Chapter Text
God loves you, but not enough to save you. I’ll never be that kind of angel.
Beomgyu goes to church every Sunday. Ever since he was a little boy, he has always been a child of God. He sits in the same seat near the back of the small church in his small town beside his mother, the stained glass windows cast golden light across his face, and his hands folded in prayer. It’s as if God himself is shining his light on the boy.
No one really notices how tightly he presses his fists together in prayer, at how his knuckles almost turn white. If the Lord could only see the boy kneeling in front of his altar, hands trembling, his voice below a whisper, because if it ever were to be heard, he would be deemed a sinner. He prays for the evil that slumbers inside him to go away, and if Heaven were watching, maybe it would see that all he wanted was to be good.
Because Beomgyu likes boys.
And he believes that as he continues to do so, God would never love him.
He likes boys, has known it for years, even during the times he tried not to. Even when the sermons told him that it was wrong, he remembers it so clearly. “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.” His eyes were fixed on the floor as the pastor preached the word of God. Fearing that so much as a glance would expose the sin he carried in his heart.
He was eight years old.
So he hides it, like it’s a wound that he must hide from the prying eyes of the people around him. Wrapping it in guilt and shame, he would always pretend that he was fine. But it bled through his clothes, onto the palms of his hands, every night as he kneels beside his bed and whispers the same prayers over, and over, and over again.
“Please, Lord, make it go away.” He says it until the words that came out of his mouth lost all meaning, until the pain in his chest catches up to his throat, and until his tears lull him to sleep.