watchful eyes (tronnor)

seventeen; and the hopeless sacrifice their religion

okay the response was an overwhelming "make connor suffer" so. sorry i haven't updated in forever...but i should be back on a regular schedule again now. also just to clarify, i'm saying all churches/religious figures/christians are like this. this is one specific church, in one place, with made up people. that being said, i'm not religious at all, so if something is drastically wrong, sorry & please point it out.

a priest stands in snow white robes with his arms raised and preaches as if he is god. his words fly to the ceiling and then sink to the ground like anchors. connor closes his eyes and lets the words sink in like ink. like ink under skin in the swirling sin of a tattoo.

connor holds his hands in his lap and wraps his fingers around each other, intertwined in a net. he tries to feel whole this way, with a man pretending to be god telling him how to live his life and surrounded by straight backed suits and dresses. his mother mouths the words to her prayers next to him. there is not a single wrinkle in her dress. his father mirrors her, hands clasped. his sister stares at the floorboards as if she is afraid that the ground will open and she will go to hell.

the man preaching says that troye will go to hell. (so will he, so will connor, so will he. they are all going to hell.)

his mother is nodding along to the man. (connor will never be forgiven if he tells his mother the things he has been thinking. he has not been thinking anything, there is nothing wrong with him, he is normal.)

his father whispers to connor, "you must tell your friend. perhaps he can be fixed." (he still does not know troye's name. he probably never will.) connor must help him, he must, he must.

his sister will not meet his eyes. (does she know? she knows, she knows, she knows.) her hands are clasped and her breathing is quiet, even. she smiles at her boyfriend across the aisle. he smiles back and mouths something. she looks away, eyes laughing. his mother glares but she does not notice.

lana sits a few rows ahead and across the aisle, and connor stares at her hunched back as if that will make her turn to him. she fiddles with something in her lap quietly, and a few seconds later, connor feels his phone buzz. (he smiles to himself.) his mother stiffens and glares at him. he only swallows and folds his bones father into his skin. he is a folded origami lie, and his mother does not ask for the truth. lana does not ask for the truth either, and instead of asking him to text during the sermon, she texts someone else. (amelia woods, connor guesses. her name is sour in his mind, but not because lana is texting her instead of him. it is because she is not a lie, her tongue is not twisted in her throat and she is everything he will never be brave enough to be.) he watches lana smile at her lap and he looks away, forcing his stomach into jealous knots.

when it is over, his mother leads him outside with a claw on his shoulder and a smile on her lips. she will yell at him for texting during church later, even if it was not his fault. he would never directly anger her (ignore god) like that. church is holy and he will carve holes into himself trying to believe that. he will not answer his phone the rest of the day (it will vibrate dully in his mother's bedside table).

connor and troye and lana and tyler go out for pizza later. neither lana nor connor speak of the service (they all know where they were, but they do not ask) and troye does not speak of the boy at the table behind them who smiles out of the corner of his lips.

"he's cute," tyler whispers, nudging troye. "and he's smiling at you."

troye blushes and does not meet connor's eyes.

lana turns. "oh he is cute."

connor laughs, and it burns. it hurts like fiery stakes and the heat of his mother's eyes and the glare in his father's almost-frown-almost-smile. "go talk to him, tro. he's totally smiling at you."

the boy was not even looking at troye by then, but no one mentions that. connor has not turned to look at the boy, but no one mentions that either. and troye smiles because connor is trying. he is trying and that is more than troye could ever have asked for from a boy who burns with the fires of hell.