Archive of Our Own

It would’ve been better if he’d realized sooner, Marcus thinks. If only he’d known earlier. In a bar in Chicago, blues in the air and both of them laughing. On the side of the road under a wide Montana sky, stripped down to their vests and passing a bottle of beer back and forth as they argued over how to get the truck started again. In any one of the countless diners across the continent, Tomás leaning across the sticky tabletop to dump more hashbrowns onto Marcus’s plate.

He can’t fix a problem he hasn’t identified. If he’d realized sooner, he could’ve put a stop to it, or at least he could’ve come up with a plan for how to deal with it. He has to find the root of the rot before he can pull it out, just as with a demon.

But he didn’t realize it any sooner. Instead, it’s only now, as he puts a bullet in Andy Kim’s head, that Marcus realizes he is completely and utterly in love with Tomás.

The aircon doesn’t work in the truck. It’s nearly October, so Marcus was hoping that would stop mattering, but there isn’t a cloud in the sky and the sun is blazing down hot and bright. 74 degrees and climbing, according to the overly-cheerful radio DJ, and it’s only 8 am. The last gasp of a too-hot summer.

There’s already sweat gathering at Tomás’s temples. He runs hot, sweats easily, and no amount of teasing about vanity will convince him to buzz his hair off like Marcus does. It suits him, the luscious curls he keeps tidy, but Marcus is pretty sure the buzzed look would suit him, too. He’s an objectively, irritatingly beautiful man. The demon last week had been completely enamored by him, and Tomás had been so embarrassed he’d fumbled the litany of the saints.

They crack the windows for a breeze, but it gets to be too much when they hit the freeway. With the windows up, the inside of the car is stifling and stale, the dusty vents blowing hot air into their faces and not much better than no air at all.

“You know, it is against the law to leave a child in a hot car,” Tomás says at some point.

“I’ll keep that in mind next time I see a child,” Marcus shoots back. Tomás rolls his eyes, but he’s badly hiding the smile tugging at his lips, too. “Should’ve found a church that put more money in exorcisms so we could fly,” Marcus adds.

That makes Tomás snort. “Maybe I will ask those missionary boys the next time they come to my door when I don’t have my collar on.”

Marcus laughs. “I bet you invite them in for snacks and spiritual discussion, don’t you?”

Tomás shrugs, unembarrassed. “I like to be kind to them. They are very young.” Older than Marcus was when he took his vows, but Marcus doesn’t bring it up. After a second, Tomás reveals, “I had never been on a plane until I went to North Dakota in college.”

“Hadn’t you?” Marcus asks, surprised. “Did you drive to Mexico?”

Tomás nods. “And when I came back.”

“You never came back to Chicago while you were growing up?” Marcus asks.

“No, Olivia and my mother came to Mexico every summer and at Christmas,” Tomás says. “My grandmother did not ever have a passport, so it was the only way to see her. And after my parents separated, my mother would have preferred to move back to Mexico herself if she hadn’t had her job.”

Tomás has never told him why the split happened, the split between his parents or the split of the kids. He may not know the answer to either; he was so young when it happened. Marcus wonders if he’d felt abandoned, the little boy shlepped across the continent and left there. He was close with his grandmother, Marcus knows that, but still.

“Do you remember anything from the drive?” Marcus asks.

“We stopped to see alligators,” Tomás says. “And there was a creature…” He huffs. “They had a tank and they said it was a merman inside. It gave me nightmares.”

“Nightmares?” Marcus echoes, a little amused. He shouldn’t be, since he knows Tomás was just a small child, but it’s the funny kind of nightmare story Tomás probably feels comfortable telling at parties.

“It was so scary,” Tomás says. “They made it look like it was crawling to you. And I hated that they said they captured it from the water and kept it in a tank for people to look at. I thought he probably did not want to be on display like that. He probably just wanted to go home.”

Marcus spares a glance over at Tomás. “Did you just want to go home?”

Tomás is quiet for a minute. “Yes,” he admits. “And I cried, and my father was not happy.”

“Oh, your dad drove you?” Marcus asks. This is the first story Marcus has heard about Tomás’s father. He has so firmly not mentioned him that Marcus knows there’s a story there.

Tomás sighs. “Well, I was not originally supposed to be going to live with my grandmother. I went to Mexico with my father and we were going to live there together. After two weeks, he left me with Abuela and…” He shrugs. “Didn’t come back.”

“Oh.” Marcus isn’t entirely sure how to respond to that.

“But I did still have my grandmother,” Tomás scrambles to say. For a second, Marcus can’t quite figure out why Tomás is so quick to remind him of that, but then he realizes Tomás is trying to…what, make sure Marcus doesn’t think they’re comparable?

“You don’t have to downplay your childhood trauma on my account,” Marcus says.

“My childhood overall was loving,” Tomás says. “I know that is a blessing.”

Marcus rolls his eyes. A bit sanctimonious, really, though he knows Tomás is being genuine. “Afraid I haven’t cornered the market on parental missteps,” Marcus says.

“Missteps?” Tomás parrots, so incredulous at the understatement Marcus has to laugh.

“Alright, fine, pick a better word.”

“Cruelty,” Tomás says, and yeah, that fits, but Marcus doesn’t want to spend any more time dwelling on it than he already has through his five bloody decades of life.

Marcus shrugs. “Well, got me ready for my life’s purpose, didn’t it?”

Tomás frowns. Two months of knowing each other is not enough time for him to be done dwelling on it, apparently. That’s fair, maybe. Marcus certainly wasn’t over dwelling on it when he was two months away.

And he’s stuck a bit, now, on the idea of Tomás’s father taking him to an entirely different country and leaving him there. Taking him away from his mother and his sister. Maybe he fought for Tomás, only to abandon him. Tomás can dwell on Marcus’s history, and Marcus can dwell on Tomás’s. That seems like a nice change of pace for each of them.

“There are always so many little signs along the road,” Tomás remarks, wiping at his forehead as he looks out the window. “Those weird little places.”

“You a roadside attraction man?” Marcus asks.

Tomás shrugs. “The only one I have stopped at was the alligators and the merman,” he says.

“Didn’t you ever go on another road trip?” Marcus asks. “What about on your way back to Chicago?”

Tomás shakes his head. “I took it in two days,” he says. “My mother…” He shrugs again. “My mother was not well. I got to the hospital just in time to say goodbye.”

Marcus would let out a whistle if it didn’t seem insensitive. Tomás can say his childhood was loving, and there are signs of that all over him. But it was marked with heartbreak, too, and Marcus doesn’t like that. It unsettles him, even knowing that the vast majority of humankind has been marked with heartbreak.

He sighs to himself and changes lanes, pointing the truck toward the exit. Tomás looks at him, waiting for an explanation, and Marcus shrugs. “Won’t do for your only roadside attraction memory to be bad,” he says, almost self-conscious. “Not like we’re heading toward anything concrete now.”

They’re driving through Kansas, to a contact of Bennett’s who might know someone who knows someone who’s acting strange. It’s weak, to say the least, though Marcus has found possessions on less.

But there’s no hurry, not today. There’s no reason Marcus can’t guide them toward something calling itself the Garden of Eden. And really, what choice do they have but to stop and see that?

“I was not aware the Garden is in Kansas,” Tomás remarks dryly.

It’s an art installation, apparently. Sculptures of saints. But then the bored teenager manning the place says, “Would you like to see the mausoleum? The artist entombed himself there.”

“Oh, God,” Marcus says with a laugh. “This isn’t going to be any better than the merman after all, is it?”

“I do not scare so easily as when I was six,” Tomás points out. In a way, it makes Marcus a little sad. Tomás doesn’t scare easily now indeed. He faces down demons and angry family members and hell itself. It would be nice if he still scared easily. It would mean he didn’t know of these things.

But he does know. And he’s becoming an admirable exorcist. So Marcus just claps him on the back and follows him into a tomb.

Marcus wakes up slowly, which is a nice change. He’s in a soft-enough motel bed, with sun streaming in from a dirty window. Tomás is already up and dressed, apparently waiting for Marcus to wake up by the way he pounces as soon as Marcus opens his eyes.

Marcus doesn’t know what his rush is. They finished an exorcism last night, and Marcus would like to take their damn time finding the next one. There’s certainly an increase in demonic activity, with that plot ripping through the upper echelons in Rome, but they’re no good to anyone if they drop from exhaustion before they can finish an exorcism.

“Marcus,” Tomás says.

“Yeah.” Marcus isn’t looking at him, too busy knuckling sleep from his eyes and wondering if Tomás’s early rise means there’s coffee.

“Will you take my confession?” Tomás asks softly.

Marcus is lost for words, just for a moment. “Tomás, I can’t,” he reminds him.

Tomás takes a deep breath. “I cannot go to a regular priest,” he points out, because they don’t know who to trust, and because even without a demonic conspiracy exorcists are given a wide berth. “But I need to confess. If I don’t, the demons will have more to use against me.”

That’s true. He’s learning, at least. Marcus sighs. “But I’m not a priest anymore.”

“You still have God with you,” Tomás says. “I see it every time we cast out a demon.” He raises his chin, defiant, even though his voice wobbles just a bit around his next words. “I don’t care what the Church says.”

That’s an awful lot to throw at a man at 10 in the morning. But Tomás is right about needing to confess, and right about not being able to go to any other priest, and Marcus can’t seem to say no when he can see Tomás’s hands clenching and unclenching in the bedspread. Tomás gets irritated with Marcus’s constant reminders about repetition, but he’s a man who understands the value of ritual.

“Alright,” Marcus says, feeling a bit helpless and a lot out of his depth. He sits up and Tomás sits down and the two of them face each other across the scant distance between the beds. “Just like this?”

“Yes, it’s fine,” Tomás says.

Marcus would never confess like this, without the safety of the box and the screen. He hardly ever confesses anyway, and he hasn’t done since before Gabriel. But if this is how Tomás wants to do it, Marcus will oblige.

“I didn’t—I haven’t done this a lot,” Marcus warns. “Taking confession wasn’t really in the job description.”

Back when he wore the collar, people wanted to confess sometimes as he cleansed their souls, and sometimes the odd parishioner would take advantage of confessing to someone they’d never have to see again, but for the most part this is one of those duties he only knows about in theory.

“But you know how it goes,” Tomás says.

“Yeah,” Marcus says. More or less.

Tomás takes a deep breath, crosses himself, and bows his head. “Bless me Father, for I have sinned,” he begins. “It has been four months since my last confession.”

“We’ve been out here three months,” Marcus corrects gently.

“I know,” Tomás says.

Oh. Marcus knows what this will be about, then. They’ve exorcised four demons and each one has spat Jessica’s name at Tomás.

“Okay,” Marcus says.

“I have committed the sin of lust,” Tomás says, as Marcus knew he would. “I committed the sin of adultery.” He stops for a second, lips tightening, and says quietly, painfully, “I am an adulterer.”

He doesn’t go on. Marcus hates seeing him twisted up in knots like this. He tries to remember what priests have said to him in confession. “Have you abandoned your sin?”

“Yes,” Tomás says. Then he sighs. “Well. It is…sometimes still in my thoughts.”

The part of Marcus that never can quite be reverent wants to snort and say bet it is. But he can’t, not with Tomás sitting here with guilt as visible around his neck as his collar. “Alright,” Marcus says. “Anything else?”

“I have been quick to anger,” Tomás says. “I have been uncharitable.” Marcus isn’t sure he agrees with that last one, but he doesn’t think he’s supposed to argue with Tomás’s confession. “This is all I can remember. I am sorry for these and all my sins.”

“Yeah,” Marcus says, and gets a stink-eye in return because he probably doesn’t sound like he’s taking this seriously. “I’ve thought of a penance for you, for all of this,” Marcus says, and Tomás sits up straighter. Tomás does love his penance. “Your penance is to cleanse a soul from damnation. Oh, there you have it, penance paid.”

“Marcus,” Tomás complains, rolling his eyes.

“Tomás, I think you’ve done more than enough penance,” Marcus says. “You said you don’t care what the Church says about me, I’m saying it back to you. You have the power of God, too. You made a mistake. You move past it. You’ve certainly shown you’re committing your life to the Lord.”

Tomás blows out a breath. “Are you sure?”

His voice sounds so small and worried. And it’s a marvel, really, that he trusts Marcus on this. Tomás is the one with the authority here, the official one with his collar and robes. Marcus is just a disgraced ex-priest, an exorcist who needs Tomás to do any exorcising these days.

“Course I am,” Marcus says firmly, ignoring all his own self-pity. “God, the Father of mercies—”

“Wait, my act of contrition,” Tomás says.

“Right, sorry,” Marcus says. He did warn Tomás he wasn’t used to this.

They both bow their heads. Tomás says it in Spanish. He’s always more comfortable praying in Spanish, and Marcus likes listening to it even if he doesn’t catch everything. When Tomás is done, Marcus gives him the prayer of absolution and they both cross themselves again.

“That’s it, right?” Marcus checks.

“Yes,” Tomás confirms, smiling a little. “Thank you.”

“You feel better?”

“I do,” Tomás says. “Would you like to confess?”

“Not at all,” Marcus says. It makes Tomás laugh a little.

“Okay,” he says. “If you ever change your mind.” He wiggles his eyebrows a little, looking stupid and somehow still attractive. “I have been told I am a great listener. And very fair with the penances.” Of course he’d be fair with other people’s penance, though never his own.

“I don’t really do confession,” Marcus admits. “Never saw much point in it. If God didn’t like my actions, figured He’d let me know Himself.”

Tomás makes a prissy sort of face, lips pressed together and eyebrows raised. “Well, aren’t you important.”

Marcus falls back on the bed laughing. “You could give a mother superior a run for her money, couldn’t you?”

“No mother superior ever beat my grandmother,” Tomás says. He adopts a scolding tone. “Mijo, you think God the Father has time to find your lost football? Saints are here for you so you do not waste His time.”

It makes Marcus laugh harder. “Makes God sound a bit like a frazzled CEO.”

“I didn’t understand it,” Tomás says with a laugh. “According to her, God had time to love me and watch me sleep, but not help me win a football match. As a child, I would’ve rather he gave me the football help.”

Marcus is laughing helplessly, imaging a teenage-Tomás rolling his eyes like he does so often now. “How’d you go from that to the priesthood?” Marcus asks. He remembers the story, first Mexican pope, but he also remembers the demon saying it was only a story. It had the cadence of revealing a long-buried truth.

Tomás sighs and shrugs. “My grandmother did want me to be a priest,” he says. “She—” He makes a face. “Well. She thought I was not very good at, hmm, lust. Or resisting the temptation of it, anyway.” The tips of his ears are going a little pink. “She thought it would be better for me to give myself to God so that I did not commit any mortal sins.” He huffs and looks down at his hands. “Well. So much for that.”

“Tomás,” Marcus says. “Up for a little more heresy this morning?”

Tomás laughs a little. “Okay.”

“I don’t think God put us down here to be perfect. We can bloody well try, but most of us make a right mess of everything. The demon exploited your feelings, but it wasn’t just empty lust. You loved her. You told me she was something beautiful. I think if your worst sin comes from love, it can’t be that bad.”

Tomás’s eyebrows are raised high. “You are being a lot more understanding than you were at the time.”

Marcus snorts. “Right, well, the exorcism worked, didn’t it? All done now. If we’d failed, I’d have held it against you until kingdom come.”

“What a comforting thought for my future mistakes,” Tomás says wryly. They’re both laughing again.

“Yeah, well, God’s the one who does the forgiving,” Marcus says. “I’m just the mouthpiece.” Sometimes. When God feels like talking to him.

But Tomás is laughing, light and unburdened now. It probably won’t last long, can’t in their line of work, but it’s nice to hear all the same. Marcus pushes away his dark thoughts and joins him.

“Oh, now, what’s this?” Marcus asks, reaching behind little Kevin Howell’s ear. He plucks a quarter out and Kevin giggles.

Kevin’s five years old and shy as anything when a demon isn’t sending him thrashing around. It had been a quick exorcism, because the kind of demon who takes a child that small is never strong, but Marcus knows Kevin will have nightmares the rest of his life.

He wishes he could take those nightmares. He wishes he could cast those out with the demon. Marcus can handle a few more nightmares. He has plenty already; he’d hardly notice. He wishes saving Kevin’s immortal soul included saving him from the aftermath, too.

But he can’t do any of that. He can only rid Kevin of the demon who took his body and do little parlor tricks to make Kevin smile. It doesn’t feel like enough, but it’s all he can offer.

They stay for dinner, and Marcus runs out of quarters from showing his trick to Kevin’s sisters, all four of them. The eldest, Abigail, had stood in the doorway of Kevin’s room on trembling little thirteen-year-old knees and prayed with Marcus and Tomás to save her brother. These are the kinds of families that give Marcus strength to keep doing this.

Marcus and Tomás end up in a competition of pulling faces to make the children laugh, and they both do the mother the grace of pretending not to see her tears. Tomás gives up another crucifix and two rosary beads by the time they leave, unwilling to leave the children without some talisman against their fears. He is forever giving them away, along with the candles of the different saints he picks up at bodegas and truck stops for a handful of change.

“You’re going to use up our budget on crucifixes,” Marcus teases as they get in the truck.

Tomás laughs a little. “I can go without a sandwich for a few days for that.”

He won’t, not if Marcus has anything to say about it, but Marcus doesn’t bring that up. “It’s always hard when they’re so young.” He thinks of Gabriel, and the crack of his neck, and he has to screw his eyes shut for a moment until it passes.

Tomás reaches over and squeezes his shoulder. “The way you are with people,” he says. He sounds almost wondering.

“What, bad?” Marcus asks.

Tomás laughs a little. “No,” he says. “Good, actually.” He tips his head. “Well. Depends on the people. But children, always.”

“Yeah, well, who isn’t good to children?” Marcus flashes a smirk at Tomás as he says it, daring him to point out how well Marcus knows the answer to that question, but Tomás doesn’t lean into his needling for once.

“But that’s why it gets to me,” Tomás says. “So much pain in your life, but look at your heart.”

Marcus doesn’t know what to say to that. “Glad you think that,” he says, trying not to sound as tongue-tied as he feels. “Because I pulled all our quarters from the kids’ ears and now we can’t do laundry.”

Tomás sighs. He’s grown accustomed to dirty clothes now, but he still doesn’t like it. “Oh, now I curse your giving heart.”

They both laugh, and Marcus drives them through the darkening night.

Tomás starts letting the demons in, and he starts pushing Marcus out. He’s confused about it, though, one day bristling at Marcus treating him like a schoolboy, the next begging Marcus for help and guidance.

It’s the instinct, Marcus thinks. Tomás wants to be proud of what he thinks is a gift from God, but deep down, some animalistic part of him knows to be afraid of it. But Tomás has a prideful streak a mile wide, and the more Marcus points out this is a problem, the less he’ll listen.

“You were the one who said as long as the exorcism works,” Tomás says stubbornly. It takes a beat for Marcus to place it, to figure out what Tomás is talking about, and then he feels anger blaze up in his throat.

“That was for your human failings, Tomás, not for making room in your head for a bloody demon!”

But it’s no use. Tomás will not see others suffer without diving in after them. And so he slips under the visions a little more each day, until Harper and that house and Andy. When Mouse shows up with her gun and her news of danger, Marcus stands firm. He says no.

Until that pupil moves toward Tomás's. Until the sirens are coming and Tomás is still blank and unseeing. Until the choice becomes let Tomás destroy himself or destroy someone else. Until Marcus pulls the trigger.

I’m not sorry, he thinks even as he apologizes to Andy’s weeping children and holds them close. I’m only sorry for your pain. He is not sorry for Tomás, standing whole and alive and alone in his body. Marcus is no Abraham, offering up the one he waited so long for. God sent Tomás to Marcus, and Marcus wasn’t going to let the bastard take him back without a fight.

Maybe Marcus can be forgiven for not realizing his feelings sooner. It’s hard to realize something you don’t recognize, after all, and love has always been in short supply for Marcus before Tomás came along.

That’s not entirely true. Marcus has loved God, to be sure. He’s loved every soul he’s exorcised, and sometimes their families. He’s loved the Earth around him and the birds in the trees. He thinks he even loved his mother, at least a bit, at least for a little while.

But this kind of love is new. He was maybe halfway there with Mouse, about a quarter of the way with Peter on the boat, and a lot of that was simply the novelty of it. This isn’t supposed to be the kind of love he feels, especially not for Tomás, his partner in the work, his brother of the cloth, so he didn’t notice it.

Marcus’s love is supposed to be about giving. Giving someone their body back. Giving souls to Heaven. Giving last rites when he had to. Giving his time, giving his childhood, giving his life in service. Giving himself to God.

His love for Tomás is all taking. Taking glimpses of Tomás doing pushups on the motel floor. Taking the turn-off for a roadside fruit stand because it will make Tomás smile. Taking little bottles of hotel shampoo so Tomás can wash blood from his hair in a rest stop sink.

Taking a good man’s life.

Marcus would take anything for Tomás. It isn’t solely that Marcus wants Tomás to have what he needs, what he wants, but it’s that Marcus wants to be the one providing it. God provides, that was what Marcus was supposed to remember, but Marcus wanted a turn.

These are the kinds of thoughts that mean Marcus has to leave. How can Marcus do this work with thoughts like these? Prideful, lustful, ugly thoughts.

Everything is quiet after Andy, after Mouse and Tomás leave. Tomás’s eyes are wet but he doesn’t try to argue with Marcus once he sees Marcus's mind is made up, and that might hurt more. He doesn’t feel what Marcus feels. He must understand that Marcus is unclean now.

The quiet in Marcus’s head isn’t the peaceful quiet he found on the boat with Peter. It isn’t the quiet of a job well done and a restful sleep. This quiet is the quiet of no God. No buzzing power guiding him through the words.

But then one day the buzzing is back. Marcus’s ears ring in that familiar way, so different from the ringing in his head when he gets boxed in the ears. He stops and he listens and he opens himself to the message.

The message is Tomás and danger and fear.

“Tomás,” he says, and he knows exactly where he is supposed to be. It isn’t here. It’s wherever Tomás is. Tomás, who’s in danger. Tomás, who he led right into the lion’s den and then abandoned. Marcus doesn’t stop to think or make excuses or apologize. He runs.

Finding them is no fair task. Mouse knows what she’s doing, and Tomás is a quick study if ever there were. But when he does find them, Tomás is chained to the wall.

“He helped me do it,” Mouse says. “He came to me the moment it happened.”

Marcus goes to his knees in front of Tomás. “Oh, Tomás.”

Tomás’s beautiful face pulls back into a snarl, and then a cold laugh comes out of his mouth. This is not Tomás’s laugh. There is nothing but warmth in Tomás’s laugh.

“Didn’t even have to promise this one anything,” the demon taunts. “You left him for us. You knew we’d been in his head and you sent him out with the person you knew would use him as a weapon.”

Marcus glances over his shoulder at Mouse, who only stares back levelly. She won’t apologize. And the demon is right. Marcus tried to warn her off, but Mouse and Tomás are both too willing to shoot first, ask questions later. Usually literally, in Mouse’s case.

“Release this servant of God,” Marcus demands.

The demon laughs again. “This servant of God invited me. Such a desperate little thing he’ll let anyone come inside.” The smirk is all wrong on Tomás’s face. “Well, except you, right?”

The exorcism takes eight and a half days, and it would’ve taken longer if Tomás hadn’t been fighting so hard from the inside. Tomás has been bleeding from the ears and nose for a full day at the end. But it does end, and when Marcus looks down into Tomás’s eyes—just Tomás, no demon, no presence—Marcus sobs in relief.

They don’t have time to talk about it. They have to get to Rome. They have to intercept Bennett. They have to exorcise Bennett. He’s spitting mad when they do, and leads the charge at the Vatican. And then, after they’ve cast out dozens of demons and have cracked the Holy City in half, they suddenly find themselves alone. Cleaning themselves up in, of course, a motel bathroom.

Maybe Marcus didn’t fall in love with Tomás in any of those diners or on the side of any roads or in a small country church somewhere they were passing through on a Sunday. Maybe it was always here, these motels where they learned to knock elbows and move in sync around the small space, where Tomás would brush his teeth as Marcus shaved and they would have whole conversations while one of them was in the shower.

Marcus can hardly look at Tomás now. There’s an awkwardness between them, and Marcus doesn’t know if it’s because he left or because he wants nothing more than to press Tomás against the wall like he did the first time they met and kiss him breathless.

Tomás is still exhausted. There’s a gash on his cheek and bruises along his neck that made the check-in girl look Marcus over with distrust. Not me, he’d wanted to say. I would never mar that beautiful skin.

They don’t speak as they fall into the room. There’s nothing to do but climb into their separate, small beds and stare at the ceiling.

“Are you staying?” Tomás finally asks at some point. Neither of them are sleeping, despite their exhaustion.

“I don’t know,” Marcus answers honestly.

“Why not?” Tomás asks.

Marcus sighs. What a question. “You want me to?”

“Yes,” Tomás answers without hesitation. It makes Marcus’s breath stutter away for a moment, eyes growing hot. He wants so badly for Tomás to mean it the way Marcus means it.

“We both go straight for the jugular when we fight,” Marcus says.

He hasn’t forgiven himself for his words, tied up in that barn by Cindy’s husband. Tomás had said the last time I trusted a vision, it led me to you. Was that also a mistake? And Marcus had been so angry, so tired, so scared, and he’d lashed out. Starting to feel like that, yeah. He hadn’t meant it, and he knows Tomás knows it, but he’d said it.

And Tomás knows how to wound Marcus right back. You’re jealous because He chose me and not you. They know each other too well, maybe. They know the deepest bruises to press on to hurt the most.

Tomás sighs. “We do,” he agrees. “But maybe we do that because we know we can. We won’t leave.”

“But I left,” Marcus whispers, like Tomás needs the reminder.

He can’t stop hearing how choked Tomás’s voice was. Not forever. Just for now. He’d been pleading, and Marcus hadn’t reassured him. He thinks of Tomás as a little boy in his grandmother’s kitchen, watching out the window for his father who was never coming back.

Marcus knew about that. He left Tomás anyway, cowardly in the face of his own feelings.

“You came back,” Tomás says. Softer, he adds, “You always come back to me.”

He’d left Tomás in Chicago more than once. And he did go back. He went back for the work. He went back because he wasn’t going to leave Casey Rance to a demon. He went back because knowing Tomás for four days had already told Marcus that fool of a man was going to walk straight into Hell to save Casey’s soul, or Angela’s, or anyone’s, and it reminded Marcus of what his purpose was.

Marcus can see Tomás’s eyes shining in the dark. Marcus’s chest hurts. He wants Tomás. He wants to believe Tomás wants him, too. But Marcus doesn’t feel worthy. How can he? Here is Tomás, beautiful and powerful and strong, full of the power of heaven. And here is Marcus, grizzled and scarred and tired, kicked out of the church and left behind by God.

God hasn’t spoken to Marcus again since He sent him to find Tomás. Marcus remembers saying maybe He didn’t send me a partner; maybe He sent me a replacement. Maybe that’s this again. Maybe Marcus’s last act as an exorcist was to save Tomás’s soul.

That would be enough. If Marcus never gets to spend another day with Tomás, if Marcus never hears God’s voice again, if the power never flows through his hands again, it would be enough to know that Tomás is safe

Marcus blows out a breath. “I’m tired.”

“I know,” Tomás says. “I am too.”

Marcus hadn’t meant just tonight. He’d meant weary, heavy in his heart. The kind of tired that got him sent to St. Aquinas.

But if he says that, it will start an argument. Tomás is in no fit state to argue, but then again, he could be half-dead and he’d still argue. If Marcus says he might be done, Tomás won’t sleep. And Tomás needs sleep. So Marcus will let it lie. He will tell himself it’s for Tomás’s benefit and not his own cowardice.

“Goodnight, Tomás,” he murmurs.

“Goodnight, Marcus.”

Tomás is awake first, as he often is. He didn’t get up and try to go for a run, thank the Lord, because Marcus would’ve had to go running after him. But he got coffee and donuts, and they eat without looking at each other. The familiarity hurts Marcus’s chest.

Tomás shaves in the bathroom. Marcus goes in to brush his teeth. Tomás hands over the toothpaste without Marcus having to ask. Marcus steps back just as Tomás switches to the right side of his face. They still have their rhythm.

This, for some reason, is what pushes Marcus. This too-small motel bathroom, the mixture of toothpaste and shaving cream in the sink, the rasp of Tomás’s razor as he pulls his skin tight. He’s leaving some of the beard, just cleaning up the edges, and Marcus doesn’t say anything, but he likes it.

They go out of the bathroom at the same time, and some kind of courage fills Marcus. Maybe it’s from God. Maybe it’s just his own human heart. Either way, Marcus thinks it’s time.

He needs to say things. He needs to get them out of his mind, out his heart, like a possessed person spitting up demon bile to clear their stomach. If Tomás doesn’t answer the way he wants, at least it will be out of him. Power in the ritual, he’s said over and over, so maybe he needs to take his own advice.

“Tomás,” Marcus says, heart pounding. Tomás looks at him with those beautiful eyes. “Will you take my confession?”

Tomás freezes for a second. He’s very serious when he says, “Of course.”

Marcus sits on the edge of the bed, every muscle in his body feeling weak and shaky, and Tomás copies him on the other bed. Their knees are touching. Marcus would prefer the little booth, but it doesn’t much matter now. He’s going to lay himself bare to Tomás anyway.

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned,” Marcus starts in a trembling voice. “It has been…” Marcus has to think about it. “I don’t know. Maybe four years since my last confession.”

“That's okay,” Tomás says, voice gentle and soothing. Marcus can picture him in the booth, loving the soul of every parishioner who came in. Even that woman who wouldn’t leave him alone about her cats. Tomás has even mentioned feeling guilty for leaving her behind, worried about the cats.

“I have been covetous and angry and, um, unkind in my thoughts and in my deeds,” Marcus says. “I have, um, I have been lustful.” He peeks up at Tomás. Tomás is keeping his face mostly neutral, except that Marcus knows him too well. He can see the quirk in Tomás’s eyebrows that would be hidden in the confessional. Tomás is certainly listening. “I have lusted for my closest friend.”

“Have you acted on that lust?” Tomás asks, voice hushed, so maybe he gets what Marcus is saying without Marcus having to spell it out.

“No,” Marcus says. He lets out a shaky breath. “But by God do I want to.”

Tomás swallows hard and it makes Marcus’s heart leap. “Go on.”

“I hurt people,” Marcus says, and his voice breaks now. Tomás leans across the empty space and holds onto Marcus’s hands, resting on his knees. “I took a man’s life.”

“Marcus.”

“I murdered—”

“Marcus,” Tomás says again, squeezing his hands.

“I can’t be forgiven for that one,” Marcus says.

“You can be forgiven for all,” Tomás says.

Marcus is well and truly crying now. “I would do it again,” he whispers, and Tomás inhales sharply. “For you. I would. I would do anything I had to do to keep you safe. And I don’t care who else gets hurt or—”

Tomás stands up and holds Marcus’s face in his hands. Then he sits down on the bed beside Marcus, still holding Marcus’s face, and kisses him. Marcus is so surprised he doesn’t move. “Marcus,” Tomás murmurs. “I love you.”

It’s what Marcus wanted. It’s what he’s been trying not to hope for. It’s why he started this, right now, this confession. And yet now that Tomás is saying it, it fills Marcus with a desperate, shamed panic.

“Don’t,” Marcus begs. “Why would you?”

“How could I not?” Tomás counters gently. He strokes Marcus’s cheek. “Outcast, fallen angel, you are loved.”

Marcus lets out a strangled noise that could be a sob or a laugh. “Not possessed.”

“No,” Tomás agrees. “I was. And you saved me. You saved my soul.”

“I’m not supposed to love anyone more than anyone else,” Marcus whispers. “Tomás, I killed.”

“If your worst sin comes from love, it can’t be that bad,” Tomás says, and Marcus remembers saying that to him, remembers reassuring him, but Marcus shakes his head now.

“Not the same.”

“Did God leave you after Andy?” Tomás asks. He’s still holding Marcus’s face, still looking at him with such unbearable softness and love in his eyes.

“For a while,” Marcus says.

“Did He stop speaking to you entirely?” Tomás presses, because he knows the answer. He’s not going to let Marcus dodge this.

“No,” Marcus admits. “He sent me back to you.”

“He sent you back to me,” Tomás echoes. “And He worked through you to save the Holy Father, Marcus. Do you think He would do that if He found you unworthy?”

“I…” Marcus shudders. Yes, God had been with him in Rome. He hadn’t even had to search, had felt the power and the words right there along with his heartbeat. “But…”

“You said it,” Tomás says. “You said if God didn’t like your actions, He could tell you Himself. Instead He spoke to you.”

“You really think I can be forgiven?” Marcus asks. He wants so badly for Tomás to say yes. He wants equally badly for Tomás to say no and send him away. He doesn’t know why. Everything is so mixed up and confusing.

“I think you have been,” Tomás says. He’s so steady, so sure. He sounds just like when he gives a homily at Mass, powerful and righteous. “I think you have saved more souls than anyone could count.”

“482,” Marcus says softly, and Tomás laughs. God, that laugh. It’s such a beautiful sound. The demon had tried to replicate it and never could, because Tomás’s laugh has his whole soul in it.

“482,” Tomás says. “Not counting anyone you also saved by saving their family. I am not saying a life for a life, Marcus. I am just saying you were running out of time. Mouse told me. The police were almost there. Andy had accepted his death. He wanted to save his children and all the other people on the island. You did not have good options. I don’t think God wants you to punish yourself forever because you chose to save one life instead of losing two.”

There’s a peace that goes through Marcus’s whole body when he hears that. It could be because that’s what he wants to hear anyway. But Marcus has a lot of practice listening to God. It feels a bit like He might agree.

Marcus rests his head against Tomás’s. “I have more to confess.”

“Go on,” Tomás says. He doesn’t move and Marcus doesn’t either. They’re sharing the air between them now, so close someone who saw them might think they’re kissing.

“I abandoned the person I love most in the world,” Marcus says. His voice breaks. “I was cowardly and selfish and I hurt him.”

Tomás doesn’t say anything for a second. He moves his head even closer so his lips brush against Marcus’s as he speaks. “Have you forsaken your sin?”

“What do you…?”

“Have you gone back to him, and you won’t leave again?” Tomás’s lower lip is trembling, just a tiny bit. As if Marcus needed to cry harder.

“Yes,” Marcus promises. “I will never leave him again, as long as he’ll have me.” Tomás kisses him again, and this time, Marcus kisses back. “I’m sorry for these,” Marcus murmurs between kisses, “and all my sins.”

“This is all I can remember,” Tomás corrects.

“Oh, whatever.”

Tomás kisses him again, and again, and again. “Hurry up and do your act of contrition.”

“I’m contrite,” Marcus says. “I’m sorry. I will be contrite for the rest of my life.”

Tomás speeds through the prayer of absolution in Spanish so fast Marcus can’t even tell the words apart. He crosses Marcus with one hand while he’s kissing him. “This might be blasphemy,” he murmurs into Marcus’s mouth. “To use confession this way.”

“Well, let’s see if He strikes us down,” Marcus says.

“I have never kissed someone during confession,” Tomás says. “This is a new one.”

“I’d like if you never did again,” Marcus says. His mouth is running away from him now, asking for too much too soon. But Tomás already asked him not to leave.

Tomás pulls back a little. “You didn’t like it?”

“I meant no one else,” Marcus clarifies, pulling Tomás back in close. He’s rewarded with Tomás laughing again. But a thought strikes Marcus, important enough to lean out again. “Wait, Tomás,” he says. “I worry…” He blows out a breath. “The guilt you felt after Jessica—”

“Not a problem now,” Tomás says.

“Your vows—”

“Let’s see if He strikes me down,” Tomás says. He’s kissing the hollow under Marcus’s ear and it’s making him shiver. But Tomás stops for a second. He doesn’t move away, but he pauses. “I have always worried I am too…carnal, I guess. You know, too—” He makes a noise, frustrated with English. “Lustful. It has been my favorite sin, so to speak.”

“Think it’s going to be mine, too,” Marcus says.

“This does not feel like a sin, Marcus,” Tomás says, and it steals Marcus’s breath. “With Jessica, I had guilt the whole time. Well.” He smirks a little. “Not the whole time.” He gets serious again. “I knew it was wrong even as I did it. I—I was succumbing to temptation. But you don’t feel like temptation. I don’t feel guilt for this. You said…you said it was not empty lust. This isn’t, either. And God is the one who keeps sending us to each other. He must know that we have these thoughts and these feelings and if He does not want us apart, then…” Tomás shrugs, moving away enough to smile at Marcus. “Then He must want us together.”

Marcus pulls him back in and kisses him until they’re both breathless. “Yeah, yes,” he agrees. Marcus has gotten pretty accustomed to the feeling of losing God’s presence. He doesn’t feel it now. Tomás pushes him back onto the bed and covers him with his body, his mouth hot and wet against Marcus’s. Marcus’s hands hover for a moment, unsure, before he settles them on Tomás’s hips as Tomás moves to kiss Marcus’s neck. “I don’t—” He feels shy, suddenly, shy and tongue-tied and blushing. He’s never gone further than kissing. Even this, already, is more than he’s ever done. “Tomás, I haven’t—”

“Okay,” Tomás says. He’s breathing hard, and it shoots a thrill through Marcus. Tomás kisses him again, slower and more chaste, and then presses his face into the crook of Marcus’s neck. “Okay, we don’t have to—”

“Well, I didn’t say I don’t want to,” Marcus protests.

Tomás laughs, a little strangled. He kisses the side of Marcus’s neck and makes him shiver. “We don’t have to be in a rush,” Tomás says. “Because you are staying.”

“I’m staying,” Marcus confirms, holding Tomás tighter. “You’ll wish you hadn’t asked.”

“No, I won’t,” Tomás says steadily. Marcus hides his face in Tomás’s shoulder, overwhelmed. Tomás rolls off him but takes his hand right away, and they lie there together on the dingy motel bedspread, just looking into each other’s eyes.

Marcus imagines this must be what it feels like to be a teenager, or a normal one at least—giddy and punch-drunk with love. He isn’t a teenager, though. He knows that keenly. He is an old man with aches and pains and heartbreaks and disappointments.

“I don’t know if I can keep being an exorcist,” Marcus whispers. Voicing the thought is terrifying. An exorcist is, quite literally, the only thing he’s ever been. He was an exorcist before he was even a man. He never expected to consider stopping. He never expected to have a choice. He assumed he’d die early, like so many others before him.

Tomás pulls Marcus over to rest on his chest. “Okay,” he says slowly.

“Don’t ask what I’ll do instead,” Marcus warns, voice choked with tears. “Haven’t the foggiest.”

“Okay,” Tomás repeats. He kisses the top of Marcus’s head. “Then we will figure it out.”

“Tomás, you can’t—” Marcus starts.

“We are meant to be together,” Tomás says. “We just agreed.”

“But your life—” Marcus tries.

“My life is God’s,” Tomás says. His arms tighten around Marcus. “And now it is also yours.”

That’s too much, too much trust and too much love to put in Marcus. But he knows Tomás. Tomás is stubborn. Tomás can’t be convinced contrary when he believes he’s right. And aside from that, Tomás is right that they just agreed.

God agrees, too. He’s the one who sent Tomás to Marcus and Marcus back to Tomás. Marcus knows what it’s like to lose God, and he knows what it’s like to lose Tomás, and he’s far too exhausted to go through either one ever again.

“Okay,” he murmurs.

“We don’t have to worry about it right now,” Tomás says. There’s a smile in his voice when he says, “We have time.”

“We have time,” Marcus echoes.

That’s a bit of a foreign concept. Marcus has never had much time to do as he pleases. He had to hurry to hide before his father got home, hurry to the dormitory before the older boys caught him, and then, endlessly through his life, hurry to the next exorcism, the next soul in need. Even in St. Aquinas, everything was structured and scheduled and his time was rarely his own.

There will still be demons. There will always still be demons. But there aren’t as many now. Maybe he can take time. He can think it over. He can rest. All the better if that means Tomás rests, too. Maybe after a month he’ll be ready to get back to work. Maybe he won’t.

He thinks he should be more frightened. He has no plan. Giving up the one thing he’s ever done means taking a great leap, changing everything in his life.

But not everything, he thinks. Tomás is here. Somehow, in just a year, Tomás has become the most important constant in his life. And Tomás is not leaving. Whatever they decide, they’ll decide together, the way they used to bicker over the newspaper with eggs and toast about which town’s crime spree sounded most promising.

“Come on,” Tomás says, sitting up.

“Come on what?” Marcus grouses. He was tipping comfortably toward sleep, even though he’s barely been awake an hour.

“It’s a nice day outside,” Tomás says.

“If you think you’re going to get me to run,” Marcus threatens.

Tomás laughs at him. “I would never,” he promises. He gets off the bed and tugs at Marcus’s hand. “I just think fresh air will be good.” He kisses Marcus’s fingers and Marcus gets distracted, transfixed at this new, wonderful thing between them. “You can draw.”

“Can I draw you doing some pushups?” Marcus asks.

Tomás raises his eyebrows. “Oh, do you like when I do pushups?”

“Nah, hate it,” Marcus says. “Can’t stand seeing your muscles like that.”

Tomás laughs, loud and delighted, and Marcus grins at the sound. “You are in luck,” Tomás says. “I love showing off my muscles.”

Now it’s Marcus’s turn to laugh. He lets Tomás pull him up off the bed and into a kiss. They lace their fingers together, smiling at one another. Marcus wants to bottle this feeling so he never forgets it. He wants to live in this moment right here, this happiness.

He’ll have time for more happiness, he knows. They have time. He squeezes Tomás’s hand, and then he follows Tomás into the sunshine.