Page 19 of Gay for Pray
The cool air feels nice. Jude feels nice. I leave my eyes closed and sway along. The tide is so much gentler with him directing it. That party was a ship swaying in a storm, but Jude is a pond lapping at my feet, gently kissing my bare skin.
When I open my eyes, we’re at his dorm room. A thousand thoughts flit through my brain, but for some reason they don’t scare me the way they should. We stumble through the dark dorm and Jude deposits me on a bed. It smells like him. His bed?
“I’m going to get you water,” he says.
He looks like an angel hovering above me, a literal, Biblical angel. His hair is a halo framing his face. His eyes hold the sort of infinite mercy I’ve only read about in holy texts. There’s no judgment, no hatred, no expectation, just the most intelligent and beautiful blue eyes I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life watching me with genuine compassion. His presence washes over me like the light of Heaven itself, healing whatever has gone so very, very wrong inside me tonight.
When he leaves, it’s like he takes all my skin with him. I’m raw and aching. Even the bedsheets under me hurt to shift against.
I sit up, hot and itchy, and start unbuttoning my shirt and pants. Everything is hot and awful. My body quivers like I’ve had too much coffee. The night curls and warps around me. Something is very, very wrong with me, and I don’t understand it, but I do know that the only thing that will fix it is Jude.
Chapter Eleven
Jude
THEODORE IS MASSIVELY FUCKED up. His pupils are huge, overtaking his brown eyes. When I reenter my bedroom with a glass of water, he’s wearing nothing but his boxer briefs, and he doesn’t seem to notice. He gapes at me open-mouthed, swaying even as he sits.
I’m going to fucking strangle whoever did this to him. Seriously, who doses people at parties? Picking a guy who hasn’t had so much as a sip of alcohol in his entire life is extra messed up. Theodore has never felt anything like this. What if he had a bad trip or something? No one at that party would have noticed, and Theodore wouldn’t be able to get himself out of the spiral of a feeling he’s never encountered in his life.
I stuff down my anger. With the state he’s in, he could be sensitive to that kind of thing. So far, he’s been pretty happy and chill, and I want to keep him that way until the drug works itself out of his system. He doesn’t seem to be reacting badly otherwise, and that’s a good thing. I just have to keep him in a good headspace and we might get through this with nothing worse than a hangover.
Until I find the guy who did this to him, at least.
I save that for later and set the glass of water on the table beside the bed. Theodore’s eyes follow me the whole time. For whatever reason, I’ve become the thing he’s fixated on, probably because I’m the only person at that party he knew. He clung tome the entire way back to my dorm, and he looks like he might leap up and do it again.
At least that narrows the possibilities of what they dosed him with. I have a pretty good guess, and I’m hoping I’m right because it means he won’t need much besides water and a human to touch. This is not the way I hoped to get a guy into my bed tonight, but it seems like it’s the way fate or God has decided to make it happen.
Instead of getting laid, I have to take care of averyhigh Theodore. How did my life ever come to this?
“Can you drink some water?” I say.
He nods, but when he goes for the glass, his hands are shaky. I sit next to him on the bed and help him, ignoring the water that slips from his mouth and drips down his bare throat and chest. I’m definitely not thinking about the pale hair scattered over his surprisingly toned chest, or the way it trails lower and lower, or the thin fabric of his boxer briefs.
Okay, maybe I am thinking about it, but I’m not a monster. I will do nothing more than think about it while he’s in such a vulnerable state.
I manage to get him to down the whole glass of water. He probably needs about a gallon more with how hot his body is burning, but I’ll take one glass if that’s all he can manage right now. I can try again later if he seems up for it. Or maybe he had a small enough dose that he’ll come down soon enough to want water on his own. In the meantime, I have to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with him.
Theodore answers that question for me. As we sit on the bed, he opens his arms, and fuck me, I should tell him no, but I don’t. No choir boy should have a body this amazing, and I went out tonight desperate for touch. This is not how I wanted to get it, but I know that the drug is making him crave touch as well, so I can fix both our problems by giving in. Besides, I’m basicallythe safest person on campus for him to do this with tonight. I’ll never tell for the same reason he won’t—because by morning he’ll hate me for this—but at the same time, I also won’t do anything worse than hug him. He can snarl at me all he wants in the morning, but right now his brain is buzzing full of chemicals that demand touch, and I know how to safely give him that so he gets through this unscathed.
I slide into his arms, which close around me strong and sure. For a moment we sit there awkwardly hugging, his head against mine.
“You feel so nice,” he sighs.
My heart breaks a little at the longing in his tone. That isn’t just the drug. He’s probably never been touched like this in his entire life. Whatever he got dosed with has unearthed a need he’s kept suppressed for a long, long time.
“Can I kiss you?” he says.
I stiffen with shock. It’s not merely that Theodore wants to kiss me, but also that he wants to kiss a man, a man he knows is gay. He’s going to hate me so much in the morning.
“I…don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say carefully.
He sounds disappointed despite my attempt at gentleness. “Why not?”
“I think we can save kissing for another time, okay? We can do other things tonight.”
“Other things?”
I lean away. Concern and confusion sit baldly on his face. He’s more expressive than ever, his stony, puritan facade stripped away by altered brain chemistry. He needs touch. He needs skin on skin. But I have to be careful about this. He’s in a delicate state, and he’s going to have a lot to reconcile with tomorrow, so guiding him through this night is going to take a deft touch.
