Chapter Thirty- Seven
Chapter
Thirty-Seven
“Lucas?” Mark’s voice was coming from right
behind him, but Lucas didn’t look up from his task. “What are you
doing to my car?”
Well, that was a reasonable question, one
that deserved an answer, so Lucas pulled himself out from under the
hood and leaned against the front of the car. “You said it doesn’t
start in the rain, right?”
Mark looked confused. He’d come out to the
farm that morning as was becoming his habit, worked quietly with
Lucas for a while and then gone off to help Alex tempt an injured
owl to eat. Returning from his task to find Lucas messing with his
car…yeah, it made sense that he was bit confused.
Still, he wasn’t recovering too quickly. “In
the rain. It doesn’t start. Right?” Lucas prompted.
“Yeah…” Mark said cautiously.
“So I figured it was your distributor cap or
your spark plug wires. Those are the most likely things.”
“Okay…”
“So I’m replacing them. If that doesn’t work
you might need a real mechanic, but this is a good first try.”
“You’re fixing my car?”
“Hopefully,” Lucas said. “No guarantees.” He
saw Mark’s frown and hurried to say, “I’m being careful. It’s not
hard. I can’t mess it up. Well, I could if I got the wires mixed
up, but I didn’t. It can’t hurt to try.”
“You’re fixing my car.” Mark didn’t sound
upset, which was a relief, but he was looking at Lucas far too
intently.
Lucas ducked his head back under the hood.
This was why he’d wanted to get the job done while Mark was
elsewhere. It wasn’t a big deal. He’d been surprised when Elise had
told him that priests didn’t make much money, he’d heard Mark
complain about his car having trouble in the rain, and he’d figured
he could do something to help. That was all. He didn’t want Mark
looking at him like that. Except for the part of him that did want
Mark to look at him, like that or any other damned way. Lucas tried
to ignore that craving and focus on the engine.
His task was made a little more challenging
when Mark edged in beside him and ducked his own head under the
hood of the car. “The distributor cap? And what was the other
thing?”
“Spark plug wires,” Lucas said, pointing.
Talking about cars was a lot easier than thinking about how Mark
looked at him. “I’m pretty sure it was the wires.” He gently lifted
a couple of the new wires and pointed at a few black marks on the
metal beneath. “I think the rain was making them short out. All
that energy that should have gone to your ignition got wasted.”
Mark nodded slowly. “I know nothing about
cars,” he admitted.
“You know about other stuff. Important
stuff.”
“More important than being able to get from
one place to another?”
“Getting to Heaven. Isn’t that your big job?
Saving people from hellfire?” Lucas wasn’t quite sure if he was
serious or not, and he could tell that Mark wasn’t sure either. He
forced himself to look at the other man as he said, “Anybody can
change spark plug wires. It’s not a big thing.”
“If it works, it’ll be a pretty big thing.”
Mark’s smile was sweet and generous. “Thank you. Even if it doesn’t
work, I appreciate the effort. The thought.”
Lucas wanted to bask in the other man’s
approval and he also wanted to squirm away and hide. “I hope it
works,” he managed to say. “But I guess we won’t know until the
next time it rains.”
“Do you need any help?”
“No, I’m pretty much done. Five more minutes
and I would have been packed up and gone. You wouldn’t have known
I’d done anything, and then if your car worked in the rain, you’d
have thought it was a miracle.” Lucas nodded sagely.
“That would have been cool,” Mark said. “But
it’s nice to know too. Nice to know you’re looking out for me.”
Lucas shrugged, feeling awkward again. “It’s
not a big deal.”
“And last night? Getting all those guys
together, and putting yourself on the line—again—to protect me?
That wasn’t a big deal either?”
“It was easy to get the guys together. That’s
why I wanted you to see it. They were totally ready to help as soon
as I even mentioned it to them.”
Mark looked at him for a long moment, then
smiled softly. “Thank you,” he said. Then he stood a little
straighter. “So, I was thinking…I don’t suppose you’d like to go
out to dinner with me sometime?”
The words had come out fast, too fast for
Lucas to understand them the first time they played through his
mind. And the second time through the words themselves made sense
but the intention behind them was baffling. “Dinner?” He frowned in
confusion. He’d thought about the kiss in the alley. Thought about
it quite a bit, and then jerked off in his little bedroom still
thinking about it. And he’d decided that if Mark wanted to take it
further, it would be a good thing. If Mark was looking for a fuck,
Lucas would be more than willing to go along with the plan. But
dinner was inexplicable. “Why?”
Mark looked awkward but squared his shoulders
and said, “We could talk. Get to know each other.”
“We talk here, don’t we?” Lucas squinted
suspiciously. “What do you want to talk about?”
A deep, frustrated sigh before Mark said,
“Just talk. Like…a date. You know?”
“A date.” Lucas let the word roll over his
tongue. “A date.”
“Yes, Lucas.” Mark seemed torn between
embarrassment, amusement, and frustration. “A date. I’d like to go
on a date with you. Does that sound like a good idea?”
Well that was an easy question. “No. It does
not sound like a good idea.” Lucas shook his head emphatically.
“What did I tell you last night about being careful? About being
respectable and everything? You can’t…” It was too stupid to even
put it into words, but apparently Mark needed it spelled out. “You
can date some respectable teacher or lawyer or accountant or
something. Another priest, maybe, or even someone with a trade—you
could date a real mechanic, if you like the blue collar thing. But
Mark, come on. I’m…” Again, it was all too obvious to even say it
but Lucas forced himself to continue. “I’m a convicted felon. And
what I’m convicted of…what I did…to who…”
“Do you think I’m unaware of that?” Mark’s
voice was strained. “Honestly, you think I haven’t struggled with
all this?”
“You’ve struggled with it and come to the
conclusion that we should go on a date? Fuck, Mark, you need to
struggle some more!”
Mark’s snort was half-laugh, half-disgust.
“Believe me, I’ve tried.” He shook his head. “I know all the
reasons I should be smart about this, all the reasons you and I
don’t make any kind of sense together.” His face softened a little
and he stepped closer. Too close, but Lucas couldn’t make himself
move away. When Mark spoke again, his voice was quiet, almost as
though he was talking to himself. “I know all the reasons to walk
away, but I also…” He reached out and ran his fingers gently,
reverently along Lucas’s jawline. “I also know this,” he said, and
he leaned in, his lips meeting Lucas’s gently.
This wasn’t the angry kiss from Mark’s
apartment or the passionate kiss of the night before. This kiss was
sweet, almost chaste, until somehow it wasn’t. Then Lucas was
turning toward Mark to find more contact between their bodies, was
wrapping his tongue around Mark’s and tasting his mouth, was
running his hands over Mark’s chest and around to his ass…
Mark pulled himself away and somehow had the
strength to keep Lucas from following. “That’s what I know,” he
said intensely. “I’m going crazy thinking about you. There’s
something here, and I want more of it, even if it is a bad
idea.”
“I didn’t say we couldn’t fuck,” Lucas said
as soon as he had his breathing back under control. “I thought
about that. We can do that. For sure. But not a date.”
Mark stared at him. “What happened to me
being an upstanding citizen and a moral leader?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t…I don’t have casual sex, Lucas. The
church…well, the church teaches that premarital sex is wrong, but
it also teaches that homosexuality is okay, but then only a few
congregations allow gay marriage, so how exactly am I supposed to
have post-marital sex…the rules are a bit fuzzy, I admit. But
casual sex is definitely right out. A ‘committed relationship’ is
usually the standard they use.”
Lucas struggled to make sense of it. “A
‘committed relationship’? Okay, a date was a bad idea, but a
committed relationship is crazy. That’s out of the question.
Obviously. Right?”
“I have no idea,” Mark sighed. He turned and
leaned against the front of the car. “It makes no sense. I get
that. But…I don’t know, Lucas. I’m pretty confused. I thought a
date would be a chance to test things out a little, I guess.”
“Or we could just fuck,” Lucas said with more
certainty. “I don’t know about all this sin stuff, but you could be
forgiven if it was a sin, couldn’t you? I mean, get it out of your
system, repent or whatever, and move on. Wouldn’t that work?”
“I can’t really take that approach to
things,” Mark said carefully. “That’s not how I work, not how
repentance is supposed to work.” He looked at Lucas and added, “And
it’s not just the church, not just the rules. I’m not
looking for a loophole. I believe that sex is a beautiful
thing that should be shared between people who truly care for each
other. I don’t want to have sex without an emotional
connection.”
Lucas was quiet for a moment. “Blowjobs?” he
suggested hopefully. “Does that count as sex? Or we could do other
stuff. You know, be the ‘everything but’ types.”
Mark was starting to look pretty unhappy, and
Lucas really didn’t like it. “Because an emotional connection with
me is so impossible? Because you’re completely uninterested in
spending time getting to know me?”
“Don’t be stupid,” Lucas retorted. “This is
about you. You know this is a bad idea but for some reason
you’re ignoring your common sense. Me? It doesn’t matter what I do,
or who I do it with. The beauty of having nothing to lose—there’s a
lot of freedom that goes with it. But you…”
“Let me worry about me.” Mark pushed
away from the car and stood straight and tall. “I’d like to take
you out to dinner, Lucas. If you don’t want to go out with me, say
so. Otherwise, tell me when and where.”
Lucas knew what he should say. Even if it was
a lie, he should say it. But he wasn’t strong enough to deny the
truth. Instead, he deflected. “You really think either of us is
going to be able to enjoy a meal with everyone in the restaurant
staring at us and talking?”
“I already thought about that. We can go down
to the city, somewhere nobody knows anything about anything.”
Finally Mark was displaying at least a little
sense, but Lucas shook his head anyway. “I need to be here for
afternoon feeding until five o’clock, and I have a nine o’clock
curfew. Allowing for traffic, the city’s two hours away. That would
leave us with zero minutes for eating.” He shook his head at Mark’s
expression. “Are you starting to see what a bad idea this is?”
“You could get time off work if you really
wanted to,” Mark said. “You’re only getting paid for about half of
your hours anyway. But…” He raised a hand to forestall Lucas’s
objection. “That’s fine. You’ve made commitments, and I respect
that. So we can eat at my place. I’m not a great cook, but I’ve got
a few specialties. You could come over right after work, eat, talk,
and still be back to the house in time for curfew.”
It sounded so easy. Sounded like something
people did when they had lives, and friends, and weren’t just
trying to get through each day without messing up. It was seductive
and terrifying. Lucas knew he had to be smart. He had to say no.
Instead, he said, “Not right after work. I should get cleaned
up.”
For the first time in too long, Mark smiled.
“Yeah, okay. So that’s a yes? You’ll come over after you’ve gotten
cleaned up? How about tonight?”
Lucas nodded shakily. This was a mistake.
Mark could get hurt, but so could Lucas. He didn’t want to get too
attached to something that they both knew was a bad idea. But as
Mark shuffled in closer, Lucas knew he couldn’t back away. He stood
still, let Mark find his hands and wrap their fingers together, and
opened his lips as Mark kissed him sweetly. “We’ll figure it out,”
Mark murmured between kisses.
Lucas knew they wouldn’t. The whole thing was
doomed before it even started, and the further along they made it
before it fell apart, the more devastating the wreckage would be.
He knew all that but he still returned Mark’s kisses. “Okay,” he
said. Sometimes it was easiest to just pretend.