Soundtrack: 'The war inside' - Switchfoot

{Jon}

His dad's voice was muffled, the words incomprehensible. The door shut again. Jon's cuts prickled and ached under the padded bandage, and his stomach touched the back of his throat like he might throw up.

Did you see your dad's face when he saw those? The voice whispered.

Jon clenched the pillow tighter over his eyes. Of course he had. Pete hadn't been able to hide the horror he'd felt while looking at him. His dad's bearded face had flinched every time his fingers brushed Jon's skin. Because Jon was disgusting. Everyone agreed.

Jon couldn't have said anymore why he was fighting to live like this. Why he shouldn't just accept that the best thing for everyone was for Jon White to burn into a pile of ash? He turned to face the person he'd never really been able to convince himself didn't exist.

Leaning against Jon's desk, his arms and ankles crossed, immaculate from the shine of his shoes to the perfectly arranged hairs on his head, was the source of the voice Jon had been trying to ignore. The man smiled thinly. "Are you finally ready to listen?"

Jon hugged his arms around his stomach, shivering. "You said you wanted me to die," he whispered.

The man clicked his tongue. "Isn't it obvious? You haven't exactly turned out the way I had in mind."

Jon's eyes were hot, and his heart felt like it would hammer through his chest. "I thought you loved me."

"You?" The man shook his head regretfully.

The hammering filled his head and rattled the walls of the room. "My whole life, my parents said you loved me. God loved me."

The man sighed. "Well they don't know what I know, do they? Do you really believe God has no standards?"

The door to his room was shaking and Jon got up, confused, to answer it, wondering why Pete was up so late. He pulled the door open, and someone filled the frame, muscles bunching in his shoulders as if he might tear the door right out of the wall. This man lifted his face to Jon, the corner of his scarred mouth tucking into his beard.

"That's not me," he said plainly.

Jon looked from this man's mane of dark hair, his worn clothes and bare brown feet, to the gleaming person leaning against his desk. Side by side, it was obvious who the real Jesus was, and the clean man looked nothing like him.

"Who are you?" Jon asked the figure by his desk.

It seemed to stretch, eyes flashing green. "A little of you, a little of something else."

"Your name." Jesus spoke from the door.

The figure's lips drew back from its teeth. "Self-hatred. Self-harm. And Death. He invited us in," it snarled, pointing an accusing finger at Jon. "We're allowed to be here. He's one of ours—look, we marked him."

The words thudded into Jon's body and he hunched, wrapping his cut-up arms around himself.

"Ha," Jesus said softly. "He's mine first. I always get dibs." Jon felt the heat of his gaze on his bent head. "Do you want them to stay?"

Jon lifted his eyes to the figure, and under his gaze, the edges of its face softened. It was his brother—a version of what his brother might have been. Judah lifted his eyebrows, smiling cockily. "How are you going to get better, little brother, if you won't listen to what's wrong with you? You need my help."

Jon closed his fists at his sides, facing down the thing. "You're not Judah. My brother is dead."

The figure shrugged, and it was like Judah had never been there. It was Jon's own face now, with his clean clothes and clear skin from before. In a way, seeing this boy hurt more than seeing his brother's face. Jon wanted to zip that unmarked skin back on so badly—to be innocent and free of shame again. He looked away and found Jesus' eyes on him, his expression open and compassionate, his arms still spread in the doorway.

"I'll never be good enough for you." Jon's ears burned dully as he spoke to the figure. "I'm sorry. I'm done—trying."

But the thing wasn't done with him. "I would have thought when you scraped the disgusting bottom of your life, Jon White, that you would see—"

"Be quiet," Jesus said, and the figure's mouth snapped shut. "Get out."

The thing twisted, and black cracked up its middle and ate its white cleanliness. Alarmed, Jon backed up until his shoulders were braced against the closet doors. The thing squiggled and shriveled on the floor of his room, until it popped out of existence. Abruptly, the room fell silent, like there had been a buzz of static under everything, and the plug had been yanked from the wall. Jon took a deep, shaky breath, rubbing the stink of sulphur out of his nose.

"Invite me in," Jesus said, his eyes warm on Jon.

Jon clenched his fist against his stomach, holding the other hand out to keep Jesus where he was. He was shaking, recalling all the poisonous things he'd heard in his head over the past months, and trying to sort through what had been real and what hadn't. The last time he'd seen the voice, it had appeared as the clean boy in his room. Jon had been sick with withdrawal, sick with how much he'd hated himself.

"Was it you saying my dad would cross "White" off my birth certificate?" That had been the first time he'd cut himself—not the first time he'd heard that poisonous suggestion.

"No," Jesus said quietly.

Jon lifted his eyes to glare at him. "Was it you saying I wasn't God's creature if I liked guys?" The voice had whispered this into his mind so many times since that youth talk, each time making his heart burn like it had been dipped in acid.

Jesus' mouth was a firm line in his beard. "No."

"Was it you on the bus saying I had to die?" Jon's whole body shook with tension and fury.

"Yes." Jesus put his cheek against his scarred hand resting on the doorframe, holding Jon's eyes. His mouth was soft, and the fingers of his free hand touched the front of his shirt, like he knew Jon's cuts were aching fiercely.

Jon blinked, his face stinging. "Why did you say that? When you knew—you were the only person who knew—how much I hated..." He shoved his hands against the front of his body, digging his shoulders against the closet to stay up. "How much I hated me. I worked so hard to change for you."

Jesus held his gaze steadily. "That's what had to die, Jon."

The words took the punch out of Jon's anger, and he held his eyes on Jesus' face. As he gazed, he felt as if Jesus thumbed through his memories so Jon could see the way an ugly mix of hatred and pride had become the soundtrack of his life.

Jesus quietly named each moment as he brought them to Jon's mind: "You made a vow to make yourself right with me that night after youth group. Jon, I never asked you for that vow. You worked your fingers to the bone to be good, and you were so proud of your goodness. You and I both know that underneath, you hated the parts of yourself you kept secret. That hate needed a place to go. It bled out. When Cary confessed to your parents—you were glad to put that hate on him. As if by rejecting his uncleanness, you could make yourself clean. As if by hating, you could please me."

Jon slumped against the closet—it felt like being naked, with all his ugliness exposed. "Yes," he said in a low voice. "That's me." There was no point in hiding any longer: Jesus saw everything. Jon bowed his head. "What do you want to do with me, then?" He spread his hands flat on the doors, wondering if Jesus could rain fire on him here without burning the rest of his family. Maybe he could just turn Jon to ash at his touch.

"Invite me in," Jesus said, soft and warm.

Jon made a dry noise. "If you need an invitation; come in already."

Jesus stepped over the line of the doorway, glancing around with his eyebrows lifted like he was thinking about renovating. He went to Jon's desk, leaning in his familiar place and stretching his legs in front of him, wiggling his brown toes in the carpet. "We haven't talked in a while."

Jon looked at him from under his fringe of hair. "I assumed you didn't want to hear from me."

Jesus met his eyes, and Jon added the other part that was true. "And I didn't want to hear from you—more than the shit I'd already heard." He took a slow breath, reorganizing his memories again. "That I thought I heard from you. Why didn't you say something sooner?"

"You shut me out," Jesus said simply.

Jon dug the heel of his hand into the socket of his eye, exhaling. That was true—it all was. "I'm sorry. So fucking sorry for all of it—God. Can you just—do the thing already? That you came to do?" A memory floated up, of sitting on the steps with Cary, washed in moonlight as he quit pretending and came clean for the first time. He had been afraid then too. "I'm not okay. I'm done. And I would rather die—than hurt anymore like this. And you'll just have to...explain that to my parents somehow. I can't do this for them anymore."

It felt a little like electricity—there was a hum in the air, pricking his skin. "Who do you say I am, Jon?" Jesus asked, and the words struck a harmonizing note with the hum.

Oh god, he knew this in the centre of his being. Jon turned his hands palm out at his sides. "Lord." His trembling steadied. He'd treasured that knowledge as long as he could remember: that Jesus was Lord meant he was taking care of Jon along with the entire universe. Whether God was good or not, Jon had never really doubted he was in charge.

"Who do you say you are?"

His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth while all the names the voice had called him, and that he had called himself, jabbed him like tiny stinging darts. Not good enough to even have this conversation with Jesus—that's what it came down to. He made the creaky hinge of his mouth form the most true thing out of all that garbage: "Who you say I am."

Jesus smiled. "Good answer, child." As he stepped toward Jon, his voice hummed in Jon's ears, in his chest and the soles of his feet like a bass note. "You're one of mine, Jon."

Jon's breath caught raggedly. Jesus was right in front of him, his hands lifted like he was showing Jon to himself. His scars were pink and pitted in the lighter skin of his wrists. Jesus said, "I made you. I love you. I still see my marks all over you."

Tears dripped off the corner of Jon's jaw and down his neck. The palms of his own hands were hot, pressed against his stomach, as the sludge of his regret and fuck-ups and self-hatred welled up and flowed away while Jesus' love poured in like fresh, clean water.

Jesus leaned in and brushed a calloused thumb over the tears on Jon's cheeks. His fingers came to rest on the corner of Jon's jaw, where Jon's heartbeat leapt and sang. Jesus bent his head and softly touched his lips to Jon's mouth. His breath tasted of spices. Jon took a sharp breath, Jesus' own breath in his mouth, the smell of his skin filling his senses.

"Taste and see." The words brushed Jon's lips, and the bass note underneath them thrummed in his chest. "Taste and see if I am good, Jonathan White."

Jon woke up with a soft intake of breath, his eyes opening on his dim, lamp-lit room. His hands were so hot against his stomach that his shirt was damp with his own sweat. Tears were pooling in his ears after flowing down his face, and he pressed his lips together, shaking, still tasting Jesus' breath in his mouth. His throat made a soft sound, and he curled and closed his eyes to hold onto that memory. He wanted to taste that kiss forever. He fell back asleep with Jesus on his mind.