In the harsh light of day, he looked a bit younger than Jude remembered him being at the club, and he winced a bit as he pulled back and fumbled for his packet of wet-wipes he kept on the side table. He didn’t trust himself to say anything, so instead, he just passed a couple over and wiped his hands. He did his best not to watch as the man cleaned come from between his legs and on his stomach and winced a little when he saw a few nail-shaped red marks he’d left behind from his enthusiasm.
“Hey, you wanna go grab some breakfast after this?” the man asked, daring a look over with a slightly shy smile.
Jude swallowed thickly, but where he knew he should feel guilt, there was just an emptiness. “Actually, I’ve got a bit of work to take care of.”
At the very least, it wasn’t a lie. He should have been in his office hours before, but lately it had been harder and harder to make himself go in. He had never really felt such a distance between himself and his job before, but there was a letter of resignation on his desk that he had been staring at for a fortnight.
It didn’t help that his synagogue wouldn’t hurt without him. They’d replace him in a day if need be. There were two rabbis who were freshly ordained and had been working in the city—mostly with the LGBT youth—and Jude had no qualms about stepping down and making room.
Especially when he saw a fire in their eyes that had long-since faded down to glowing embers in his own.
And he knew it was mostly him looking for an excuse to go. He felt lost. Detached. And maybe even a little terrified of what was coming next, but that wasn’t enough to stop him from wanting to walk away. He would always be a rabbi, but he wasn’t doing his congregation any good like this.
“You know,” the man said as he hunted around for his jeans, “you could just ask me to leave.”
At that, Jude flopped onto his back and put one arm behind his head, chuckling softly. “I believe I did that last night after sucking you off.”
The guy turned his head, and in the morning light, Jude found him beautiful. His face still held roundness of youth, his eyes unburdened by the harsher realities of growing up. Someone would love this man someday—with the fierce desperation he deserved. But that person would never be Jude.
“It’s not personal,” he finally said when the hurt from the guy’s eyes didn’t fade. “I’m massively behind, and I have to prepare my sermon, which I neglected last night thanks to you.”
The man froze, and then his eyes widened. “Sermon, like…oh fuck, are you a priest?”
Jude laughed again, ignoring the way the man’s gaze darted down to his now-flaccid cock that was a little sticky with lube. He desperately needed a shower, but he wanted to wait until this man had finally vacated his flat. “No, I’m a rabbi—and before you have some sort of moral hell-bound crisis, I’m not in the closet. I’m an openly queer, single man who would not deny what we did to anyone if they asked.”
The man swallowed thickly, and Jude was starting to regret the fact that he didn’t remember his name. The poor sod didn’t deserve to be cast into oblivion just because Jude was a careless arsehole. “Uh. If you say so.”
“I do,” Jude said as he slipped into a pair of sweats. He scratched at the hair on his belly, then took a few steps closer to him. “You should probably also know that I’m not going to call you later.”
He knew he should have been insulted by the look of relief on the poor man’s face, but he shared that feeling instead. There would be no expectations, no broken hearts. There would just be the echo of their kisses and the late-night dancing in a noisy club and the remnants of their love-making that he planned to wash away the moment he got the chance.
He saw the man to the door, then grabbed him by the back of the neck and kissed him. It was an indulgence, a quick, selfish thing he knew he could live with only because the poor man looked like the last thing in the world he wanted was to be invited to stay—even if he also looked like he wanted Jude to slam him up against the door and take him one more time.
“You were fantastic,” Jude murmured as he pulled away.
At that, he got a smile—something soft and genuine. “Forgettable?”
“Never,” he lied, because he was pretty sure that sometimes, the truth was more cruel. “Get home safe.”
He didn’t offer a ride or to call for one. He just turned the deadbolt as he heard his footsteps fading, then he dragged the heel of his palm down his half-hard dick. He wasn’t up enough to rub one out. He was old enough now that his libido would be sated for a while after a night like that. But the hollow feeling followed him as he moved into his kitchen to start the kettle, and he wondered if maybe that wasn’t part of the reason he wanted to run.
His life had been both dull and interesting growing up—and he couldn’t escape that cycle. He became a sort of commodity at school when Eliah had finally managed to come back—leaning heavy on a cane with shuffling footsteps and obvious pain. At the start, people stared because they were mirror images of each other, and at the end, they stared because that had been ripped away from them.
His anger defined him for too many years, his hands curling into fists the moment someone looked at Eliah wrong. His ears would ring with rage, and somewhere in that fog he’d hear his brother begging him to leave it, to stop. But the only thing that took the edge off was making someone bleed—making them hurt on the outside as much as Eliah hurt on the inside.
As much as he hurt in deep dark places he could never touch.
He wasn’t foolish enough to think that his anger wasn’t also a large part of the reason he’d clung to faith like it was the only thing keeping him breathing. He looked at it the same way that psychologists who had tragic and terrible childhoods and wanted to understand their own brain through the study of others. And he approached HaShem with a sort of desperation to understand.
Why, he’d ask late at night, lying on his bed staring at the ceiling and trying to pretend like he didn’t know his brother was crying in the other room because his body was shattered. Why Eliah? Why punish him for my selfishness?
It was years before he realized maybe it had nothing to do with him at all. Maybe, this was Eliah’s lesson to learn. The place where their paths diverged. Maybe Jude was never meant to know why Eliah was the one who had been hurt.
But accepting that meant accepting the whole reason he’d chased down this life with an almost violent passion was for nothing.
The sound of the kettle startled him out of his thoughts, and he grabbed a mug from the cabinet and a bag of tea. The tin was almost empty, the last of his mum’s latest care package, and he didn’t want to bother her about sending another. Though, even that was a bit of a lie.
The truth was, every time he rang her, it got harder and harder to come up with answers to her questions. “Have you met anyone new, darling? Are you happy there? Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”
He knew he should be a better son, to answer her with honesty, but every time they spoke, he could hear the resignation in her voice. Her sons were never going to lead the life she’d envisioned for them, and it broke her heart a little bit more with each passing year.
Once upon a time, she’d been over the moon with his life’s choices. When he told her he was going to be a rabbi, she’d wept the happy collective tears of all Jewish mothers who wanted the boasting rights. She held him by the cheeks and kissed his forehead and told him he was going to be so brilliant at it.