He stopped showing up.

He just stopped showing up altogether.

I started to get worried the time he missed a confession time, that wasn't really confession time anymore since I'd stopped doing them. 

I sat patiently in the confessional, fiddling with my phone in a very un-priestly fashion.

I know his name, I thought. I can search him.

I had avoided it, wanting to keep the aura of mystery around the man, pathetically enough. But now, I was getting worried. But searching him proved more difficult than I had expected. I didn't have a last name, but I thought it couldn't matter, seeing it was quite an unusual name. But nothing. No social media, at least none with his true name. No address or phone number for anyone named Madara. 

I was suddenly desperate to see his face.

When I was done with my fruitless search, I realised it was half an hour past confession time. Still, no Madara. I sighed, tried to calm myself down. He was an addict. Maybe, he had just injected, and had thus not shown up. Or maybe, and perhaps even better, he tried to stay off the drug, and was now abstinent. Could a heroin abstinence kill you? I googled that as well, but had to stop myself, suddenly frightened.

What if something has happened?

I stood up to run out and look for him, but stopped myself. Where should I even begin? Our city had five million inhabitants; it was beyond looking for a needle in a haystack. Instead I sat down, hid my face in my hands.

It's okay. It's going to be okay.

I sat in the confessional waiting for him until midnight, not even locking the doors. 

If I had thought the weeks after the first time he had come to sit in my confessional had been hard...

If I had thought the uncertainty about whether or not I would ever meet him again after that first time had been rough...

If I had thought I was suffering then, I didn't know what suffering truly was.

He didn't come. Several weeks passed, and he didn't come. And, as opposed to last time, I didn't calm down. I was in a frenzy, trembling from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed. The tourists visiting the cathedral during daytime bothered me in a way they had never bothered me before. I couldn't focus during my worship services, and recited them from a paper, not painting out beautiful scenarios from the Bible I knew by heart as I usually did but rather behaving like a Catholic robot. When people came to me afterwards to ask questions, I had to add "you dumb fuck" at the end of my answers in my head not to lash out; I was so stressed.

I got texts from Tobirama and Izuna, but I didn't even look at them. Several times, however, I picked up my phone to call them because I knew I should. It scared me that they could be in the middle of a divorce without me knowing, without me being there to support them, but in the end I couldn't call them. I just couldn't. It seemed to be a task as impossible as walking to the moon, and then bite of your own fingers while standing on the moon's surface.

Finally, Izuna took things in his own hands.

I was walking around my cathedral, trying to interact with the tourists to distract myself but regretting it from the moment I stepped out of the basement where my room lay onto the cream cathedral floors, when I turned around and saw him.

I thought he was an angel, then. He stood right in the middle of a kaleidoscopic pattern cast on the floor by a window, and the rays from the sun were visible in the air and hit him directly in the face.

I gaped, but as he stepped forwards I saw it was Izuna, which truly was even better than an angel.

He reached his hand out, and I took it, and he pulled me with him towards the bedroom.

I didn't know how it happened. I didn't even know if that was what he wanted. He probably just wanted to talk to me somewhere in private. But it did happen; I backed him up into a wall, and kissed him with force.

This time was entirely different from last time. This time, there was no Tobirama to give his consent. This time was wrong.

Izuna didn't seem to have any more control over himself than I had. He moaned in surprise, and grabbed my priest robe. My hand went to his hair, pulled his hair band out. My other hand went to his waist and caressed it, then further down to the insides of his thighs. He completely melted beneath my touch.

I took him, then. For the first time in years, I fucked someone. It was so fast, so desperate that neither of us understood how it happened but suddenly we were there, in my bed, him on all four in front of me, me behind him with my hands on his waist, both of us moaning hotly as I thrusted until I came with a grunt, and Izuna screamed as he made my bedsheets sticky.

I leaned forwards and bit his shoulder softly, enjoying the sound of his panting.

In that moment, I broke free from God. I well and truly broke free from God in a way I knew meant that I would no longer worry about what kind of future I traded him for.

Then, like a total fucking star, I broke down crying.

But Izuna didn't seem offended by this at all. He held me softly, whispering words of comfort that I understood but didn't hear, allowing me to hide, allowing me to pretend this world didn't existed, or that I didn't exist in it.

It took me a long time to accept that I was alive.

Our farewells were soft, a little awkward as they should be, as we deserved them to be. I felt incredibly lonely as he left. I couldn't help checking my phone over and over.

But Izuna didn't text. Instead, my little brother, whom I loved so much, did.

Tobirama: please stay off Izuna. I don't like forbidding you to do things, and I like forbidding Izuna to do things even less. But please, if your heart has room to hold any love for me still, let Izuna be. For completely selfish reasons. I can't stand it. I can't stand it right now. I still love you xx

I wanted to die in pure shame.