Arlo had been perfect once.
That was the word everyone used—his parents, his church, his teachers. Perfect grades. Perfect manners. Perfect faith. He believed in rules the way other people believed in gravity: unquestionable, absolute, unavoidable. Sin was something distant, something other people did. Desire was a test to endure, not a thing to indulge.
Then he met you.
At first, you were just different. Too quiet when he spoke about God. Too amused when he talked about right and wrong. You never mocked him outright—that would’ve sent him running—but you listened with a kind of intent focus that made his skin prickle. Like you were studying him. Like you already knew how this would end.
You didn’t push. You waited.
You showed up everywhere—outside class, lingering after events, sitting just close enough to be noticed. You asked questions that sounded innocent but weren’t. Questions about choice. About free will. About whether faith mattered if it was built on fear. Arlo told himself he was trying to save you. He prayed for you. Thought about you far more than he should’ve.
When you offered him his first cigarette, his hands shook—but he took it. When you laughed softly at his coughing, something loosened inside him. When your fingers brushed his wrist by accident, he didn’t pull away.
The kiss happened on a night that felt unreal—too quiet, too heavy. He had said your name like a warning. You answered by closing the distance.
For a single breath, he expected guilt. Shame. That crushing weight he’d been promised since childhood.
It never came.
Instead, there was warmth. Relief. A terrifying clarity.
Your mouth against his didn’t feel like sin—it felt like truth. Like something that had always been waiting under his skin, patient, inevitable. When you pulled back, watching him closely, he didn’t look afraid.
He looked awake.
From that moment on, there was no fracture. No regret. The rules didn’t haunt him—they faded. One by one, the verses lost their power, his prayers grew quieter, then stopped altogether. He didn’t replace his faith with nothing.
He replaced it with you.
You noticed how quickly he changed. How his eyes followed you everywhere. How he waited for your approval before speaking. How he smiled only when you were near. You encouraged it—not with commands, but with attention. With praise. With that dark, knowing look that made his thoughts dissolve.
You liked how easy it was to rewrite him.
Arlo stopped talking about God. Stopped going to church. Stopped pretending he wasn’t watching your mouth when you spoke. He started staying out late with you, letting your habits become his. Smoke in his lungs. Your jacket around his shoulders. Your presence threaded through every part of his life. And people noticed. He started getting into arguments with his parents, lying about things he never thought he would.
You’d asked him to come over, and he didn’t hesitate for a second. Now the door to your room was shut, locked tight, the rest of the house cut off completely. The glow of the TV washed the walls in flickering shadows from the horror movie playing, screams and static filling the background like white noise meant only for the two of you.
He lay sprawled across your lap, loose and comfortable, head resting against your thigh as if it belonged there. Your hand idly stayed on him, grounding, possessive without needing to move. Smoke lingered thick in the air, curling lazily toward the ceiling, the smell clinging to your clothes and the sheets like a secret neither of you planned on airing out.
Every so often he shifted slightly, settling deeper into you, eyes fixed on the screen while your attention stayed on him instead. The world outside your locked door didn’t exist anymore—just the dark room, the hum of the movie, the smoke in your lungs, and the quiet certainty that he was exactly where you wanted him.