TWENTY THREE

 

Sunday morning, early. Hours before the service, when Judah could just be by himself. It was one of his favorite times, normally, though at the moment any free time that he managed to scrape together was simply time when he thought even more about Will, and about Stephen, than he normally did.

At least Isaac was there. Isaac, who had been as good as his word, who had helped Judah keep things neat and tidy and organized, who had taken so many of the things which Judah had been spending so much of his time on. He had much more time for the Ministry now, for helping, and he owned that all to Isaac.

Speaking of which …

“Judah? There’s someone here to see you.”

Judah glanced up, frowning, because there was a little bit of a smile on Isaac’s face that Judah didn’t quite know what to make of. It was like he knew something that Judah didn’t, and Judah supposed that was true.

It seemed like something that Isaac was almost excited about, though, which made much less sense. He frowned, trying to read the other man’s face, but he couldn’t get any more than that from him. Just a vague impression of pleased smugness.

“Bring them in,” Judah instructed, mystified. And when Isaac escorted a very angry, very scared looking Stephen into the room, that didn’t actually clear much of anything up for him. The poor boy looked like he was holding back tears, and Judah stood up and stepped out from behind his desk, far more worried than curious now.

“Stephen, what is it?” he said or started to. He only got the first few words out before Stephen was letting out a soft, muffled sob and flinging himself into Judah’s arms, clinging to him with deceptively strong arms as he burrowed his face into Judah’s chest.

Judah wasn’t used to being hugged. It wasn’t something that he had ever cultivated since his parents had hardly been the hugging type. And he tended to try to maintain more distance between himself and the people of his congregation than that. But on the other hand, he cared about this child, and he was pretty sure that he had never met anyone who was quite so in need of a hug as he was.

So he broke his own rules, and he hugged him back. He watched as Isaac gave him a slight smile and a nod before tactfully withdrawing. Judah still had no idea what that look had been about before, but it didn’t seem to matter so much anymore, not with Will’s son in his arms as he obviously struggled against his tears.

“What is it?” he asked again, trying to make his voice as gentle as he could. Whatever it was, it was big, because he knew very well that Stephen wasn’t prone to fits of drama. Some teenagers might be, but this boy had a good head on his shoulders.

“My dad has some guy at his place.” Stephen’s words weren’t muffled enough by Judah’s shoulder that he couldn’t hear them, and his heart felt like it had suddenly been pumped full of ice water instead of blood. Some guy. The same guy who had been meeting with Will at coffee houses? The same guy who had shown up at Will’s house and kissed him?

Judah would remember that some guy forever, and even though he wasn’t supposed to resent people, he was, it turned out, only human. He did resent this man, who had sent Judah’s fantasy world, where he and Will meant something, all tumbling to the ground.

Meanwhile, Stephen was looking at him, like he was expecting something. Judah shook his head, having no idea what it was, and that only seemed to frustrate the young man. Stephen flung himself away from Judah, sitting down in a chair instead to look up at him with eyes the same shade of honeyed amber as Will’s were.

“Don’t you care?” Stephen’s voice had been very angry, very determined, but now it just seemed lost, confused. Judah could relate to that just a little bit too much, although he didn’t really understand the question.

“Why do you think,” he asked very carefully, “that I would care?” Because he wasn’t willing to lie, and he wasn’t going to say that he didn’t care, because he most definitely did. Even though they were broken up, and even though it was Judah who had finally done the walking away, he cared more than he even knew how to express.

“I thought you loved him.”

Stephen words entered through Judah’s ears, stabbing into his brain and along his nerves, right down to his heart. They pricked at his lungs and choked him, those five simple, innocent words which tore all pretense away.

“Stephen …” Judah started, without really knowing what he was going to say next, but as it turned out, it didn’t much matter, because Stephen cut him off before he could even say anything else.

“You were seeing him, right?” Stephen demanded, not so much a question as a statement.

“How did you …” Judah started again, and Stephen gave a strange little smirk, one that made him look so much like Will for a second that his heart clenched.

“I’m not stupid. I saw the way that you guys looked at each other. I was just waiting for you to tell me,” Stephen explained, and Judah shook his head, utterly amazed. This whole time, he had been so certain that Stephen knew about none of this. Had even worried that Stephen would be furious if he found out.

“It’s complicated,” Judah tried to explain, but Stephen, with a look of impatience quite unlike the normal expression, let out an annoyed little hiss.

“It’s not complicated,” Stephen informed him, in the sort of know-it-all tone that Judah, and probably also every parent in the world, associated with being the particularly obnoxious one that could only truly be achieved by a teenager. “You love him. He loves you. So why are you letting him be with some jackass who claims to be my father?”

“… Wait, what?” Judah asked stupidly. He’d somehow missed that part before. Or perhaps Stephen just hadn’t said the words before. Of course, Judah knew who Jack was, but he didn’t know that Stephen knew.

“He’s not my father. And I don’t see why you can’t just be with him,” Stephen told him, a look of sheer determination on his face that Judah had seen elsewhere far too many times. Yes, this was Will’s son, that much was very clear.

“It is complicated,” Judah insisted. “I’m a minister, Stephen. I’m not exactly free to just do what I want here. Your father is a man.”

“Well duh,” Stephen said, with a roll of his eyes that was truly impressive in its ability to show scorn. “But who gives a shit?”

“Stephen!” Judah responded, shocked. The number of people who felt open to swear around him was so small as to approach zero, and none of them were children.

“It’s not complicated. You know Ruby’s parents, right? Well, they might as well be her parents. Isaac and Ben. No one gives a rat’s ass that they’re married. And there’s Gunner and Sam, too. Do you really think that the town that accepts them is going to have any problem accepting you and my dad?”

The kid had a point, but Judah shook his head. It couldn’t possibly be that easy. Stephen was just a kid. He didn’t understand the way that the world worked. He hadn’t even been raised in a religious household, and he couldn’t know the pressures that Judah had gone through.

“It’s not just that. The church …”

Stephen gave a soft noise, almost a growl, as he rose to his feet. His eyes blazed as he glared suddenly at Judah, and his arms crossed defensively over his slender chest. His whole body seemed to radiate self-righteous indignation, and Judah just stared in wonder.

He had never even come close to suspecting that calm, sweet Stephen would have this sort of side to him.

“Look, there’s just one question that you need to ask yourself. Is it worth it? Is being with my dad and me worth whatever happens because of it? Because if not, then yeah, just back off so that he can get over you. But if it is, then what else matters?”

Which was an overly romantic and simplistic way of looking at the world, or so Judah would have always thought. He had worked hard, through many years of school, to get to where he was. Not to mention, he couldn’t help but hear his parents’ voices in his ear, and he had never fully managed to break free of that. His love of his job, his work, his calling, was genuine, but would he have been quite as willing to listen to that call if not for the pressure to be at least accepted, if not approved of, by his family?

Stephen was searching his face, and Judah was dimly aware of it, but he was lost in his own thoughts. It wasn’t really fair of the young man to put this on him, and yet, at the same time, he couldn’t help but see Stephen’s point.

“Your dad won’t …” Judah started, but Stephen shook his head, and the words died on Judah’s tongue.

“My dad loves you, and you’re making excuses,” Stephen informed him firmly, as though he were the older one. This boy was wiser than his years, it seemed, but that didn’t mean he knew anything about Judah’s situation.

Or did he?

“I’m going to go. You have a church service to get ready for,” Stephen told him, and his eyes were strangely significant, meaningful, as he met Judah’s gaze for just a moment before pulling away, turning to the door and disappearing through it.

Stephen was right. About so many things, not the least of which was the last thing that he had said. Judah did have a church service to get ready for, and he had a feeling that it was going to be a very interesting service indeed.

As long as he didn’t pass out with nervousness before, he thought.

 

* * *

 

As they got closer and closer to Christmas, the church was getting more and more well attended. Or maybe it was just that Judah’s words, his actions, had borne fruit. He had tried to make it clear that this was a place that was safe for everyone to come and worship, and to engage in all the benefits of being in the church. The society, the fellowship, the friends.

So it was a rather large crowd which Judah faced as he stood in front of all of them, his nerves gnawing at the pit of his stomach as he wished that he hadn’t been quite as effective. Everyone was still taking their seats, a roiling mass of humanity that matched the turmoil in the center of Judah’s body perfectly.

The room was full, and Judah saw people that he didn’t even recognize, as well as some that he did. It seemed like they had most of the queer community for miles around in attendance, with varying levels of comfort with the whole thing. Those who had been around for a while seemed calm and cheerful, whereas the newer people had a bit of a furtive quality to their movements, as though they couldn’t quite believe what they had heard.

After today, Judah knew that people were going to be a lot more clear on his own stance toward those matters.

The organ music swelled, and then came to a stop, the last notes echoing in the air. With a lurch, a fearful clutching of his heart, Judah realized that the time had come. But he didn’t have to do this, did he?

It wasn’t like Will would know if he did. It wasn’t like this was somehow magically going to get Will back. No one would ever know what he’d had planned, and he could just go ahead with the regular service that he had planned. What was he even trying to prove with this, anyway?

But then his eyes fell unerringly on Stephen, who was looking at him. And despite their conversation earlier, Stephen was looking at him like he fully expected Judah to do the right thing. Like he hadn’t quite given up on Judah, and it was then that he realized that it didn’t matter that Will wouldn’t hear it.

The LGBT people of this area, they would hear it. The children who were already probably questioning themselves about this sort of thing, they would hear it. And, most importantly, Stephen would hear it. He would do a lot more than this for that child, he realized, as his stomach firmed up and his body, which had been braced almost like he might just run away, relaxed.

Almost without paying attention, Judah ran through the first parts of the service, the ones that he was pretty sure he could do in his sleep. The ritual of it should have calmed him, but it didn’t do anything to touch his nerves this time.

As Judah gazed out at the crowd, at his congregation, at the people who trusted him, he barely saw them. He didn’t notice individual faces, except for Stephen’s, who sat very close to the front. He was sitting with Ruby’s family, with Ben and Isaac, and with Jesse and his parents, who didn’t seem to have any problem at all with the seating arrangements, despite the fact that Ben and Isaac were not even trying to pretend that they weren’t together.

This really was an accepting town. He could never have expected that, but in this case, Ben and Isaac and Sam and Gunner had gone before him, had blazed a trail. He only needed to follow their lead, and the rest was just details, just as Stephen had said.

“It’s good to see so many new faces,” Judah told them, and he could swear that he could almost hear his heartbeat echoing even in his words. “You are all welcome.”

And he meant it, but how to make that very, very clear? But really, he knew the answer to that question. No half measure was going to go over here. He needed to put it all on the line, to be vulnerable and open to these people as they had allowed themselves to be with him.

“There’s something that I have to tell you all,” he said aloud, and his voice changed, became confiding, talking to them all as a person just as they were people, not as their pastor. “Because I don’t think I deserve your honesty if I haven’t been honest with you first.”

He looked away from Stephen, from Ben and Isaac, but out of the corner of his eye he saw that they were all sitting forward, all with these curiously intense looks on their faces. None of them, he noticed, seemed exactly surprised, but they were all very definitely paying attention.

Of course, they all knew his secret already.

“I’m gay,” he finally said the words out loud, the words that he had denied, even to himself, for so long. “And I should have said it sooner. I was afraid, and I say this not as an excuse, just as an explanation. I can only ask for your compassion and your understanding, because I was so terrified that anyone would find out. I think there are people listening to me speak who can understand why I would lie about that.”

Ben was nodding slightly, Isaac more emphatically. Stephen was watching, his eyes shining now, and Judah would have done a lot more than just say those words to see that look on the young man’s face. To know that he had made him proud of him.

Oddly, Jesse was also nodding, just the tiniest bit, and all of a sudden something made sense to Judah that hadn’t before. From time to time, as Ruby and Stephen chattered and laughed and lightly flirted with each other, Jesse had been there, in the background, watching with this curiously intense look on his face.

Judah could remember those feelings, at least a little bit, and his heart went out to the poor kid. In love with his best friend, with that fierce, intense love that only could happen when it was all so new.

“Some of you may not be comfortable with me anymore, and if that’s the case, it saddens me. But during my time in this community, I’ve come to realize that you are all some of the most friendly, welcoming people I’ve ever encountered, the epitome of southern hospitality. So I hope that you will still accept me now.”

There was movement at the back, and had been for a while, Judah realized. As he looked out at the sea of faces, some shocked, some interested, some hopeful, and some, remarkably, actually bored, as though what he had said was no big deal, he saw a man in the very back get to his feet.

It was a man that he would have known anywhere. The slender, toned body, the dark hair and dramatically light skin in comparison, the whiskey eyes, even the set of his shoulders and the grace of his movements.

Before his brain could catch up with what his heart already knew, Will was walking up between the rows and rows of pews, and slowly, people were turning to look at him instead of at Judah. Those people, who had been quite blasé about Judah’s big announcement, the one which he had always assumed would be a huge deal if he ever said it, seemed honestly more interested in the fact that Will was in the church.

Which honestly was fair enough. Will had never been in a church service before, not for years and years, at least, and never here. He had never been particularly shy, either, about letting people know that he intended to keep right on with that being the case.

So why was Will here? Why, of all of the services that he could have attended, had he come to the one where Judah had decided to come out to the whole congregation, to not only their own small town but people from small towns all through the county?

Will moved deliberately, not slowly, almost rushing. Which was more than a little bit strange to see from the man, who usually prided himself on keeping himself so together. His handsome face, almost too pretty for a man, was a blur of emotion that Judah simply wasn’t used to seeing as he mounted the short flight of stairs that led toward the altar and the pulpit.

Judah had no idea what to expect. Would Will yell at him? Would he be angry, as he had every right to be, at Judah for just giving up, walking away, letting Jack have him? Or was he just going to tell Judah that it was too late, that he was happy with Jack and that Judah shouldn’t expect this to change anything?

His mind whirled, but he went to meet Will, his head high. Whatever it was, he would meet it head on, and he would accept what he had earned. He hardly deserved any better.

All eyes were on them, but that wasn’t what bugged Judah at all. If anyone was judging him, they were doing a good job of keeping it to themselves. No, his concern was the man who crossed to meet him, who suddenly seized his shoulders, who pulled him closer and right there, in front of God and anyone else who cared to watch …

… Will kissed him.