tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us
"This has to stop," Jason says when he comes in, but he pushes Peter against the locked door all the same, pressing wet kisses at the corner of his mouth, down his neck, across his collarbone. Peter leans his head back, and lets him. Jason's hair is fluffed, bleached even blonder by the unforgiving sun, and still warm to the touch. He thinks, madly, wrongly, that him having Jason is no less a miracle than the burning bush, and goes red at the thought, does not voice it.
This does not happen often.
Jason may stare as he works whenever he thinks Peter isn't looking, casting oblique glances out of the corners of his eyes, but he rarely lets himself actually reach out and touch. Peter would have let him all the time, for lately whenever he looks at Jason, he sees, in his mind's eye, his head tossed back in pleasure, spread out in Peter's bed.
"I couldn't think," he hisses, roughly, as though the words were catching in his throat, "all that time, I couldn't think of anything but you," and to say that Peter is surprised would be somewhat akin to suggesting that the other disciples had been a little displeased with Judas, that the merchants at the marketplace might not have been too fond of Jesus. For often after they are done, Jason lies still, avoiding his eyes, choosing to stare up at the ceiling instead, while Peter stares at him, wondering, doubting, and feeling the words catch in his own throat, for he could not bear the answer.
If he is so easily replaceable, if it does not much matter to Jason who warms his bed, then Peter would rather not know it. Still, the thought remains. Jason's words do not seem quite real, but that is not an uncommon thing: sometimes when Jason kisses him, Peter still waits for the punch-line, for the others to appear and jeer. He knows, deep down, that Jason would never betray him thus, but it makes no difference. Even the original Peter doubted, and his trust was laid upon one far less fallible.
"I – " he begins, in agreement, but his breaths are shallow, and he still can't think, Jason warm against him, finally. He feels drunk, lethargic as though it were still high summer, though it is already cold enough for his grandmother's sweaters.
"What have you done to me?" he hears, and feels his belt being unlatched, the metal of the buckle cold against his skin, hears the zip being pulled down.
Jason huffs against his mouth, pulling away slightly. "We don't have to be in uniform until tomorrow, for God's sake, Peter, why?" he asks indignantly, and Peter can't help the smile, for this at least is normal, and grounds him in the face of Jason's strange behaviour. Jason's hand slips beneath his underwear and his fingers wrap around Peter's cock, and surely the first question applies more to himself, he thinks, arching up into Jason's hand, leaning forward to catch his mouth.
Then Jason moves his fingers, and Peter forgets to think, lost in the touch, the taste of him, all fresh mint and sugar, heartstoppingly familiar.
They have been separated all summer, so it certainly doesn't take very long at all for Peter to collapse against the wall, panting. Jason pulls back, his mouth moving uncertainly as though he were trying to purse it and smile at the same time. He says, "I mean it. It has to – we have – I can't –" He squeezes his eyes shut, rubs a hand over his face, and says, helplessly, like a prayer, "Peter, Peter."
Peter's hand moves to touch him on instinct, stopping hesitatingly in the space between them. He opens his mouth, closes it, and says at last, "We don't have to think about that now."
At once, Jason snaps, "You say that all the time! It's just getting worse. For God's sake, don't you understand – " he breaks off, looking a little sheepish.
And it is true, perhaps; Peter would prefer never to talk about it, for more and more he has come to think that he doesn't much mind, that if being with Jason brings him so much joy that he spends longer at his prayers, thanking God over and over for his luck, then perhaps God may not mind either. Certainly if it continues thus, he could never lose his faith in His goodness.
But Jason would not understand that.
Peter says, tone deliberately light, "There was that poem about Jesus sleeping with the centurion," and resolves to pray another rosary that night for forgiveness, for this blasphemy indeed.
But it works. The tension eases out of Jason, and he laughs despite himself. "I don't think," he says, "that Father Michael would agree with that interpretation."
"For the last time," Peter says, remembering, "I kissed his mouth," and he leans in to do so, again and again, giving the lie to his words, feeling Jason relax under him, twisting his tongue into his mouth.
After a while, Jason pulls away, laughing. "What next?" he asks, "Will you crucify me? Patiently and gladly this passionate and blissful cru – "
"Oh, shut up," Peter says by way of reply, and kisses him again, stepping forward so that he can manoeuvre Jason against a safer wall. He falls back with an oomph and a protest that is soon muffled when Peter sinks to his knees.
Jason looks stupefied, his mouth a little open, and Peter laughs, looking up at him through his eyelashes, and feels a smile curl at the edge of his mouth. He pops the button of Jason's jeans and fists his hand in them to drag them down to the floor, leans forward to mouth at the bulge he finds, feels it jump beneath his lips. "I laid my lips," he recites, "around the tip of that great cock, the instrument of our salvation."
Jason's head falls back with a breathy moan, his eyes fluttering shut, and Peter pulls his briefs down and does just as he has promised.
The opening line is from Richard Siken's poem Scheherezade.
The last few lines ('for the last time I kissed his mouth', 'I laid my lips around the tip of that great cock, the instrument of our salvation' and 'the passionate and blissful crucifixion same-sex lovers suffer, patiently and gladly') come from James Kirkup's The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name. When it was published, the editor of Gay News and the paper itself were taken to court by Mary Whitehouse, self-appointed media censor, and fined.