Kevin Price had not seen Connor McKinley in over a year. Granted, living in the age of modern technology and social media meant that this should not exactly have been a huge deterrent to their relationship. In the weeks following Kevin's return from Uganda, Kevin had received a torrent of phone calls, emails, and Facebook friend requests from the other Uganda District 9 elders eagerly seeking to keep in touch (most of them from Arnold). But he'd felt a strange sense of elation (mixed with a tiny bit of relief) when the former district leader finally reconnected with him. After Arnold, Connor had been the elder Kevin had grown the closest to over the course of his mission – in no small part because Connor was the only one who truly understood Kevin's deep, abiding love for Disney, DDR, and trashy television, and he didn't judge Kevin when he said he cried like a baby every time he watched Bambi.
Still, trying to settle back into the routine of 'normal' life had kept Kevin pretty preoccupied, especially since the post-mission Kevin Price was a vastly different person from the pious, naive, somewhat self-absorbed missionary who had embarked on his travels with visions of single-handedly changing the world. After his life-altering experiences in Uganda – Kevin had never really regained his belief in God back, for one thing – he'd elected to transfer from BYU to UC Berkeley. His parents had not been too thrilled with his decision at first, but in the end, after much piteous, doe-eyed imploring on Kevin's part, they'd reluctantly supported him. Kevin was glad for the change of scene, even if it meant leaving most of his old friends and family behind in Utah. He didn't think he could stand spending the remainder of his college career toeing the line of a doctrine that he no longer really agreed with, and which had cast him and his missionary friends out anyway. Besides, he liked drinking coffee too much.
Connor, on the other hand, had simply dropped out of college. When Kevin had asked why, Connor vaguely said something about deciding to pursue other interests, and changed the subject. Since then, Connor's phone calls had steadily become less frequent, until they had stopped entirely. Even his Facebook status updates had become rarer and less relentlessly cheery.
Kevin wondered if something had happened. Kevin wondered if it was his place to ask. Connor never liked to talk about his own feelings too much, even back in Uganda. Usually this wouldn't have been an issue for Kevin, who enjoyed talking about himself, and Connor enjoyed making fun of how Kevin talked about himself, so theoretically it should have been perfect. The problem was, he'd actually come to care quite a bit about how the former district leader felt, and to his frustration, it always seemed as though there were a part of Connor that was perpetually closed off to him, despite Kevin's best efforts to break in. And if there was one thing that Kevin Price hated, it was feeling powerless to do something.
So when Connor suddenly showed up outside his apartment in Berkeley one day, with his russet hair sopping with early spring rainwater and a shaky smile plastered over his pallid features, Kevin didn't say anything, but gave him a quick hug and held the door open as if no time had passed at all.
"You're lucky you dropped in the week that I have to get dinner around here," Kevin said, piling a sizable helping of garlic linguine and sausages onto his plate. "The other guys here just pop a stack of frozen dinners in the microwave and call it a meal."
"Honestly, I'm so hungry right now I could eat anything. I wouldn't even complain."
Kevin shook his head morosely. "Story of my life. Nobody appreciates the extra effort I put in."
"I appreciate it! I'm just not as finicky as you are about everything."
"By finicky I presume you mean 'in possession of excellent taste.'"
Connor McKinley was, by most appearances, virtually the same as when Kevin had last seen him. He was slightly taller, perhaps, and his hair had grown a little longer. But his fondness for glitter and shiny objects had evidently not diminished, as indicated by the gleaming turquoise bauble he wore in one ear and the studded belt clasped over his blue skinny jeans. He was even wearing one of those astonishingly garish ties that really only he could get away with pulling off, because Connor McKinley was, on his worst days, more or less a bouncing beam of sunshine in human form.
"You still haven't kicked the coffee-drinking habit yet?" Connor teased as Kevin poured a cupful of the steaming drink into his favorite Disney World mug.
"Nope. I'm a full-fledged addict, now that I don't have to worry about being caught and reprimanded by a certain district leader." Kevin took a long, deliberate slurp.
"You were always a trouble-maker, Elder Price," said Connor, rolling his eyes.
"I know, right? I even had my first taste of alcohol last week. I threw up afterwards, but you know, I felt quite rebellious at the time."
"And yet I still get a squirmy feeling inside whenever I start breaking rules."
"You broke plenty of them in Uganda," Kevin pointed out.
"Under your influence. And that was years and a continent ago."
"You haven't changed. Not that much."
"The circumstances have, though. Back then there was no one to care what rules we broke, most of the time."
Connor sighed. He seemed like he was steeling himself for something. Kevin kept on eating silently until the other boy spoke again.
"I came out to my parents. A few months ago."
"How'd they take it?" Kevin asked, though he suspected he already knew the answer.
"Not well. I mean, they already kind of gathered that I'd been suffering from 'homosexual inclinations.'" He made little air quotes and laughed nervously. "A long time ago I told them that I'd found a way to cure myself so they wouldn't send me to therapy, like some kids of other families we knew. And, well, you know how that ended up working out."
Kevin did. In Uganda it had taken an awful lot of convincing from Kevin's end to disabuse Connor of the notion that his feelings were sinful, especially while they lived in a part of the world where it was considered a crime to be gay. Kevin himself had to do a complete turnaround in his thinking on the subject, although it hadn't been nearly as difficult for him to shed that narrow-minded mentality as it had been for Connor. Condemnation of homosexuality had just been another item on a long list of puzzling religious teachings that Kevin hadn't really ever bothered to question until then, not something that had been stamped and inculcated into every waking moment of his life.
"So I told them that I wasn't cured after all," Connor continued in a harder voice, "and that, what was more, I didn't want to be cured – that God made me this way, and they'd just have to accept it." Connor hesitated, faltering slightly. "I – I don't want to repeat what they said."
"You don't have to. Gosh Connor, that's really..."
Connor waved him off with his hand. "So after that, I ended up moving in with my aunt for a while. She's sort of the black sheep of our family – next to me now, I guess – very liberal, ex-Mormon. I always liked her, even though Mom said she was a bad influence and not to take after her. She was the one who taught me how to tap dance. But I didn't want to mooch off her kindness for too long - she's a single mother living on welfare and can barely afford to support herself and her kids, let alone me as well, so I told her that I'd found a place to stay elsewhere."
"So why come here?"
"I didn't know where else to go." A note of desperation, almost pleading, had crept into his voice. "No one else would have understood. You – you, Poptarts, and Arnold – are the only people outside of my family who know that I'm gay. Poptarts' family is friends with mine, and..." He swallowed. "Where is Arnold, anyway?"
He was being evasive again, but Kevin chose not to mention it. "In Salt Lake City, with Nabulungi. I hear they're working on his idea for the 'great American novel.' You know the one."
Connor smiled weakly. "Well, Arnold already has one book to his name, even if it was self-published. He may just surpass us all in success one day. Even you."
"Yeah. And here I am, consigning myself to years of medical school debt which likely won't get paid off until I'm forty." Kevin mock-grimaced.
"I didn't know you decided to become a doctor...you'd probably be good at it, though."
Kevin shrugged. "I never thought I'd want to until going to Uganda, and meeting all those sick villagers...even though we provided some of them with spiritual comfort, it was still hard to – to see so many of them die and not really be able to do anything about it, you know?" He paused, and then added, with a small grin, "Though truthfully, it might have been when Gotswana surgically removed the Book of Mormon from my ass that I really gained a new level of respect for the profession."
Kevin had almost forgotten how Connor's entire face seemed to light up when he laughed, and how beautiful he looked...Whoa whoa whoa, beautiful? he thought, almost recoiling in shock. Where did that come from? He definitely needed more coffee.
"But you still haven't told me what your plans are," he said quickly. "I mean, do you have a place to stay, at least?"
The other boy coughed. "Well, sort of..."
"Sort of? For God's sake, where have you been staying for the past few weeks?"
"I have a car..."
"Connor!"
"Oh, don't look at me like that, Kevin. If I wanted to stay somewhere with an actual roof over my head, I could have. The issue was, I never really found somewhere that was right for me. I traveled for a while, met some people, did a few odd jobs here and there when I was strapped for cash...and finally I came here."
"How very bohemian of you."
"You go to Berkeley, Kevin."
"Touché. But it's not like we're all tree-hugging, bleeding-heart hippies around here, I'll have you know."
"Oh please. I bet you have an Occupy Wall Street sign stashed somewhere in your closet right now."
As a matter of fact he did, but Kevin wasn't going to allow Connor the satisfaction of knowing that. "You're staying here," he said bluntly.
"I don't want your charity, Kevin."
"It's not charity. There are only a couple of other guys boarding here, and one's a senior graduating soon anyway. Once you get a job – and I know some people you can talk to, so don't worry about that – you can start helping us with rent."
"Kevin..."
"Connor. You didn't come all the way here just for dinner and a chat. My cooking's not that good. Well, it is, but the point still stands. You wanted a friend."
"Yes..."
"You wanted someone who would accept you, for everything you are."
"Yes."
"So that's it then. I am those things. You're staying here."
"Kevin, no. You're right about why I came, but I can't stay here."
"Well, why not?"
Connor bit his lip. "I don't want you to hate me."
Kevin blinked in astonishment. "I'm sorry, but why the fuck would I hate you?" Even now Kevin rarely ever swore except for emphasis.
Connor winced. "I never told you – never dreamed of telling you – but back when we were in Uganda, I...I developed sort of a crush on you." He blushed and stared down very intently at the remaining scraps of food on his plate.
"...Oh," said Kevin Price, master orator.
"Well, I guess crush is understating it a bit. I was in love with you – really, deeply, wildly in love with you, actually. And I knew there was no hope that you'd ever feel the same way. But as long as we were friends, I could still be happy." Connor took a deep breath; he had said all this in a nervous rush, as if trying to get it over with as quickly as possible. "I told you I decided to come out to my family after I came back from Uganda. But the reason why I came out – it was, at least partly, because of you. Don't get me wrong, I was under absolutely no illusions that we were ever going to be together, but after feeling that way towards someone – anyone – I knew I could never go back to 'turning it off.' I couldn't deceive myself into believing that what I felt for you wasn't real, or wasn't right. It would just – hurt – too much."
"Connor, I had no idea...I'm so sorry that –"
Connor put up a hand. "No, you shouldn't be. At the risk of sounding utterly cliché, you were the best thing that ever happened to me. Really. But you don't have to worry, it's been so long now and I don't feel that way anymore – or, well, I haven't had time to think about feeling anything like that. But if I stayed here, I might. And that's why I can't – it would make things too awkward between us, and you'd eventually hate me, and, well, I couldn't blame you for it." He hung his head, looking incredibly small and vulnerable in that moment.
It was a long time before either of them spoke again, but finally Kevin broke the silence, crashing his fist onto the table.
"...Connor, with all due respect, that is a load of bullshit."
"...What?"
"Look, I don't want to brag, but you are hardly the first person who's ever fallen in love with me, and heck, you're probably far from the last. You think I'd start hating you out of some stupid gay panic? Give me a little credit, please."
"It's not – I never thought that! It's because we're friends, you idiot."
"And we'll always be friends. No matter what. We were on mission together, we were excommunicated from the church together, we built our own freaking community together, in spite of people telling us we couldn't. A friendship that's gone through all that doesn't just go away. Okay?"
"...Okay."
"Good. Now stop crying and help me clean up."
"I am not crying!" exclaimed Connor, as he inexplicably held up his sleeve to his eyes.
"Whatever you say." Kevin threw a dishrag at him and laughed at the (frankly adorable) scowl that adorned Connor's face just then.
"I hate you."
"Ah, now it's just like old times..."
That night Kevin watched as Connor laid fast asleep on the extra futon in Kevin's bedroom, curled up like a cat and breathing almost soundlessly. Several loose strands of hair had fallen over his eyes; it made him look much younger, more innocent, more fragile, even though Kevin knew Connor was anything but.
He thought of all the terrible battles Connor had had to fight just so that he could be himself, and he thought about how he'd like nothing more at this moment than to offer some measure of security and shelter from all the bad things that might come to pass later down the road. A place Connor could be without guilt, without fear.
Whether there was anything more to it...he didn't know. But just to see Connor slumber peacefully in the dim moonlight, without any visible sign of fire and brimstone afflicting his dreams – for now, it was good, and it was enough.