(A/N: First and foremost, I'd like to acknowledge that fact that no character from 7th Heaven belongs to me. They're all Brenda Hampton's and she can keep them. I'd also like to thank Hans from the 7H board at televisionwithoutpity.com for inspiring me to write this story with his challenge-- he asked if anyone could make a character from 7H real from a sexual standpoint; I took the challenge rather literally. I'd also like to thank everyone at the TwoP 7H board, who continue to help me look at the Camdens in new, surprising, and always hilarious ways. And Cate (of course) for her magnificent recaps! That said, on with the story . . .)
"Real Boy"
"...once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."
~Margery Williams
Sometimes, I think that deep down he hates me for what I do to him. The way I make him feel. I think some part of him hates the way his skin burns when I touch him, when I tear off the clothes that coddle and conceal.
But he's never complained. Never.
Those soft, full lips part and a breathy moan escapes from deep inside him. Smooth vanilla skin trembles, flushes at my touch. I let my own lips fall all over him, feeling, tasting what seems so forbidden. Sleek, youthful muscles war to come to the surface beneath his skin. I touch him, gently at first, and tangle my hands in his hair. We don't speak, but I know beneath the shivering pleasure of it all, he's wondering the same thing I am:
What would they think?
He could never take what they would think of him. His family would never be able to understand why he comes to me, his eyes so stark full of need. They seem so perfect, those Camdens. You know, from the outside, looking in. Almost like mannequins. Perfect little wind-me-up clockwork dolls, merrily, mechanically going about their everyday business, making a flawless family. A father, mother, all those happy children, so strong in their faith. But that can't be true. If it were, he wouldn't come to me.
I'm not someone they know, not really. They've seen me around before - the kid that helps him with his English homework, the boy who's always in the background. My face a little hazy. They can never seem to remember my name on the rare occasions when I come over to his house.
But I'm still there. I'm the one part of his normal, every day life that doesn't quite fit-the one part of the jigsaw that throws the rest of the puzzle off, in the smallest of ways.
Sure, he has his little adventures. I heard he's even managed to get drunk recently. But that's nothing compared to what I do to him, on those hot, sticky-summer restless nights, when he can feel it building inside him, shimmering and rumbling like heat lightening.
The fierce desire.
Not necessarily for me, or what I do to him. That may be part of it, but beneath the growling pleasure, the sparkling lust, all of it, is the hunger he feels. The hunger to find the one person who can make him different.
Different from the family he hangs pictures of cars on his walls for; different from the family he goes out with blonde, cookie-cutter girls in a rapid, meaningless succession for.
When I lick, taste, explore him, he's not who his parents tell him he should be. Not what the Bible tells him a man should be. Not what all those siblings expect.
He's just a teenaged boy, who, every now and again, sleeps with another teenaged boy. And in those burning, sweaty, sensuous moments he spends with me, whether he knows it or not, he becomes real. Teeth and lips and need, hormones raging and heart pounding, he is only himself, naked under the sheets and before my eyes. He hates it, but he wants it more then anything else he's ever wanted in his life. To be no one but himself.
Just Simon.