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Sometimes, in the smaller moments, Fergus thinks he can feel God watching him.
Late at night or early in the morning; lying in bed, making a cup of tea, drafting a policy, delivering the final sentence of a statement to the press. Within the blur of political blunders and misdeeds or the few blinding successes of his career; amidst every chewing out delivered or received, in all the moments of overwhelming frustration and in every soothing touch of a warm familiar hand on his shoulder, if Fergus gives focus to it, he can feel a burning in the back of his head.
It would be easier if Fergus could say he truly believed in the existence of God but the truth is, he doesn’t. Not anymore, anyway. Adulthood and the desperate grasp for independence should have freed him from having to concern himself with religion. Even when the bible was in his hands, placed there by a stern-faced teacher at his Catholic primary school or by his mother in her typical frenzy to uphold a respectable family image, he found the stories themselves to be nothing more than far-fetched and occasionally intriguing pieces of light entertainment.
As with many things in Fergus’ life, whether or not he believed didn’t seem to make a difference. There were still times where he thought he could hear God counting out his misdeeds and waiting patiently to dole out judgement. Sometimes it made him want to cry out and start smashing things. Sometimes it made him want to curl up in a ball and sob. Neither urge was alien to him, and thus, it seemed that God was just another piece of decor in the agonising and overstimulating planes of Fergus’ existence.
The weight of good and bad decisions, the differences between the moral and the immoral don’t often cross Fergus’ mind. From the moment he could talk, he asked only for what he wanted. He doesn’t care to analyse nor overthink, he commits only to what pleases him and tries not to concern himself with the consequences. Whenever he has adopted principles, they have only ever been enough to help him get by. They helped gain him a place in government. They have acted as a suitable disguise; a story that he can tell himself on the days in which the gaps in his identity seek to swallow him whole. Fergus knows full well that God doesn’t fall for disguises, no matter how suitable they may be.
Sometimes he wonders if he had always been doomed to sin or if it was a choice he made along the way. Was it forced upon him by his mother’s fussing or his father’s disapproval, or was it already destined to run through his veins before he was even conceived? Yet another fundamental flaw in the long list of fundamental flaws from which Fergus will never escape. After fleeing his family home to start university, Fergus remembers unpacking and finding a bible hidden in his suitcase. Inevitably his mother knew that asking him outright would only lead to an argument so she’d tucked it away amongst his clothes. A message: you can run but you cannot hide. He’d torn it to pieces as best he could and given himself a paper cut in the process. Fergus wonders if God had found the events funny or pitiful. Both possibilities fill him with rage.
However, upon starting university, Fergus wasn’t to know that the image of God and all of the terrifying and intoxicating freedoms of the wider world were about to collide. Fergus believes in fate about as much as he believes in God, and yet all it took to change the entire course of his life was going out to a bar.
Despite his less-than-favourable reputation (‘rude’, ‘weird’, ‘unfriendly’, ‘uptight’, ‘fucking bellend’: all descriptors he’d become increasingly familiar with), he had still made the decision to go down to the SUC knowing full well it would only earn him a night stood in a corner, sipping at an overpriced pint and getting increasingly agitated by the music and the heat and all the fucking people. Fergus doesn’t believe in angels either, and yet when he’d first spotted him, the light seemed to catch him just right and Fergus could’ve sworn he had a halo.
Fergus remembers the swagger in his walk as he’d been approached by him, unfamiliar as it was back then. Fergus remembers the way in which his mouth had quirked up prettily as he’d asked to buy Fergus a drink, dizzying and unstudied as it had appeared to him at the time. Then he’d held out a hand and said that his name was Adam, and Fergus was helpless against the shudder that ran down his spine and the bitter taste that filled his mouth.
His name was Adam, because of course it fucking was. God’s image was as pretty as it was intimidating. Fergus had accepted the drink anyway.
Adam’s fingers had lingered on Fergus’ skin for longer than necessary when handing Fergus the glass, and his eyes had sparkled when he’d listened to Fergus speak. Adam was wicked and sharp and his opinions were ugly and his eyes seemed to cut Fergus open until he felt really, truly seen in a way that was so foreign it made him feel as though he was losing his balance. Adam wore his amorality with a level of courage and pride that Fergus had previously been unable to muster and talked with such a disregard for public opinion that it made Fergus swoon.
Every interaction between them felt natural and effortless in a way that was so far removed from any other encounter Fergus had ever experienced. He wanted to know everything about Adam with an intensity that floored him and Adam’s evident interest in him made his head spin. Fergus couldn’t remember a time where he had been the object of anyone’s desire or interest. It was a different world.
Adam made Fergus want to be real. He made Fergus want to be brave. The name had meant nothing. The name had meant everything.
When he looks back, he wonders if God’s eyes had strayed away that night, or whether he had intended for his original creation to pick Fergus apart piece by piece, as effortlessly as pulling petals from a flower. Had he and Adam found each other in God’s blind spot, surrendering to each other in a place which left God helpless to stop them? He wonders whether his departure from God’s path came when he had accepted Adam’s invitation to go home with him, or whether his fate had been out of God’s hands from the moment Adam had attempted to catch his eye from across the bar. Either way, he had given into temptation. It was better than anything he’d ever tasted.
After that night, their meetings were few and far between. Fergus’ memories of those years are a boring blur of university work, graduation, the beginnings of a career in PR, so-called friends whose names he can barely remember occasionally coming and going. The only vivid memories, the only genuinely fulfilling experiences, are of time spent with Adam. With every encounter, no matter how fleeting, Fergus could feel himself giving in more and more to the things he’d been denying himself; God’s grip upon him loosening, year by year.
When Fergus looks back upon his memories of Christianity, the overwhelming feelings are of isolation and disconnection. He had laughed at stories he could not believe and prayers that did not reflect his true desires, and yet lain awake at night wondering what it all meant. God had been a threat when he couldn’t behave and a warning about what would await him if he couldn’t change. God was presented to Fergus as a figure of guidance and comfort, and yet it only ever served to remind him of the depth of his own inadequacy. Really, God was nothing but an extension of the world at large; the life in which, no matter what he did or how hard he tried, Fergus did not belong.
Adam validated him, not for what he could be, but for what he was. All his life, Fergus had been defined by his shortcomings; his identity shaped by the disappointment of his mother, his father, his surroundings, and God. With Adam, he could be whoever he wanted to be. Adam could’ve told Fergus that he was capable of flight and he would’ve believed him.
It would’ve been easier to give in to whatever sin Adam represented if it hadn’t all felt far too good to be true. Distance had to be maintained for the sake of his own sanity. Adam was a beautiful and delicate gift that he was lucky enough to hold in his hands for brief intervals. If he clung to him, the one truly wonderful thing he’d managed to gain would undoubtedly shatter in his grip.
Fergus had been plagued his entire life by the inherent and inescapable sin of his very being. He lived to serve his own interests; to fulfil gnawing desires and keep the emptiness and blinding frustration at bay for as long as possible, and yet on this occasion he was unable to let himself reach out and take the one thing he wanted most. An act of self-preservation; an act of self-hatred, self-doubt. He sinned in small doses and survived upon the memories of Adam’s presence in his space, Adam’s voice in his ears, Adam’s touch on his skin. He hated himself for expecting more. God must have laughed.
Sometimes he would cry. Late at night in his deafeningly-silent room, on Sunday afternoons spent giving himself headaches from watching too much shit TV and drinking endless cups of tea. Alone. Always alone. It reminded him of childhood; it reminded him of God. He’d cry until he felt utterly hollow, until he felt so sick that it distracted him from the overwhelming emptiness and wanting that clawed at him until he could barely breathe. If the sound of Fergus’ sobbing had ever reached God’s ears, he’d never made it known. As it was in Fergus’ childhood, it had continued to be. Always watching, never listening.
The time Adam and Fergus spent together grew longer and longer. The distances grew increasingly agonising. Fergus had told Adam that he was considering what a career in politics could offer him, that he’d make the jump if he only thought himself capable of it. Adam had told Fergus that he was capable of everything. Fergus had said that he’d struggle to do it alone. Adam had said nothing, but he’d looked at Fergus as if to say it should’ve been obvious that the answer was right in front of him. Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find. Fergus had looked back at Adam and left it at that.
Though God’s influence had continued to wane, Fergus still felt the suffocating heat of his gaze. On the day he submitted his entry for political candidacy, his awareness of God’s eyes was painfully keen. Fergus had no plan, as was typical for him. He knew that nomination seemed rather unlikely. The only thought he could focus upon was the memory of Adam’s expression during their brief conversation about it, telling him everything he needed to know.
There were many outcomes that Fergus perhaps should have been able to predict from that moment onwards. However, what was to come was far greater than anything his imagination ever could’ve conjured. If God had ever truly had an alternative plan for him, then this was the point at which all control had been lost.
On the day that it happened, he’d been travelling home after staying with Adam for the second time that month. The train journey had lagged and he’d spent much of it watching the rain form patterns on the window, thinking he could see the outline of Adam’s face within it. It was dark when he finally got in, and the dodgy light in his hallway meant that he almost missed the letter lying on the tiled floor. It was damp from where he had dripped on it when entering the house and it had been so long since he’d sent out his fateful candidacy application that for a moment, he had no idea what the contents might include.
Growing up, whenever Fergus had found himself forced into prayer, the main recurring themes had been his plea for God to give him a sense of self. For as long as Fergus can remember, he has been seeking answers to his questions of identity, cure-alls for the empty spaces with himself that have proved impossible to fill. There have been few moments in his existence where he can look back and say he truly felt like one whole, unbroken person, and neither life nor God have seemed willing to offer guidance. The night Fergus found out he’d been nominated for candidacy is one of the few moments of true clarity he’s ever experienced, and it had not been achieved through prayer.
It was Adam. It was always Adam.
Fergus hadn’t noticed the way the rain had soaked through every layer of his clothes, nor had he thought to take anything with him but the letter clutched in his hand. He could have stopped to phone him, he could have grabbed an umbrella on his way out of the door, but all he could do was run. Run down the street, run back to the train station, run to the ticket booth, run onto the train. His only thoughts were of Adam. Holier than any guiding light or any watchful and elusive God: Adam.
He had to tell Adam. He had to get to Adam.
Adam, stood in the doorway 40 minutes later in his bare feet. Adam, asking him what was wrong as Fergus stood before him, shivering and suddenly unable to form words. Adam, calling him a wanker as he pulled him in from the cold, herding him into his living room and giving him the jumper off his back with the insistence that he put it on before he froze to death. Adam, placing a cup of tea on the coffee table and gently prying the soggy piece of paper from his cold hands.
Fergus remembers how the seconds had dragged as he watched Adam read the letter, his expression unreadable. Fergus wanted desperately to say something but the words had refused to come out, trapped in his throat and driving him mad as the silence stretched ever onwards. Finally, Adam had looked at him, searchingly.
‘What are you going to do, then?’
Fergus didn’t know.
‘This is going to take a lot of work, Ferg.’
Adam had studied Fergus’ face as he’d struggled to pin down something, anything to say, the silence still unbreakable and weighing him down. Adam had sighed, looking away.
‘All you have to do is ask me. I think you know that by now.’
Before he could think about it, Fergus had found himself reaching out, taking Adam’s hand and gently cradling it. Instinct. Blind faith. Fergus could feel Adam’s eyes on him again, but he kept his gaze on their hands, unable to look Adam in the face for fear of the intensity. He hadn’t intended for his words to come out so quietly, but nothing else seemed appropriate. A whispered prayer.
‘Stay with me, please. Help me.’
Only the briefest moment passed before Adam was reaching out and tilting Fergus’ chin up to look at him. When they locked eyes, Adam was smiling softly, his gaze certain.
‘Of course I will.’
Adam had kissed him like the world was about to end, like they were the only two people left on earth. His right hand had cradled Fergus’ face, stroking his jaw softly, whilst his left gripped Fergus’ hand as if to prove to himself that Fergus was real, as if he wasn’t entirely sure this wasn’t an illusion that could shatter at any minute. When they broke apart, Adam had sighed shakily, still holding Fergus’ face. When he’d spoken, it was with a bravery that Fergus could only have dreamed of
‘I love you.’
And that had been that.
Over the coming months, miracles had seemed to become extremely commonplace. So much so that when Fergus won the election, it had seemed almost matter-of-fact. In between the frenzied chaos of it all, he and Adam had come home to Adam’s cold little flat (Fergus had moved in temporarily before they’d bought their current house in Shepherd’s Bush) and collapsed into each other’s arms. Fergus remembers the way their shared dazed laughter had been muffled as they’d stood holding each other in Adam’s kitchen, his face buried in Adam’s shoulder, his hand stroking Adam’s hair.
Over the course of that year, Fergus had experienced some of the greatest victories of his life and somehow, even then, all he really remembers is Adam. He was finally allowed to surround himself with Adam every single day: that was his true victory and from it came every success, every joy, every salvation. New religion had been revealed to him, piece by piece.
There are times when he cannot help but question Adam’s reasoning for choosing him, being with him, loving him. Sometimes he cannot help but wonder how long it’ll be before Fergus inevitably loses him. There are moments when he feels compelled to argue against Adam’s softness towards him, the gestures of love he extends that are so at odds with the reality Fergus had grown so accustomed to. But faith in Adam has always been easier than faith in anything else. Adam’s love is tangible. God’s love remains nothing but an untouchable myth.
Despite everything, the shadow of God never truly disappears from Fergus’ life. He can remember the feeling of God’s gaze singeing the back of his neck at the Goolding inquiry, the building sense of dread as the bible was placed in front of him. Sometimes he thinks he can feel God’s presence walking beside him as he makes his way to DoSAC in the morning, watching over his shoulder as he snaps at Peter or yells at Terri, hiding in the face of every journalist that interviews him. God remains a lingering presence, but Adam is always closer: lying next to Fergus when he wakes up in the morning and when he goes to sleep at night, a consistent warmth at his side in every political endeavour, a familiar voice in his ear when the entire world appears twisted and unbearable.
Sometimes Fergus thinks he can feel God watching him. When he looks at Adam, it is very easy to let himself forget why God’s judgement ever mattered in the first place.