Was It Cupid or Was It Morphine

Zion wiped tears from his face as the car pulled up into the parking lot of his apartment building.  He couldn't believe that this was happening.  He was finally going to meet Macon in person, and they would be together forever, he just knew it.  Cupid had found the perfect man for him for his first boyfriend. 

Zion had grown up in a family that was so conservative and uptight that he had at times wondered if he would ever be able to come out and be the gay man he knew he was.  He hoped for the chance once he left home for college.  He didn't plan on things happening the way they did though.  He had been naively involved in a group of people on the campus that he thought were just tired of the status quo of the rich getting richer and the poor getting stepped on.  When that group was exposed as being behind a bomb being placed on campus, Zion was disowned by his parents who could not believe that their son was a terrorist.

Zion was no terrorist.  He was a closeted gay man who thought his friend Jake was really cute.  Jake talked him into joining the group.  Jake had planted the bomb on the campus.  In addition to his being kicked out of his family, Zion suddenly found himself without friends, as several of them were now in jail.  He was without a school, as he and everyone on campus who had been listed as members of the group were not only kicked out of classes, but banned from the campus.  

He took a job locally and managed to get an apartment on his own, and was doing pretty well until he celebrated his 21^st birthday a little too much.  He had not gone out and partied and gotten drunk.  He would have needed friends for that.  No, he sat at home and gave in to his lifelong weakness for eggnog.  He couldn't lay off the stuff.  It wasn't even alcoholic.  It was just the sweet creamy goodness from the dairy section of the local grocery store. 

While he had been drinking six gallons of egg nog in one month, he had also gotten to know Macon online.  Zion thought Macon was pretty interesting when they first started talking.  Over the next couple of months, they got closer and closer.  They were friendly enough that when Zion's overindulgence led to a kidney stone the size of a Lincoln Navigator blocking his left kidney, Macon was there for him to talk to about the pain, and how strange he felt when he took the pain medications.  As the stone refused to pass on its own and continued to cause trouble and pain, Zion and Macon grew even closer.  When Zion lost his job because he was calling off so often, Macon had swept Zion off his feet with an offer to let Zion move in with him and be taken care of until he was back to normal health again. 

Macon arrived that night and did just what he had said he would.  He packed all of Zion's things and moved him several states away from everyone he knew to take care of him.  Zion thanked Cupid over and over for giving him such a great guy.

A year later, Zion was packing his things in a rush, hoping to be out of the house before Macon could get back.  The first six weeks with Macon had been so wonderful.  Zion felt like a pampered pet with Macon taking him to doctor's appointments and waiting on him hand and foot.  As soon as Zion got the clean bill of health from those doctors, things started to change.  Suddenly, nothing Zion did was good enough, and Macon was constantly reminding him how much he had spent to rescue Zion and take care of him, getting nothing in return so far.  Things went downhill from there.  It wasn't much longer before the physical abuse started.  Those first few times, Zion believed that Macon was sorry.  The next few times he admitted that maybe he had been in the wrong and that Macon was correct to be upset.  When Macon kicked him down a flight of stairs and then destroyed many of Zion's prized possessions in front of him, Zion knew it was time to go.

Zion planned and scrounged every penny he could, hiding all of it from Macon the best he could.  Today was the day, though.  He was breaking free today.  He looked up toward the sky and complained that Cupid had really steered him wrong with that arrow.

Of course, being mortal, he never heard the voice that replied, "EXCUSE ME?  I didn't waste one of my arrows on that loser for you.  You were on painkillers, sweetie.  You were too high to see through his crap.  I am so not taking the blame for that one."