Weeks Later
It didn't take long for Eli and Ty to become inseparable. They were lab partners in science. They always found spots next to each other during drills at hockey practice. They did their homework together, watched TV together, and usually ate dinner at each other's houses. Well, usually they ate dinner at Ty's house. Ty had gone over to Eli's house a few times. While his parents were welcoming of their son's friend, both of the boys felt more comfortable when they were at Ty's.
Each Sunday, Eli would fall of the grid. At first, Ty didn't mention anything about it. He figured that Eli just needed some time to himself. Ty still hadn't invited Eli to a team night, figuring the group would pretty much tease the poor boy into hamburger.
As the weeks passed, Ty began to wonder if Eli wasn't hiding something from him.
"So, do you want to come over and read some Wormhole Extreme fanfiction tomorrow?" Ty asks one Saturday.
"I can't," Eli says.
"Right," Ty says, giving him a verbal way out of the conversation, but locking eyes on him in a way that wouldn't let him weasel out any other way.
"Look, I go to church on Sundays."
"That sounds good. I haven't been to church for a long time. Actually, I think I was like five. I used to go sometimes with Teal'c and Shelby." While Eli hasn't met any of Ty's SG-1 family, he has certainly heard a lot about them.
"I don't think you want to go to church with me," Eli says.
"Why not?" Ty asks, wondering if there is still a lot about his friend that he doesn't know.
"I don't even want to go to church," Eli admits.
Ty doesn't have to ask why Eli goes then. He knows that Eli's parents can make him do pretty much anything with no stronger tools than a stern look. "Why don't you want to?" he asks instead.
Eli sighs, and looks away from him. "Let's just say that my church is not the most accepting of churches."
Ty's heart sinks, and he can't help but wonder if a great deal of Eli's desire to deny the fact that he's gay doesn't stem from this church. "Let me come with you," Ty pleads softly.
Eli shakes his head, and there are tears brimming in his eyes.
Ty has respected Eli's wish to stay friends. He thinks its bull crap, but he still respects it. He had never crossed the line into flirting or any kind of physical touch. Now though, he reaches over, and touches Eli's hand.
Eli pulls away like he is on fire.
"Sorry," Ty whispers.
"I don't want them to hurt you," Eli whispers.
If Ty had not already been in love, this whispered confession would have pushed him over the edge. It is the kindest thing he's ever heard of. "Eli, there is nothing anyone can say that is going to make me feel bad about who I am. I've got to figure that God made me, and he could have made me different. If he wanted me to be straight, I would be straight. I don't care who preaches at me, and calls me a sinner. Anyway, what are they going to accuse me of? It's not like I've done anything! I'm probably a whole lot more sexually pure than most of the straight kids that go there. They are not going to hurt me, and I think my being there is going to help you."
Eli shakes his head, "No, you're going to think the less of me. You're going to think I'm weak, stupid."
"I've seen you do calculus. I know for a fact you aren't stupid. What? Do you think that just because I don't go to church that I think those who do are stupid? There are a lot of really brilliant people that are Christians. You don't have to turn your mind off to believe in God."
"You're going to think I'm stupid, because I believe them… that it's all wrong."
And there it was… right out loud. The reason that Eli would never confess that he was gay. The reason that Ty and Eli could never be together. It wasn't Eli's parents, like Ty had thought. If that were the case… well, there was always college next year or when they were adults.
How could you argue with God? How could you hope against God?
If someone's religion told them it was a sin to love you, then nothing else mattered. You love them? Irrelevant. They love you? Still irrelevant. You would be perfect together? Who cares?
"Eli, I'd still like to come," Ty says softly.
"Why? What good can it possibly do?" Eli asks.
"It's a big part of you, and until I go there I'm never going to understand it. I want to understand it. I want to understand you."
There is a long moment of silence that Ty is pretty sure is the same as the word "no", and then suddenly Eli nods his head.
The Next Day
At six-thirty the next morning Ty arrives at Eli's house in a suit and tie that makes Eli's heart skip a beat. They all load up into Eli's family station wagon.
Eli's father is an Elder. Ty doesn't know exactly what that means, but he can guess by the way it's said in reverence that it's something pretty important. The elders, and the Sunday School teachers, and all of their families gather in the empty sanctuary before Sunday School. They all join hands, and say a rather lengthy prayer about the Holy Spirit, and God speaking through all the Sunday School teachers.
Eli was next to Ty when the prayer began, so their hands are joined with nothing but a layer of adolescent sweat between them. Needless to say, neither one of them was very much focused on the prayer.
After that, they are off to Sunday School. Eli is in the high school boy's version of it. Lanky teens bustle around a room with couches and a foosball table until the "youth pastor", who looked way too young to have finished college, let alone seminary, calls them all to sit down.
There is another long prayer, and then they slog through a long passage of one of the minor prophets. They have to stand when the Bible is read, and do something called a "sword drill" whenever they have to find a passage to reference the one in the main reading. A sword drill involves putting the Bible on the floor, and waiting until the Pastor says to find a verse. When you are the first one to get your finger on the passage you win.
Ty is horrible at it, spending most of his time in the wrong testament. Usually, whoever was the first one done would come over and find the passage for Ty.
They assured him that he would get better at it. "Once you've read the book a few times, it's easy," said a kid who looked like the youngest one there. The rest of them nod, as if reading the Bible multiple times was the most natural thing in the world.
When they are done, there is a bit of mingling over coffee and doughnuts. The boys high school Sunday School mixes with the girls, and a few middle schoolers and young adults are the mix too. They are perhaps the friendliest bunch of kids that Ty has ever encountered.
Then there is a service that is almost two hours long to sit through. The service is a lot like the Bible study, only with a lot more people. They don't do sword drills, but each time the Pastor quotes the Bible (as he often did) they all flipped their Bible to the page, and read aloud. When they sang songs, they put their hands up in the air, and closed their eyes, and bounced.
The songs were better than Ty had expected. He'd been preparing himself for hymns, and these were definitely not hymns. As far as Ty could tell, they were rock music with the word "Jesus" inserted where the name of a romantic partner went in most songs.
When it was over, Ty thought it must finally be time for Eli's family to go home. Nope, apparently after church Eli's parents do something called "sheep care"*, and Eli has another youth event. There is a small kitchen in a hidden region of the church, and the youth all go there and assume their normal roles in the making of a five-course meal of lasagna.
The youth pastor's wife works next to Ty, pumping him for information about his life in such a way that it feels vaguely like a conversation.
Eli smiles at him from across the room, and Ty can't help but have his heart jump. The feeling causes a wave of guilt to cover him. It's probably a lot smaller than the wave of guilt that Eli feels. He wonders how people that are so nice could make him feel so bad about himself.
The youth eat one of the meals themselves, and then they take the rest of the meals around to older people in the church. Sometimes, they sit down with the older person as they eat their meal. Sometimes they fix some little thing around the person's house. There were a lot of cookies given by the older people to the teenagers, who consume them over the course of the afternoon.
At long last, Eli and Ty start walking back to Eli's house.
"I'm sorry," Eli says.
"What could you possibly be sorry for?" Ty asked.
"Six hours of church? It's not exactly what you would call a gentle introduction. You know you could have left at any time, right?
Ty nods his head, "I really didn't want to leave though. I don't know. I honestly enjoyed it."
"Right, well, today there wasn't any preaching on sexual sins. But being Sunday School, church, and youth group, there aren't a whole lot of weeks that go by without someone mentioning it."
"Was your old church the same, before you moved?"
Eli nods his head.
"That's a lot of condemnation to live under. I'm not surprised that you are trying to deny who you are," Ty says. Eli had never admitted to Ty that he was gay, but both of them by now were working on the assumption that he was, and Eli never corrected Ty.
"God isn't about condemnation. He's about love," Eli says, in a voice that has obviously repeated the words many times before.
"I actually kind of got that today. Still, you're being asked to be someone other than you are," Ty says softly.
Eli sighs, "You know, sometimes I get angry. There are all these people born good, and it's so easy for them. They just wake up each day, and follow God. He never asks them to do anything other than what they were going to do anyway. Sometimes I get jealous. Then sometimes, I read the Bible where it says that it's supposed to be hard. I read stories of martyrs and missionaries, and I wonder, are all of these people who have life so easy really the ones that are blessed? Maybe they are missing out on something good. Maybe they are missing out on all the good things."
"Still, you think that if he was going to ban homosexuality, he could have made a world where there was no homosexuality."
"Of course, and since pedophilia and murder are bad, he could have made us all incapable of that, too. Yet God decided to give his stupid little humans free will. I'm sorry, Ty. I know that you probably want more from this," he gestures between them, "But if I can't change, I'm at least going to be celibate. So… we're never going to be more than friends. I tried to make that really clear from the beginning, and I hope that I didn't mislead you."
"You didn't, Eli, and I am ok with being your friend. I'd certainly like to be more, but I can deal with friendship."
Eli nods his head, and they walk on in silence for a while.
"Can I come to church with you again?" Ty asks.
"Really? I thought for sure that all of that was just you trying to date me."
"Really? Church has a very sexual," he exaggerates the word to make it ridiculous, "vibe to it for you?"
Eli laughs.
"Nothing turns you on more than Bible passages and communion wine?"
Eli smacks his shoulder lightly, "Naw, I just thought you might be thinking that the whole 'yoked to a non-believer' thing was the reason I wasn't dating you."
"Well, no, considering the fact that I never heard of it. Yoked? Do you guys have a meeting every month (for about 10 hours, judging by your church service) to think up ways to confuse newcomers? Sheep care and yoked to non-believers, what next?"
Eli giggles, "It means that Christians aren't supposed to date someone who isn't a Christian."
"But in our case it doesn't matter, because no matter how Christian I get, I am still a boy, and you are still a boy."
Eli nods his head.
Ty sighs, "Right, well, did you start the book I loaned you?"
"Start it? I finished it in one night! It was amazing," Eli exclaims, glad to have something to eagerly chatter about other than the immutable facts of their non-relationship.
*"Sheep Care" is something that one of my churches did. At the time I was so into the culture it didn't seem weird to me. My mom visited me, and when they talked about sheep care she couldn't stop laughing. Yeah, sometimes we don't realize how odd our culture is until we can see it through other people's eyes.
Also, on a personal note. Eli's church is very much like the church I attended from age 12-19. I love it, I miss it. I now know it was so very wrong about some things. Eli's story is at least partly based on a friend of mine who grew up in the same church I did. Well, there is a lot of differences between Eli and her actually, but the honest internal conflict caused by her personal beliefs and her sexual orientation are there.