Chapter Text
Marcus looks good. Better after sleeping. He's lost a bit of that sharpness—no, not sharpness, Marcus is always sharp, angular, but when he's tired, he's jagged. Less like a knife, more like broken glass. He loses his hilt, and the hand clasps the blade. But he looks better now, after resting, and he tells Tomas he feels better. Rests a hand on his shoulder and says, "Thank you for taking care of me."
Tomas smiles, and Marcus smiles back. It's like when the sun cuts through the clouds in such a way that the light becomes visible, lines of pure warmth, the sky's honest halo. When he was younger, Tomas thought that light was God, was literally God, before he went to seminary, learned the theoretical and the theological, the words of the Lord and the words of the men of the Lord who tried and failed to speak for Him in their best and worst intentions, and forgot for a while the sky.
Then Marcus drove them through big sky country on their travels west, so they could exorcise a young boy who'd slaughtered the livestock of his parents' farm.
The boy lived. The demon left. The family asked Tomas and Marcus to leave as well, and they slept that night some twenty miles away in the flatbed of their truck. It had been ages since Tomas had gone camping, if you could call this camping, parking off the side of a straight empty highway and listening to music played through Marcus’ seemingly indestructible tape deck. So maybe that wasn’t camping. After all, Tomas had never enjoyed camping, and this—this he wanted to do every night for the rest of his life. Here was the glory of God, in the multitude of stars and the chill of the night air, all the brighter and colder because of the heat radiating from man beside him. They shared constellations and the last of their beers. At one point, Marcus laughed and while laughing rested his head upon Tomas' shoulder, and without thinking, Tomas rested his cheek on the top of Marcus’ head. And they paused like that. Perhaps Marcus was also wondering if this was them tipping over into something new, or also realizing that this is what happiness felt like. Perhaps Marcus was thinking nothing at all.
After a beat, they moved. They passed the bottle between them. They slept without touching. Even with the cold.
In the morning, Tomas woke to sunlight piercing his eyes. And blinded by the sunrise, half panicked, half euphoric at the terrible grandeur, Tomas thought, I see You. I see You.
Marcus' smile has a terrible grandeur too familiar. There's a commandment or two about thoughts like that. But Marcus is not God, and Tomas does not think that for even a moment, any more than Tomas thought God was a sunrise, or the last swallow of Marcus' proffered beer, or the glancing weight of Marcus' laughing head on Tomas' shoulder. This is not the temptation of idolatry; these are the markers on the path to God, who is infinite, who is everywhere, who is everything. He chooses when He wants to be seen. Marcus smiles like God wants Tomas to remember Him.
Tomas is not sure what that means.
"You're good at this, you know," Marcus says. "You're going to be better at it than I ever was."
Tomas drops his head, afraid to let Marcus see the joy that must shine from his face. "Thank you. Everything I do, is because you've taught me."
Then a hand on Tomas's chin. And Marcus raises Tomas' head to look at him, and he does not remove his hand, and he says, "God chose you. God chose you for greatness, Tomas. I should thank you for letting me be with you here, at the beginning of your path."
"I—I—" Tomas says, as Marcus lowers his hand, his touch, his fingers brushing the pulse pounding in Tomas' neck. "I've made mistakes. I let a demon into my—"
"I've let demons into me," Marcus says. "It happens. Why do you think I was so mad?" His fingers trace Tomas' jawline. Marcus watches Tomas shiver through half-lidded eyes. "It's dangerous because it feels good. They're good at that, demons. Making you feel good."
"It doesn't feel good," Tomas murmurs. He feels as if he's drunk; he feels that way with Marcus often enough that you’d think he’d handle it better. Marcus is closer now, closer than he was before, and Tomas doesn't remember him approaching, doesn't ever want him to step back. He's high off the proximity of his body, and the finger tracing the shell of his ear.
"It does," Marcus says. "You did it because it felt good. To beat a demon on their own ground. To do what I never could. It only feels bad when you're done. That's why you never stop doing it." He leans forward, his breath so hot against Tomas' ear it feels like he's panting flames. "Sinning's the fun part, isn't it? It's the repentance that’s the bitch."
"Marcus." Tomas' hands ball in Marcus's sweater, to push him away, to pull him closer, to keep him exactly where he is, the temptation almost but not quite succumbed to, the inches of distance of plausible deniability. But Marcus is hot, so hot; without touching Tomas, Marcus still burns him. “We have to—Marcus, the exorcism, we have to—”
“We did, Tomas,” Marcus says. “We did.”
And they did, Tomas remembers that now, driving the demon out of Andy while Marcus slept on the couch downstairs. The children celebrating while Andy embraced them all. Harper looking to Tomas without fear, just joy—he might have killed her, in his pride, his arrogance, his surety that he knew better than Marcus, but he hadn’t, and Tomas had saved the day alone, and Marcus stood in the doorway, arms crossed, a soft smile on his face as the sunlight wreathed him in holy fire—
And they are in the guest bedroom of the house while the family plays outside, or maybe they’re off the island, or they’re getting dinner, or they’re gone, just gone, because Marcus and Tomas are here, alone, and so close. This is the room where Rose sleeps, and Rose is not here. The two of them are unchaperoned, Tomas thinks as a nervous giggle bubbles out of him.
And Marcus looks at him.
And Tomas does not know what his face is trying to say.
And Marcus asks, “Do you want to kiss me?”
It’s worse, it’s so much worse that he asks. There would be a simplicity in simply kissing. In Tomas’ too, too numerous fantasies, Marcus doesn’t ask and neither does Tomas. They don’t need to. They should understand (that to ask makes it real, to concede makes you complicit, they would turn passion into premeditated sin) each other too well to need that (Tomas wants it to be real, he wants to ask and acquiesce and demand and give and give and take and give, he wants to know where his suspicion comes from that touching Marcus cannot possibly be a sin. He suspects it is from God, but he’s let too many things into his head lately).
Marcus says, “I asked you a question, Tomas.”
When Tomas doesn’t answer, can’t answer, can’t think of anything except how he promised he wouldn’t do this again, defile his vows and the person he’s with by breaking his vows with them, can’t think of anything except how Marcus’ touch has never felt like defilement, Marcus drops his hand. He takes a step back, or tries to. Tomas catches his hands before he can. There is his answer to himself, how bravery comes to him before the moment of loss.
“Yes,” Tomas breathes.
Marcus’ face is perfectly still, and the thought occurs to Tomas in the same way a chill occurs to the body if one is dunked in ice water: Marcus did not say he wished to kiss Tomas. Only that he wished to know if Tomas did. And now he is saying nothing, doing nothing, just standing there, his hands limp in Tomas’ sweaty grasp.
Was this a test? Had Tomas failed?
But Tomas does not let Marcus’ hands go. Nor does Marcus pull away. They are tipping, Tomas feels it with perfect surety this time, into something new.
Then Marcus smiles, and it burns so brightly it must be the light of God. “So kiss me.”
To exult God in rapturous joy is to press his lips to Marcus’, which are hotter than Tomas ever imagined. It’s a light kiss at first, a toe dipped in the ocean. It is soft as a dream. Tomas has dreamed of this, has dreamed of slow dancing with Marcus while the band plays only for them. Marcus’ hands still hang in Tomas’—they squeeze, and he squeezes back.
Then Marcus shifts, and snatches away all slowness, all softness.
Marcus’s hands hot on his throat, gripping so tight Tomas nearly chokes, and Marcus groans into Tomas’s mouth, “You taste so good, you taste so sweet.” The praise churns in Tomas’s gut like fire, and Tomas groans back, and Marcus swallows the sound along with Tomas’s breath, his thoughts, his hesitations.
Tomas whimpers, “Marcus,” and Marcus swallows that as well as he pushes Tomas backwards. The bed feels so good underneath him, almost as good as Marcus feels on top of him, impossible weight and heat like his body is made of iron pulled right from the fire. In Mexico, the sidelines of the football match, Tomas was twelve years old and his best friend’s brother told him that faggots go to hell where they are tortured for all eternity by demons who shove red hot pokers up their filthy assholes.
When Tomas flinches, Marcus hold his head tight and does not cease his kissing as if he will not allow the movement to derail what has been so long coming. This is good, good. Tomas does not need to apologize, to explain, and he wouldn’t know how to do either, does not know why the ugly words of an ignorant child come to mind now, except that Marcus is so hot on top of him, and Tomas is the shameless faggot the boys who hated him accused him of being.
“Wait, wait,” Tomas says, pulling away enough to whisper the words against Marcus’s lips. When he dreamed this, he dreamed it sweet and slow, he dreamed the kind of touch that said it was something more than lust, more than broken vows for his throbbing cock. He dreamed there was a way, though he’d never found it before, that sex might feel like God’s blessing, without sin or shame.
“We’ve waited enough,” Marcus whispers back, and Tomas can’t argue with that either. He wants this. God forgive him, he wants this. He has always wanted too much. He wanted Jessica, wanted glory, wanted to banish demons with a wave of his hand, but it has nothing on this, nothing on Marcus’s steady hands undoing Tomas’ belt, nothing on Marcus’ steady teeth scraping Tomas’ lifeline. Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault, Tomas’ heart rejoices as it beats against his chest.
Marcus pulls down Tomas’ pants and says, as if he were remarking upon a clever dog, “Look at you,” and Tomas flushes and hardens with aroused shame, shameful arousal, the two emotions so intertwined beneath Marcus’s amused gaze that Tomas could not pick them apart in all of God’s eternity. He feels foolish, clothed but bare as Marcus straddles him fully dressed. Tomas has not even removed his collar, has not even unbuttoned his shirt. He raises his hands to do so, and Marcus pins his wrists to the bed. “Look at you,” Marcus says again and looks at him. Tomas is so hard he wants to cry.
“Marcus, please,” he says, and Marcus smirks, and Tomas closes his eyes because the sight feels the same as Marcus’s weight on his wrists: a sensation so white hot that Tomas can truly not differentiate between pleasure and pain.
“I like you begging,” Marcus says. Tomas cannot close his ears to that. “You’ve wanted this for so long.”
“Yes, yes,” Tomas pants, humiliation heavy as lead in his lungs. This is confession, wicked confession, the horrible satisfaction of listing sins like posts on a bedpost. The shame that comes before the absolution.
Marcus’s hands tighten on Tomas’ wrists as he grinds their hips together, and scrape of rough denim against Tomas’ bare, aching cock rips a keening plea from Tomas’ throat. “Por favor, Marcus.”
“You’re good at that. Good at begging.” There’s laughter in Marcus’s voice. “I bet you’re used to getting everything you’ve ever asked for.”
He flips Tomas onto his stomach and spreads his thighs with enough force to bruise. Tomas shudders and thrusts back against Marcus, against nothing, rutting the air as his cock drips precum onto the guest sheets. Tomas does not say, I’ve never done this before. He can tell by the way Marcus strokes the curve of his ass that Marcus knows. Tomas does not say, Be gentle. He does not want gentleness. He wants pleasure to scour him raw and clean.
“This is a sin,” Marcus mutters without shame, as if the thought is all the more alluring than this act could ever be condoned. He does not offer what Jessica offered, what she thought Tomas needed and what only drained the pleasure, not the sin; he does not take the collar off. He is never just a man; wishing cannot make it so. Jessica didn’t realize that sin hurts less when it hurts at all, the pious satisfaction of suffering as you do wrong. Tomas thinks of all those holy men and women across the centuries mortifying the flesh—let me be one of you, he wants to tell them. I love God in all my weakness, I love the vessel He fills, I beg Him to fill me with His Light beyond my body can endure.
Marcus offers Tomas not indulgence from sin but his hand, pressed to Tomas’ lips, which part for the copper tang communion of Marcus’s fingers. Tomas lathes them with what individual worship he can offer while Marcus finger fucks his mouth. His other hand scratches the nape of Tomas’ neck, right above the collar. On all fours, Tomas feels like a dog, like a bitch in heat. Marcus weaves his fingers through Tomas’ hair and tugs, until Tomas is nearly bent double backwards and Marcus can nip his earlobe and say, with horrible softness, “My good boy. Tell me what you want.”
“I want—” Tomas tries and nearly chokes on Marcus’s fingers. Marcus pulls them back, just enough to brush their spit-covered tips against Tomas’ bruised lips. “I want you,” those lips pants.
Marcus doesn’t move. “Want me how?”
Tomas squeezes his eyes shut. “Make love to me.”
Marcus laughs, and it’s such a strange sound, such a cruel sound that Tomas jerks out of his grip, falling forward onto the bed, and Marcus falls with him, his weight heavy on Tomas’s back. “No, Tomasito, no. Tell me what you want.”
But that is what he wants, that’s what he’s wanted for so long, a way to make the way Marcus warms him into a physical exultation. Marcus doesn’t seem interesting in warming him right now. He wants them to burn, and Tomas burns with the thought. “Fuck me?” Tomas does not mean for it to come out a question.
“Again.”
Fingers press against Tomas’ entrance, where no one in his abbreviated sex life has ever touched him, where he’s only cautiously probed himself in the shower of cheap motel rooms, his other hand clasped over his mouth so he does not wake Marcus sleeping just on the other side of the door. He hasn’t imagined it like this, but he has imagined it, God have mercy, how Tomas has imagined it, and that he’s here, that it’s happening but not happening, it nearly makes him sob. “Dios, fuck, please, Marcus, fuck me, please, please fuck me,” Tomas pants.
Then Marcus presses in, and it’s too much, too fast, and not enough, not at all. One finger, two fingers, such a strange invasion done so fast that if Tomas had not experimented himself, he could not have borne it. He barely bears it now. Lube, he thinks, they should have something, before he hears the obscene wetness of Marcus spitting on his spare hand.
Tomas never finished writing his last sermon, the one so thoroughly derailed by the Rances, by the demons, by the Pope, by everything. What had it been on? Ephesians. God’s glory, received. That he would grant you (“Tell me you want this,” Marcus murmurs) according to the riches of his glory (Tomas can hear the soft rasp of skin on skin as Marcus strokes himself) to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man
(benediction is Marcus pleasuring himself to Tomas—Tomas will never deny this man anything)
That Christ (“yes”) may dwell in your hearts by faith (“yes, Marcus, I want this so much”); that ye, being rooted (“say it again, Tomas”) and grounded (“I want nothing so much as you”) in love may be about to comprehend (Marcus shifts) with all the saints (Tomas closes his eyes) what is the breadth (Marcus pushes), and the length (pushes), and depth (pushes), and height (stills);
(“Relax,” Marcus teases, as Tomas seizes, every part of his body tensed in the face of this agony, ecstasy, this misplaced stigmata. He is pinned and speared. This is not how he imagined. This is pain and pleasure and pressure beyond endurance.)
And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled (Tomas pants, “More”) with the fullness of God (and Marcus says fondly, “What a good boy.”)
Tomas is crying. That is what you do in the face of something so much bigger than you. Tomas prostrates himself before the headboard and gives himself to God.
“Confess, Father,” Marcus hisses in his ear. “How often have you thought about this?”
Tomas can’t answer, he can’t, can’t manage any noise more coherent than the gasps of pleasure fucked out of him with every thrust. He can barely hold himself up with both arms while his cock hangs heavy and neglected between his legs. When he tries to reach for it, Marcus grabs his arm and twists up behind Tomas’ back. “I asked you a question. How often have you thought about being fucked by me?”
“Every night, every night. Marcus, touch me, please—”
“And how often did you do something about it?”
“I can’t—”
Marcus shifts his hips, and Tomas’ vision goes white, pure white, and Tomas thinks oh, oh so this is the prostate he’d tried in halting vain to find in himself, yes, this explains quite a lot of sinning, if sin feels like this, and Marcus asks, “Did you abuse yourself, Father? Hmm? Qué te va?”
Tomas’ cheeks burn, and he is amazed there is still embarrassment to be drained from him as he says, “Si, si, dios perdoname, muy a menudo, casi todas las noches.”
“English, Padre. How will I understand you?”
He flushes all the harder, feels all the stupider for doing so. “Yes, Marcus, yes, I did, yes, it wasn’t enough, it was never enough. Please, God, please touch me.”
Marcus thrusts again, hits that same spot, laughs as Tomas wails, and says with merciless affection, “No, Father. You’re going to come on my cock or you’re not going to come at all.”
The answer seems to be not at all. Marcus teases so close to what Tomas needs, and then backs off, fucks him until Tomas feels he’ll tear in two, then slows until Tomas begs him to move. Marcus doesn’t fuck like a chaste man. Marcus fucks as if now that he is inside Tomas, they have all of eternity, not one night but entire span of damnation. Oh Tomasita, muy bonita, muy piadosa, his memories whisper in their ugly little voice, la inglesia no te salvará. Maricas siempre arden en el infierno.
“Fuck me, Marcus,” Tomas grunts, and Marcus laughs, says, “Aren’t I doing that already?” and Tomas says, “Harder, harder, harder,” as Marcus acquiesces, and Tomas thrusts back, and his arm is still twisted up behind his back, twisted and more twisted as Tomas loses what little control he still had in the face of Marcus’ methodical onslaught.
Tomas’ climax doesn’t feel good. It feels like a cracked tooth finally pulled, the gangrenous limb finally amputated. It is relief more profound than pleasure. The relaxation at last of your body when it can stand no more to be tense, blood rushing out to warm you as you die of hypothermia.
Marcus pulls out and lets Tomas go. Tomas collapses face down, and he is so tired, so weak, that for a long moment he forgets that he must breathe. It takes the last of his strength to turn his head out of the pillow. He cannot see Marcus, cannot hear or feel him. It would almost be like he had never been there at all, if Tomas could not feel his seed dripping out of him. He tries to cry out and finds he has no words left.
“Shh, shh,” comes from the side of the bed Tomas isn’t looking towards, and weight settles there, and a hand settles in Tomas’ hair. “Calm down, Tomas.” Marcus sounds amused. “God but you were gagging for it.”
Tomas tries to say something like fuck off but can’t get the words from his fried brain to his broken mouth. He tries to tell Marcus to knock it off. There’s something about being on the other side of an orgasm that makes Marcus’ words sound meaner.
“You weren’t built for chastity, were you?” Marcus strokes Tomas’ sweat-soaked hair before he pats the back of his neck. “Me neither. I ought to send Bennett a fruit basket for finally getting that damn collar off me. Send him something anyway.” Marcus tugs at Tomas’ collar so that for a moment it chokes him. “Feels like a noose, doesn’t it? Gets you free refills at the odd cafe, but not nearly the respect it used to scare up. Being a man of God used to mean something. Now it’s just empty Masses and people making jokes about what you get up to with the altar boys.”
Tomas shivers. He’s freezing now, his clothes so wet with sweat that it’s as if he went swimming in them, and Marcus sounds sharp again. Jagged.
“You could make the church mean something again,” Marcus says. “Go back to Chicago. Tell them you want that big fancy church after all. They’d give it to you. Look at you, Tomas. Who wouldn’t give you anything you asked for?”
Tomas struggles to sit up. But his arms shake, and Marcus’ hand resting on his back seems so impossibly heavy. “You don’t want me to stay with you?”
“I could come with. I’ve heard good things about the rectory.”
“But our work, the people who need us—”
“Sure, we’ll still help them. You’re a powerful exorcist, Tomas. Shouldn’t take too much time out of your schedule. I’ll drive you out where you need to be, you’ll send the demons scattering with a wave of your hands.” Marcus’ voice drops the way Tomas so loves to hear it drop, like Marcus is telling a joke for Tomas and no one else, not even God. “You can show me how it’s done.”
“It is God's doing,” Tomas says, and Marcus says, “Only for exorcists too weak to do it themselves.”
Tomas closes his eyes and for a moment, a moment he knows he will wish could last longer, feels nothing at all. The moment of breaking through thin ice must be a numb shock, when the steady ground splinters and suddenly the world is in an instant not what it was before. It is deadly and you are drowning, and your body forces upon you in the account moment of crisis a terrible stillness not unlike acceptance, in which you may press your hands against the underside of the ice and wonder what happened, what you’ve done.
This time when Tomas sits up, Marcus does not stop him. Or cannot. His hand is still on Tomas’ back, his lower back, where Marcus has so often graced his hand to guide Tomas or comfort him or tease him or simply, Tomas has always hoped, because Marcus took the same pleasure in touching that Tomas took in being touched. “This is not real,” Tomas says through numb lips.
He makes the mistake of opening his eyes, of looking as he always does to Marcus, and the thing that looks like Marcus looks just like Marcus, purses his lips, squints, and cocks his head just like Marcus, except Marcus never looked at him like that with his pants still undone, stroking his penis back to hardness.
Tomas jerks his gaze away. “This is not real.”
Marcus’ voice says, “It feels real. Doesn’t it, Tomas? So much more real than your sweet little dreams.”
“Unclean spirit, I cast you out—”
“You can’t even cast yourself out of the bed.” Words formed through an audible sneer, and when Tomas flinches away, tries to stand and falls, hobbled by his pants still pulled down, hits the hardwood floor that isn’t really there, and burns with shame, the demon laughs, he laughs like Marcus laughs but crueler, and Tomas wonders how he could have been so wicked and stupid to have kissed that mouth.
Tomas staggers to his feet, fumbles his way dressed, cracks his dry lips. “In the Name—the Name—” and the words drop from him as the demon laughs again.
“You want me so bad,” taunts Marcus’ mouth. “You didn’t think for a second, and now you’re trying the righteous act on? You think God wants a cocksucker’s mouth wrapped around His words?”
“It is he who commands you, he who—”
“Not even a cocksucker, though.” The thing that wears Marcus’ face wears a musing expression upon it, and it is so familiar that Tomas nearly throws up. “An aspirational cocksucker. And a wannabe exorcist. Quite a resume you’ve got. I’m sure Marcus is very impressed.” The thing that is not Marcus smirks with Marcus’ mouth and uses Marcus’ hand to run Marcus’ thumb over the head of Marcus’ erection. “Come on, love. I promise I’ll tell you how good you’re doing. That’s all it takes, isn’t it?”
“Get out,” Tomas hisses. “Wear your own face, you filthy, unclean thing.” Tomas made his mistakes, Tomas committed his sins, he’s committed sin beyond measure upon the body of his friend, but with a fury purifying in its clarity, Tomas cannot allow even the image of Marcus’ flesh to be so defiled. Not for Tomas’ weakness. Marcus will never deserve that, and Tomas is unworthy to see what he has dreamed so long of seeing.
The demon tuts. “That sort of attitude isn’t how you make first Mexican Pope, Tomas.”
This is not real, and this is real, and this is Tomas’ head, and he has defeated demons from the inside before. “I command you, unclean spirit, whoever you are—”
“You know who I am, Tomas,” the demon uses Marcus to say. “I’m what you want.”
Tomas can no more shut his eyes than he could shut his ears. He forces himself to hear the poison, to let it drip upon his open eyes as Marcus, half naked, not Marcus, touches himself and laughs. “By the mysteries of the incarnation, passion, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ—”
“I didn’t offer anything you didn’t want.”
Tomas wants a crucifix and this is his head so now he has a crucifix that he brandishes towards the creature which, hissing, falls back. “By the descent of the Holy Spirit—”
Not Marcus lunges forward, nearly snapping his teeth on Tomas’ nose if Tomas hadn’t caught him in the chest. “I didn’t give you anything you didn’t ask for,” he hisses in Tomas’s face, his breath the putrid smell of sick and death and long decay.
Tomas holds him off, holds the crucifix to his neck and reminds himself that this is not Marcus who writhes. “Obey me to the letter—”
“I did, you stupid faggot—”
“I who am a minister of God—”
The demons makes a sound from Marcus’ mouth that Tomas realizes with grim satisfaction that Tomas has never heard before. “God doesn’t want you.”
“Despite my unworthiness—”
“Marcus doesn’t want you.”
“I command you, minion of hell—”
“Whore,” Marcus’ mouth but Marcus’ mouth bleeding, rotting, hisses. “Why would I ever want you? Kiss you, fuck you? I know where your mouth’s been, I’ve already pulled it off one demon’s cunt. How many times does Tomas Ortega have to go to his knees before he learns how unworthy he is?”
Tomas’ grip falters, just for a second, and the demon lunges.
It’s funny, in a humorless sort of way, that Tomas’ first thought at the hand seizing his throat is how often Marcus has cupped him here, both palms cradling Tomas’ neck like they held some precious, fragile thing. Sometimes Tomas’ head has felt too heavy for his tired bones, has hung so heavy with exhausted terror that Tomas cannot lift it from his chest or the pillow or the windowsill or Marcus’ shoulder, and Marcus’ hands anointed with his own generously offered blood as much as Christ’s would lift Tomas’ head for him, and Marcus’ tender lips would in their tenderness make achingly soft whatever words he’d use to tease Tomas falling asleep on the job.
Tomas is used to drawing strength from Marcus’ hands. The demon can use them to choke the life but not the spirit, nor the Spirit. God is water that fills Tomas’ cupped hands; Marcus holds his wrists steady. The demon and Tomas are both unclean things, but one once laid prostrate before the cross and swore to more.
“God is in me,” Tomas exhales, and the demon who is not Marcus, too cruel and petty a thing to ever be Marcus, sneers and says, “He fuck you too?” And Tomas invokes the power of Christ who flows through his vessel to smash the demon against the wall, and Tomas raises the crucifix once more, and Tomas does not think of how his body, his imagined dream of a body, aches from the imagined violation of Marcus’, and the demon snarls, and Tomas thinks, Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault, and asks God for time. Before him is the adversary who cowers before the cross. Let him defeat this evil in the name of the Lord, in the name of Andy Kim who loves his children and loved his wife. Let Tomas do this now, whatever the cost, and when the work is done, he’ll kneel before Marcus once more and beg his forgiveness.