The Bad Boy and the Other Bad Boy

Chapter 22

16K stfu!!!

Also DISCLAIMER: 

I am not religious myself but I see a lot of the bxb/gxg books on here don't talk about religion and Christianity/Catholicism. Many many people around the world are actually christian and struggle with sexual identity because it goes against what their religion's values are. If books on here do talk about it, it is mostly the main gay character going "I renounce my religion because it doesn't support me being gay". That is totally fine, and they are completely within their rights to do that, but they don't discuss how difficult it is for many people to just renounce their religion. That religion is what they have grown up believing in, what their family has grown up believing in, and to just discard that whole part of their identity isn't so easy and black and white. I don't want Rocco to just lose that whole part of himself. He believes in God, and he is gay. I believe you can be both - firstly the bible doesn't even explicitly say "man cannot lie with man" it says "man cannot lie with boy". Even if some versions do say "man cannot lie with man", hasn't it been theorised or even proven that it was a translation error or something? I'm not going to get into that anyway, but Rocco has God and also guys. Or guy. 

ROCCO

I pushed the last pin into the wall, then stepped back to assess it. My charcoal drawing hung up on my bedroom wall, the lone feature. 

I tilted my head. Man, it would be so cool if there was colour in this. Maybe in the lips or in the eyes...

I went down the stairs into the study, pulling open drawers and rifling through them. Did we really have no paint in this entire house? 

I found a very very shitty water colour palette of my sister's, and tested it out with the shitty paintbrush it came with. 

Nope. Nope. Way too fucking clumpy. 

I sighed, and went back up into my room to look at the artwork again.  

I wanted to make a new one now. 

I sighed again, and went to grab my keys. 

In minutes, I was speeding down the quiet streets of my modern suburb towards the town centre. I pulled up to the only good art store in town - I only knew that because Mallory was a sculptor, selling mushroom earrings and other wack shit like that. 

I pushed open the door, feeling out of place in my Wolverine jacket. The bell above the door chimed and I immediately smelt incense or something - my mother was always burning stuff in the prayer room. 

The store was very cramped, with art products piled high onto the already full shelves and racks.

I went around the corner and came up to the counter, which was also filled up with random crap. 

The owner, an older woman named Laurie with masses of curly red hair, appeared suddenly and silently behind it. 

"Hi Rocco! Where's Mallory?" she beamed at me, peering around my shoulder. 

"Hi Laurie, just me today." I knew my smile was uncomfortable. 

Laurie's eyebrows rose. "Oh, are you getting a present for her birthday? You're a bit early!"

I smiled uncomfortably again. "Nope. Here for me. "

Her mouth formed an embarrassed O. "Oh. Well, do you need help with anything?"

I grabbed one of the art starter kits off the rack next to me. Hopefully this would have everything I needed for now. 

"Just this, thanks."