Bird Came Down

Like a Brother

Theme Song: The Son of a Preacher Man, Dusty Springfield

Joey heard the knock at the front door, but he knew his mother would get it, and she did. A few minutes later, when there was a knock at his bedroom door he said come in, and was immediately startled to see Wesley Dnncan standing in his room.

“What are you….?” Joey sat up. “What are you doing here?”

“What were you doing there?” Wesley said, closing the door behind him. “And why were you being such a dick?”

Joey didn’t say anything, and then Wesley said, “Get up and come with me.”

“I wasn’t going anywhere.”

“Stop being a dick and come on,” Wesley said.

Joey wasn’t prepared for any of this, and he didn’t have any coy way to respond so he put down his magazine and said, “I have to get my wallet.”

“No you don’t.”

“Well, then I have to get my phone.”

“Fine,” Wesley said. “Just hurry it up.”

In Wesley’s car, Joey noted that Wesley’s shirt was open so that he could see a little of the hair on his chest, and he wore a choker that looked like a little rosary with a cross hanging over his breast.

“What ate you looking at?” Wesley said, his handsome face looking a little less sweet than usual. Joey noticed he hadn’t shaved.

“I didn’t expect to see you in church today.”

“I didn’t expect to see you either,” Wesley said. Then: “It’s not your church.”

“Your father’s a preacher.”

“My father’s a priest, and I’m probably going to be one too.”

“See, that’s it!”

“What?”

“How can you be…. All holy and shit. All in a white robe and praise God? I feel like everybody’s fucking pretending to be something they aren’t.”

“I’m not pretending to be anything,” Wesley said as he turned on Washington and headed east.

“You’re… pretending to be holy. Or pretending to…”

“I am religious,” Wesley said simply. “I go to church. I believe in God. I am a Christian. What’s your problem with that?”

“My problem is you fucked me on the edge of the river, and then told me to fuck you.”

Wesley laughed harshly and frowned at they came to a red light on Metcalf Boulevard.

“What?”

“Look,” Wesley said, “I get that it would have been better if it had happened in a better place, and I get that I was a little crude and stupid about that, but are you mad because I asked you to have sex with me in a jerky way, and then you saw me in church, or are you mad because I asked you to have sex with me period?”

Joey opened his mouth.

“Because if you’ve got some Catholic or Baptist idea that sex is evil, and men having sex with each other is evil, and I’m a hypocrite because I’m not a eunuch, then that’s bullshit. I love sex, I love Jesus, and I’m not going to let you make me feel bad for that.”

Wesley stared at him so hard that Joey had to remind him the light was green.

Wesley drove on and Joey said, “I… don’t know.”

They drove on a while and then Joey said, “No, I do know.

“It would have made a difference, it would have made a big difference if it had happened in bed. I had just come out of something. You took me out. You were a fucking gentleman and then… you fucked me up. I didn’t think I could say no. It would have made a shit ton of difference if we had gone to your house—”

“My parents are liberal. They aren’t that liberal,” Wesley said, looking ahead at the road.

“Or any place. If you’d been a gentleman about it.”

“Well you should have said that then. No one put a gun to your head.”

“Take me home.”

Wesley frowned while he looked ahead at the road and then he shouted, “Fucccck!”

They kept driving. They couldn’t make a u-turn on this long road, and Wesley said, “I’m doing this all wrong. “

“Are you taking me home?”

“If I tell you I’m sorry, and I messed up, and I’d like us to start over again, will you still go to dinner with me?”

“Yeah,” Joey said. “Sure.”

“Not as enthusiastic as I wanted, but I’ll take it.”

“I don’t even know what we should talk about,” Wesley said. “You know, polite dates where you talk about common interests and….” He shrugged, “stuff like that.”

“I actually haven’t been on a date with anyone but you,” Joey said.

Wesley blinked at him.

“I didn’t say I hadn’t…. with anyone but you,” Joey clarified. “But like… a real date.”

Joey looked around at the Del Taco and said, “Are you sure this classifies as a real date?”

“It does,” Joey decided, lifting the taco. “I love these fuckers.”

Wesley grinned, tilting his to bite into it.

“I guess I just knew I liked you.”

“I know I like you,” Joey said, “and I know why. But I don’t know why you like me.”

Wesley scrunched up his face. “That’s a terrible thing to say about yourself.”

“No, I just mean… I’m not very smart, and I’m not in college, and I’m not religious. I’m not all the stuff you are.”

“You’re super nice,” Wesley said. “You’re super kind. I just like being around you.”

Joey colored through his sun darkened skin, and hanging his head he muttered, “Thanks.”

“I thought,” Joey began, “and don’t think I’m vain or anything. But I thought it was because I was hot. I mean, just like you saw my body or something.”

“I did see your body,” Wesley clarified. “And I do, and it’s a very nice body by the way, but… it’s more than that. I’m not going to lie, it isn’t always. But with you it is.”

“And what about me?” Wesley demanded.

Joey looked up at him.

“What about me? Why would you want to be around me?”

“Oh, well,” Joey gestured to him it. “It goes without saying.”

“No it doesn’t,” Wesley disagreed. “You’d better say it.”

Joey thought a while, and when he still hadn’t come up with a reason, Wesley said, “I swear I’m about to get up and leave you at Del Taco.”

“You’re serious.”

“What?”

“You’re just the first serious, smart guy I’ve been with. The first my age,” Joey corrected. “And you treat me real good and… That’s what I like about you.”

“It’s getting late,” Wesley observed unnecessarily as they headed down Thomason Road.

“I should drop you off.”

“Why?”

“Whaddo you mean?” Wesley said. Then, “I’m tired, aren’t you? And I gotta get ready to head back to Bloomington.”

“Well when are you going there?”

“In two days.”

“Well, that’s two days from now, then,” Joey said. “Right now you’re with me.”

Wesley stopped the car and looked at Joey.

“Are you trying to say you want to spend the night together?”

“I’m trying to say every time I think of what we did on the river, I get… Part of me wants that again.”

“But you said…” Wesley began.

“I know what I said,” Joey told him. “And I know I’m fucked up.”

“And confusing.”

“Yes,” Joey agreed.

“Then what do you…?” Wesley stopped.

Joey had often been seduced, but never been seductive. It took a great deal of effort to put his hand on Wesley’s thigh.

“Well, Joey,” Wesley sounded very scholarly for a moment, “We can’t got to your place, and we can’t go to mine.”

“Not really.”

Wesley bit his lower lip and frowned and then nodded.

“Alright,” he said. “I know. Just… don’t judge, and gon’t be unnerved.”

The church was darkened and somehow, when Wesley lit the candles on either side of the altar, it made the church look darker still. Wesley’s eyes were filled with light. He took Joey by the hand, and kissed him lightly. Hand and hand they went up the aisle to the altar.

“I’ll be right back,” Wesley said.

When he came back he held a bundle under and arm, but Joey asked no questions.

“It’s beautiful,” Joey whispered in the darkness of the sanctuary. “I’ve never been in a church at night.”

Wesley dropped the bundle and it fell noiselessly. They were in the chancel, Joey remembered that’s what you called it, and Wesley’s hand in his was trembling as he led him to the other side of the altar.

“Joey,” he said, almost painfully, and lifted his shirt so only the choker with the cross glinted against his chest.

“I thought…” Joey began. But he was not sure what he had thought.

“We don’t have to,” Wesley said calmly, holding his shirt in his hands. He had a lovely, smooth young chest. The candlelight glinted on his amber hair.

“No,” Joey looked out into the darkness over the altar where the congregation had been that morning. He felt strangely protected by the communion rail. Past the latticed are they were Joey unbuckled Wesley’s shorts and pulled down the underwear that clung to him. He held the other boy’s penis in his hands and cupped his balls and Wesley’s mouth parted as his cock swelled. Joey undressed himself, and their penises rising up to touch each other, the boys stood naked together.

Joey Flowers leaned forward and kissed Wesley, pulling his face forward. Wesley’s hands were gentle on Joey’s shoulders when he pushed him down into the bundle of blankets and they had little time to unroll them before the two of them lay down, kissing, linking limbs, sighing as, at last, they ran their hands over each other’s bodies.

He had lain on his stomach for Wesley and received him, but in the end he turned around and opened his legs wide, running his hands up and down Wesley’s moist thighs, looking up at his chest while he felt Wes Duncan fucking him, running his hands up and down the sinewy arms of a sprinter, touching his face while Wesley looked down on him in love and, at last, looked up, making a staggering noise while Joey tightened his grip around his thighs. Wesley came, his semen shooting deep, and then trickling out of Joey the same time Joey felt his own orgasm, hot all over his chest and stomach.

In the aftermath, Wesley was still kneeling between his legs, still hard inside of him. Neither of them said a thing. They only breathed in the intense silence of the sanctuary. There was nothing to be said.