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NEW FIC: "Don't Let The Rain Come Down"
ETA: This is a wifeless A/U!
Title: Don't Let the Rain Come Down
Pairing/characters: Jon/"Stephen"
Rating: PG for swearing
Warnings: religion :P
Summary: What if every time "Stephen" had a homosexual thought or feeling, it caused a rainstorm? "Inspired" by the anti-gay ad that was running during the Prop 8 thing in 2008.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Author: Farfalla Caquí
Word Count: around 2600
He was thinking about tonight's toss, and how much fun it was to banter with his Jewish friend Jon Stewart before a live audience, when God's message first came down to him.
CRACK went the thunder outside, followed shortly by a faint rumble.
Any other night this would have just been 'weather', but Stephen had just been watching old anti-gay tv adverts, mostly because he had movie files on his computer that he hadn't labeled clearly enough and wanted to rename them to more specific filenames. (Apparently "AntiGayAd453.mov" was unspecific and therefore, unhelpful.) And there had been that one from 2008, where they talked about the 'coming storm'--or maybe it was 'gathering storm'--that was about to rain down across America.
The thunder coming with such precision after his fond thoughts about Stewart jarred him, knocked his boat off course, curdled the milk in his tea. What was that?
Was there something gay about his feelings for Stewart? Was that what had caused the thunder? One had certainly followed the other with such speed that only God Himself could be responsible.
What a ridiculous idea. He and Jon Stewart were intelligent, honorable, manly men and simply enjoying any time they happened to be interacting was no sign of any sinful taint to those feelings.
But a nagging doubt seeped into his mind, like water coming from leaky plumbing. Subtle, but unmistakably there.
He decided to test it. Gritting his teeth, he decided to purposely have a gay thought about Jon Stewart. He'd never had to come up with one on the spot before, so all he could think of was "um…. he looks almost as good as I do?"
CRASHrumblegrumble, said the weather outside.
An image of one of the faces Jon made in reaction to the stupidity of other news stations popped into his mind, and suddenly a fine shower of rain danced across the window to Stephen's office.
Fuck.
"I hear you, Lord!" Stephen said out loud. Checking in his waistband for Sweetness, he darted out of his office and spent the next forty-five minutes in his private shooting range, firing at what may or may not have been targets made of pink triangles.
//
The next time it happened, Stephen was riding in his expensive sedan when he noticed that the man driving the car next to his looked a little bit like his muscular, shirtless cameraman. He idly wondered if the man in the car had the same ripped muscles, underneath that tidy, tailored business shirt he was wearing. Then a movement in the windshield caught his attention.
The chauffeur had turned on the wiper blades. Drops of water were flying to and fro. It had started to rain.
'How was that even gay??' Stephen asked God angrily. 'I was just admiring the body's athleticism. And, after all, as an ordinary competitive male, it's only normal that I be concerned with other men's physiques so I can see how I match up.'
God's answer was the rain coming down slightly harder, which may have been a direct result of Stephen's sudden and involuntary comparison of his own body to Jon Stewart's. 'Okay, okay, I'll stop.' Stephen stared out the window into a world growing quickly silver in the shower, reciting psalms to himself to get himself back on the right track.
//
Stephen was in the middle of a noisy political argument with Jon Stewart in the studio hallway when Samantha Bee walked past them, completely drenched. Both men stopped what they were doing to watch her make puddly tracks on the floor. "So I guess it's not raining outside, then," Stewart quipped.
"Dry as your delivery," Sam shot back. wringing out her hair.
Stephen just blinked. He'd been thinking to himself how pleasant it was to have an argument with Jon, because he was still your friend even if he was shouting at you. Nobody else was like that--they all hated him. Jon could scream at him for twenty minutes and then still pat him on the back and ask if he wanted to go grab a coffee. Stephen was afraid to go have that coffee. He had a feeling that Jon was patient like the proverbial mills of God that grind slowly, and would wait for him faithfully and forever--for what?
"The alley behind the building is flooded," commented a nonchalant intern as he passed the pundits on his way somewhere to commit more acts of drudgery.
"I have to go pray," Stephen mumbled, ducking away.
"In the men's room?" Jon called after him.
"God is everywhere!" Stephen snarled back from the other side of the hallway through clenched teeth.
//
The twin book tour had been scheduled to leave New York at 2 pm. The pilot had already pushed it back forty-five minutes, referencing heavy cloud cover.
"What's Mr. Colbert doing?" asked one of Jon Stewart's assistants, a relatively sheltered young woman from the same ethnic background as her boss. She had never seen a rosary before and she was gawking across the airplane aisle at the man seated at the window seat beyond Stewart.
"Reciting the 'Our Father'," explained Stewart, "so it won't rain and we'll be able to take off."
The young woman seemed impressed.
Meanwhile, poor Stephen was trying desperately to ignore how good Jon looked today, or how he was guaranteed at least two hours trapped next to him in First Class. 'I wonder if I ask to switch seats with Jon, and then use that opportunity to teach that assistant about the one true church, the liberals in charge of the studio would ding me for harrassment,' he mused to himself.
"If that actually works, with the, er, the thing, I'll be really impressed," Jon commented suddenly, turning his head and focusing his attention on Stephen.
"Uh, ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking..." Droplets were collecting on the airplane windows.
"Your new assistant is really hot," Stephen hissed quickly, and then looked down at his own lap.
//
The hotel in Miami was comfortable and elegant, and was a wonderful place in which to curl up and get a good night's rest after a fantastic day on tour. Stephen had quite forgotten about his weather woes in the excitement of signing books for hundreds of wonderful conservatives, the Upstanding Citizen Protective Fathers and the Palinesque Strong Mothers, and their well-behaved and innocent children, too, all crowding him in a throng of people that surged against him like the waves in an ocean of ego. This was His America, even if some of the people were different colors from him.
Exhausted from a day of smiling, he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
They say that you only remember your dreams if you wake up in the middle of them. It was probably the thunder that woke Stephen, wrenching him out of the arms of--who?
He lay there in the darkened room, listening to the subtropical downpour outside, afraid to fall back into the cozy sleep he so desperately needed. What if the dream picked up right where he'd left off? And if that was the Cuban desk clerk from downstairs, how would he be able to face the man in the morning after what he'd just experienced in his mind?
Immigrants, Stephen huffed bitterly. Keeping him awake at night. Would they stop at nothing?
//
Luckily for Stephen, the next day was a day off for the pundits. He had managed to fall asleep in spite of himself, but he still badly needed to relax. He was eating a room-service breakfast in his room when there was a knock on his door.
Stephen opened the door and found Jon Stewart waiting there outside. "Some of us are going to Metro Zoo," said Jon. He was dressed very casually, with sunglasses stuck into his collar and--was that a fanny pack on his hip?
"Who's 'some of us'? Stephen asked.
"Some of the interns. I said I'd go with them. Sounds like fun, huh? Lions, giraffes, an aviary... been a while since I've been to the zoo."
It did sound like fun. Stephen thought it would be a fantastic way to relax and uncoil after several days of satisfying his adoring public. Except for the possibility of seeing bears--and they'd be safe in their enclosures, behind a moat and a fence, where they couldn't get at him--he liked the idea of spending several hours walking around gawking at strange animals and enjoying a healthy argument with Stewart.
Then he remembered that he was a liability. If he stayed behind in the hotel and kept his mind Godly and heterosexual all day, Jon and the interns would enjoy a beautiful, sunshine-dappled day at the zoo. If he went with them, he might be led astray in a moment of weakness and they'd all be drenched.
"Animals, Jon? True Americans put human beings first," Stephen snapped.
"The zoo? Now you have something against the zoo?" Jon's face was painted with a weary indulgence. He was used to absorbing the randomness of Stephen's vitriol.
The best thing about Jon Stewart, thought Stephen glumly as he shuffled back to his breakfast once Jon had left, is that you could be completely, horrendously mean to him and he'd just laugh it off. Eventually. Because sometimes Stephen couldn't help being mean. Sometimes, he had to do the Right Thing.
Stephen spent the entire day curled up in an armchair in his hotel room, trying to keep the sun in the sky with his little rosary.
//
They were in the Midwest, now, that land that Sarah Palin had called the "real America", and Stephen was loving it. His autograph hand was getting tired and achy, but it was a good kind of tired and achy. He wondered if it was growing more muscular, and examined it carefully before looking up at the next family in the line snaking around the hotel ballroom.
A crowd of small children surrounded a wholesome-looking mother and father. "Hi," said one of the kids, swinging from side to side while holding her mother's purse strap.
"Hello there, little American girl!" said Stephen, putting on his biggest Happy Smile. "And why do you love America?"
"Because it's the bestest and biggest country in the world!" said the girl.
Her parents beamed and introduced themselves. "We're so glad to see you. Thank you for coming to our little town."
"I hate Obama," volunteered the little girl.
Stephen snickered. "Bright little thing, isn't she?"
The parents smiled shyly.
"Why is that, dear?" Stephen asked the girl.
"Cos we, we might gonna lose, the farm makes no money, and there hasn't been any crops, and the 'conomy is bad, and Daddy can't afford stuff cos the crop's all messed up."
"We've been under a terrible drought," explained the father. "After last year, we had to borrow on our house and risked everything on this year's crop."
"We've been praying so hard for rain," sniffed the mother. She was starting to tear up. "My granddaddy built that house with his own two hands...." She started to wipe her eyes, but it wasn't enough--they were really starting to ooze. "We can't move in with my in-laws because they don't have room for our seven children. I couldn't bear for us to be split up! My children are my whole world!"
"Mommy, don't cry! Jesus will make it better!" said one of the other kids.
"I pray and pray for it to rain so I won't be homeless and have to live in a concrete block," said the girl who had been first to speak.
Stephen took one hand of each of the two children who had already spoken. "I'll be praying for all of you, kids."
Later, when the twin ballrooms had been closed down for the night, Stephen was sitting out on the deserted pool deck nursing a drink. He heard the door behind him open and shut, and then came Jon's voice. "So, how was today?"
"Just great. Love meeting those real Americans. You?" Stephen nervously sipped his drink, trying to make the sips look like the more manly "gulp".
"Pretty good--this part of the country is more your area than mine." Jon tapped his fingers against his rocks glass. "So, uh, what's this about you making a woman cry earlier today?"
"What can I say, Jon--I leave behind a trail of broken-hearted, beautiful women wherever I go," Stephen said glibly.
"Do all of them have seven kids and a husband in tow?"
"Oh, her?"
"Yeah, what was that about?"
"Local farmer. Losing his shirt and probably his house because his crop's been ruined by drought two years in a row." Stephen looked into his drink thoughtfully, watching the ice melt into the liquor. "I never thought I'd hear a kid saying she wanted it to rain. Usually kids just want to go outside and play. Rain is what spoils all their fun."
"Well, rain is bad, unless you're, you know, any living organism," Jon pointed out. "Without rain, none of us would be here."
"Without rain, there'd be no ice in my drink." Stephen was still staring at the morphing shapes as they gave themselves up to liquid. "Without rain, a good, traditional, Christian family is going to lose everything."
"I guess rain isn't so bad, then, is it."
Stephen set his glass down on the table beside his pool chair and stood up.. "Jon," he began, then stopped. 'God, I don't care what you do to me, but I have to save those kids.'
His tone was so obviously distressed-yet-determined that it immediately put Stewart on alarm. "Stephen? What's the matter? ....How much have you had to drink?"
"Only this one, and I haven't finished it. This isn't the alcohol talking, Jon, I want you to know that this is what I really feel. If I didn't sincerely have these feelings, it wouldn't work." He reached out his hand and took hold of Jon's free hand, the one that wasn't holding the drink.
Jon quickly set his drink down. "Stephen? Are you all right?" Rumbles of thunder scurried across the sky.
"I'm fine. I feel great." Stephen looked up at the sky, trembling with wonder at the majesty of the Lord. He concentrated on the feel of Jon's hand in his, then slid his grasp up Jon's arm all the way to his bicep. He felt satisfyingly solid beneath his tailored shirt.
A full, buxom drop of water fell out of the sky and landed on Stephen's nose.
"You're acting like you want me to kiss you," Jon stated flatly.
"What, and you don't?" Stephen retorted.
"Well, I--you always made it clear how you felt about--"
"Times change, Jon. Get with the program. This is the new America--I'm still the undeniable ruling class, as long as I'm still a white man!"
"That's your great come-on line? 'I'll still be a privileged asshole even after I come out?' If I wasn't in love with you already, I'd push you in the pool."
"While it's thundering, and risk a lightning strike? Jon, that might legally constitute a threat. I'm still carrying, don't forget."
"I'm confused. Do you want to shoot me or kiss me?"
Finally, Stephen just pounced on him.
The sky opened up and water poured from the heavens. A baptism. A miracle. Raindrops slipped into the places their lips met and flavored the kiss with its purity. It tasted clean. The world tasted clean. They clung together and Stephen understood, felt the cleansing love of God flow down his body and drip from his bangs and soak him to the core. Rain was no curse--it was one of God's most basic gifts. And so was love.
//
Thank you for reading!
Note: I have no idea how agricultural subsidies work, or if they mess up my story at all. Heheheheh.
Title: Don't Let the Rain Come Down
Pairing/characters: Jon/"Stephen"
Rating: PG for swearing
Warnings: religion :P
Summary: What if every time "Stephen" had a homosexual thought or feeling, it caused a rainstorm? "Inspired" by the anti-gay ad that was running during the Prop 8 thing in 2008.
Disclaimer: All television shows, movies, books, and other copyrighted material referred to in this work, and the characters, settings, and events thereof, are the properties of their respective owners. As this work is an interpretation of the original material and not for-profit, it constitutes fair use. Reference to real persons, places, or events are made in a fictional context, and are not intended to be libelous, defamatory, or in any way factual.
Author: Farfalla Caquí
Word Count: around 2600
Don't let the rain come down--my roof's got a hole in it and I might drown!
--song lyric
He was thinking about tonight's toss, and how much fun it was to banter with his Jewish friend Jon Stewart before a live audience, when God's message first came down to him.
CRACK went the thunder outside, followed shortly by a faint rumble.
Any other night this would have just been 'weather', but Stephen had just been watching old anti-gay tv adverts, mostly because he had movie files on his computer that he hadn't labeled clearly enough and wanted to rename them to more specific filenames. (Apparently "AntiGayAd453.mov" was unspecific and therefore, unhelpful.) And there had been that one from 2008, where they talked about the 'coming storm'--or maybe it was 'gathering storm'--that was about to rain down across America.
The thunder coming with such precision after his fond thoughts about Stewart jarred him, knocked his boat off course, curdled the milk in his tea. What was that?
Was there something gay about his feelings for Stewart? Was that what had caused the thunder? One had certainly followed the other with such speed that only God Himself could be responsible.
What a ridiculous idea. He and Jon Stewart were intelligent, honorable, manly men and simply enjoying any time they happened to be interacting was no sign of any sinful taint to those feelings.
But a nagging doubt seeped into his mind, like water coming from leaky plumbing. Subtle, but unmistakably there.
He decided to test it. Gritting his teeth, he decided to purposely have a gay thought about Jon Stewart. He'd never had to come up with one on the spot before, so all he could think of was "um…. he looks almost as good as I do?"
CRASHrumblegrumble, said the weather outside.
An image of one of the faces Jon made in reaction to the stupidity of other news stations popped into his mind, and suddenly a fine shower of rain danced across the window to Stephen's office.
Fuck.
"I hear you, Lord!" Stephen said out loud. Checking in his waistband for Sweetness, he darted out of his office and spent the next forty-five minutes in his private shooting range, firing at what may or may not have been targets made of pink triangles.
//
The next time it happened, Stephen was riding in his expensive sedan when he noticed that the man driving the car next to his looked a little bit like his muscular, shirtless cameraman. He idly wondered if the man in the car had the same ripped muscles, underneath that tidy, tailored business shirt he was wearing. Then a movement in the windshield caught his attention.
The chauffeur had turned on the wiper blades. Drops of water were flying to and fro. It had started to rain.
'How was that even gay??' Stephen asked God angrily. 'I was just admiring the body's athleticism. And, after all, as an ordinary competitive male, it's only normal that I be concerned with other men's physiques so I can see how I match up.'
God's answer was the rain coming down slightly harder, which may have been a direct result of Stephen's sudden and involuntary comparison of his own body to Jon Stewart's. 'Okay, okay, I'll stop.' Stephen stared out the window into a world growing quickly silver in the shower, reciting psalms to himself to get himself back on the right track.
//
Stephen was in the middle of a noisy political argument with Jon Stewart in the studio hallway when Samantha Bee walked past them, completely drenched. Both men stopped what they were doing to watch her make puddly tracks on the floor. "So I guess it's not raining outside, then," Stewart quipped.
"Dry as your delivery," Sam shot back. wringing out her hair.
Stephen just blinked. He'd been thinking to himself how pleasant it was to have an argument with Jon, because he was still your friend even if he was shouting at you. Nobody else was like that--they all hated him. Jon could scream at him for twenty minutes and then still pat him on the back and ask if he wanted to go grab a coffee. Stephen was afraid to go have that coffee. He had a feeling that Jon was patient like the proverbial mills of God that grind slowly, and would wait for him faithfully and forever--for what?
"The alley behind the building is flooded," commented a nonchalant intern as he passed the pundits on his way somewhere to commit more acts of drudgery.
"I have to go pray," Stephen mumbled, ducking away.
"In the men's room?" Jon called after him.
"God is everywhere!" Stephen snarled back from the other side of the hallway through clenched teeth.
//
The twin book tour had been scheduled to leave New York at 2 pm. The pilot had already pushed it back forty-five minutes, referencing heavy cloud cover.
"What's Mr. Colbert doing?" asked one of Jon Stewart's assistants, a relatively sheltered young woman from the same ethnic background as her boss. She had never seen a rosary before and she was gawking across the airplane aisle at the man seated at the window seat beyond Stewart.
"Reciting the 'Our Father'," explained Stewart, "so it won't rain and we'll be able to take off."
The young woman seemed impressed.
Meanwhile, poor Stephen was trying desperately to ignore how good Jon looked today, or how he was guaranteed at least two hours trapped next to him in First Class. 'I wonder if I ask to switch seats with Jon, and then use that opportunity to teach that assistant about the one true church, the liberals in charge of the studio would ding me for harrassment,' he mused to himself.
"If that actually works, with the, er, the thing, I'll be really impressed," Jon commented suddenly, turning his head and focusing his attention on Stephen.
"Uh, ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking..." Droplets were collecting on the airplane windows.
"Your new assistant is really hot," Stephen hissed quickly, and then looked down at his own lap.
//
The hotel in Miami was comfortable and elegant, and was a wonderful place in which to curl up and get a good night's rest after a fantastic day on tour. Stephen had quite forgotten about his weather woes in the excitement of signing books for hundreds of wonderful conservatives, the Upstanding Citizen Protective Fathers and the Palinesque Strong Mothers, and their well-behaved and innocent children, too, all crowding him in a throng of people that surged against him like the waves in an ocean of ego. This was His America, even if some of the people were different colors from him.
Exhausted from a day of smiling, he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
They say that you only remember your dreams if you wake up in the middle of them. It was probably the thunder that woke Stephen, wrenching him out of the arms of--who?
He lay there in the darkened room, listening to the subtropical downpour outside, afraid to fall back into the cozy sleep he so desperately needed. What if the dream picked up right where he'd left off? And if that was the Cuban desk clerk from downstairs, how would he be able to face the man in the morning after what he'd just experienced in his mind?
Immigrants, Stephen huffed bitterly. Keeping him awake at night. Would they stop at nothing?
//
Luckily for Stephen, the next day was a day off for the pundits. He had managed to fall asleep in spite of himself, but he still badly needed to relax. He was eating a room-service breakfast in his room when there was a knock on his door.
Stephen opened the door and found Jon Stewart waiting there outside. "Some of us are going to Metro Zoo," said Jon. He was dressed very casually, with sunglasses stuck into his collar and--was that a fanny pack on his hip?
"Who's 'some of us'? Stephen asked.
"Some of the interns. I said I'd go with them. Sounds like fun, huh? Lions, giraffes, an aviary... been a while since I've been to the zoo."
It did sound like fun. Stephen thought it would be a fantastic way to relax and uncoil after several days of satisfying his adoring public. Except for the possibility of seeing bears--and they'd be safe in their enclosures, behind a moat and a fence, where they couldn't get at him--he liked the idea of spending several hours walking around gawking at strange animals and enjoying a healthy argument with Stewart.
Then he remembered that he was a liability. If he stayed behind in the hotel and kept his mind Godly and heterosexual all day, Jon and the interns would enjoy a beautiful, sunshine-dappled day at the zoo. If he went with them, he might be led astray in a moment of weakness and they'd all be drenched.
"Animals, Jon? True Americans put human beings first," Stephen snapped.
"The zoo? Now you have something against the zoo?" Jon's face was painted with a weary indulgence. He was used to absorbing the randomness of Stephen's vitriol.
The best thing about Jon Stewart, thought Stephen glumly as he shuffled back to his breakfast once Jon had left, is that you could be completely, horrendously mean to him and he'd just laugh it off. Eventually. Because sometimes Stephen couldn't help being mean. Sometimes, he had to do the Right Thing.
Stephen spent the entire day curled up in an armchair in his hotel room, trying to keep the sun in the sky with his little rosary.
//
They were in the Midwest, now, that land that Sarah Palin had called the "real America", and Stephen was loving it. His autograph hand was getting tired and achy, but it was a good kind of tired and achy. He wondered if it was growing more muscular, and examined it carefully before looking up at the next family in the line snaking around the hotel ballroom.
A crowd of small children surrounded a wholesome-looking mother and father. "Hi," said one of the kids, swinging from side to side while holding her mother's purse strap.
"Hello there, little American girl!" said Stephen, putting on his biggest Happy Smile. "And why do you love America?"
"Because it's the bestest and biggest country in the world!" said the girl.
Her parents beamed and introduced themselves. "We're so glad to see you. Thank you for coming to our little town."
"I hate Obama," volunteered the little girl.
Stephen snickered. "Bright little thing, isn't she?"
The parents smiled shyly.
"Why is that, dear?" Stephen asked the girl.
"Cos we, we might gonna lose, the farm makes no money, and there hasn't been any crops, and the 'conomy is bad, and Daddy can't afford stuff cos the crop's all messed up."
"We've been under a terrible drought," explained the father. "After last year, we had to borrow on our house and risked everything on this year's crop."
"We've been praying so hard for rain," sniffed the mother. She was starting to tear up. "My granddaddy built that house with his own two hands...." She started to wipe her eyes, but it wasn't enough--they were really starting to ooze. "We can't move in with my in-laws because they don't have room for our seven children. I couldn't bear for us to be split up! My children are my whole world!"
"Mommy, don't cry! Jesus will make it better!" said one of the other kids.
"I pray and pray for it to rain so I won't be homeless and have to live in a concrete block," said the girl who had been first to speak.
Stephen took one hand of each of the two children who had already spoken. "I'll be praying for all of you, kids."
Later, when the twin ballrooms had been closed down for the night, Stephen was sitting out on the deserted pool deck nursing a drink. He heard the door behind him open and shut, and then came Jon's voice. "So, how was today?"
"Just great. Love meeting those real Americans. You?" Stephen nervously sipped his drink, trying to make the sips look like the more manly "gulp".
"Pretty good--this part of the country is more your area than mine." Jon tapped his fingers against his rocks glass. "So, uh, what's this about you making a woman cry earlier today?"
"What can I say, Jon--I leave behind a trail of broken-hearted, beautiful women wherever I go," Stephen said glibly.
"Do all of them have seven kids and a husband in tow?"
"Oh, her?"
"Yeah, what was that about?"
"Local farmer. Losing his shirt and probably his house because his crop's been ruined by drought two years in a row." Stephen looked into his drink thoughtfully, watching the ice melt into the liquor. "I never thought I'd hear a kid saying she wanted it to rain. Usually kids just want to go outside and play. Rain is what spoils all their fun."
"Well, rain is bad, unless you're, you know, any living organism," Jon pointed out. "Without rain, none of us would be here."
"Without rain, there'd be no ice in my drink." Stephen was still staring at the morphing shapes as they gave themselves up to liquid. "Without rain, a good, traditional, Christian family is going to lose everything."
"I guess rain isn't so bad, then, is it."
Stephen set his glass down on the table beside his pool chair and stood up.. "Jon," he began, then stopped. 'God, I don't care what you do to me, but I have to save those kids.'
His tone was so obviously distressed-yet-determined that it immediately put Stewart on alarm. "Stephen? What's the matter? ....How much have you had to drink?"
"Only this one, and I haven't finished it. This isn't the alcohol talking, Jon, I want you to know that this is what I really feel. If I didn't sincerely have these feelings, it wouldn't work." He reached out his hand and took hold of Jon's free hand, the one that wasn't holding the drink.
Jon quickly set his drink down. "Stephen? Are you all right?" Rumbles of thunder scurried across the sky.
"I'm fine. I feel great." Stephen looked up at the sky, trembling with wonder at the majesty of the Lord. He concentrated on the feel of Jon's hand in his, then slid his grasp up Jon's arm all the way to his bicep. He felt satisfyingly solid beneath his tailored shirt.
A full, buxom drop of water fell out of the sky and landed on Stephen's nose.
"You're acting like you want me to kiss you," Jon stated flatly.
"What, and you don't?" Stephen retorted.
"Well, I--you always made it clear how you felt about--"
"Times change, Jon. Get with the program. This is the new America--I'm still the undeniable ruling class, as long as I'm still a white man!"
"That's your great come-on line? 'I'll still be a privileged asshole even after I come out?' If I wasn't in love with you already, I'd push you in the pool."
"While it's thundering, and risk a lightning strike? Jon, that might legally constitute a threat. I'm still carrying, don't forget."
"I'm confused. Do you want to shoot me or kiss me?"
Finally, Stephen just pounced on him.
The sky opened up and water poured from the heavens. A baptism. A miracle. Raindrops slipped into the places their lips met and flavored the kiss with its purity. It tasted clean. The world tasted clean. They clung together and Stephen understood, felt the cleansing love of God flow down his body and drip from his bangs and soak him to the core. Rain was no curse--it was one of God's most basic gifts. And so was love.
//
Thank you for reading!
Note: I have no idea how agricultural subsidies work, or if they mess up my story at all. Heheheheh.