Title: Love and Religion
Author: Meg-Of-The-Moon
Pairing: Nick/Greg
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: Inspired by John Keats of the Romantics
"I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion - I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more - I could be martyred for my religion - Love is my religion - I could die for that"
I've been playing around with the idea of something based on a piece by John Keats for the last couple of days after seeing a video about him and some other Romantics. Basically, the Romantics were a bunch of poets in the early nineteenth century who fell away from religion and into expressing things through poetry.
They included Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron VI and Leigh Hunt.
Summary: Nick has a revelation about God and Greg when his mother is always setting him up. Slight AU.

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For years Nick's parents had tried to get him to settle down with a pretty young woman, trying to see if by choosing different types of women, with different looks, seeing if their son would become interested. They tried to get him to date sweet girls that he had grown up with, raised as good Christians in large families and trained so that they'd make good wives.

They tried setting him up with rebellious women with dyed hair and nose rings. Women who wore eyeliner so that it looked like it had run down their cheeks from tears but obviously hadn't. Didn't matter if the rebel was religious, they'd break her into one some day. At least Mrs Sanders hoped so.

They tried intelligent women that they knew from work, sharp tongued lawyers with even sharper tongues and consecutive outfits. Tried women who were total "red-necks", Bottle blondes and cherry reds going by the names of Scarlet and Sherry, working in diners and snapping their gum.

The problem wasn't the women though, no, far from it. Because Nick could appreciate their efforts and did think that some of the women would make fine wives someday... but not for him. No, the problem was that he was gay. He was gay and in love, settled down with a house that had a white picket fence and a dog, two dogs actually. There was his own dog, Monty, a Chocolate Labrador, then there was Max, a Blue Merle Catahoula Leopard Dog. He hadn't been Nick's idea to buy, he'd been content with just Monty. No, It had been Greg's idea to buy Max. He'd seen him in a pet store window, only a puppy but the runt in the litter. Greg claimed it was love at first sight, just like when he'd seen Nick.

He'd been with Greg for five years now. Greg who was funny and gorgeous and smart and perfect and.. Greg was Nick's world. His mother told him that he could live a godly life if he found a woman to settle down with, that god would forgive him for his sins and five years of living as a sodomite, for having.. "relations" as she'd put it, with other men. Only, it hadn't been other men.. It had just been Greg, and it always would just be Greg. Anyways, wasn't God meant to forgive us our sins?

And he realised that now, that he couldn't live in fear of God, because if God was as great as people said and as true, then he would forgive Nick for all his sins. But Greg wasn't one of them. Greg was his world. Greg was love, love was his religion.

And he'd die for that.

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