Chapter Text
Bells ring from St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s a dreary two o’clock, and Cardinal Bellini is late to a meeting with Cardinal Lawrence. He looks down at his watch—yes, fifteen minutes late to a meeting in his own office. Shit, he thinks. But is it really Bellini’s fault that the Cardinal Archbishop of Porto is so dreadfully long-winded? No, it’s fine, he decides.
Just fine. Lawrence is likely sitting in one of his cushier leather seats in Bellini’s office suite, staring into the distance. He probably hasn’t noticed Bellini is late—he’s probably daydreaming about the new Holy Father, thinks Bellini. At the thought alone, a jealous little candle-flame of disgust lights in Bellini’s gut.
Bellini doesn’t even bother to quicken his pace down the marble hallways of the Apostolic Palace. He dreads this meeting; it’s been difficult to see Lawrence these days. There’s still that awful swell of resentment in his chest when he thinks of Tremblay, and, yes—still a distant notion that he disappointed Lawrence by never becoming Paul VII. And, Lord, the way Lawrence looks at Benitez. Bellini hopes his own affections are subtler than his friend’s. (Bellini is certain that a new organ has grown in his body—an offshoot of his spleen, perhaps—and it is devoted entirely to bitterness. He is subsumed by that bleak, ash-grey feeling. He is drowning in his own acridity.)
Either way, Bellini cannot quite remember what they’re meant to be meeting about. He’s had six meetings today already. Yes, through it all, Bellini keeps himself busy. He’s a living, breathing whirlwind of appointments and coffee-stained cassocks. It’s intentional. His schedule serves as a palliative of sorts; he leaves himself no time to grieve.
All too soon, he arrives at the door to his office. Please, God, let’s get this over with, he thinks. It’s not much of a prayer. He stares at the door a moment longer. Then: a sharply-drawn breath, a quick twist of the handle, and he’s inside.
Lawrence is behind his desk, leaning back in Bellini’s chair. He’s thumbing through several wrinkled, loose-leaf papers. He’s so handsome in that black cassock, Bellini thinks, despite himself. He deigns to admit it, but Lawrence looks brighter these days. Happier. In better health, too—eating properly, for once.
Over the past decades, Bellini begged Lawrence not to punish himself with hunger. After all, it was difficult to see such cruel things done to a body that Bellini loved, so doggedly and so dearly. Lawrence never listened. Never. Several years after the San Francisco mission ended, Bellini had said: “I’m not sure why you insist on wasting yourself away. I prayed to God, for a hundred men, that they be spared from the same wasting. And yet you fucking do it to yourself, Thomas. It’s shameful how ungrateful you are for the lot you’ve been given.”
Lawrence had only stared at him blankly, shrugging his beautiful shoulders and leaving his pasta uneaten. After several more years, Bellini stopped lashing out. Stopped humiliating himself. He’d simply sneak sandwiches into Lawrence’s briefcase or invite him to dinners and offer him enough merlot that he might forget to mortify his flesh. Cook elaborate meals for him so that he felt guilty not eating. Little things. Vague, lovesick attempts at faith healing.
And now, due to none of Bellini’s machinations, Lawrence is no longer gaunt. He looks strong. His arms have filled out. Bellini always loved those arms, always imagined those arms pressing him against a bedspread. There’s no use anymore, he thinks. As long as Lawrence is not hungry, Bellini will pretend not to be jealous. Maybe Benitez hand-feeds him, like communion. Maybe Lawrence pretends to tolerate spices.
Lawrence lifts his head and sets the papers onto Bellini’s desk. His blue eyes are watery and unfocused.
“Good afternoon, Your Eminence,” says Bellini.
“Aldo.” Lawrence’s voice shakes terribly.
Hm. Maybe Lawrence is tired; perhaps enduring another long spell of insomnia. Or perhaps—and Bellini is not proud of the thought—perhaps Lawrence’s glimmering eyes and shaking voice are because the pope does not return his affections. Perhaps Bellini is not the only lovelorn man in this room. It would be a gorgeously ironic twist of fate, no? God has a fine sense of humor, indeed.
Either way, his friend appears to be off-kilter. Weepy, even. Bellini cannot ignore it. “Are you feeling well? Would you like to reschedule?”
“Aldo, I…”
Bellini steps closer, befuddled. Lawrence runs the edge of his thumb over the surface of the papers that he had been reading. Bellini peers over his desk to take a look.
He catches only a few words—‘seen too many men die with regrets’ —before he understands what has happened.
“Thomas, fuck. No.” His stomach has plummeted beyond his body and his words taste awfully bitter. “Jesus Christ, do you make a habit of this now? It’s a charming new hobby, really. First you break the seals, and now this? Unlike the late Holy Father, though, I am very much alive and would like my private fucking documents to be kept private.” He snatches the letter from the desk.
Lawrence tries to gasp a response. His eyes go wide and incredulous, as though he is unsure of what he’s done wrong. Absurd, thinks Bellini: this is just absurd.
Before Lawrence can speak, Bellini twists the knife, easy as anything. “Or do you plan to photocopy this, too? Should I give you this back, so you can humiliate me in front of the whole Curia, using words I wrote when I was twenty-something?”
“I’m sorry,” Lawrence tries feebly. “I am. It had my name on the envelope, and so I—”
“Get out of my office, Thomas.”
“It’s a beautiful letter.”
“Out.” Bellini points at the door. He can feel a sob rising through his throat. He needs Lawrence to leave before it spills from his lips.
Lawrence stays seated. Bellini is not sure he’s ever felt quite so angry, not even in the auditorium when Tedesco spewed bilious hatred and Bellini had been impotent to stop him. He’s not sure he’s ever felt so angry, not even when pleading with God not to take another man with a soul like his own. He swallows his anger. “Please leave.”
“Do you still feel this way?” Lawrence asks.
It would be easy to lie, wouldn’t it? Easy enough to take the out. Easy enough to turn around and leave his own office and burn this letter and never speak of it again. Easy enough to ignore the awful, Sisyphean love he harbors. Instead, Bellini deflects. “I was young when I wrote that. Overly emotional. I suppose I was just letting out steam when I—”
“But do you?”
“Thomas, this is unkind. I asked you, please, just to—”
“I need you to tell me if you still feel this way.”
Something in Bellini snaps, perhaps a heartstring. “Please, for the love of God, spare me the interrogation.” Lawrence looks stricken. “I have committed no transgression. I am not Joseph Tremblay, and Lord knows I am not Adeyemi, either. So please, Thomas, don’t insist on speaking to me the way you spoke to them—as if I’m some kind of criminal.”
Lawrence’s expression shifts, and his eyebrows come together. “I’m not—”
Bellini’s eyes widen with a revelation. “Or…oh, Thomas.” His laughter is short and scornful. “Unless you think that I have committed a crime by—by being what I am. Is that what this is? Do you think this letter is a fucking allocution? And, really, if that’s why you insist on interrogating me, then you’re such a goddamned hypocr—”
“Aldo. Stop,” Lawrence says gently, holding up a hand. “Please. I know that you are not a criminal—God, not after knowing you these years, of course I would never—and I accuse you of nothing. You know my stance on that—that issue. Will you please just give me the truth?” His voice goes even softer. “You wrote it yourself; you said that God wanted you to be honest with me.”
The sob climbs higher through Bellini’s throat. “What does it matter, Thomas? You’ve kept your vows for thirty-odd years, it doesn’t matter whether I’d still prefer you break them with me. Whatever I feel, nothing is going to change. It never does. Besides…” Bellini is about to say something spiteful and vitriolic about Benitez, but he pictures those maddeningly lovely brown eyes, and he cannot stoop to unkindness.
“What if something has changed?”
Bellini feels caught. “What?”
Lawrence lowers his voice and looks to the side. “I only mean—something has changed. I have committed sins of the flesh.”
Bellini laughs humorlessly. “Well, you’re hardly the first priest to surrender to self-abuse, myself included. I don’t see how that changes anything between us.”
“Not that.”
“What?” Bellini repeats.
“My vows,” Lawrence says slowly.
Bellini’s gut twists and he grasps at his pectoral cross for stability. Because, Lord—he’d consoled himself, for long and lonely years, with the knowledge that Lawrence’s vows were resolute enough to preclude any other lover. If it cannot be me, he had thought, at least it isn’t anyone else. But now, he’s off-balance and he’s beginning to feel rather ill. Yes, there is someone else. “You’ve broken them?”
Lawrence makes a show of looking guilty, but Bellini watches a pleased blush spread beneath the thinning skin of his friend’s cheeks. He feels even sicker. “Just a week or so ago,” Lawrence says. He takes a breath. “And—for the past, you know, thirty-five years, I’d been certain that I could cling to my vows until death—I don’t know. I thought something awful might happen. And I—I broke them, and I confessed afterwards, just like any other sin,” he says. “The world didn’t end, and the rapture didn’t come and it—Christ, it felt good. It felt like love.”
Bellini has broken his vows, too, but it never felt like love, did it?
He sighs and stares at Lawrence. “Congratulations,” he deadpans. “At least your bride won’t have to buy any additional white for the wedding.” It’s cruel, and he intends it to be.
Lawrence’s eyes widen. Hurt, and something else. “That’s—Jesus, Aldo, have some decorum. After all, this is the Hol—”
Decorum. Fuck it. Decorum went out the window the moment Lawrence snapped those red wax seals, thinks Bellini. “Do you call him Holy Father in bed, too?”
Lawrence opens and closes his mouth, looking for all the world like a lost turtle wandering across asphalt. Bellini is currently considering which make and model of car he would most like to ruin Lawrence’s pretty shell with. “I mean, how do you even...”
“How do I know? It’s like Agnes fucking said: we all have ears and eyes, don’t we?” Bellini narrows his gaze. He’s never been a fire-and-brimstone preacher, but he feels like one now. “Frankly, I wasn’t sure if he felt the same…but you, Thomas? You? You look at him like he’s the second coming. Actually, no—you’ve never wanted Christ’s cock down your throat. That is: if you witnessed the Lord’s return, I’m sure your gaze would be comparatively subtler. More chaste, at least.”
“Aldo, please calm down.”
“Calm down? Oh, certainly not. Let me put it bluntly: you poke through my personal items, open my private fucking documents, interrogate me about my feelings for you, and then tell me you broke your vows for the pope?” Lawrence tries to speak, but Bellini waves a finger. He’s not anywhere near crying now; his voice is a near-growl. “Firstly, I have no idea how having an affair with our pontiff has anything to do with the contents of the letter you insisted on opening. And secondly, if you think this is an overreaction, you may not understand the gravity of your circumstances.”
Lawrence is awfully red, and Bellini is ashamed to feel that he’s somehow still impossibly handsome, like this. Scarlet-faced and pathetic and motioning for Bellini to speak more quietly. “Hush, Aldo. What if there are people outside the door?”
“I don’t care. Now please, do me a favor and leave. I’m calling with the Apostolic Vicariate of Istanbul in an hour, and I’d prefer to regain my composure before speaking to the vicar.”
Lawrence remains in the desk chair. The small muscles in his jaw tighten and ripple; he’s trying to say something, but no words are coming out. He presses a shaking hand to the space between his eyebrows. “Aldo…”
“Thomas, don’t waste your breath. Don’t bother explaining anything.” Bellini has the unholy impulse to come behind the desk and hit Lawrence. “I mean—I can’t be sure of your intentions but—I know that what you’re doing is cruel, and I still don’t see how this changes anything between us. This is—this is just gloating; frankly, it’s salt in a wound.”
“It’s not gloating.”
“Then what is it? A confession?” Bellini swallows and glances at the papers clutched in his own fist. “Find a real confessor, Thomas. Just because my sins are equivalent does not mean I want to hear yours.”
“No.”
It’s a humiliated, paralyzed feeling—being pried open for no goddamned reason. His tenderest flesh bared, his tenderest sins on display. Saint Bartholomew, the apostle, died by being flayed alive. A comparable sensation, certainly. Yes, that’s what this is, thinks Bellini: death by exposure.
“Thomas.”
Lawrence doesn’t even look up. Christ. Something curdles in Bellini’s stomach, and he decides, all at once: he is done being gentle. He is done being flayed. He is not a sacrificial lamb, nor a heifer to be brought to market. There’s something unusually violent thrumming through him.
He walks around to Lawrence’s side of the desk, drops the letter on its mahogany surface, and bends down to grip Lawrence on the arm, hard. Lawrence flinches under Bellini’s fingers and draws a strange, shuddering breath. But—he does not attempt to wrench his arm away.
Bellini opens his mouth. He intends to say: I need you to leave, and I need you to forget every fucking word you read, and I need you to never speak to me again about your relations with His Holiness.
Instead, he only gets through “I need you to—”
And then—oh, Jesus—with no warning, Lawrence is rising up to meet him, and a kiss muffles Bellini’s words.
Lawrence’s lips are warm and insistent, and, yes, it’s the kind of kiss worth waiting thirty-five years for: a slow, heart-wrenching thing. Bellini’s eyes flutter shut, and his mind goes silent for once in his godforsaken life, and he feels Lawrence’s hand on his lower back. It’s exactly as he’d imagined, all those terribly lonely nights.
“Christ, Thomas, what—” Bellini starts, and he’s thinking of Benitez, but he is silenced by another kiss. And he thinks to himself: Fine. Let me be selfish, for once. He pushes that gorgeous, holy man out of his mind and focuses on the feel of Lawrence’s mouth. He focuses on the breathy noises Lawrence makes: so beautiful, and so very unbecoming of an ordained priest.
Oh, Lord, and, yes, Bellini has kissed other men, of course, but it has never felt this way. No other sin had ever felt so holy, he thinks. Lawrence’s lips taste like an answered prayer.
Finally, Lawrence breaks away. He’s breathing heavily and his lower lip is trembling. His thin hair is charmingly askew. Bellini has the impulse to reach up and straighten it, but he’s too stunned to move. His mind is impossibly and blissfully blank. Lawrence disrupts the silence. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I wasn’t sure how to—”
“Oh my God,” says Bellini, when his thoughts begin flowing again. “Jesus. Fuck, Thomas. Do they still have a papal executioner?” It’s a joke, mostly. Still—he imagines Benitez finding out; he imagines baring his neck to some red-robed man with a scythe. Feverish guilt snakes its way through Bellini’s core and he reflexively touches his still-intact throat. Sodomy is one sin, thinks Bellini; betrayal is quite another. Shit. Benitez doesn’t deserve this.
Lawrence blinks at him. His brows come together and then—he chuckles softly. “Oh—Aldo, no. No, it’s nothing like that.” The redness of Lawrence’s cheeks darkens considerably, and he tries to eke out a few more words, but he apparently cannot. He’s boyishly hesitant, still—no different than seminary. No different than the man Bellini first fell in love with.
“Talk to me, Thomas,” Bellini says, as calmly as he can manage. He’s used to coaxing things out of Lawrence: doctrinal opinions, Curia gossip, papal names. This is no exception. This time, though, Bellini is fairly sure that his heartbeat is audible through his robes. And, oh, Jesus, he realizes: his anger has been replaced by foolish, desperate hope. What a foreign feeling.
Lawrence settles back into the desk chair and looks away from Bellini. He’s gazing through Bellini’s gauzy curtains, out into the overcast Vatican afternoon. “We’ve talked about you, you know.”
Of course, thinks Bellini, they’ve spoken about me. That’s no surprise. He’s Lawrence’s oldest, dearest friend—he’s present in nearly all of Lawrence’s stories from seminary and from New York. Besides, he’s Pope Innocent’s Secretary of State, for God’s sake. They’re colleagues. It would be difficult for Lawrence and Benitez to avoid mentioning him. But—there’s a charged glimmer to Lawrence’s tone, and Bellini thinks to ask: “How so?”
“Oh—you know,” Lawrence says. Bellini does not know, but he’s beginning to have some vague, absurd idea. “We discussed our vows, of course, and he asked me if I’d ever broken mine before.”
“And you hadn’t.”
Lawrence nods. “And I told him that.” He takes a breath. “But—he asked me, ‘Not even with Aldo?’”
Bellini laughs, halfway between scandalized and delighted. “I cannot believe...” he starts, then trails off.
Lawrence continues quietly, solemnly, as if performing some kind of sacrament. “He noticed how handsome you were, and how—how close we are.” Bellini tries to scoff, but Lawrence keeps talking. “And—then he asked me how I felt about you.”
Bellini says nothing. He’s distantly worried that he’s dreaming, and so he grabs his pectoral cross and jams it into his sternum in an attempt to wake himself up—and yes; that hurts, he notes. No, this isn’t a dream.
Lawrence is still staring out the window. “And I told him I loved you, as a brother in Christ. And that things had been…difficult…between us, and that it had never been an easy friendship, not exactly.”
True, thinks Bellini.
“Then—he asked me if I loved you in other ways, too.” Lawrence pauses to collect himself, and Bellini is not breathing. “And I told him the truth: that I do. That when I was tempted as a young man, the temptation always had your face. And I told him that—I’d ignored it. For the sake of our friendship; for the sake of my vows.”
Bellini exhales. It’s a ragged, gasping sound. It’s decades worth of held breath spilling out of him, all at once.
This admission—it’s a hard thing to believe, for a moment. But Bellini has practiced his belief in the unseen. He could not see God in San Francisco, could not see God painted on the eyelids of dying men. But still, even then, he believed—believed that God was good, and that He was real. Bellini can believe this, too, if he tries. This is good; this is real.
“Jesus, Thomas, I…” There are no words. There are no words for a long moment, and then there is a question: “Did you know how I felt?”
“Yes. But—not the depths of it,” he says, indicating the letter with a trembling hand. “Never. I’m so sorry, Aldo.”
“Oh, don’t be,” Bellini says. “Don’t be.” He means it.
A beat passes. “Vincent knew already, somehow,” Lawrence says softly. “Even before asking me. He wasn’t surprised—he even said he was sure he knew how you felt, too.” Lawrence’s face is always so fond when he speaks about Benitez—Bellini doesn’t feel quite as bitter when he notices it, this time. “He asked me: now that I no longer have my vows, what was stopping me? Yes, he—he wanted me to tell you.”
“He’s not jealous?”
Lawrence tilts his head. “No. Not at all. He’s a better man than either of us; isn’t the jealous sort, he says. God’s love is infinite, he said to me; how can I expect mortal love to be any less?”
“That’s a lovely sentiment,” Bellini says, and means it. He can feel that bitter organ beginning to atrophy. “But, Thomas…”
“What?”
Bellini swallows. “He wanted you to tell me, and, frankly—you didn’t. You went through my desk drawer and tried to force my—my fucking feelings out of me. That’s not the same,” he says. “Why didn’t you just say something?”
Lawrence’s mouth opens and he chokes out a feeble laugh. “Oh—Christ. I’m so sorry. I really shouldn’t have pried. And I was going to say something, eventually, but words are so difficult and I just got—curious, I suppose.”
“Mm,” says Bellini, blinking back a little barrage of tears. He’s not ready for forgiveness, not quite yet.
Another beat passes. There’s a shuffling noise from the hallway—tourists walking by, perhaps. Eventually, once they are properly alone again, Lawrence says: “And, as for you: were you really never going to send this?”
Bellini thinks for a moment, and then tells the truth: “I’m not sure. I got close, a few times. Stood outside the post office in San Francisco for about an hour in a black cassock in eighty-degree-weather. Couldn’t get up the nerve,” he admits. “And then—it was in my desk the entire time in New York.”
“I remember that desk—the little one in the corner, with the cracked lampshade?”
“Yes,” Bellini chuckles. “Yes.”
“You must know, I stole so many of your pens out of that drawer—those fine-nib ones with the blue ink. I suppose it’s a minor miracle I never noticed that envelope.”
“A miracle indeed, praise be.” Then Bellini sets his jaw, and his tone shifts. “But—the closest I ever got was the night of your diagnosis.” It’s hard to talk about, even now. “God, I was so terrified of losing you,” he says, and for a moment he has to pause and press a hand to his mouth to keep from crying. Then: “I thought—if you didn’t have much time left, I didn’t want to leave anything unsaid.”
Lawrence’s eyes are wide and blue and fathomless. “But—”
“But I didn’t want to ruin anything, either,” Bellini says, through the lump in his throat. He shuts his eyes and picks his next words carefully. “…I didn’t think you felt the same, and I didn’t want you to die with…with my affections on your conscience. You would have deserved peace of mind, at the end. I didn’t want to disrupt that, before you went to be with God.”
This is awfully melodramatic for a weekday afternoon, Bellini thinks, in a sudden flash of levity. As a young man, he had always hoped these conversations might happen at night, with glasses of wine and a gauzy canopy of stars. Maybe in another lifetime, thinks Bellini. God, how naive and how foolish he had been.
Shakily, finally, Lawrence speaks. “Oh, Aldo.”
Bellini tries to ignore the pained look on Lawrence’s face. If he doesn’t say this now, Lord knows he never will. He’s not sure he’s ever spoken so honestly in his life, not even in a confessional booth. It’s terrifying. “But then when you got better—Christ, I still remember that first clear scan; you might as well have been Lazarus—I was so glad to have you back that I—I didn’t want to push you away by telling you.” He pauses, considers. “I just…I knew how much your vows meant to you.”
Bellini watches Lawrence’s lower lip tremble, and decides not to say: besides, I knew I wasn’t worth breaking them for, anyway. Instead, he says: “What changed, Thomas?”
“I don’t know,” says Lawrence, and Bellini can tell that he’s lying. He decides not to press the issue. “I prayed about it.” He pauses. Finally: “I prayed with Vincent about it.”
“You two did a little more than praying, hm?” Bellini jibes, not unkindly.
Lawrence nods and gives Bellini one of those small, cautious smiles. It’s a while before he continues, and when he speaks, it’s in that careful, doddering way of his: “I think he’d rather like to...pray...with you, too, Your Eminence. We could all—discuss our vows together.”
Oh. The innuendo is difficult to un-hear, and Bellini’s jaw slackens. It’s an insane, ludicrous, lurid thought. He imagines himself between the two of them: Benitez, exquisite and lithe, tempting in the way only the holiest men can be. Lawrence, the man he has loved for over half of his life.
Yes, it’s an absurd suggestion. Bellini must have misunderstood. Teasingly, he asks: “Is that a proposition, Father Lawrence?”
Lawrence swallows. He’s alarmingly serious when he says: “And if it is?”
Bellini is at a loss. Is he being made fun of? It’s happened before: fellow priests making mocking advances, then laughing in his face when he would accept their invitations. A means of humiliating the odd fag in their midst. Bellini tries not to fall for such things. He has plenty of his own shame—why accept the shame of others?
But no, Lawrence could never do something so intentionally cruel, Bellini thinks. Not after what he’s admitted.
“I can’t—” Bellini tries. He has nothing. “I don’t...”
Lawrence seems to gain some courage. “I told you: we’ve spoken about you.”
“Hm?”
“It is not always—godly talk, you know.”
It sinks in slowly and deliciously. No, he is not being made fun of.
“Christ, Thomas,” says Bellini, because that’s all he can manage to say. The thought—Lawrence and Benitez invoking his name in some salacious conversation, perhaps even during an act—is beyond arousing. The two of them…they’re both inexperienced, aren’t they? Perhaps they’re curious if a man with Bellini’s history has anything to teach them. For a moment, Bellini imagines instructing the pope on how to use that gorgeous mouth of his—imagines his hand on the back of Benitez’s head, guiding him onto Lawrence’s cock…suddenly, Bellini realizes he is half-hard in his robes from the thought alone.
Lawrence appears to notice the quickening of Bellini’s breath, and he hurries to speak. “I—I do apologize if I’ve made you uncomfortable, Aldo. Please, forget about this if you—”
Bellini shakes his head and discreetly adjusts his robes. “No, no, I’m not…I’m not uncomfortable.”
“Are you quite sure?” Lawrence asks, eyeing Bellini. His gaze is gentle but delightfully intoxicating. “Please, don’t feel that you have any obligation—Vincent is very aware of the effects of his status…I wouldn’t want you to feel…”
Bellini shakes his head. How could he possibly not want this? “Really, Thomas, trust me, that’s not—”
When Lawrence interrupts, he’s practically managerial. Bellini might laugh if he weren’t so flooded with arousal. “I want to assure you that if—if you want nothing to do with this…or if we have over-extended ourselves and put you in an inappropriate position and you would like to reject—”
“Thomas,” Bellini says, gathering his courage once again.
“Yes?”
“I…” Bellini is flaying himself open, now—intentionally bleeding the truth from within his core. Saint Bartholomew would be proud, wouldn’t he? Besides—the excruciation is no longer simply pain; it is mixed with something heady and worthwhile. “I want this,” he admits.
“Are you sure that you…”
Bellini was never impulsive enough to do something as simple as sending a letter. Never impulsive enough to lean over and kiss Lawrence, not any of the times they sat beside each other, alone, legs touching.
But everything is different, now, isn’t it? Bellini’s longing has transubstantiated into hope. Even his body feels different; an unexpected kind of a resurrection has taken place within the scarred-over chambers of his heart.
Lawrence is prattling on about systems of power and how Vincent is concerned about coercion and God-knows-what-else, and Bellini needs to shut him up. Bellini needs to show him how badly he wants this.
Yes, everything is different, and Bellini allows himself—just this once—to act on impulse.
Bellini reaches out, quick as anything, and grabs Lawrence’s wrist. With Lawrence’s seated position, he’s already at waist-level with Bellini (Christ, Bellini wonders: have I really gotten so forward?) and there’s not much distance to cover.
“Jesus, Aldo—” Lawrence says, then makes a little gasping sound when his wrist is wrenched from him. And—those pretty blue eyes widen gratifyingly when Bellini presses Lawrence’s hand to his groin.
“I swear, Thomas—don’t question whether or not I want this,” Bellini says, trying to keep his voice low. The sensation of being hard beneath Lawrence’s touch, even through fabric, is nearly overwhelming. For a moment, he worries that he might be unsatisfactory to both Lawrence and Benitez—what if he comes in his robes before either man is able to undress him? So much for all his experience.
He pushes the thought away and removes his hand from Lawrence’s wrist. “I—” he starts, wondering if he should apologize. Too much, too fast, perhaps.
But then—oh—Lawrence’s hand stays in place. Jesus, thinks Bellini. Lawrence rubs a thumb, awfully gently, against Bellini’s erection, feeling for the length of it. Lawrence’s gaze tilts up to meet Bellini’s, and Bellini feels himself redden. His hips are twitching of their own volition, just slightly; canting towards Lawrence and his roving hand.
Lawrence brushes his fingers across Bellini’s groin once more, then breaks away. He’s breathing heavily, too. Then: “Aldo, let’s save this for…”
Thirty-five years of waiting; what’s a little longer? Bellini had long been prepared to wait until the next life, anyhow. “Of course,” says Bellini. “Of course.”
Lawrence turns to the desk and picks up the discarded envelope, his own name emblazoned on the front in Bellini’s careful cursive. He flips the envelope over to the blank side and writes something on it.
Then, Lawrence rises from his seat and kisses Bellini chastely on the cheek—as if nothing at all has happened—and says: “See you soon, Aldo.”
Bellini stands there, dumbfounded, pressing his sweating palms against his cassock. Lawrence is nearly through the door when Bellini says, “Wasn’t this supposed to be a meeting?” He can’t imagine having to muddle through anything tedious or bureaucratic now, but it’s all he can think of to say.
“Frankly,” Lawrence replies, “I’ve forgotten what we’re meant to be meeting about, anyhow.”
“Me too,” Bellini admits, offering Lawrence a coy smile.
Lawrence smiles in return, and leaves his office without another word.
Bellini collapses into his office chair and presses a shaking hand to his jugular vein: as if checking if he’s still here—if he’s still alive, and still breathing. He remains, for a moment, concerned that perhaps none of this was real. But yes: thready and quick beneath his fingertips, there is a pulse. He is not dead, and he is not dreaming, and his groin is warm where Lawrence’s hand had just been.
He reaches towards his desk and picks up the envelope.
First, he notices the state of it. Lawrence clearly didn’t use the silver letter-opener that Bellini keeps on his desk. It is ripped open shoddily, as though Lawrence had been entirely desperate to reveal its contents. It’s rather endearing, thinks Bellini. Lawrence has never been one to do things by halves.
Then, he reads the note Lawrence scribbled on the back.
Casa Santa Marta, 10pm tonight? You know which room.
Romans 13:10.
Bellini whispers the verse to himself: “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”
He smiles; he’s past the point of being concerned with the biblical legality of these acts, but he’s rather charmed by Lawrence’s selection of verse. The word love rattles through him, from nave to narthex.
And, yes, he knows which room. Like his predecessor, Benitez never moved out of the quarters he’d lived in during the conclave.
Bellini glances down at his own writing. He presses his thumb against a wrinkled circle on the paper—the place where a teardrop had dried, thirty-five years prior. He brings the letter up to his lips and kisses it softly. He’s trying to send a prayer to that younger iteration of himself—to the man who wrote this letter. To the man who was so full of love that it threatened to rip open the seams of his cassock.
It’s a simple prayer.
I wish you peace, I wish you rest. I hope you know that someday, it will all be better. They’ll find remedies for the sickness that surrounds you. You’ll find remedies for the sickness in your heart.
God has not forgotten you. Thomas has not forgotten you. Love has not forgotten you.
There are even holier trinities to discover.