"Dude, I swear, if you're gonna keep shooting your mouth off in bars, you gotta learn to duck."
Alex grinned sheepishly. "I know, I know. I didn't think he was sober enough to have reflexes that fast. It's not too swollen though, right?"
Chris took hold of Alex's chin, tilting his head towards the uncomfortably stark light hanging from the ceiling to survey the growing lump under his eye. They could never get the lights right in these places; far too many of the hotel rooms Chris had stayed in over the course of his career either had lights that were deliberately too dim in a vain attempt to hide how grotty the room was, or ones that were so bright they made him feel like he had a hangover in his eyeballs. "Nah. I mean, you look a bit like you were dropped on your face from a great height when you were a child, but no more so than usual."
Slapping Chris' hand away, Alex scowled. "Funny. You know perfectly well that of the two of us, I'm the looker."
"Now you sound like you were dropped from a great height too. That's crazy talk, and you know it," Chris said with a smirk.
"Whatever, gayface. Anyway, I'm going to soak in the tub for a while, so if you need to piss, you'd better go now."
Chris nodded, heading for the bathroom. When he'd finished, he barely managed to take two steps back into the room before a book connected squarely with his head.
"Sometimes, Sabin, you really piss me off." Even if the book to the head hadn't been a dead giveaway, Alex's tone would immediately have betrayed the sincerity of his agitation.
Rubbing at the spot where the book had connected with his temple, Chris couldn't help but grin. Alex should know better than to rise to the bait by now, but annoying him like this was just as easy as it had been in the first weeks after they'd met. Chris' head throbbed in protest as he bent down to retrieve his copy of The God Delusion, but a quick glance at the frustration on Alex's face reassured him that slipping it into Alex's bag was totally worth the headache he was in for. "It's only a book, dude. What's the harm in loaning you a book?"
"A book built on a strawman and full of flaws," Alex corrected.
"How would you know? It's not like you've ever read it."
"Seriously, you've got to get off this thing. If it's not a book or a leaflet, it's endless smartass remarks. It just goes on and on." Alex glared resentfully. "I don't understand why you can't leave this alone. Why do you even care that I'm Catholic?"
Chris tossed The God Delusion into his open bag, and then threw himself heavily onto his bed with his most infuriating smile on his face. "You're missing the point again. I don't care if you're Christian, Hindu, Discordian or Pastafarian."
Alex sat on his own bed and faced Chris, wearing what Chris liked to think of as his Victorian schoolmarm expression. "Then why don't you explain to me why you keep making such a hairy fucking deal about it?"
"Sure, since you asked so eloquently." Chris shifted onto his side, leaning up on his elbow. "You're Catholic, right? But you've never thought about it, not really. You're Catholic because that's what was fed to you when you were a child, by your family, by your school, by the community you lived in. You sleepwalked into a religion, and apparently you're content to stay there without even bothering to see what's outside."
Chris paused, but Alex knew him well enough to recognise that he hadn't finished, and was instead running things through his head to find the right words. Drumming his fingers on his thighs, Alex waited patiently in silence for some thirty seconds before Chris spoke again, passing the time by envisioning the variety of ways he could visit a gruesome death on his best friend.
"You've never stopped and questioned it, and figured out if that's what you really believe on an instinctive level. If you'd questioned your faith and explored it, and decided Catholicism was for you, then great, I'd be behind you one hundred percent, regardless of my own feelings on the subject. But you haven't. You've just taken the path of least resistance, and that bugs me. You're better than this mindless sheep bullshit."
Alex felt his annoyance softening at the compliment, and he wondered if Chris had thrown it in there on purpose to make sure he took the complaint seriously. He pursed his lips, biting at the inside of them as he turned Chris' words over in his head. "I'll make you a deal," he said finally.
"I hope it's better than that one where I bought your drinks all night in exchange for dirt on Red. Everyone knows about that thing with the raccoon."
Alex ignored Chris' flippancy and continued. "I'll read your stupid book, if you come to mass with me." He saw Chris' eyebrow raise questioningly and added, "I want you to see it from the other side."
Chris nodded. "It's not exactly about that particular book, but okay." After a moment, he grinned maliciously. "They don't send you to Sea Org or cut off your foreskin just for going once, do they?"
"That's Scientology and Judaism," Alex said with a scowl, "and what the hell is with you and religious bigotry?"
Chris shrugged. "It's funny, and anyway, I think we both know Scientology doesn't really count. How am I supposed to resist any form of bigotry that entertaining? It'd be like asking AJ to stop calling everyone faggots. I'm sure he even says it in his sleep. He probably yells it at his wife when he cums."
"Probably, but AJ's a fucking redneck with a Doris Day fixation. That's just denial." Alex grinned. "Is that what your problem is too, denial? Are you a closet Jesus fanboy?"
Chris laughed as he rolled onto his back again, lacing his fingers behind his head. "Yeah, I can't get enough of that guilt and suppression of self-worth and subjugation of women..."
"Now you're just being silly, you know perfectly well that subjugating women is awesome." Alex got to his feet, taking the opportunity to aim a punch at Chris' unprotected stomach. He smiled in satisfaction when Chris grunted in pain and reflexively curled into a ball. "Anyway, you godless heathen, I'm going to take my bath. You better not be rubbing one out when I come back in here, I don't need to see that ever again."
"Whatever, you know you replay that image in your head every time you're fucking some rat. Pervert."
Alex rolled his eyes as he stepped into the bathroom and closed the door, mercifully muffling Chris' outlandish claim to be the leading cause of homosexuality in the Midwest.
Chris made an effort to keep his extremities still - the spot where Alex had kicked him in the ankle five minutes previously for swinging his legs like a bored child still hurt. He'd have no problem keeping still if he lay full-length on the pew and got stuck into some serious meditation, but he was fairly sure that'd just result in more kicking.
He'd managed to maintain a half-hearted interest for the first few minutes after they came in. They'd sat in the very last pew because Alex said he should watch the people as well as the clergy, and Chris had briefly managed to entertain himself with thoughts of how some of the prettier women in the congregation must look naked, and trying to mentally divide them into two groups according to whether he thought they'd agree to be fucked in the ass. He'd tried to share his conclusions with Alex, but Alex had stood heavily on his foot and hissed that if Chris didn't shut his mouth, Alex was going to shove the statue of Saint Jude into it. With hindsight, Chris supposed it was just as well Alex stopped him when he did. The next woman Chris had been intending to comment on was Alex's sister.
Once the service had started, Chris had been temporarily fascinated by the acoustics of the church. With its high stone ceilings, it would have been a brilliant place to play a didgeridoo. The thought could only hold his attention for so long without an actual didgeridoo to hand though, and Chris had quickly grown bored. Somehow, he doubted Alex would have let him play a didgeridoo even if he'd had one.
Chris glanced to his right, his eyes skipping down Alex's profile as Alex murmured the appropriate responses to the priest's declarations. He wasn't sure of the context because he didn't speak Catholic, and admittedly he hadn't read the bible in a long time, but Chris couldn't recall any women in it called Kylie or Alison.
Chris wasn't sure what Alex had hoped to achieve by bringing him here, but whatever it was, it wasn't working. The service itself wasn't holding his interest, and he could already tell he was going to become annoyed with all the switching between standing, sitting and kneeling, and they'd barely even started. He was tempted to come back later and steal a few of those little knee cushions though - they'd make life considerably less uncomfortable when he and his next flavour of the week were doing it doggy style on the floor. Not to mention the fact that Alex would go ballistic.
The only thing the place really seemed to have going for it was that for once in his life, Alex actually seemed somewhat calm. He radiated a kind of contentment, something Chris would never normally have associated with him, and it was the closest Chris had ever seen him to achieving peace.
Obviously, as Alex's very best friend, Chris had a moral obligation to ruin it.
As the congregation lumbered to its feet, Alex looked fondly over its members. These were his people; some he called friends, and many he'd known his entire life. Having Chris stood next to him on the outskirts of this little community he'd been raised in brought him a lot of happiness - despite Chris acting like a petulant five-year-old who'd been denied his nap - although he would have given himself an emergency tracheotomy with a spoon before he'd ever have admitted to feeling anything so girly. The priest launched into the Gloria in Excelsis and the choir and congregation followed, although Chris couldn't join in due to lacking a hand missal. Alex had removed them all from the pew after Chris had amassed six of them and started building a house.
Alex's eyes swept again over the people before him. There were ladies who'd mollycoddled him and given him Easter eggs and little Christmas gifts every year when he was a child in spite of his constant misbehaviour, and men who'd played baseball with him even though their attempts to teach him a little bit about his ancestry had fallen on deaf ears. There were people he'd been in school with; Alex smiled as his glance passed over little James Sheehan - not so little anymore - whom he'd had so much fun duct taping to that flagpole. If he was honest, Alex supposed he'd been a bit of a dick as a child.
Some of his first girlfriends were here too. His gaze locked on the back of Alice Sullivan's head, and Alex's smile tightened into a smaller, more secretive smirk. They'd broken into his school one Saturday night when he was fourteen, and had made out for three hours in his art classroom. It had been the first time Alex had got his hand on a naked breast, and he could still remember the thrill that ran through his stomach as his fingers had slipped under her sweater and into her bra, and the feeling of soft, warm flesh in his hand.
Much to Alex's dismay, his body reacted immediately to his remembered lust. Within moments, he could feel his pants beginning to grow uncomfortable and he shifted his stance, trying to be discreet as he pulled at them to give his growing erection some room, cursing the male anatomy and its fondness for inappropriate and largely unprovoked arousal. He hurriedly looked away from Alice, attempting to force the memory of his fevered adolescent desire from his mind. He moved his weight from one foot to the other in an effort to find the least uncomfortable position to stand in as his erection stubbornly plunged ahead toward full length, but at this point, the only way to find some relief would be to reach into his pants and physically readjust himself - and there was no way Alex could bring himself to do that. He heard a quiet snort of laughter to his left, and he turned a furious glare on Chris' stupid grinning face. It was just his luck that his asshole of a best friend would notice his unfortunate situation. He spitefully hoped the next rat Chris picked up gave him herpes.
He shouldn't have been thinking about his teenage encounter with Alice and her wonderfully overdeveloped breasts in church at all, Alex knew, so he supposed it was only fair that he should be punished for it this way. Still, it was kind of nice that after all the things he'd done he could still be turned on by such a simple, innocent memory, although he knew it was more down to the whimsical and treacherous nature of the penis than any genuine arousal. The recollection of that night flashed through his mind again, and he remembered the way Alice had sighed and arched into his clumsy touch. His pants felt like they were growing tighter by the moment.
A low noise Alex couldn't immediately identify cut across the mingled sounds of the poorly pitched singing around him and his memory of Alice's blissful moan and the rustling of her clothes. It buzzed through everything he heard for a second before Alex realised what his brain was screaming at him and simultaneously trying desperately to deny - Chris' hand was tugging down his zipper.
Alex practically doubled over, the backs of his legs bumping into the pew behind him and his forehead bouncing off the high back of the one in front. He seized Chris' hand, trying to pull it away, but Chris resisted.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Alex hissed furiously. "Get off me!"
Chris smirked. "Do you really want to draw attention to this?" he whispered back.
Alex stilled, a vast array of possible scenes that could ensue should anyone notice what was going on in the last pew running through his head, each of them more excruciating than the last. That alone should have been enough to kill his erection, but apparently his body was in league with Chris. Alex clenched his jaw as Chris' hand slid inside his pants, searching out the waistband of his briefs to pull them down and release his cock from confinement. Alex glanced down, watching in disbelief as Chris gently guided his member out of the opening in his pants. If there was one thing Alex had thought he'd never see, it was the image of his own penis against a background of pews and red leather kneelers.
At least Chris had taken care not to let him get scratched by his zipper, and now that Chris had enjoyed the 'humour' of exposing him in church, Alex knew he'd lose interest, and Alex could put himself away without Chris drawing attention to him. But instead of pulling back, Chris' hand wrapped firmly around Alex's cock and stroked down to the base, and Alex sucked in a sharp breath at the unexpected movement, his hands balling into fists as he stamped down the urge to strangle Chris.
Alex couldn't quite comprehend what was going on as Chris' fingers slid up to just below the head of his cock and then back down again. His brain seemed to refuse to acknowledge that anything was happening at all, and his body took the opportunity to run away with the sensation. In comparison to what he was used to from a hand job, the hand around his cock was too big and too rough, but there was no denying that it was moving in exactly the way he liked and that his dick didn't care who it was attached to, just so long as it didn't stop. The knowledge that he was in church - in the middle of mass, no less - should have been enough to deflate his erection regardless, but the thrill of committing such an unforgivably obscene act on holy ground made him so hard it made his head swim. He'd done some pretty illicit things in his time, but watching another man's hand stroke his cock in a church full of people while the choir and congregation finished up their heartfelt delivery of the Gloria took the cake.
Chris' fingers tightened slightly, and so did Alex's balls. He flicked his eyes over to Chris, and was relieved to see that Chris looked for all the world like he was listening to the dying tones of the Gloria in an impressively dedicated fashion. He did his best to follow Chris' example; if someone turned around, he didn't want them taking one look at his face and thinking he was having some kind of aneurysm. It was difficult to maintain a neutral expression though when Chris was working his cock in almost exactly the same way he did it himself when he masturbated. It was good, so good it probably would have gotten him off even if he hadn't been in a church with a hundred people he'd known since childhood blissfully unaware of the carnal act taking place in the last pew, and in spite of the fact that it was his best friend doing it. Former best friend, Alex amended mentally. When this service was over, Alex was going to take Chris out back and shoot him.
Chris sped up a little, and Alex bit down on his lip to contain the groan he felt rising in his throat, a groan which would have been all too obvious in the silence as the priest allowed the congregation to focus their thoughts before beginning the collect. The hand on Alex's cock worked in quick, firm strokes, all the more profane as its tempo complimented the chant of the collect, and Alex tried desperately to escape the ever constricting clutches of impending climax. For a moment, the priest's voice seemed to fade, and the only things Alex was aware of were the circled fingers drawing down his length with maddeningly regularity as he teetered on the brink of orgasm - and then a wall of pleasure slammed into him as the knot in his groin exploded, and a tiny, choked whimper escaped his lips. He watched in horror as thick jets of cum splattered onto the pew in front of him, the prayer suddenly deafening and the priest's voice somehow full of accusation.
Alex heard the low chuckle Chris gave as he carefully slipped Alex's rapidly softening cock back through the opening in his pants and into his briefs. He drew the zipper back up, and then patted Alex's thigh in a conciliatory fashion, as though the disingenuous little bastard was actually sorry for having put Alex in that position, although the effect was spoiled somewhat when he wiped his hand on Alex's pants. Alex seethed, and kicked him in the ankle again. It didn't help much, but it would have to suffice until they were in private.
Chris behaved quite well during the rest of the service, barring the moment when boredom overcame him and he ran his fingers through the cum sliding down the pew in front of them and wiped it in Alex's hair. Alex took communion, full of shame and feeling utterly unworthy, and on his way back down to his seat, his mother - oh God, his mother - caught his eye and smiled at him. Alex tried to look sincere as he returned the smile, but he wanted the earth to open and swallow him whole. Chris Sabin was a dead man.
By the time mass was over, Alex had composed himself sufficiently to exchange greetings with his friends and family outside the church without showing any of the conflict raging inside him. He kissed his mother, hugged his sister and punched his brother, and suggested to a very receptive Alice that they should get together sometime to catch up, and then he made a start for his car, dragging Chris away while he was still in the middle of telling Alice how pleased he was to meet her. Once inside the car, Alex immediately rounded on his supposed best friend.
"What the fuck was that?"
"What?" Chris asked innocently, although that was a mistake because Alex's first response was a punch in the face.
"Don't even fucking try that shit with me," Alex ranted, and he would have continued if not for the fact that he was far too confused by the morning's events to know what to say.
Chris pressed gently at the top of his nose and around his eye socket, trying to assess the damage. "Dude, you have anger issues. There's a word for people who react to homosexual overtures with violence."
Alex scowled, but as always, Chris' laid back nature soothed his fury, regardless of the fact that it was Chris himself with whom Alex was angry. "I'm not a homophobe, and you know it."
"I was going to go with 'retard', but okay."
"I didn't even know you were into guys." Alex could feel himself growing calmer, sinking into helpless confusion rather than the rage he'd started out with, and the urge to shoot Chris was fading. He was glad, because he didn't own a gun, and buying one just to kill Chris seemed like a lot of effort.
Chris shrugged. "I'm not."
Alex stared at him. "Then why the hell would you do that?"
"It was funny, duh." Chris rolled his eyes. "Man, you have no sense of humour."
"No sense of..." Alex rubbed his fingers over his temple. He couldn't even begin to process Chris' logic, and the whole thing was so ludicrous that Alex couldn't really accept it had happened at all. "You're an asshole, Sabin."
Chris smirked. "I'm an asshole? Dude, you just came on a pew. You're going to hell."
Alex started the car, staring ahead and ignoring Chris completely. "I'm going to go home and get really fucking stoned."
"Great idea. Can I come?"
"No. I'm kicking you out of the car outside your house, and I don't want to see your fucking ugly face for at least the next week."
"Oh well, at least that'll give you time to read The God Delusion."
Alex scowled, keeping his eyes on the road as he drove and refusing to look at Chris in case he gave in to the urge to punch him again. Chris gave a snort of laughter, and before he even spoke, Alex knew his desire to commit violence was about to rise.
"You've got something in your hair. Hey, why are we stopping at Danny's Guns and Ammo?"