AN: This is a sequel to my previous Book of Mormon story "Sanctuary," which I'd probably recommend reading before this. I own nothing, and reviews are always greatly appreciated.
Chapter One
Connor McKinley had been living at Kevin Price's apartment in Berkeley for quite some time now, and for the most part, it had been a rather seamless transition. Kevin's college friends, a few of whom with he also resided, had had virtually no issue with accepting him into their circle, since Connor was generally very well-mannered and organized and diligent. He even took it upon himself to micromanage all the household expenses and bills, as well as the delegation of chores and meal preparations, and he always made sure that the kitchen was stocked with proper supplies and never ran out of food for too long. As Kevin was already well aware of from mission, Connor was essentially a complete control freak, but he went about being one so enthusiastically and smilingly that nobody really minded.
In general, Connor had developed a system for nearly everything. It was one of the – he liked to think, many – reasons why he'd been chosen for district leader during his mission over other similarly qualified candidates. If you handed him almost any sort of mess or disorder, you could pretty much count on him to have it sorted, categorized, and alphabetized within a few hours, tops. He planned out which outfits he would wear at least a week in advance, he knew which meals he was going to eat each day, and he recorded of all his daily events in a hot pink planner and made friendly little Post-It notes to remind himself of them.
He didn't always stick to his systems. Sometimes, for instance, he would add a lively splash of color or a glittery bedazzlement to his daily attire just to feel spontaneous. And he was a lot less stringent about adhering to his systems after leaving the LDS church. But for the most part, having some sort of routine gave him a sense of peace, a feeling that he could at least control something in his life, which had become a lot more nebulous and uncertain nowadays.
He never expressed it out loud to anyone, not even Kevin, but he missed being in college. Before he dropped out he had been pursuing a degree in accounting, largely to appease his parents who considered it to be a respectable degree for a young Mormon boy, although his heart had never been truly in it. Mostly he missed the sense of security that the prospect of a degree afforded him, and he no longer had much of that.
So when Kevin and his friends discussed academics around the dinner table and commiserated over draconian professors and brutal midterms, he couldn't help but be slightly envious of these bright young people who knew what they wanted and, moreover, knew exactly how they were going to attain it. He had been in their position once, with clear-cut futures brimming with optimism, the graces of fortune shining behind their every word and gesture. Now...Connor wasn't even sure what he wanted out of life, much less how he was going to go about accomplishing any of it.
He did know that he desperately needed to make some money, so he went out with his determined face on and eventually landed a retail job at a local department store, as well as a weekend job waiting tables. In what spare time he had, he practiced dance and learned yoga and tai chi, which helped clear his mind of the multitude of stressors that accompanied his work. Occasionally he received offers to teach dance classes at an elementary school in a low-income neighborhood nearby, and that was when Connor finally discovered what his calling was in life.
"A dance instructor. I love dancing, I love children, and I love teaching. It's perfect."
"Then you should go for it," Kevin said.
Connor sighed, the light in his blue eyes dimming slightly. "Without a college degree? I doubt it."
"It can still happen. You can go back to school and get your BFA."
"I couldn't afford it, unless I happen to stumble into a sudden windfall of money, or my parents forgive me for being gay. Guess which one is more likely to happen?"
It was one of the only times since he'd begun staying there that Connor had mentioned his parents, or had that hard edge of bitterness to his voice. Kevin frowned, and the subject was thereafter dropped. Still, it was one matter that Kevin put in the back of his mind for future deliberation. Connor deserved to have a shot at his dream, and one way or another, Kevin was going to make sure he got it. He just had to think of a way.
On the bright side, Connor was gradually becoming more comfortable with being out. He hadn't yet reached the point of entering an actual relationship with anyone (the idea of which was still semi-terrifying to him), but he managed to flirt awkwardly with a boy he'd met a few times at work, and that he considered to be a pretty good milestone.
Mainly he was just happy that he could wear pink and sequins any time he wanted without people reproving him for it, and he learned to ignore the inevitable stares he sometimes got in public. Once at the supermarket he'd overheard some girl playfully informing her boyfriend that real men weren't afraid to wear pink. She then had winked at Connor, in a gesture of spiritual camaraderie.
One of Kevin's friends, Benjamin something, who was the president of the QSA at UC Berkeley, was very enthusiastic about helping Connor ease into the queer community there. "You should come talk to us at our next meeting!" he said to Connor, after Kevin introduced them. "I'm sure that many people there would be interested in hearing your story."
So Connor accepted the invitation and went, with no little trepidation. He had never done anything like this before, and he didn't know what to expect. He ended up dragging Kevin along with him, mostly so he'd have someone on standby if he happened to have a nervous breakdown and collapsed on the spot. Kevin thought the chance of this happening was highly unlikely, but Connor tended to get very insistent when he was anxious. At any rate, Connor seemed like he could probably use the moral support.
Connor didn't break down after all. In fact he was quite solemn when he got up to speak in front of everyone, looking somewhat small and unexceptional with his shoulders slightly hunched, his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his jeans. Yet when he talked, his words were terse but poignant, every line resonating with significance and astonishingly free of self-pity or regret. He briefly recounted having his first crush in fifth grade, repressing his homosexuality for years under the church doctrine, his experiences in Uganda during his mission, being literally thrown out of his own home and disowned by his family, and struggling to reconcile what was left of his faith with his identity as a gay man. At the end they all clapped and said very kind things and Connor cried a little, because he had never put most of those feelings into words before. And even though he had already managed to convince himself, it was nice to be reassured that he wasn't a bad person, and that it was possible to believe in a God that didn't hate him.
Benjamin then broke them all up into small group discussions, which appeared to go swimmingly until Connor realized...he had almost no idea what any of them were talking about. While he vaguely felt that he might agree with the overall sentiment of what people were saying, the majority of the terminology sailed right over his head. For the rest of the hour he put on his best Mormon missionary smile and tried to nod along and pretend like he wasn't totally lost.
"Don't worry, you'll catch on soon enough," Benjamin told him sympathetically after Connor pleadingly asked him after the meeting to explain what LGBTQ stood for, and what "intersectionality" meant, and a whole score of other questions that Connor had been too intimidated to raise during the discussions. He then asked Connor to elucidate a few tenets of the LDS dogma for him, probably so Connor wouldn't have to feel like a complete idiot.
After that, Connor spent several nights poring over pamphlets, texts, and primers he had obtained from the meeting, frantically trying to catch up on decades' worth of queer criticism and history, as well as giving himself a crash course in modern feminism. It was an eye-opening experience.
"I should just wear a sign over my chest saying, 'Gay, ignorant, recently closeted ex-Mormon. Speak slowly and use small words when addressing.'"
"Everyone has to start somewhere," Kevin said, yawning. "Here, I'll do some of your reading if you can make sense of this stats problem set for me."
Connor was pretty good with numbers, which tended to be straightforward and logical and impossible to offend. So he accepted this exchange gratefully.
Nevertheless, it was pleasant to know that there was a vast community of people out there who had undergone experiences similar to his, and with whom he could talk about intensely personal matters. As understanding as Kevin was, when he wanted to be, it was sometimes hard for Connor to discuss certain things with someone he used to have very vivid sex dreams about. And still occasionally did, if he were to be perfectly honest with himself.
Eventually Connor even started incorporating more flashy rainbow themes into his regular attire. He always wanted the excuse, anyway.
Kevin already had his whole life mapped out for at least the next fifteen years. He was going to graduate at the head of his class as the University Medalist, attend medical school at either Harvard or Stanford and score top honors, do a residency in internal medicine and a subspecialty in infectious disease, and conduct humanitarian work overseas with MSF for a few years. And that was just the bare skeleton of his ambitions.
"So you're going to be insanely sleep-deprived for another decade, is what I'm hearing here," Connor remarked, after Kevin finished telling him his plan. Kevin, bless his heart, had even produced a twenty-page hard copy of it, complete with needlessly complicated flow charts and Venn diagrams. There were extensive footnotes.
"Basically," Kevin agreed. "Just FYI, we're going to need to stock up on coffee and Red Bull."
"Is there going to be room in your great plan for anybody else?" Connor asked lightly, while flipping through the pages.
"What do you mean?"
"Oh you know, a special someone..."
"Haven't you been listening to anything I've been saying? My career comes first, everything else is secondary. Anyway, see, I already wrote it right here towards the end – 'get married to somebody awesome and start a family before I'm fifty.'"
Connor glanced at the line in question. "You wrote that over a picture of Mila Kunis."
"It's a placeholder."
"Right..."
The truth was, Kevin was getting a bit tired of the local dating scene. Half the people he met seemed to hate his guts for being That Pre-Med his first year – the kind who highlighted his notes in three colors, stayed after every lecture to interrogate the professor, attended every office hours (even ones by appointment), and considerably jacked up the curve on exams. He had, to his credit, mellowed out over time and become much less competitive, but his reputation as a cutthroat had never completely receded despite his sincerest efforts. As for the other half, he wasn't having much luck finding people with compatible interests. Maybe because these tended to be the people who only liked him for rather shallow reasons, and became bored whenever he tried to engage in actual conversation with them.
Connor seemed to find this amusing. Connor usually seemed to find Kevin's suffering amusing, for some reason.
"It reminds me that you're human," Connor explained, when Kevin pointed this out one day.
Kevin frowned. "I'm not sure whether to interpret that as a compliment or an insult."
"Since your ego is currently in tatters, I'll let you have it as a compliment. Out of the goodness of my heart."
Kevin had noticed Connor's sassiness had gone up exponentially since he started living there with him. But it meant that Connor was happier, so he let it slide.
He rarely ever admitted this, but Kevin was rather glad for Connor's current presence in his life. In part it was a nostalgia thing, due to the bond they shared from undergoing the joys and ordeals of their mission together. His time in Uganda seemed so remote now, an aberrant interlude in a life otherwise filled with privilege and complacency. He wanted to remember that experience and hold onto it, as a reminder of the person he had become, and of what he was working for as a future physician. And it was something he could never really talk to any of his college friends about, because none of them could understand without having been there. He thought maybe Connor felt the same way, because neither of them had left Uganda without being radically transformed.
Another reason was that their friendship was possibly the only thing keeping him sane nowadays. Kevin was currently president of the Pre-Medical Honor Society and captain of the cross-country team, as well as an active member of eight other student organizations. And when he wasn't busy with all that and studying, he was helping to run a free clinic in the area that frequently demanded his undivided care and attention. It used to be that he could juggle all these activities almost effortlessly, but over time his commitments had been incrementally piling up, and the competition in his classes was intensifying to the point where he was starting to have serious doubts about fulfilling any of his ambitions. What was more, he'd secretly begun taking sleeping pills to alleviate his moderate insomnia.
When Connor found out, he made Kevin drop some of his extracurriculars and lighten his course load for the semester, and he severely restricted Kevin's caffeine intake.
"Also, you are going swing dancing with me on Friday nights. I don't care how much studying you have to do, you are going to have some fun for once."
"Okay, Mom," Kevin said resignedly, because there was no arguing with Connor when he used that tone of voice. Connor had been trying to get Kevin to go dancing with him for months, and Kevin suspected Connor was at least a little bit delighted to finally have a way to coerce him into going.
Sometimes, in those moments when he was too exhausted to stop unwanted thoughts from creeping into his mind, Kevin pondered whether there should be something more to their relationship at this point. Certainly there were starting to be rumors, rumors that he frequently denied, and some of his friends had taken to calling him "Mr. McKinley" in jest when Connor wasn't around, to Kevin's chagrin. He knew that Connor had been in love with him, once, which was a subject they had never really broached again, because Connor had been close to tears when he'd confessed it. And after all, maybe it had just been a matter of circumstance – the lonely crush of a boy latching onto one of the few people around who knew and accepted him during his bitter struggle with coming out, and in an environment known to be hostile to people like him. But Connor was surrounded by plenty of accepting people now, and he had options that weren't open to him previously.
There was, for instance, that time Benjamin asked Kevin if it was alright for him to ask Connor out on a date.
Kevin was a bit taken aback by this. "I don't think I'm the one you should be asking here."
"Okay. I was just wondering if you two were..." He trailed off, but the implication was clear.
"We're not."
"Oh. Good." He smiled, and Kevin smiled back and wondered why he suddenly felt like going off to lie face-down in a ditch somewhere.
Connor said yes, and he and Benjamin started casually dating for a few weeks, at which point Kevin threw himself into aggressively studying for his MCAT. This conveniently entailed holing himself up in his room with over a dozen bricklike practice books and not seeing much of the outside world for several hours a day. He told himself he was happy for them, because they were two of his best friends, and that meant he would support them and be their best man at their fantastically flamboyant wedding and the godfather to their garishly dressed children. Kevin's imagination could get pretty carried away at times.
During this period Kevin received a phone call that brightened his mood considerably. It was from Arnold, and he and Nabulungi were going to visit them soon from Salt Lake City. So that at least gave him a reason to look forward to tomorrow, which was a philosophy that had somehow forsaken him over the years.