All the Risk of Faith and Free-fall

📅 mid-December, 2015

[ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴘᴀʀᴇɴᴛᴀʟ ᴀʙᴀɴᴅᴏɴᴍᴇɴᴛ, ʟɢʙᴛᴘʜᴏʙɪᴀ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴀᴛᴛᴇᴍᴘᴛᴇᴅ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ]

December had blown in cold and grey with winds that bit, and the approach of Christmas warmed spirits but nothing else: The teenager was relieved to shut the front door behind them upon returning home from a rather late-pushed present-shopping run, relishing the inside warmth and the chance to drop their backpack from their shoulders.
“I’m home!” They called out to the quiet house, heading for the kitchen to grab something to eat before settling in to start wrapping; maybe even trying to tackle some winter-break homework. 
“Welcome back,” their father replied half-distractedly, then looked up from his chair in the sunroom and made an unreadable facial expression. “What was all that business with asking your mother for a haircut yesterday about, Rachel?”

The sixteen-year-old paused from slicing their apple, expressionlessly letting their given name roll off their back and trying not to betray that their father’s insight had unnerved them.
“If you don’t want me to get it cut, I won’t. I just thought it would be interesting to change it up,” they shrugged, as though it weren’t a deal. As far as their father was concerned, it wasn’t. Shouldn’t be. But still, there had been something in that tone that the teenager couldn’t read; something clipped or guarded or almost-but-not-quite pointed. An edge that couldn’t be placed but that they answered nonetheless with a gentle smile and sympathy, trying to diffuse any hypothetical suspicion that may have taken root.
“Are you okay, dad?” they asked, with a minute head-tilt, “You sound tired. You work too hard, you know. It’s almost Christmas.”
Their father waved a dismissive hand as he turned back to his book. “I’m fine, Rachel. Dishes in the sink when you’re done, please.”
The teenager couldn’t help but quietly laugh as they made their way upstairs: They'd never left a plate in their room, but the reminder never ceased.
“Of course, dad.”

Fortunately it didn’t take too long to wrap most of the gifts up in their room, no matter how fidgety the scotch tape got. Most were small; perfume for their mom, a tie-clip and book for their dad. A necklace for their sister, Brielle, and colognes for both Thomas and Timotheo: All three of their siblings were going to be home for Christmas, and the opportunity to catch up in person was exciting, even if time with family had started to feel somewhat purgatorial over the past couple years...at least in comparison to the secret other life the teenager led on the internet—where his pronouns were he/him/his, where he went by his chosen name and not “Rachel.” 
But that...that wasn’t something his family would understand. Not with the church they attended; the rigidity they had when it came to questions about even carbon dating or micro-evolution. 
Christmastime was always a joyous season in the Cammell household; holy and warm and familial. But this year felt fringed vaguely by sadness: Living a double life inevitably left half of it feeling fake, and the facade of being “Rachel” tugged at the teenager’s heart. He wished he could be himself with his family, sharing in their joy without walking through the house feeling nebulous, ungrounded; caught between two names, two genders. Walking in the space between truth and lie.

It was only the colognes they had yet to wrap when they heard their mother arrive home from the hairdresser, and knowing she tended to come up and check in, they swiftly tucked all gift-wrapping supplies under the bed; smiling at their own childlike drive to keep all mystery and surprise intact, even if it would spoil nothing if she were to know merely that the gifts existed.
Ten minutes passed without her opening the bedroom door, though, and the sixteen-year-old heard tension in the tone of the conversation going on downstairs, even if no words could quite be made out. Curious and with a twinge of concern, they decided to go down themself. They’d been a decent enough mediator before; maybe they could help this time, too.
“Hey mom, welcome home,” they greeted softly, walking into the kitchen with a tentative smile; “Is...something going on?” The smile faltered; both parents turned to look, frowning, foreheads furrowed.
“You tell us.”

“You have a user account on the family computer,” their father said, icy and deliberate, as if reading charges before a court. He gestured curtly toward the sunroom. “Would you care to explain why when I checked your website history on that account, I found sinful, frankly blasphemous websites? ‘transmissionministry.com,’ ‘thechristiancloset,’ ‘qchristian.org…’ What is the meaning of this?”
“You’re not a homosexual, are you?” their mother asked. She was the same height as her child or slightly shorter, but the venom in her tone and disgusted expression seemed to render her a looming, intimidating figure. The teenager quailed before them both and looked at the ground. They’d trusted their parents not to snoop, and had clearly become careless in the use of incognito windows and clearing of history, but despite the fear, they couldn’t bring themself to lie. Doing so would be useless if their parents had read the forum posts, anyway.
“Not...not gay—or, yes, that too, but because—I’m not...a girl. I’m sorry,” he whispered eventually, lifting his head. “I...I wouldn’t be like this if it was a choice, I swear.”

There was a disquieting silence in the wake of his response, where shock briefly displaced disgust on his mother’s face; as if she’d counted on denial despite all evidence—then her expression contorted again, and for the first time since a couple light childhood spankings, she slapped him: This time hard, and across the face. The disbelief watered his eyes before the pain did.
“After everything we and the Lord have done for you?!” his mother yelled, more furious than he’d ever seen her, flushed red with anger; “How could you; how dare you be willing to spit in my face?! In the face of God?”
“I’m not, mom, please, that’s—”
“You can call me your mother again when you’ve cleansed yourself of your disgusting desires!” She stomped her foot like an enraged bull and the teenager flinched, cowering with his hands defensively half-raised and his face turned away, even as he haltingly tried to reason through the gaps in his fingers;
“Mom, it’s—it’s not a desire, it’s who I am—”
“Then I am not your mother!” she shouted, more painful than the slap to his face. “Lord forgive me for raising a child like you! This house belongs to God: Either you can right yourself, or you can leave!” She turned on her heel and stormed off, her freshly permed curls bouncing against her shoulders. 

His anxiety spiking with his mother’s disavowal, the boy turned towards his father, desperate, his cheek still stinging.
“She doesn't mean that, does she?” he asked, trying to swallow his panic, his shame. “You wouldn’t throw me out, I know you wouldn’t—” He faltered in the face of his father’s impassive eyes.
“If you want to stay under our roof then you’ll agree to fix yourself,” his father said coldly, in that same deliberate tone from before. This time it sounded like a sentencing: 
“You’ll attend church on Wednesday nights as well as twice on Sundays. You’ll never again go to any of your disgraceful websites or associate with any homosexuals—or...transsexuals. We’ll find you a therapist to get you over these sinful, frankly delusional thoughts and you’ll see them once a week until you are cured completely.”
The boy felt his heart drop to his stomach at the word ‘cured:’ He’d heard about conversion therapy, and felt his intensifying panic fluttering in his chest like a trapped bird. That couldn’t be his only option.
“Dad, that’s not how it works, you have to know that,” he said, his lips unwittingly trembling towards a terrified, appeasing smile; “Please. I can’t just not be who I am, you know I—”
“Then you have three days to leave this house or change your mind,” his father said, unmoved. He gave a slow, judgement-passing shake of his head. “I never would have expected this kind of filth from you, Rachel.”
Stunned into silence, the boy watched the older man turn and walk away, leaving their familial bonds behind him, abandoned.

The teenager slunk up to his room in a daze, his parents’ bedroom door closed to the hall but more explicitly, to him. He stared around his room at his things, ruminating on the weight of being given three days: Three days, like Christ, to choose to be reborn. Three days to ‘return’ to grace. Tears welled in his eyes. It would be no rebirth to choose to stay; it would be surrendering to dishonesty, to trauma. He would have to become a fraction of who he truly was; he’d need to lie his way through it and beyond so that he could continue to suffer anyway, as Rachel, a woman, his non-self.
He sat on his bed. Maybe he was catastrophizing; maybe he could make it. He had so far, hadn’t he? But so far he’d been able to lead a double life; on the internet, on his forums, he was Ἀετός, ‘eagle,’ he/him. Maybe that had been the issue, that he’d been given the opportunity to have his truth, if only in the clandestinity of the internet and his own mind. Maybe that had become too empowering, had leached through his facade without him meaning to allow it. But God… What would he do without it?
He rolled up his sleeves and stared down at the small collection of scars that marked his arms. That was the past; that was the life before he’d had the secret truth he had now, the one acknowledged by all those ‘homosexuals’ and ‘transsexuals’ he ‘affiliated with’ online. The people who had read the posts he’d made at age fourteen, fifteen, asking how to ‘cure’ being trans, how to stop it. And they’d said that that there wasn’t a cure, but that it wasn’t wrong, and that life was easier as a trans person when you could transition: That then things were less painful. The same people who had reassured him that being trans wasn’t rejecting God’s design; that taking hormones was not a spit in the face of God’s Plan, and desiring them was in no way sinful.
But he was meant to sever himself from those people; disassociate from truth and support and be Rachel, his parents’ daughter. He was meant to disavow all that was true and grow up as the person he was not. He strained to imagine it; never using his chosen name again; never being acknowledged by the pronouns that he felt suited him. He’d be meant to marry a man who would always view him as a woman, a wife….a mother, eventually, potentially.

He choked on an aggrieved noise that wrenched itself out of his throat and clutched his arms around his chest, hating the shape of the body he found under his hands. His shoulders shook when he superimposed the future his parents wanted for him over the other future he envisioned, one where he was happy: Taking T, testosterone; his voice deeper, his chest scarred but flat. Still marrying a man, one with a deep laugh and firm hands and a dusting of stubble, but one who saw him as himself. As a man; a husband.
His parents could never support that. Would never support that. Any fraction of it. A future from here could only ever be one of extended, painful dishonesty: To his parents, his parish, his potential future husband...and to himself.
He had nowhere else to go and no idea what to do, but staying felt like consideration and consideration felt like deception and though the room was still his for three days, he felt both unwelcome and guilty. He pulled his Christmas presents from beneath his bed and set them on the sheets, each addressed to its intended recipient, then stared blankly at them for minutes that felt like hours.
‘From: Rachel.’
‘From: Rachel.’
‘From: Rachel.’
‘From: Rachel.’

The small, half-folded tags on each gift lied up to him from his crumpled blankets, and the urge to correct them welled up in his chest like grief; like strength. The scissors he’d used for the wrapping paper earlier peeked out from under the bed and were in his hand before he’d yet decided to pick them up. Carefully, he snipped his old name from each tag. Tipping the scraps into his waste bin, severing himself from his old name and knowing every action now was a gesture of farewell to all of what had been, the surge of grief-strength gripped him again. The scissors were still in his hand. His mother was no longer his mother, by her words; he had no need to ask her permission for a haircut now. Decisively, he gathered his hair into his fist and brought the scissors back behind his head, each snip burying his old name beneath locks of black hair.
When he straightened back up, the room seemed even more alien; a stage set for a girl who no longer was, not even as a mirage. He didn’t want to linger; didn’t want to be seen as his honest self within the judgmental walls around him. He pulled on his jacket, shaking the sleeves down over his wrists, then tucked his Bible alone beneath his arm...and left.

He wandered from the familiarity of his neighborhood without direction; the fade-out of Wolf Creek’s burble and its replacement by the half-distant drone of Rte 1 becoming his only real point of reference. He felt dulled out by grief and shock, and would get lost in his thoughts only to forget what he was thinking about. He wondered what his parents would tell his siblings. He wondered if ‘Rachel’ would be missed at Christmas; if she’d be mourned, if they felt that he’d killed her. Was he dead to them, or was she? Miserably plodding through a suburban maze, he prayed for guidance, then dead-ended multiple times in his wanderings before finally reaching some sidewalk-less on-ramp which he had to dart across, fearful and deer-like, feeling like a fugitive as he scrambled up between dark-windowed buildings on the opposite side to climb the bluff the city had built itself into. 
He emerged onto a wide, unfamiliar road facing a seemingly infinite number of identical rowhouses, and made a left-hand turn if only because it was upwardly inclined and heading for higher ground seemed like the thing to do when lost, which he certainly was. In more ways than one. The rowhouses gave way to shabbier-looking duplexes and eventually, across from their peeling paint, he reached a point where he could see the view from the hill into the valley back towards Ridgefield. 

He still could go home. Maybe. The jacket he’d tugged on before leaving still had his cellphone in the pocket; he could just search up directions and walk back home, say he was wrong...He choked on the concept, wanting to be wrong and knowing he wasn’t; wanting to open his front door and be greeted by name. His heart ached. Only Rachel could go home. Him…? He couldn’t.
He turned away from the twinkling valley lights; the view of a home no longer his, and walked blindly directly away. The occasional barred windows of the neighborhood he’d found himself in felt no less alienating, though, and the Christmas decorations glinting from the homes he passed felt almost taunting, repeatedly reopening the wound of knowing he had nowhere to go for that sacred day; no family with which to celebrate; not anymore. He miserably plodded forward until he was forced to take a turn, then apathetically zig-zagged at each intersection following it, getting increasingly lost. 
He was rounding the corner of a gas station and staring half-hopelessly upwards, wishing desperately for something, when a honk and a harsh voice startled him from his attempted piety. 
“Get the fuck outta the way, bitch!” an irate driver attempting to pull into the station yelled out his window, and the teenager scrambled clear of the headlights just in time to catch the driver hiss a scathing “God, Jersey’s just crawling with whores and homeless trash,” to his faceless passenger.

It hit the boy like a blow to the chest, the impulse to correct the man which couldn’t be realized. Because it was true, now: He was homeless. Trash, though…? He retreated down the street, nursing the new insult and the pain of praying for a sign and receiving cruelty. When he looked up from his shoes again he found himself facing another choice point: The road he was following forked. He glanced up at the sign at the road’s divide:

↖ Fort Lee
 G. Washington Br
━━━━━━━━━
↗ Edgewater

Something about the middle line stirred up a dull memory, one that brought sorrow to his chest. It was an incident he’d seen talked about online more than heard about in person, despite apparently living so close that he could reach a sign pointing to where it all had happened. George Washington Bridge… A few years ago, a gay boy had jumped to his death from there, hadn’t he?
He looked up at the sky again. Was he meant to reach this fork in the road now? To recall that suicide? So soon after being deemed ‘trash’ by a stranger? Was this sign the sign? 
The bridge’s name was the first spark of familiarity felt in hours and the teenager fumbled with his Bible, seeking something else. It fell open in his hands and his eyes found Luke 23:46 of their own accord:
Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.
“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit…” he breathed. He blinked back up at the arrow pointing left. Since his parents had cast him out, the boy had felt unwelcome on every street he walked; an outsider, an intruder, the same as even his own body made him feel. Perhaps the world was too cruel here, too quick to judge. Perhaps it was fantastical to think he’d ever make peace even within himself. Perhaps this was where acceptance could be found by those like him...in surrendering his spirit’s passage to the Kingdom of God.
Slowly, the sixteen-year-old tucked his Bible back beneath his arm and took the fork for the bridge.

The avenue he ended up following off the fork ran parallel to the Hudson, and the boy looked out over the vast, black expanse of water as he walked, verses and psalms churning through his head. One kept repeating, interrupting others to replay itself like a record. Psalm 139:23-24… Had God seen ‘the offensive ways’ within him? Was that why he was now being led ‘in the way everlasting’? To death? He bowed his head, trying to banish both the view and the thought of the river, which now was surely deathly frigid. He had to trust, not to anticipate.
Into your hands...

The bridge rose, aglow beneath the winter moon, like a single strand of silver cord managing to untangle itself from the knot of roads and avenues it stretched away from. His hands and feet beginning to numb with cold, the boy stumbled his way to its impressive incline, rising out towards the glimmer of the distant bank...which he trudged towards, his eyes fixed on it, though it seemed worlds away and his real destination was only half the distance and 200 feet below. Though the thought froze his blood like the air froze his breath, he clutched tight to his faith and determinedly passed the lifeline phones; they had nothing to offer him. His legs were aching and trembling beneath him before he managed to reach the halfway point, but the water below looked far enough, cold enough. He didn’t know when the tears chilling his cheeks had started flowing, but they were there now and he didn’t wipe them away.
I must believe and not doubt, he thought firmly to himself. He shakily placed his Bible on the ground next to the bridge railing and guilt rose in his chest, but he figured it was better there, dirty but dry, than condemned to the water. He considered saving the small silver cross around his neck from the clutches of the river too, but he couldn’t bear the idea of taking it off and worried that doing so would look like he had cast his faith off before death. Instead, he held the cool metal tightly in his hand as he used the other to haul himself up onto the railing, where he sat in the wind and prayed. He supposed it must be very late for there to be so little traffic on the massive bridge—but even the cars that were out apparently took no note of him; he bowed his head on his unstable pew and their headlights passed over him without pausing. Silently he moved his lips with one last plea, to find acceptance in the choice he made or to be given another sign if this was not the way intended.
I commit...

He had just begun to bend his knees to push away from the railing towards the drop into the abyss below when his world suddenly went bright and blinding: An approaching car swerved to the curb and braked, hard, coming to a screeching halt with the headlights washing him white. He had no time to speak, stop crying, or even think before the driver was already vaulting the car’s hood, reaching out, wrenching him back over the railing—to safety.

They spun back and hit the ground together, the stranger clutching him against his chest.
“Whoa, whoa, okay,” the rescuer said, his low voice a deep rumble that the boy could feel against his spine, “You’re alright; let’s not do anything like that. Relax.”
The stranger’s grip loosened, and the teenager let himself be turned around. He found himself sitting there on the winter-cold concrete, stunned and staring up into the heavily-pierced face of a dark-skinned man whose wide eyes glinted with concern from behind a pair of round glasses askew on his crooked nose. He kept his hands—firm, but comforting—on the sixteen-year-old’s shaking shoulders.
“How old are you?” he asked, clearly taken aback—but then hurried to a less shocked, more soothing: “What’s your name?”

Too much had happened with too little time to adjust; Aetos could still feel the cold of the bridge railing in his now-empty palm. Barely able to find his voice in his still-heaving chest, he struggled to force an answer out between shallow, panicked breaths.
“I—I...Aetos. I’m sixteen—My name’s—Aetos,” he gasped, tripping over his words.
“‘Aetos’?” his rescuer repeated, the name clearly feeling foreign in his mouth.
“Yeah,” Aetos said, his voice shaking with the decision he’d made to introduce himself as he’d done, speaking his chosen name aloud as his for the first time; “It’s Biblical Greek. It means ‘eagle.’”
“Aetos. Eagle. Okay,” the stranger said softly, then; “My name is Sethfire. Seth. Okay? Take a couple slow, deep breaths for me.”

Sethfire’s voice was low and calming, and Aetos obediently focused on his breathing as he tried to control it; slow it down and make his heart stop racing.
“There—” Sethfire started to murmur, but suddenly looked up; a strong-looking young woman with his same dark complexion had all but thrown herself out of the sedan’s passenger seat to join them and was striding swiftly over, nearly tripping on her untied bootlaces.
“Is she okay?! Are you okay?” she asked them each, her eyes wide and frantic. She dropped into a half crouch beside them, but neither Sethfire nor Aetos had a chance to reply before one of two men emerging from the backseat cut in, dry and sarcastic;
“Yeah, Athena, I expect she’s doing great—I usually try and chuck myself off bridges when I’m doing well, personally,” he drawled, flicking his ponytail over his shoulder.
“You fucking would, Kato, don’t be an ass!” the woman—‘Athena’—snapped, shooting a glare at her companion before turning back to Aetos and allowing her expression to grow gentler.
“Don’t mind these assholes,” she said to Aetos kindly, gesturing to the men walking up behind her, “The loudmouth is K-O—er, Kato. Other one’s ‘Key.”
“Anarchy,” the second man said with half an eye-roll, shoving his hands in his pockets, “‘‘Key’ for short. Nice to, uh, meet you.” He offered a quirked eyebrow—one split by an obvious scar carving up the left side of his face—and what might have been an awkwardly sympathetic grimace before Athena waved him off.
“Yeah, yeah, make sure she knows your edgelordian name in full,” she quipped with affectionate snark, before refocusing on Aetos and letting her voice soften again: “Anyway, though—I’m Athena. What’s your name?”
Aetos’s head was spinning from overwhelm, and it took him a blinking second to process her prompt and stammer a reply.
“I—uh. Aetos? My name is Aetos.”
“‘Aetos’?” Athena repeated, that same inflection of uncertainty that Aetos was so familiar with.
“It’s Biblical Greek,” Sethfire said in Aetos’s stead, “It means ‘eagle.’”
Athena raised her eyebrows. 
“Do you just fucking know that or did she tell you?”
“No, she told me,” Sethfire replied, “If anyone were to know off the top of their head, it would likely be Kato, not me.”
“If I knew anything less about Greece, I’d be calling Athena ‘Minerva,’ Seth,” drawled the man who’d been introduced as Kato, “I do Rome; Latin. And even that I’m shit at, so don’t oversell me. Aquila over there’s lookin’ kinda green, though. Ya good, kid?” He directed the last question to Aetos, who wordlessly shook his head, unable to form a response.

Every part of the interaction felt surreal and life seemed to be moving far too fast; Aetos was struggling to keep up and must have looked the part, because Sethfire held up his hand in a quieting gesture before anyone could speak again.
“I’m sorry, Aetos. I know this is a lot. Keep breathing with me; let us just take a minute. Everything else can wait,” Sethfire said soothingly, and Aetos gave a grateful nod. For a little while they stayed in a welcome quiet calm where Aetos managed to slow his breathing and start to settle his mind, focusing on his fogged breath and Sethfire’s occasional murmurs of praise. Coming down from his panicked confusion, Aetos began to truly take in the situation he’d found himself in: He’d been praying for a sign...and he’d been Saved. 
His saviours were unexpectedly fascinating, though; a group that seemed as patchwork as the jeans they wore. Athena’s heavily studded, cropped red leather jacket and the distressed top beneath it contrasted sharply with Sethfire’s scholarly wire-rimmed glasses, collared shirt, and peacoat—though his long dreadlocks were dyed green at the tips. Anarchy had a short undercut with the top bleached pale and seemed immune to the cold; his hoodie sleeves were rolled up to reveal muscular, tattooed forearms. He and Kato had lit a cigarette to share and began wordlessly tossing the lighter between them, the spikes studding the shoulders of Kato’s leather jacket glinting like teeth beneath the streetlight each time he moved. Everyone had facial piercings.

“...Aetos?” Sethfire prompted softly. Aetos shook himself from his distracted observation and refocused, noticing his heartbeat had slowed to a steady rhythm and his breathing had become far more even.
“Yeah? I’m...I’m okay now. I think,” he said. His voice still wavered, and Sethfire hesitated, apprehensive concern clear in the lines on his forehead and the purse of his lips.
“...Why were you attempting to...end your life, Aetos?” he asked, finally; “What drove you out here tonight?”
Aetos swallowed hard and drew his shoulders in, shrinking into the sense of shame that swept over him.
“I...I’m trans,” he all but whispered. “...I’m not actually a girl.”
“Oh shit, sorry, didn’t mean to be misgendering you,” Athena blinked at him, raising her eyebrows. “And—wait. Did you give us the right name?” She seemed able to sense the anxiety that question raised in Aetos’s chest and quickly clarified: “I mean your real one. The one you use, not your birth name.”
“I...Yeah. Yeah. Aetos is my real name,” Aetos replied, maybe still more softly than he wanted to, but with strength welling beneath the softness as he reiterated his truth. He felt further from home than ever; and not just with the distance that came from standing on a state-line.
“Good, then, we wanna be calling you by the right name,” Athena said, yet more warmth to her tone. “Believe it or not, that’s not really a new concept with us. And I mean...I’m queer too, but I’m not going for a swim just for being gay,” she added, tilting her head toward the steep drop to the water. “...So what else is up?”
“...Um. Well. My parents found out.” A lump rose in Aetos’s throat but couldn’t silence him, so badly he needed to pour out the pain of the past few hours. Despite them all being strangers, they were heaven-sent and calling him by his name and there was an air of comfort that radiated off of Sethfire and Athena, coaxing Aetos’s story out into the open air. Kato and Anarchy had stopped their lighter-tossing in order to come closer and listen, and Aetos was certain he wasn’t imagining the sympathy in their shadowed expressions either. The tears finally returned, talking about how coldly his parents had cast him out, and Athena pulled him into a warm, soothing embrace that he leaned gratefully into until he could stop hiccuping.
“...So I don’t...I don’t know what to do, now, really,” he said when he finished his story; “I don’t have anywhere to go.” He swallowed hard and struggled to keep eye contact, feeling directionless.
Kato, surprisingly, was the first to respond.

“Come on,” he snorted, rolling his eyes and gesturing, “We know how the fuck this works. Step one: Find misfit kid. Step two: Shove him into Seth’s apartment until he plays bass! Let’s just chuck him in the back seat like a stray—”
“Shh!” Athena hissed, spinning around and swatting her friend in the shin. Sethfire himself gave Kato a silencing, half-exasperated head-shake before turning back to Aetos, an apologetic tilt to his brow. From their reactions, Aetos realized that to them he must still look very young and very scared—maybe more scared than he actually was, now.
“If you do not have anywhere to go home to now, Aetos, then yes—it is my instinct to offer you a place to stay,” Sethfire said, almost carefully, “But I am aware that we are a group of strangers to you. If you would rather—”
“No, no, it’s okay,” Aetos interrupted earnestly; “I know I can trust you. God sent you.” His chest felt warm with his certainty, but he'd barely finished his sentence before Kato scoffed so heavily that it sounded painful.
“God sent me? Now that’s fuckin’ wild.” Kato’s voice was hard-edged and mocking; his teeth were bared by his smirk. He stepped forward to lean closer as he spoke, and a pendant around his neck swung into sudden visibility; a glossy, black inverted cross dangling loosely from the chain around his throat. With his face illuminated by the streetlight overhead, Aetos recoiled at a second inverted cross; tattooed just to the outer corner of Kato’s left eye. 

“Don’t be a shithead!” Athena snapped, interrupting Aetos’s alarm by half-standing and throwing an elbow into her friend’s thigh as he swiftly straightened up and sidestepped taking a direct blow to the groin. 
“Whoa, Athena! Nut-shots aren’t very Christlike behavior,” he said as he ducked out of reach, “C’mon, What Would Jesus Do?” Despite the sarcasm, however, he laughed instead of continuing to loom, and retreated toward the bridge railing; softly punching Anarchy in the shoulder on the way and shooting a rather gleeful grin towards Sethfire, who had pinched his fingertips to his temples as though nursing a headache. Athena offered Aetos a hand. 
“Here,” she said kindly. “Ignore K-O. His bark is worse than his bite. You can trust us, Aetos.”
“Thank you,” he said, taking her hand and letting her help him to his feet; “I do trust you, I mean it: I was praying for a sign, and you drove up.” Aetos ignored Kato’s snort in the background and turned to Sethfire, who’d gotten to his feet and was suddenly so far overhead that Aetos had to look almost straight up to speak to him.
“Do you really mean that I could stay with you, though?” he asked, “You’re really offering me that?” Sethfire blinked as though the question were a surprise and offered a soft smile, the warmth of which eased its way into his low voice.
“Of course. My flat’s second bedroom is empty anyway, I may as well put it to use,” he said, to which Athena rolled her eyes, her own smile much amused.
“That’s Seth for ‘I want to help and I’d love the company, don’t even worry about it,’” she quipped, then gestured towards Anarchy and Kato; “For real, he took these two in and dealt with them; you’re so fine. Fortunately for you, I’m stuck with ‘em now and you won’t have to share space with some loudmouth chucklefucks.”
“Tch, speak for yourself, ‘Thena,” Anarchy replied, casting her a smirk and Aetos an amused, nonchalant shrug. Aetos’s attention was focused more on Kato, though; he didn’t rise to respond to Athena’s bait aside from an eye-roll, and instead stayed—silent but still smirking—over by the bridge railing, as if now content to watch from the sidelines. Aetos couldn’t stop staring at the inverted cross tattoo, by which he felt thrown off and somewhat shaken. He was unwavered in his belief that he’d been Saved; the timing was too perfect—but he was confused by Kato. Why would God send him? Someone so blatantly irreverent, someone so far astray himself?

As if alerted to the stare, Kato’s gaze shifted in a flash and he locked eyes with Aetos, his smirk curling into an insolent sneer.
“Yeah,” he said, pointedly tapping his face tattoo; “You just fell in with a crowd of people your parents would like the absolute least. Nice to meet you, one antitheist faggot at your service. By the way—I think you dropped your bible, kid.” Kato waved the Bible he’d retrieved from the ground, then started towards the car. He returned the book to Aetos more by half-shoving it into his chest as he walked by than by handing it to him, which Athena clearly noticed: Hissing some noise of disapproval, she went to smack her friend in the side, but Kato dodged her swipe with a half laugh and spun around, cupping his hands in front of him.
“Seth, toss me the keys. I'll drive,” he said. It was spoken like an offer: His tone seemed less arrogant; his smirk was friendlier. Sethfire still visibly hesitated, looking apprehensive.
“C’mon,” Kato urged, laughter in his voice again, “Are you gonna force Bible Boy to wedge himself between me and Anarchy? Chuck me the keys; you and ‘Thena and him can have a sweet little backseat therapy sesh while us assholes stay out of your way.”
Aetos almost startled with how easily the words had left Kato’s mouth; drawled and quasi-caustic in tone like all else, they still made Aetos lift his head, shock and a smile jockeying for control of his facial expression. Bible...boy? 
Sethfire seemed to be considering Kato’s argument.
“...Do you at least have your real license?” he eventually asked, looking tired. Kato, clearly irritated, rolled his eyes.
“Fucks’ sake, yes.”

Ignoring the disrespect, Sethfire handed Kato the keys to the Camry, casting Aetos a nearly-apologetic c'est la vie shrug before guiding him around the car.
Clearly pleased with his acquisition of the car keys, Kato rolled his shoulders and held his head higher as he opened the driver’s side door, but the air of superiority dropped by a degree when he caught Aetos’s eye again, and his expression seemed to soften.
“...You’re not a fuckin’ sinner, alright? You’re not ‘wrong’ or ‘disgusting.’ Fuck your parents. Don’t throw yourself off a damn bridge for something you’re not guilty of,” he said, then climbed into the driver’s seat and shut the door behind him without waiting for a reply. Feeling somewhat dumbstruck, Aetos wordlessly let Sethfire usher him into the back seat; turning the interaction over in his head, wondering if he’d imagined that empathic look in Kato’s eyes, and realizing he didn’t feel ill at ease even in the smallest seat of an unfamiliar vehicle, sandwiched between two people he’d only just barely met. The car rumbled to life and picked back up, heading for the welcoming band of lights along the New York side of the Hudson.
“Are you alright, Aetos?” Sethfire asked quietly, perhaps mistaking the quiet for fearfulness.
“No, yeah…” Aetos said, realizing his voice was steady and his answer honest; “I’m okay.”

(...My spirit…?)