Title: A Different Kind of Worship
By: flipflopadd1ct
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Rating: R
Summary: Now, Nick takes part in a different kind of worship.

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There used to be a time when Nick hated getting on his knees. Thought it was disgusting, unclean, immoral, completely un-Christian, and wrong. He suffered through guilt and confusion and denial in his younger days, back when he and a frat brother or two would trade blowjobs and later blame it on the alcohol.

His deep shame stemmed from his childhood.

Nick Stokes was brought up in a strong Protestant Christian home. His parents and their parents and their parents were all staunch, conservative Republicans. Important, wealthy, proper Republicans, and they expected their children to be the same.

And Nick was. The same, that is. For a while.

He followed the examples illustrated by his siblings, Nick the ideal image of a flawless son. But as the years passed, and Nick reached his teenage years, Nick began to feel, well, different.

When he first thought he was gay, Nick was shocked. Horrified, and he had nowhere to turn. He certainly couldn't communicate his confusion to his parents (they'd throw him out), his friends (he wouldn't last twenty-four hours), or even his pastor (who, Nick reckoned, would tell his parents). Nick had to settle for repression.

He played it straight. Winced internally every time the church bashed gays but showed no emotion on his face. Dated girls, fucked girls, pretended to like girls, and no one else was the wiser.

His freshman year of college, Nick got his first taste of cock.

He loved the new experience and consequently hated himself in the morning.

The next day, however, he went out looking for more.

That year, Nick sucked dick for the first time. Fucked a man for the first time. Got fucked for the first time. It was "fucking," definitely, because none of it was worth calling "making love."

But the beliefs installed by his home and his church haunted Nick every day and night. He had been taught homosexuality was the Devil's work, and no man who committed such a sin would be allowed anywhere near Heaven. Nick worried about his life, his soul, because there was no questioning his desire for men. But where was his sex life leading him in the end?

Nick regularly attended church on Sundays, hoping maybe he could find some kind of breakthrough, some kind of sign that it was all okay. He would kneel on the pews to pray (a once-innocent position that now brought other acts to mind) and guilt would wash over him again and again.

Nick struggled with his sexuality during those years, and it was one of the worst periods in his life.

But opinions change over time.

Well into his thirties, Nick had abandoned much of the guilt that ravaged his teens and twenties. Nick had met Greg.

Nick easily thought of Greg as the best thing that ever happened to him. And when they made love, Nick likened it to more than sex.

It was worship.

Nick could spend hours with Greg naked and stretched out beside him, pressing fingers to muscles, dropping kisses with lips. Greg's body was flawless, breath-taking, and to Nick, sacred.

Now, when Nick dropped to his knees in front of Greg, religion was the last thing on his mind. There was nothing wrong with sucking the cock of the man he loved, and no church could tell him any differently. If God had a problem with Nick's sex life, well, Nick began to think that maybe God wasn't that important. Greg was his temple now.

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