You and Me Together

Anthony was relieved when he didn't see Piper's car in the parking lot.
"Okay, but we've got to hurry," he said to Steve in a smile.
The two almost ran into the building and rushed into the elevator, where Anthony pressed the "12" button more times than necessary. Once the door had closed, Steve let a hand slip over and touch Anthony on the backside. As soon as he felt the touch, he pressed Steve against the wall and laid a soft, simple kiss on his neck. The two parted from each other just long enough to look into each other's eyes, then lunged forward simultaneously, embracing passionately, kissing until the doors had opened once again.
"Ok, my roommate's kind of a slob, so excuse the mess," he told Steve as he unlocked the door. "But we'll just head into my room, okay?"
"I guess if I have to," Steve said in a flirtatious giggle.
Once they'd stepped inside, Anthony grabbed Steve's hand, leading him through the maze. But they had barely crossed the living room before Steve grabbed him roughly, pushing him onto the couch, then laying on top of him.
"I want you right here, right now," he told Anthony as he removed his own shirt. Anthony struggled to unbutton his shirt quickly, at the same time reaching for Steve, keeping him close, kissing him passionately.
"Yeah?" Anthony said once he had removed his own shirt, "Tell me how bad you want it!"
"Oh my god!"
They both bolted up and looked to the entrance from the hall to see Piper standing there, a look of shock on her face.
"Piper, what the hell?" Anthony stood quickly, standing in front of Steve. "I didn't see your car outside!"
"I parked on the street," she said, her voice still slightly raised. "I - I'm just - I'll go back to my room now."
"Wait!" He ran over to her as she was about to go into her room. "Let me talk to you about this, okay?"
"Did you go to your meeting?" She asked him, obviously trying to hide a great amount of rage.
"Yes. I absolutely did, I promise."
"Okay, so... where'd you find him? Did you go to the bar?"
"I met him at the meeting. Please, Piper, I know it's a shock, but if it really bothers you, I don't have to bring guys here."
A look of wonder crossed her face. "It's your house, Anthony. You can bring anyone you want here."
"Yeah, but..."
"What? You mean because it's a guy?"
"Well... yeah."
She shook her head and smiled. "I don't care about that," she told him. "I'd have been just as shocked if I walked in on you with a girl. I just didn't expect you to be sexing someone up in our living room!"
"You really don't care?"
"About what? Having people over?"
"No," he said. "That I'm... gay."
"It's the 21st century," she said. "No one cares."
He let out an audible sigh of relief. "Thanks."
"Just do all of your business in the privacy of your own bedroom, please."

The following morning, Piper woke to see a groggy Anthony sitting at the breakfast table, sipping coffee and attempting to wipe the sleep out of his eyes.
"Late night?" She asked, already knowing it was. "I could hear you guys all the way down in my room."
"Yeah," he said, shaking his head. "Sorry."
She smiled as she grabbed the carton of eggs from the fridge and pulled a pan don from the wall. "You should really be more considerate when there are other people here."
"Look, you're gonna have to deal with the fact that you live with a faggot, okay?"
She turned to him at the sound of his angry tone. "Where's that coming from?" she asked.
"I saw the way you looked at us!" he growled. "You were looking down on us the way everyone looks down on people like us."
A puzzled look suddenly took over Piper's face as she dropped her cooking utensils and sat at the table with him. "You really think that?"
He turned his stare to the wooden top of the table, folding his hands on top of the surface. "I don't appreciate being judged for who I am."
She extended a hand, reaching out to softly touch his forearm. "I didn't know it looked like that to you," she spoke. "I certainly don't judge you, and I'm sorry if you thought I did."
"I needed to be with someone last night," he told her, looking at her with a hardened glare in his eye. "And you'll have to deal with the fact that I'm gay, okay?"
"Why do you judge me like that?" she asked, finally speaking in a firmer tone. "Do you think that's what I'm like? You think I judge you because you're gay? Why do you just assume that?"
"Oh come on! You're a Christian! You wear that stupid little cross around your neck and you go to church... I know the type. You may not admit it, but you don't like how I live."
"Do you think every Christian hates gay people? You think we're all like that?" She stood and began to pace, attempting to calm herself so she wouldn't explode in anger. "Maybe if you actually knew me, you could make fair judgment about me! But you don't know me, Anthony! And for you to say I'm judging your lifestyle, or for you to yell at me because of the assumptions you're making about me is just as offensive as anything anyone has ever said to you!"
Anthony placed his hands over his ears like a child might when a parent was yelling at him. The words he had said and the tone in which he said them were chosen by him purposely. He had been worried about what she'd think of him from the time he realized she was religious. But he had hoped to avoid the discussion by never letting her see that part of him. How could he hide it when that's who he was?
His eyes trailed up to meet her, and once she had stopped yelling, he lowered his hands. "You really want me to believe that you're a Christian and you don't care that you're living with a homosexual?"
"I told you last night, that doesn't matter." She walked around the table and sat in the chair beside him. Placing her hand on his back, patting it softly, she felt his body heaving as he began to fall onto the table under the weight of his tears. They seemed to come from nowhere, taking Piper by surprise. But it didn't surprise Anthony. He'd been crying for one reason or another since he had realized who he really was.
"Tell me why you're so upset," Piper beckoned, hoping his telling her might alleviate some of the pain from him.
He wiped away tears, but kept his body bent low. "I'm a fag. I'm an abomination."
"Why do you call yourself these things?"
"Because it's the truth!"
"Stop being so hard on yourself," she told him. "Talk to me."
It took him a minute to gain the confidence or the courage to tell her why he had been conditioned to say what he said about himself.
"The home I grew up in," he started with a sigh. "My parents, they hate me."
"No parent hates their own child."
He let out a laugh too deliberate to be real. "You don't know my parents."
She moved her hand to his knee and squeezed it lightly, giving him an empathetic look. "Tell me, please."
"My dad's a pastor," he started. "Every week when I was growing up in that house I had to hear him talk about how the sodomites were bringing the world to destruction. He kept saying that they were all heading to hell, you know? All that stuff you hear preachers say. He'd preach love and compassion, but the way he would talk about homosexuals, you knew how much he hated them. And I always would listen to what he said, and even before I knew I was gay, or before I even thought I might be, I knew that what he was saying was wrong. If there was a God, he wouldn't hate the people He made, would He? And if He did hate them, then He sure wasn't the kind of God I wanted to worship.
"Then when I was 14, I was at summer Bible camp, and I met a kid named Chase. We were only at the camp for a week, but Chase and I got real close, you know, and then out of nowhere he kissed me. And I let him. And I liked it."
Piper reached closer and did something she almost never did - she hugged him.
He let go from the embrace slowly, the corner of his mouth perking up as he began to feel more comfortable opening up to her.
"You can only imagine how hard it was living with them after that, right? I mean, my dad acted like it was his own personal God-ordained mission to stop all the homos, and there I was living in his house as one of them. It sucks. It's hell on earth, actually. I tried to commit suicide when I was 16, and when I went to the hospital, I told my dad I just took a bunch of aspirin for a headache and accidentally overdosed."
"No one should ever feel like that in their own home," she said in a soothing, maternal voice. "No one should feel that alone."
"I have an older brother," he told her with a smile. "We were like best friends. But not after... after they found out."
"When did you tell them?"
"Actually, I didn't. There was a guy I went to high school with, and we kinda were... sort of... dating, I guess. You know, we'd go to lunch together or a baseball game, and no one thought anything of it. And then we had sex, and he told his parents for some reason, and they told my parents. And I couldn't exactly deny it."
"What did they do?"
"They kicked me out. I was 18, about to go off and train at the seminary, and they kicked me out. So I decided to do what I wanted to do, and I went to college out here and I haven't talked to my family since."
"I'm sorry," Piper said. She didn't know what else she could say.
He wiped away the last of his tears, though he had stopped crying several minutes before. He found something in Piper that he'd never been able to find in anyone before - someone who listened, who cared even though he was a relative stranger. He felt like he'd known her forever, and to finally be able to tell someone the truth about himself, it was just the release he needed.
"Thanks for letting me spill my guts like this," he said to her as he finally looked at her, smiling with ease as he leaned back, comfortable in her presence. "And I'm sorry I judged you like this, it's just that - "
"I understand," she said, interrupting him.
"I feel so embarrassed," he told her, shaking his head.
"Don't feel embarrassed. We all have those things we don't like to talk about."
"You? You have something to hide? You, with your perfect body and your perfect job and your perfect life?"
She looked at him silently, then rose from her chair. "You don't know a single thing about me," she told him quietly. "Don't make any more assumptions. You did that already and you saw just how wrong you were."
As she walked back to her room, Anthony looked at the eggs and milk still on the counter. The least he could do after offending her like that was make her breakfast.