's wiping down the front window when he spots Stephen coming up the path, a box which hopefully holds the new shower head under one arm and a veritable bouquet of yellow-greenery under the other. He puts down the rag and the spray bottle to get the door, greeting Stephen with a kiss on the cheek and a raised eyebrow. "What do you need all the palm fronds for?"
"I don't need all of them," admits Stephen. "But you should see the deal I got. It's like these things grow on trees around here!"
His enthusiasm is as catching as a particularly aggressive flu, and has a tendency to leave Jonathan just as feverish. "Uh, sure," he agrees, blushing. "But what are you going to do with them?"
"Crosses!" says Stephen brightly. He maneuvers his hand to snap off a long narrow strip of plant, pinching one end between his fingers and waving the other ticklishly against Jonathan's face. "You fold them right, and they turn into long-tailed crosses, no glue necessary. We can string chains of them up around the store. They're even organic!"
Laughing, Jonathan bats the palm frond away from his nose. "What do California palms have to do with Easter? 'And lo, Jesus stood upon the waves, and he spoke to them, saying, Dudes, let's have some sweet breakers here; and then he turned unto the disciples and he said, Hang ten!'"
Stephen's brow furrows into a rocky outcrop, the overhang throwing his eyes into shadow. "It's because of Palm Sunday," he says sternly, and turns on his heel before Jonathan can apologize for not keeping Stephen's holidays straight. Not that he's about to convert, but Stephen has been so diligent about learning his, even if only because he's hoping to turn up more Days of Atonement tucked away somewhere in the calendar.
The window gleams when Jonathan finally finishes. It won't last — in particular, the constellation of prints that flows across the pane at cat's-nose-level will reappear by Tuesday — so he takes a moment to drink in his handiwork before heading for the kitchen.
Stephen is huddled at the table, a mandala of shredded curls of palm radiating out around his feet. One of them skitters across the linoleum, Ronnie bounding after it. Nothing else moves.
"How's it going?" asks Jonathan, dodging Ronnie and her new best friend to take the empty chair.
His partner's hands tighten around the doubled-over frond clenched in them. It's twisted, beginning to fray under the pressure. "Can't remember."
"Hm?"
"I've wasted half these stupid things," intones Stephen, twisting the frond further. "Made dozens of these when I was a kid, and I can't even remember the stupid folds...."
"Hey, shh, it's okay." Jonathan clasps his hand over one of Stephen's fists, rubbing his thumb against the taut tendons. "It's not like there aren't any churches around here. Mrs. Ramirez is bringing in her Yorkie tomorrow; I'm sure she'll be happy to tell you all the best—"
"I CAN'T!" bellows Stephen. Ronnie bolts; palm scraps go flying. "I can't go back there, Jonathan. Don't tell me there are liberal places, I know there are, it doesn't make a difference! I'd crack up in five minutes. A month later they'd still be sweeping bits of me off the floor. I can't handle it, Jonathan, I had to choose, them or you, and I chose you," his hands bracket Jon's, the tough fibers of the leaf biting into his flesh, "I chose you, but I thought I could keep one thing. I thought He would let me hang onto this one thing—!"
His head drops, crushed under the weight of it.
Jonathan wraps his final free hand around Stephen's. Ronnie wanders back in at some point to arch against Stephen's leg, rumbling like a furnace and earning Jonathan's desperate envy: she's the only one in the room with any idea what Stephen needs to hear.
†
Two: He didn't.
Stephen takes in the room with practiced offhandedness. It seems harmless enough. Tastefully decorated, although not too tasteful. There's a diploma on the wall, but on closer inspection it has the too-generic name of a right-thinking Christian program, the kind that knows it has the approval of the Lord and feels no need to seek Earthly accreditation. So far, so good.
"This isn't going to last very long, I'm afraid," he says to the counselor, offering up his most winningly apologetic smile. "I had a happy childhood, you see. And I honor my mother and father."
"I'm sure it was happy in many respects," says the other man, with the kind of careful neutrality that wouldn't budge if you crashed into it with an oil tanker. He has a tan jacket with a small gold crucifix pinned at the lapel, and a kindly smile framed by a neatly trimmed red-brown beard. "Stephen, I want you to understand that this isn't about dishonoring your parents. They're good people, and I believe that they raised you as well as they knew how. But they couldn't be perfect. Do you know why?"
"Only God is perfect," mutters Stephen reluctantly, fiddling with a loose button on his cardigan. "But my mother comes close!" he adds, punctuating the declaration with a stab of the index finger. "Are we clear on that?"
"Of course," says the counselor, not batting an eyelash. "Now, if you remember from the group session, our philosophy here is that male same-sex attraction stems from a flawed relationship with your father. Let's start there."
Stephen juts out his chin. "Papa's almost perfect too."
"I'm sure he did his best." The counselor pauses, then slips off his small oval glasses; the room around him ripples with the force of the unbounded sincerity. "But, Stephen, surely there must have been times when he disappointed you. Can you try to think of one for me?"
It goes against every grain in Stephen's being, but he tries. It's all to the good in the end, right? He wishes he had a pen to chew on, to soothe his nerves. Although maybe that's a problem itself, a substitute for his more dangerous fixation, a crutch he ought to kick.
"I guess I used to hope he would show up at one of my Little League games," he admits after a long pause. "I guess it was kind of disappointing when he didn't. But that doesn't really count, does it? Papa had other things to do. Important, grown-up things. I mean, come on, how can a kid expect Little League to compete with that?"
"Maybe Little League itself wasn't important," agrees the counselor, gentle as ever. "But it mattered to you, didn't it? And your feelings were hurt when your father didn't recognize that. The message you were getting, then, is that your feelings weren't important. That you weren't important."
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." Stephen wishes the man would yell, or at least speak up, so he wouldn't feel so obligated to rein in the leaps and growls his own voice is itching to make. Even under the gilded aegis of an actual chapel, he's always more comfortable with fire and brimstone ringing from the walls. "Of course that's not what he meant. A boy has to learn to self-determine with his own bootstraps, and how's he supposed to do that if his father's always running after him? It was for my own good. Besides, those more-important things he does are still about the kids, in the end. How do you think we get food on the table and clothes on their backs if Daddy doesn't go in to work every day? Sure, maybe he's too tired to have much family time even on the weekends, but that's the price you pay for a job well done. And if he slacked off the show might get canceled, and then we'd have plenty of time to spend together while living out on the streets! Is that what his boys want?"
The neat beard twists with a small, well-ordered frown. "Your father had a television show?"
Stephen does a double-take, then scoffs. "What? Of course not. Three years of hosting and prestige and he still isn't even convinced it's a real career. Why would you ask that?"
Another wave of sincerity crests and rolls through the air as the other man sets his glasses on the arm of his chair, the better to lean ever-so-subtly forward. "Stephen? Are you afraid you're not being a good father to your own sons?"
Ridiculous. For so many reasons, which Stephen is prepared to enumerate in vivid and increasingly testy detail, until he actually opens his mouth and finds that in the meantime his throat has closed up and his whole face is twisting into its best impression of a constipated basset hound.
The counselor doesn't say anything, just leaves the weathered wooden chair to offer Stephen an embrace, so that when the first sob comes it's pressed against the arm of his jacket.
"I'm trying!" Stephen wails at last. He can feel what must be the crucifix, brushing against his ear. "Trying so hard, want to do what's best for them, even if it hurts them, even if they don't understand. They don't know I'm here, you know? I said I had a top-secret interview to do, and the way they looked at me, like tiny puppies would look at you if they only had one chew toy in the world and you just took it away, and my daughter has a swim meet this weekend and I told my baby boy I would take the training wheels off his bike and I want to be there but I can't! I can't pretend everything's all right while I'm fighting this! Maybe around other people who don't matter as much, but not around them! You understand? Tell me you understand!"
"I understand."
Overcome with more relief than he has any right to feel, Stephen claws his swirling terrors back into their boxes. The counselor holds him throughout, not letting go even after the tears are staunched and he's completely stopped shaking, mostly.
"For many people, this is a lifelong struggle," the other man adds, somehow managing to make even that phrase low and soothing. "We're dedicated to providing what help we can to the men who seek it, and of course I'm very humbled to be a part of this work. But, Stephen, I'm not sure our services are what you need right now."
"P-please—" Stephen's fingers dig into the tan corduroy. Please don't tell me I'm unfixable, please don't give up on me, please don't send me away....
"Hear me out," urges the counselor. "Perhaps your fears are clouding your mind too much to hear where the Lord is truly calling you. Perhaps the most healing place for you to be is back home. With your sons."
Gulping back the end of a trailing sob, Stephen stammers, "But how can I...?"
"Spend time with them. Focus on building and nurturing those relationships. You don't have to be a model of perfection for them, only an imperfect human being dedicated to doing God's work. In this way you can begin to repair the wounds left by your own cold and distant father, and help guide all three of you onto the path towards healthy, whole, heterosexual futures."
It sounds so beautiful that Stephen almost chokes up all over again. He's going to be with his children and be doing right by them. It's like being told he can eat his baby-carrot cake and have it too.
On top of which, he's been wrapped in another man's arms for the past ten minutes, and every second has been completely the opposite of hot, sweaty, fast, and anonymous. Maybe he's making progress already.
"Thank you," he trembles, not ready to let go just yet. "Thank you so much."
"I'm only a servant," says the counselor demurely. "All thanks and praise belongs to the Lord."
†
Three: He didn't.
Stephen was touching up the point on his broken broom handle, the one he kept fresh at all times because you never knew when Brett Favre would next decide to re-un-retire. So it was only natural that he be thinking about Favre's broad shoulders while doing it. And strong jaw. And muscular thighs, pumping their way across the field....
"Shake it off, Col-bert!" he snapped out loud. It was a mistake; now he had to pretend that he hadn't hear his breath catch.
He put down the knife and snapped the red molded bracelet on his wrist: a pitiful substitute for the rubber band he used to wear until somebody asked him what it was doing there. The bracelet was ubiquitous and innocuous, but it didn't leave raw lines in its wake. It didn't have the right sting.
Be strong, he ordered himself, adjusting the bracelet and reading its stamped letters instead. Strong wrists. Brett Favre probably had strong wrists, come to think of it. And strong yet capable hands....
"Stop it!" cried Stephen, shuddering from head to foot like a dog trying to shake off a dousing in some kind of gay rain. "Stop it, stop it—" He flipped the sharpened stick over, aiming the point at his pant leg. "—stop ow!"
He doubled over with a squeak, hand clapping down on his wounded thigh while the broom handle clatters to the floor. Hadn't meant to stab that hard! Just lightly, for emphasis, like a stern but fair teacher wielding a ruler, oh, ow, that hurt!
Stephen squeezed back tears, then realized that the pain was already fading. His quick, shallow breaths evened out as the worst of it ebbed away, leaving...
...blankness. All the fantasy images, all the stirrings of arousal, had been burned away in a single flash of fire, leaving nothing but ash.
Stephen took a breath deep enough for a sigh of infinite relief, then laughed until his sides ached.
...and a half:
He's reading through the latest Tek Jansen scripts with one eye and watching late-night Fox with the other when Lorraine leans against his back, breasts resting on his shoulders and one hand sliding down his chest. "Come to bed, honey."
She's wearing silk, although not enough of it to stop smooth flesh from brushing against his neck, freshly washed and smelling like soap and lavender. Which means that if he values his spot on the mattress, he's going to spend the rest of the evening envisioning Daniel Craig's abs. As long as the actual physical goings-on involve precisely one (1) penis and one (1) vagina, in the appropriate positions, it'll still be safely heterosexual.
Why did he choose tonight to skip on pajamas? At least the undressing would give him time to rev up. As it is, Lorraine's slender fingers with their polished oval nails skip lightly along his thin undershirt and move straight to his lucky Gandalf boxers.
Stephen stalls, making a show of gathering up the pages and putting them in order, when his wife pokes just the wrong spot on his thigh and he flinches. "Ow!"
"Sorry!" breathes Lorraine. She tugs the fabric lightly up towards his hip, revealing the cluster of purpling bruises. "Oh, that doesn't look good. How did you hurt yourself?"
The question knocks Stephen off-balance; he compensates by cranking up the indignation. "There's a table in the makeup room I keep bumping into," he lies, distantly impressed with how smoothly it rolls off his tongue. "I told them to move it, but Tad says there's no space anywhere else in the building, and then you know what he said? He said it would help if I got rid of some of the boxes of handmade trophies to myself! Can you believe that man? I don't know why I still pay him."
"Mmhmm," agrees his wife, making Stephen wish for an audience. Even if they weren't interested, they would at least pretend to be. "Any other bumps I should know about?"
"Lots," says Stephen. "All over. People on the street are starting to mistake me for a grape."
This one doesn't fly. "Come on, sweetheart," she says, tugging on his shoulders. "I'll work around it, don't worry."
Stephen pops Casino Royale in his mental video player, fast-forwards to the beach scene, and follows her upstairs.
†
Four: He didn't.
P.K.'s latest sample kit was spread out over half the green room, covering the large couch and relegating the fruit-and-cheese spread to a cramped heap on the corner of the table. Stephen browsed through the offerings with an intense interest that would have been perfectly convincing, if not for his habit of moving on to the next trinket while P.K. was still only halfway through his pitch.
Normally this had the perk of making it easy for P.K. to steer the host away from any troublesome items that had somehow crept into the shipment. Today, though, Stephen caught sight of the gloss of light on fine china, and before P.K. could be distracting he had lifted one of the dishes to get a better look at its markings.
"Wedding gifts?" he guessed, tilting the plate with what might have been actual care, instead of just a remarkable facsimile. "Yes, I see, with the rings...but what are these little arrows doing here?" He squinted at the interlocking signs, then let out a theatrical gasp. "P.K.! Are these gay symbols?"
"In a manner of speaking," hedged P.K., inching towards him. "Now that it looks like same-sex marriage is going to be rolled out in California, there's going to be a lot of couples in need of quality wedding furnishings at affordable prices. Speaking of affordable prices, have you taken a look at my—"
Stephen didn't so much as glance at the coasters P.K. was trying to steer him towards. "But didn't black people vote en masse against letting the gays have weddings at all? I mean, I don't see race, but that's what the news told me."
"We-ell, you might say that," admitted P.K., retrieving the plate with a suppressed breath of relief and nestling it gently back in its foam setting. "But, Stephen, the way I see it, that line of logic just means the mainstream wedding planners are going to be overlooking a key niche market: black people who are also gay."
"Clever!" exclaimed Stephen, his disdain for homosexuality briefly overridden by his respect for capitalism. "You will sell to the white gays too, though, right?" he added hastily. "I mean, I wouldn't want to think you were discriminating."
"Oh, naturally." P.K. waved a magnanimous hand at his display. "So if you're ever making any plans that we could help with, please consider—"
Stephen's eyebrows whipped into place. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Hm? Oh, nothing in—"
"Because I'm not gay!" continued Stephen. "How could I be gay? I'm Catholic."
"That's actually another niche market," offered P.K., half to himself. "Since your biggest retailers often won't sell to them at all...."
"Well, maybe that's just one more reason for them to give it up!" snapped Stephen, eyes wide. "Why would you try to make that work in the first place, huh? Trying to associate with a group that half the time doesn't treat you as human, just because they happen to share some of your most cherished and deeply held beliefs?"
It could have been any one of his everyday rhetorical ravings, until he fixed his wild stare on P.K. and fell into an almost expectant silence.
"Stephen," said P.K., pasting his most blankly dazzling grin across his own complexion, "I have no idea what you're talking about. Shall we move on to the coasters?"
†
Five: He didn't.
"It's not that I'm questioning You," insisted Stephen. "I know You're perfect and all-knowing and so on, although, really, Lord, penguins? Why did You bother giving them wings, if they're not meant to be breaded and deep-fried?"
He frowned disapprovingly at one of the stained-glass figures that towered over the empty sanctuary. Saint Jerome's features glowed with beatific peace, or possibly crushing boredom. Stephen had gotten very good at ignoring the difference.
"But that's not the point," he continued, waving away a succession of distractingly delectable mental images. Probably should have had lunch before coming. He could always break into the communion wafers, but last time he had tried that a nun had caught him in the act, and that hadn't gone over well. "The point is — the point is Jon.
"Not you," he added, jabbing a finger at a brightly colored John the Baptist. (Speaking of which, he could really go for some locusts and honey right about...shake it off, Col-bert!)
"I know I'm supposed to resist," admitted Stephen. He began to pace a ragged circle around the center aisle, his shadow cutting through the patches of luminous rainbow that flowed across the carpet. "And I'm trying. I'm trying so hard, Lord, You know I am — almost every week, these days. But every time, a few days later, I'm back in his office."
He knew he wouldn't have to explain the details to God. There was the omniscience thing, for starters. On top of that, even if the Lord did look the other way sometimes, Stephen could hardly expect Him not to take notice when you were shouting His name in the throes of ecstasy — along with the names of His son, His girlfriend, and quite a few of His prophets, sometimes all the way down to Habakkuk. (Blasphemous though it was, Stephen privately felt that Habakkuk ought to be at least a little bit grateful. For once he wouldn't be left out of the "hey, you'll never guess who took my name in vain this week!" talk at the Heavenly water cooler.)
"He keeps saying it's okay," he said instead, and was overcome with a wave of such dizziness that he barely made it to a pew, sinking onto the polished wood in the middle of a pool of color.
"He says it every time," repeated Stephen weakly, "and he acts like he means it, but how would he know? He's Jewish. And not the good kind of Jewish, the kind that follows all Your old rules because they don't know any better. He eats bacon cheeseburgers on Passover, Lord! But he keeps saying the same thing, like he's sure. And it sounds so sweet. That's how temptation always sounds, isn't it?"
He realized dimly that he had folded his hands at some point. The childhood instinct had asserted itself so quietly, he hadn't even noticed.
"I need help," he croaked, the words heavy and stale on his tongue, as he gazed at the arching wings of a stained-glass angel. "I know I'm not supposed to do that either, but I can't find my bootstraps. I don't even really know what bootstraps are, if you want the truth. And I want to stop failing like this. Help me stop breaking Your rules. Help me be good. P-please."
The halo around the angelic figure grew brighter, as if a cloud had passed away to uncover the sun shining through it.
Which was nothing unusual in itself, except that it didn't stop.
Stephen squinched his eyes shut, then threw an arm across his face, to no avail. Awash in the glory now pouring over him, he felt as if the sun itself had been a cloud all along, which had finally moved aside to reveal something of even more impossible brilliance.
"Sorry about that," said the angel. "I always forget how much less light there is down here."
...and a quarter:
Once the angel had ratcheted down the brightness to a non-blinding level, the human peeked over the edge of the pew in front of him and stared up at her, overflowing with fear and awe.
"Be not afraid," she sang, infusing the words with comfort straight from the Source. This was the best part of being a messenger: acting as a conduit for the joy and love of her Creator. "I bring you a message, on behalf of One who is greater than me."
Once she knew she had the human's attention, the angel began to recite, the LORD's verses ringing like bells from the glass and the timbers:
What seems wrong to you is right for him.
What is poison to one is honey to someone else.
Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,
These mean nothing to Me.
I am apart from all that.
Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better
or worse than one another.
It’s not I that’s glorified in acts of worship.
It’s the worshippers! I don’t hear the words
they say. I look inside at the humility.
That broken-open lowliness is the Reality,
not the language! Forget phraseology.
I want burning, burning.
Be Friends
with your burning. Burn up your thinking
and your forms of expression!
Stephen,
those who pay attention to ways of behaving
and speaking are one sort.
Lovers who burn
are another.
Okay, technically speaking they were Rumi's verses, which had made the poet awfully nervous when he found himself face-to-Face with the One from whose POV he had been writing. He needn't have worried: God liked the lines so much that, after a short negotiation, the entire heavenly host ended up licensed to use them. Even if they never sounded quite as good when not in the original Persian.
Translated or no, they were having the right effect. The lost lamb was glowing at her with pure adoration, held back only by the meekness that overcomes all creatures when they realize they are presuming to adore something whose metaphorical feet they are not worthy to sponge down.
"Ohmigosh," he squeaked, clinging to the pew to keep from falling. "I'm getting a private recital with Feist."
...and a half:
"I'm not Feist!" protested Feist. "I'm an angel of the Lord!"
"I know! That's what I thought the first time I heard you sing!"
Stephen's fear had drained away the instant Feist commanded it. Everything felt sort of floaty in its absence, although maybe that was just because she seemed to have chased away the rocks in his gut as well.
"Are those lyrics new?" he continued, still cowering behind the wooden bench, but more out of respect for Newton's first law of motion than existential terror for his soul. "Is this a sneak preview of your next hit album? Am I the first one to hear them?"
"You are not the first by far," said Feist, sounding a little testy. "They were composed by Rumi."
"Who's Roomy?"
"A thirteenth-century Persian mystic who—"
"Oh, Iran," said Stephen, nodding wisely. "I thought it sounded awfully tweetable."
"Did you even listen?" blurted the angelic figure. "They were a message! For you! Personally!"
"You just said they were from the thirteenth century," protested Stephen. "Your words, ma'am! Was this Roomy a time traveler? Or very, very old?"
"No, but—"
"Then they couldn't have been for me. Therefore, any eerie relevance they may have had to any theophilosophical predicaments I may or may not find myself in is purely coincidental."
Feist drifted softly downwards. (She had, Stephen realized, been several feet off the floor. That was a neat trick. He'd have to ask how she pulled it off.)
"You want new words?" she said, shaking her head. "You really have no idea how absurd that request is, do you? For the One who knows every sparrow in the air and every hair on your head, how can you imagine that the Lord would not know every sorrow in your heart and have found the words to soothe them, a hundred or a thousand or a million years before?"
Stephen's head was spinning. Partly with the figures (the world wasn't a million years old!...was it?), and partly with the idea of..."But it can't be that easy."
"What can't?"
"Everything!" exclaimed Stephen frantically. What good was it being an angel if you didn't get divine revelations to explain these things? "You make it sound like I should roll over and accept this — this compulsion of mine. That's not how it works! We are fallen creatures, and our spiritual life is a warfare. Sin is the deliberate, willful refusal to struggle. The last thing I need is to cut and run!"
The huge feathery wings spread out again, far broader up close than Stephen had guessed. He cringed and clung to the pew out of pure instinct, certain that one good flap would send him whirling away to God knew where.
"I think you might be getting new words," whispered Feist.
Her towering figure cast deep shadows until she started glowing again, bathing Stephen in light:
If the sparrows are perfectly designed for My purposes,
then why should you be any less so?
If I wanted you to fly, I would have given you wings.
I wanted you to love, so I gave you a heart.
It's a gift!
Can't you see that?
Quit trying to give it back!
...and three quarters:
The pigeons scattered in a flurry of dust and squawking and inefficient heavy flaps as the door banged open and the visitor pounded across the roof.
With a reluctant sigh Jon moved to get up from the ledge, half-crumbled baguette still in his hands. It slipped from his grasp as Stephen dropped to the ground, no doubt ruining the knees of those nice pants on the crumb-covered cement, and pulled him into an embrace, mouth pressed warmly against his.
Jon relaxed as long as he dared, feeling the pound of Stephen's heart through his sweatshirt and tasting salt and sweat in the kiss, before tipping his head away and cupping Stephen's chin to hold him steady. Something must be wrong; Stephen had always refused to let them so much as hold hands in the open air, lest the military or Google be watching. "Are you okay? Did something happen?"
Stephen trembled in his grasp — laughing, Jon realized, in what could only have been hysteria, because he had never seen Stephen laugh like this out of pure delight. "So much happened," he echoed, grinning from ear to ear. "Everything's different — everything I thought — it's burning, all of it, burned up—"
"Stephen, slow down, you're not making sense," urged Jon, trying to remember if he had heard sirens in the past twenty minutes. "What's on fire? Is it the studio? Have you called 911?"
"Nothing's on fire." Another bright giggle. "Jon, you don't understand — it's okay. Everything is. This...." One of his hands curled over the back of Jon's shoulder, not rough but unmistakably possessive. "...and all the rest of it. I love you, and it's okay."
"Is that all?"
Stephen's smile froze in place. "What do you mean, 'all'?"
Jon let out the breath he hadn't known he was holding. "For god's sake, babe, don't scare me like that!" he exclaimed, squeezing Stephen in another hug, this time out of pure relief. "You had me going there, imagining buildings in ashes and people being wheeled out on stretchers. What do you want to do, give me a heart attack?"
"Of course not!" sputtered Stephen, wriggling and squirming until his voice wasn't muffled against Jon's shoulder. "I don't want anything bad to happen to you! You're the man I love. The man. I love."
"I heard, I heard." Jon loosed his grip, leaving enough slack to get a full view of Stephen's insistent pout, though his fingers remained linked around Stephen's shoulders. "Welcome to the world of people who are comfortable with their sexuality. It's not the kind of revelation where the heavens open up and it gets heralded with trumpets, you know? For the most part it's exactly the same as it was before, except that you grit your teeth less."
Stephen slumped. "It's a big deal to me," he muttered. "There were some heavens-opening. And maybe it wasn't the full angelic choir, but I did get a soloist. With a great voice."
Leaning over, Jon dropped a quick kiss on his temple. "I'm sorry, Stephen. I'm sure from where you're standing it was earth-shaking. Are you ready to start telling other people, you think?"
"Maybe not this second," said Stephen after a beat. He glanced to either side, enough to glimpse a couple of the pigeons strutting the edge of a wobbly circle around them: too cautious to risk getting closer to the stranger without a peace offering, preferably in the form of baked goods. "Maybe I could just stay up here for a while and help you feed your pigeons. Would they like that?"
Jon brushed a stray curl out of Stephen's face, then patted the bare ledge beside him. "As long as you keep the bread coming, they won't care about much else."
"Birds are stupid," observed Stephen with smug satisfaction, taking the seat and making a halfhearted effort to brush off his knees.
"Pretty much," agreed Jon, handing him the baguette. "By the way, for the record? I love you too."
Rating: PG
Characters/pairings: past "Stephen"/Jonathan; a cat named after Ronald Reagan; "Stephen"/Lorraine; OCs; P. K. Winsome; angel!Feist; Jon/"Stephen"
Contents: varying religious views; rapid tense shifts; lots of tears; mystic poetry. Emotional abuse in #2 (of the ex-gay flavor). Self-harm in #3 (of the canon flavor).
Disclaimer: Two.
For the Report characters: They and their universe are property of Stephen Colbert, the other Report writers, and of course Viacom. Not mine. Sue me not, please.
And for the real people, the poem:
Please, make no mistake:
these people aren't fake,
but what's said here is no more than fiction.
It only was writ
because we like their wit
and wisecracks, and pull-squints, and diction.
We don't mean to quibble,
but this can't be libel;
it's never implied to be real.
No disrespect's meant;
if you disapprove, then,
the back button's right up there. Deal.
This follows an unclaimed
lgbtfest prompt: "2575. RPF - Pundits, "Stephen Colbert"/Jon Stewart - Stephen struggles to reconcile his faith and his sexuality." The operative word here being "struggles."The poem is translated by Coleman Barks in The Essential Rumi; full text can be found here. Shortly afterwards, Stephen quotes this treatise on sin by Richard Simpson.
Author's own religious views do not actually appear in this fic.
One: He didn't.
Jonathan's wiping down the front window when he spots Stephen coming up the path, a box which hopefully holds the new shower head under one arm and a veritable bouquet of yellow-greenery under the other. He puts down the rag and the spray bottle to get the door, greeting Stephen with a kiss on the cheek and a raised eyebrow. "What do you need all the palm fronds for?"
"I don't need all of them," admits Stephen. "But you should see the deal I got. It's like these things grow on trees around here!"
His enthusiasm is as catching as a particularly aggressive flu, and has a tendency to leave Jonathan just as feverish. "Uh, sure," he agrees, blushing. "But what are you going to do with them?"
"Crosses!" says Stephen brightly. He maneuvers his hand to snap off a long narrow strip of plant, pinching one end between his fingers and waving the other ticklishly against Jonathan's face. "You fold them right, and they turn into long-tailed crosses, no glue necessary. We can string chains of them up around the store. They're even organic!"
Laughing, Jonathan bats the palm frond away from his nose. "What do California palms have to do with Easter? 'And lo, Jesus stood upon the waves, and he spoke to them, saying, Dudes, let's have some sweet breakers here; and then he turned unto the disciples and he said, Hang ten!'"
Stephen's brow furrows into a rocky outcrop, the overhang throwing his eyes into shadow. "It's because of Palm Sunday," he says sternly, and turns on his heel before Jonathan can apologize for not keeping Stephen's holidays straight. Not that he's about to convert, but Stephen has been so diligent about learning his, even if only because he's hoping to turn up more Days of Atonement tucked away somewhere in the calendar.
The window gleams when Jonathan finally finishes. It won't last — in particular, the constellation of prints that flows across the pane at cat's-nose-level will reappear by Tuesday — so he takes a moment to drink in his handiwork before heading for the kitchen.
Stephen is huddled at the table, a mandala of shredded curls of palm radiating out around his feet. One of them skitters across the linoleum, Ronnie bounding after it. Nothing else moves.
"How's it going?" asks Jonathan, dodging Ronnie and her new best friend to take the empty chair.
His partner's hands tighten around the doubled-over frond clenched in them. It's twisted, beginning to fray under the pressure. "Can't remember."
"Hm?"
"I've wasted half these stupid things," intones Stephen, twisting the frond further. "Made dozens of these when I was a kid, and I can't even remember the stupid folds...."
"Hey, shh, it's okay." Jonathan clasps his hand over one of Stephen's fists, rubbing his thumb against the taut tendons. "It's not like there aren't any churches around here. Mrs. Ramirez is bringing in her Yorkie tomorrow; I'm sure she'll be happy to tell you all the best—"
"I CAN'T!" bellows Stephen. Ronnie bolts; palm scraps go flying. "I can't go back there, Jonathan. Don't tell me there are liberal places, I know there are, it doesn't make a difference! I'd crack up in five minutes. A month later they'd still be sweeping bits of me off the floor. I can't handle it, Jonathan, I had to choose, them or you, and I chose you," his hands bracket Jon's, the tough fibers of the leaf biting into his flesh, "I chose you, but I thought I could keep one thing. I thought He would let me hang onto this one thing—!"
His head drops, crushed under the weight of it.
Jonathan wraps his final free hand around Stephen's. Ronnie wanders back in at some point to arch against Stephen's leg, rumbling like a furnace and earning Jonathan's desperate envy: she's the only one in the room with any idea what Stephen needs to hear.
†
Two: He didn't.
Stephen takes in the room with practiced offhandedness. It seems harmless enough. Tastefully decorated, although not too tasteful. There's a diploma on the wall, but on closer inspection it has the too-generic name of a right-thinking Christian program, the kind that knows it has the approval of the Lord and feels no need to seek Earthly accreditation. So far, so good.
"This isn't going to last very long, I'm afraid," he says to the counselor, offering up his most winningly apologetic smile. "I had a happy childhood, you see. And I honor my mother and father."
"I'm sure it was happy in many respects," says the other man, with the kind of careful neutrality that wouldn't budge if you crashed into it with an oil tanker. He has a tan jacket with a small gold crucifix pinned at the lapel, and a kindly smile framed by a neatly trimmed red-brown beard. "Stephen, I want you to understand that this isn't about dishonoring your parents. They're good people, and I believe that they raised you as well as they knew how. But they couldn't be perfect. Do you know why?"
"Only God is perfect," mutters Stephen reluctantly, fiddling with a loose button on his cardigan. "But my mother comes close!" he adds, punctuating the declaration with a stab of the index finger. "Are we clear on that?"
"Of course," says the counselor, not batting an eyelash. "Now, if you remember from the group session, our philosophy here is that male same-sex attraction stems from a flawed relationship with your father. Let's start there."
Stephen juts out his chin. "Papa's almost perfect too."
"I'm sure he did his best." The counselor pauses, then slips off his small oval glasses; the room around him ripples with the force of the unbounded sincerity. "But, Stephen, surely there must have been times when he disappointed you. Can you try to think of one for me?"
It goes against every grain in Stephen's being, but he tries. It's all to the good in the end, right? He wishes he had a pen to chew on, to soothe his nerves. Although maybe that's a problem itself, a substitute for his more dangerous fixation, a crutch he ought to kick.
"I guess I used to hope he would show up at one of my Little League games," he admits after a long pause. "I guess it was kind of disappointing when he didn't. But that doesn't really count, does it? Papa had other things to do. Important, grown-up things. I mean, come on, how can a kid expect Little League to compete with that?"
"Maybe Little League itself wasn't important," agrees the counselor, gentle as ever. "But it mattered to you, didn't it? And your feelings were hurt when your father didn't recognize that. The message you were getting, then, is that your feelings weren't important. That you weren't important."
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." Stephen wishes the man would yell, or at least speak up, so he wouldn't feel so obligated to rein in the leaps and growls his own voice is itching to make. Even under the gilded aegis of an actual chapel, he's always more comfortable with fire and brimstone ringing from the walls. "Of course that's not what he meant. A boy has to learn to self-determine with his own bootstraps, and how's he supposed to do that if his father's always running after him? It was for my own good. Besides, those more-important things he does are still about the kids, in the end. How do you think we get food on the table and clothes on their backs if Daddy doesn't go in to work every day? Sure, maybe he's too tired to have much family time even on the weekends, but that's the price you pay for a job well done. And if he slacked off the show might get canceled, and then we'd have plenty of time to spend together while living out on the streets! Is that what his boys want?"
The neat beard twists with a small, well-ordered frown. "Your father had a television show?"
Stephen does a double-take, then scoffs. "What? Of course not. Three years of hosting and prestige and he still isn't even convinced it's a real career. Why would you ask that?"
Another wave of sincerity crests and rolls through the air as the other man sets his glasses on the arm of his chair, the better to lean ever-so-subtly forward. "Stephen? Are you afraid you're not being a good father to your own sons?"
Ridiculous. For so many reasons, which Stephen is prepared to enumerate in vivid and increasingly testy detail, until he actually opens his mouth and finds that in the meantime his throat has closed up and his whole face is twisting into its best impression of a constipated basset hound.
The counselor doesn't say anything, just leaves the weathered wooden chair to offer Stephen an embrace, so that when the first sob comes it's pressed against the arm of his jacket.
"I'm trying!" Stephen wails at last. He can feel what must be the crucifix, brushing against his ear. "Trying so hard, want to do what's best for them, even if it hurts them, even if they don't understand. They don't know I'm here, you know? I said I had a top-secret interview to do, and the way they looked at me, like tiny puppies would look at you if they only had one chew toy in the world and you just took it away, and my daughter has a swim meet this weekend and I told my baby boy I would take the training wheels off his bike and I want to be there but I can't! I can't pretend everything's all right while I'm fighting this! Maybe around other people who don't matter as much, but not around them! You understand? Tell me you understand!"
"I understand."
Overcome with more relief than he has any right to feel, Stephen claws his swirling terrors back into their boxes. The counselor holds him throughout, not letting go even after the tears are staunched and he's completely stopped shaking, mostly.
"For many people, this is a lifelong struggle," the other man adds, somehow managing to make even that phrase low and soothing. "We're dedicated to providing what help we can to the men who seek it, and of course I'm very humbled to be a part of this work. But, Stephen, I'm not sure our services are what you need right now."
"P-please—" Stephen's fingers dig into the tan corduroy. Please don't tell me I'm unfixable, please don't give up on me, please don't send me away....
"Hear me out," urges the counselor. "Perhaps your fears are clouding your mind too much to hear where the Lord is truly calling you. Perhaps the most healing place for you to be is back home. With your sons."
Gulping back the end of a trailing sob, Stephen stammers, "But how can I...?"
"Spend time with them. Focus on building and nurturing those relationships. You don't have to be a model of perfection for them, only an imperfect human being dedicated to doing God's work. In this way you can begin to repair the wounds left by your own cold and distant father, and help guide all three of you onto the path towards healthy, whole, heterosexual futures."
It sounds so beautiful that Stephen almost chokes up all over again. He's going to be with his children and be doing right by them. It's like being told he can eat his baby-carrot cake and have it too.
On top of which, he's been wrapped in another man's arms for the past ten minutes, and every second has been completely the opposite of hot, sweaty, fast, and anonymous. Maybe he's making progress already.
"Thank you," he trembles, not ready to let go just yet. "Thank you so much."
"I'm only a servant," says the counselor demurely. "All thanks and praise belongs to the Lord."
†
Three: He didn't.
Stephen was touching up the point on his broken broom handle, the one he kept fresh at all times because you never knew when Brett Favre would next decide to re-un-retire. So it was only natural that he be thinking about Favre's broad shoulders while doing it. And strong jaw. And muscular thighs, pumping their way across the field....
"Shake it off, Col-bert!" he snapped out loud. It was a mistake; now he had to pretend that he hadn't hear his breath catch.
He put down the knife and snapped the red molded bracelet on his wrist: a pitiful substitute for the rubber band he used to wear until somebody asked him what it was doing there. The bracelet was ubiquitous and innocuous, but it didn't leave raw lines in its wake. It didn't have the right sting.
Be strong, he ordered himself, adjusting the bracelet and reading its stamped letters instead. Strong wrists. Brett Favre probably had strong wrists, come to think of it. And strong yet capable hands....
"Stop it!" cried Stephen, shuddering from head to foot like a dog trying to shake off a dousing in some kind of gay rain. "Stop it, stop it—" He flipped the sharpened stick over, aiming the point at his pant leg. "—stop ow!"
He doubled over with a squeak, hand clapping down on his wounded thigh while the broom handle clatters to the floor. Hadn't meant to stab that hard! Just lightly, for emphasis, like a stern but fair teacher wielding a ruler, oh, ow, that hurt!
Stephen squeezed back tears, then realized that the pain was already fading. His quick, shallow breaths evened out as the worst of it ebbed away, leaving...
...blankness. All the fantasy images, all the stirrings of arousal, had been burned away in a single flash of fire, leaving nothing but ash.
Stephen took a breath deep enough for a sigh of infinite relief, then laughed until his sides ached.
...and a half:
He's reading through the latest Tek Jansen scripts with one eye and watching late-night Fox with the other when Lorraine leans against his back, breasts resting on his shoulders and one hand sliding down his chest. "Come to bed, honey."
She's wearing silk, although not enough of it to stop smooth flesh from brushing against his neck, freshly washed and smelling like soap and lavender. Which means that if he values his spot on the mattress, he's going to spend the rest of the evening envisioning Daniel Craig's abs. As long as the actual physical goings-on involve precisely one (1) penis and one (1) vagina, in the appropriate positions, it'll still be safely heterosexual.
Why did he choose tonight to skip on pajamas? At least the undressing would give him time to rev up. As it is, Lorraine's slender fingers with their polished oval nails skip lightly along his thin undershirt and move straight to his lucky Gandalf boxers.
Stephen stalls, making a show of gathering up the pages and putting them in order, when his wife pokes just the wrong spot on his thigh and he flinches. "Ow!"
"Sorry!" breathes Lorraine. She tugs the fabric lightly up towards his hip, revealing the cluster of purpling bruises. "Oh, that doesn't look good. How did you hurt yourself?"
The question knocks Stephen off-balance; he compensates by cranking up the indignation. "There's a table in the makeup room I keep bumping into," he lies, distantly impressed with how smoothly it rolls off his tongue. "I told them to move it, but Tad says there's no space anywhere else in the building, and then you know what he said? He said it would help if I got rid of some of the boxes of handmade trophies to myself! Can you believe that man? I don't know why I still pay him."
"Mmhmm," agrees his wife, making Stephen wish for an audience. Even if they weren't interested, they would at least pretend to be. "Any other bumps I should know about?"
"Lots," says Stephen. "All over. People on the street are starting to mistake me for a grape."
This one doesn't fly. "Come on, sweetheart," she says, tugging on his shoulders. "I'll work around it, don't worry."
Stephen pops Casino Royale in his mental video player, fast-forwards to the beach scene, and follows her upstairs.
†
Four: He didn't.
P.K.'s latest sample kit was spread out over half the green room, covering the large couch and relegating the fruit-and-cheese spread to a cramped heap on the corner of the table. Stephen browsed through the offerings with an intense interest that would have been perfectly convincing, if not for his habit of moving on to the next trinket while P.K. was still only halfway through his pitch.
Normally this had the perk of making it easy for P.K. to steer the host away from any troublesome items that had somehow crept into the shipment. Today, though, Stephen caught sight of the gloss of light on fine china, and before P.K. could be distracting he had lifted one of the dishes to get a better look at its markings.
"Wedding gifts?" he guessed, tilting the plate with what might have been actual care, instead of just a remarkable facsimile. "Yes, I see, with the rings...but what are these little arrows doing here?" He squinted at the interlocking signs, then let out a theatrical gasp. "P.K.! Are these gay symbols?"
"In a manner of speaking," hedged P.K., inching towards him. "Now that it looks like same-sex marriage is going to be rolled out in California, there's going to be a lot of couples in need of quality wedding furnishings at affordable prices. Speaking of affordable prices, have you taken a look at my—"
Stephen didn't so much as glance at the coasters P.K. was trying to steer him towards. "But didn't black people vote en masse against letting the gays have weddings at all? I mean, I don't see race, but that's what the news told me."
"We-ell, you might say that," admitted P.K., retrieving the plate with a suppressed breath of relief and nestling it gently back in its foam setting. "But, Stephen, the way I see it, that line of logic just means the mainstream wedding planners are going to be overlooking a key niche market: black people who are also gay."
"Clever!" exclaimed Stephen, his disdain for homosexuality briefly overridden by his respect for capitalism. "You will sell to the white gays too, though, right?" he added hastily. "I mean, I wouldn't want to think you were discriminating."
"Oh, naturally." P.K. waved a magnanimous hand at his display. "So if you're ever making any plans that we could help with, please consider—"
Stephen's eyebrows whipped into place. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Hm? Oh, nothing in—"
"Because I'm not gay!" continued Stephen. "How could I be gay? I'm Catholic."
"That's actually another niche market," offered P.K., half to himself. "Since your biggest retailers often won't sell to them at all...."
"Well, maybe that's just one more reason for them to give it up!" snapped Stephen, eyes wide. "Why would you try to make that work in the first place, huh? Trying to associate with a group that half the time doesn't treat you as human, just because they happen to share some of your most cherished and deeply held beliefs?"
It could have been any one of his everyday rhetorical ravings, until he fixed his wild stare on P.K. and fell into an almost expectant silence.
"Stephen," said P.K., pasting his most blankly dazzling grin across his own complexion, "I have no idea what you're talking about. Shall we move on to the coasters?"
†
Five: He didn't.
"It's not that I'm questioning You," insisted Stephen. "I know You're perfect and all-knowing and so on, although, really, Lord, penguins? Why did You bother giving them wings, if they're not meant to be breaded and deep-fried?"
He frowned disapprovingly at one of the stained-glass figures that towered over the empty sanctuary. Saint Jerome's features glowed with beatific peace, or possibly crushing boredom. Stephen had gotten very good at ignoring the difference.
"But that's not the point," he continued, waving away a succession of distractingly delectable mental images. Probably should have had lunch before coming. He could always break into the communion wafers, but last time he had tried that a nun had caught him in the act, and that hadn't gone over well. "The point is — the point is Jon.
"Not you," he added, jabbing a finger at a brightly colored John the Baptist. (Speaking of which, he could really go for some locusts and honey right about...shake it off, Col-bert!)
"I know I'm supposed to resist," admitted Stephen. He began to pace a ragged circle around the center aisle, his shadow cutting through the patches of luminous rainbow that flowed across the carpet. "And I'm trying. I'm trying so hard, Lord, You know I am — almost every week, these days. But every time, a few days later, I'm back in his office."
He knew he wouldn't have to explain the details to God. There was the omniscience thing, for starters. On top of that, even if the Lord did look the other way sometimes, Stephen could hardly expect Him not to take notice when you were shouting His name in the throes of ecstasy — along with the names of His son, His girlfriend, and quite a few of His prophets, sometimes all the way down to Habakkuk. (Blasphemous though it was, Stephen privately felt that Habakkuk ought to be at least a little bit grateful. For once he wouldn't be left out of the "hey, you'll never guess who took my name in vain this week!" talk at the Heavenly water cooler.)
"He keeps saying it's okay," he said instead, and was overcome with a wave of such dizziness that he barely made it to a pew, sinking onto the polished wood in the middle of a pool of color.
"He says it every time," repeated Stephen weakly, "and he acts like he means it, but how would he know? He's Jewish. And not the good kind of Jewish, the kind that follows all Your old rules because they don't know any better. He eats bacon cheeseburgers on Passover, Lord! But he keeps saying the same thing, like he's sure. And it sounds so sweet. That's how temptation always sounds, isn't it?"
He realized dimly that he had folded his hands at some point. The childhood instinct had asserted itself so quietly, he hadn't even noticed.
"I need help," he croaked, the words heavy and stale on his tongue, as he gazed at the arching wings of a stained-glass angel. "I know I'm not supposed to do that either, but I can't find my bootstraps. I don't even really know what bootstraps are, if you want the truth. And I want to stop failing like this. Help me stop breaking Your rules. Help me be good. P-please."
The halo around the angelic figure grew brighter, as if a cloud had passed away to uncover the sun shining through it.
Which was nothing unusual in itself, except that it didn't stop.
Stephen squinched his eyes shut, then threw an arm across his face, to no avail. Awash in the glory now pouring over him, he felt as if the sun itself had been a cloud all along, which had finally moved aside to reveal something of even more impossible brilliance.
"Sorry about that," said the angel. "I always forget how much less light there is down here."
...and a quarter:
Once the angel had ratcheted down the brightness to a non-blinding level, the human peeked over the edge of the pew in front of him and stared up at her, overflowing with fear and awe.
"Be not afraid," she sang, infusing the words with comfort straight from the Source. This was the best part of being a messenger: acting as a conduit for the joy and love of her Creator. "I bring you a message, on behalf of One who is greater than me."
Once she knew she had the human's attention, the angel began to recite, the LORD's verses ringing like bells from the glass and the timbers:
What seems wrong to you is right for him.
What is poison to one is honey to someone else.
Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,
These mean nothing to Me.
I am apart from all that.
Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better
or worse than one another.
It’s not I that’s glorified in acts of worship.
It’s the worshippers! I don’t hear the words
they say. I look inside at the humility.
That broken-open lowliness is the Reality,
not the language! Forget phraseology.
I want burning, burning.
Be Friends
with your burning. Burn up your thinking
and your forms of expression!
Stephen,
those who pay attention to ways of behaving
and speaking are one sort.
Lovers who burn
are another.
Okay, technically speaking they were Rumi's verses, which had made the poet awfully nervous when he found himself face-to-Face with the One from whose POV he had been writing. He needn't have worried: God liked the lines so much that, after a short negotiation, the entire heavenly host ended up licensed to use them. Even if they never sounded quite as good when not in the original Persian.
Translated or no, they were having the right effect. The lost lamb was glowing at her with pure adoration, held back only by the meekness that overcomes all creatures when they realize they are presuming to adore something whose metaphorical feet they are not worthy to sponge down.
"Ohmigosh," he squeaked, clinging to the pew to keep from falling. "I'm getting a private recital with Feist."
...and a half:
"I'm not Feist!" protested Feist. "I'm an angel of the Lord!"
"I know! That's what I thought the first time I heard you sing!"
Stephen's fear had drained away the instant Feist commanded it. Everything felt sort of floaty in its absence, although maybe that was just because she seemed to have chased away the rocks in his gut as well.
"Are those lyrics new?" he continued, still cowering behind the wooden bench, but more out of respect for Newton's first law of motion than existential terror for his soul. "Is this a sneak preview of your next hit album? Am I the first one to hear them?"
"You are not the first by far," said Feist, sounding a little testy. "They were composed by Rumi."
"Who's Roomy?"
"A thirteenth-century Persian mystic who—"
"Oh, Iran," said Stephen, nodding wisely. "I thought it sounded awfully tweetable."
"Did you even listen?" blurted the angelic figure. "They were a message! For you! Personally!"
"You just said they were from the thirteenth century," protested Stephen. "Your words, ma'am! Was this Roomy a time traveler? Or very, very old?"
"No, but—"
"Then they couldn't have been for me. Therefore, any eerie relevance they may have had to any theophilosophical predicaments I may or may not find myself in is purely coincidental."
Feist drifted softly downwards. (She had, Stephen realized, been several feet off the floor. That was a neat trick. He'd have to ask how she pulled it off.)
"You want new words?" she said, shaking her head. "You really have no idea how absurd that request is, do you? For the One who knows every sparrow in the air and every hair on your head, how can you imagine that the Lord would not know every sorrow in your heart and have found the words to soothe them, a hundred or a thousand or a million years before?"
Stephen's head was spinning. Partly with the figures (the world wasn't a million years old!...was it?), and partly with the idea of..."But it can't be that easy."
"What can't?"
"Everything!" exclaimed Stephen frantically. What good was it being an angel if you didn't get divine revelations to explain these things? "You make it sound like I should roll over and accept this — this compulsion of mine. That's not how it works! We are fallen creatures, and our spiritual life is a warfare. Sin is the deliberate, willful refusal to struggle. The last thing I need is to cut and run!"
The huge feathery wings spread out again, far broader up close than Stephen had guessed. He cringed and clung to the pew out of pure instinct, certain that one good flap would send him whirling away to God knew where.
"I think you might be getting new words," whispered Feist.
Her towering figure cast deep shadows until she started glowing again, bathing Stephen in light:
If the sparrows are perfectly designed for My purposes,
then why should you be any less so?
If I wanted you to fly, I would have given you wings.
I wanted you to love, so I gave you a heart.
It's a gift!
Can't you see that?
Quit trying to give it back!
...and three quarters:
The pigeons scattered in a flurry of dust and squawking and inefficient heavy flaps as the door banged open and the visitor pounded across the roof.
With a reluctant sigh Jon moved to get up from the ledge, half-crumbled baguette still in his hands. It slipped from his grasp as Stephen dropped to the ground, no doubt ruining the knees of those nice pants on the crumb-covered cement, and pulled him into an embrace, mouth pressed warmly against his.
Jon relaxed as long as he dared, feeling the pound of Stephen's heart through his sweatshirt and tasting salt and sweat in the kiss, before tipping his head away and cupping Stephen's chin to hold him steady. Something must be wrong; Stephen had always refused to let them so much as hold hands in the open air, lest the military or Google be watching. "Are you okay? Did something happen?"
Stephen trembled in his grasp — laughing, Jon realized, in what could only have been hysteria, because he had never seen Stephen laugh like this out of pure delight. "So much happened," he echoed, grinning from ear to ear. "Everything's different — everything I thought — it's burning, all of it, burned up—"
"Stephen, slow down, you're not making sense," urged Jon, trying to remember if he had heard sirens in the past twenty minutes. "What's on fire? Is it the studio? Have you called 911?"
"Nothing's on fire." Another bright giggle. "Jon, you don't understand — it's okay. Everything is. This...." One of his hands curled over the back of Jon's shoulder, not rough but unmistakably possessive. "...and all the rest of it. I love you, and it's okay."
"Is that all?"
Stephen's smile froze in place. "What do you mean, 'all'?"
Jon let out the breath he hadn't known he was holding. "For god's sake, babe, don't scare me like that!" he exclaimed, squeezing Stephen in another hug, this time out of pure relief. "You had me going there, imagining buildings in ashes and people being wheeled out on stretchers. What do you want to do, give me a heart attack?"
"Of course not!" sputtered Stephen, wriggling and squirming until his voice wasn't muffled against Jon's shoulder. "I don't want anything bad to happen to you! You're the man I love. The man. I love."
"I heard, I heard." Jon loosed his grip, leaving enough slack to get a full view of Stephen's insistent pout, though his fingers remained linked around Stephen's shoulders. "Welcome to the world of people who are comfortable with their sexuality. It's not the kind of revelation where the heavens open up and it gets heralded with trumpets, you know? For the most part it's exactly the same as it was before, except that you grit your teeth less."
Stephen slumped. "It's a big deal to me," he muttered. "There were some heavens-opening. And maybe it wasn't the full angelic choir, but I did get a soloist. With a great voice."
Leaning over, Jon dropped a quick kiss on his temple. "I'm sorry, Stephen. I'm sure from where you're standing it was earth-shaking. Are you ready to start telling other people, you think?"
"Maybe not this second," said Stephen after a beat. He glanced to either side, enough to glimpse a couple of the pigeons strutting the edge of a wobbly circle around them: too cautious to risk getting closer to the stranger without a peace offering, preferably in the form of baked goods. "Maybe I could just stay up here for a while and help you feed your pigeons. Would they like that?"
Jon brushed a stray curl out of Stephen's face, then patted the bare ledge beside him. "As long as you keep the bread coming, they won't care about much else."
"Birds are stupid," observed Stephen with smug satisfaction, taking the seat and making a halfhearted effort to brush off his knees.
"Pretty much," agreed Jon, handing him the baguette. "By the way, for the record? I love you too."