Chapter Text
It began, as these things tend to do, when Aldo wasn't quite in his right mind.
He wasn't a stranger to heat; growing up in NYC, there were days when you could crack an egg onto the asphalt and listen to it sizzle, watch the edges brown. When the whole city seethed with trapped heat and the oppressive stench of the bags of garbage piled high on the sidewalks. And he knew the heat of Rome, too, of course; it wasn't as smelly, in his experience, but the narrow streets tended to stifle all but the strongest of breezes.
But, Aldo had made a career out of being mostly inside. Not outside. Not here, baking under the unrelenting sun at a monastery in Caserta. A monastery with a historic, newly-restored chapel with some fascinating early medieval frescoes that were found under a seventeenth century lime wash. Hidden away for centuries, likely covered up in the name of some austerity push and the local diocese' discomfort with the more fantastical, less liturgical elements. Supposedly there was a monk riding a snail and Aldo had been looking forward to it for weeks.
When the new Holy Father - of about six months at that point - first suggested a papal visit for the reopening of the chapel, and in fact a field trip for a substantial portion of the Curia, Aldo had felt the sharp stab of a headache beginning right behind his left eyebrow. Papal travel, even just a couple of hours south of Rome, was a logistical and diplomatic Charybdis, and that was for the Pope alone. Adding on the travel arrangements, accessibility needs, and dietary accommodations for several dozen prelates (and their assistants) with the entitlement you would expect of so-called "princes of the church" was enough to keep Aldo, Thomas, Ray, and their own assistants hunched over their desks and email inboxes until the wee hours for weeks.
But Innocent had a vision for rekindling the deep ties between the monasteries and convents and their local communities, harkening back to an era when the Church was more than just the place to go on Sunday mornings. When the churchyard was market grounds, meeting place, playground. Inviting the locals in, feeding them bread baked in the monastery ovens and cheeses from a local farm, letting them take in the beauty and charm of the newly-uncovered frescoes while the monks give tours of the beehives and the herb gardens. They were even starting a market for local artisans, farmers, and old ladies sewing potholders. When he was able to think past the permits and the spreadsheets and the security protocols, Aldo had been warmed by the idea. Repositioning the Church as a beacon of community. This is what we do next.
There had been a small amount of grumbling from some of the more taciturn cardinals, especially those in more academic or administrative posts, unused to trekking out to the masses. But most were enthused by the prospect, or at least pretended to be so; even Tedesco, who had spent the first couple of months after the conclave licking his proverbial wounds - sulking in his palazzo and avoiding any Vatican engagements he could reasonably (if he could ever be called "reasonable") refuse - had sent a suggestion to coordinate field trips from the local schools for the occasion along with his RSVP. Aldo had read the email over Thomas' shoulder and tried to suss out Tedesco's angle, but Innocent had smiled softly at the idea and brushed away Aldo's concerns of subterfuge. And so the Curia descended on the monastery.
He had assumed there might be at least some sort of pavilion, though. A tent. Even an olive tree or two for shelter. He was going to get a zucchetto tan line and Aldo knew vanity was a weakness of his, had confessed to it often enough that he now associated his pricey moisturizer with a mumbled Hail Mary, but he was already preparing to be livid about it.
There was a joke to be made with his bald head and an egg yolk sizzling on the sidewalk, but he was too hot, too irritated, and his mind - normally quick, devastatingly clever, a steel trap, a point of pride - felt distressingly... sludgy. Should he be worrying about heat stroke? Well, he was now. And if he was flirting with dizziness, kidney failure, and death, then poor Thomas was probably already dead. And Ray. Was Ray here? Maybe not anymore. He may have melted into a puddle of Irish goo by now. Aldo closed his eyes. He needed to get out of the fucking sun.
They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.[1]
It was uncharitable (and inaccurate) to call the lovingly-tended monastery grounds an uninhabited salt land. Aldo sighed and offered up a quiet prayer of repentance.
He focused once more, with some difficulty, on the scene at hand. They were gathered in the grassy yard in front of the chapel, milling about while the small platform Innocent would speak from was assembled. Like chickens outside the coop, scratching the dirt for… bugs? Aldo realized he didn't actually know what chickens ate. Just off to the side of the soon-to-be platform, Thomas and the Holy Father leaned toward one another, smiling softly and speaking in low tones. Aldo could not even begin to take a guess at what they could be talking about, but he imagined it was something deeply wholesome and tender, because wasn't it always, these days?
A little further to the side, he watched Giulio tip his phone toward Tedesco, showing him something on the screen, his voice pitched too low for Aldo to hear. He felt a brief swell of apprehension, as the image was far too incongruous to spell anything good. Not here, at such a public event where smartphones abounded and any voices raised in ecclesiastical fury would not be tucked safely behind marble walls.
But then he realized, the wave of anxiety receding as quickly as it had risen, that it had to be football scores - the only thing they could speak even remotely civilly about. Their shared hatred of Inter, if he recalled correctly. Not that he really gave a shit, if he was being completely honest, as he tried to be when it was just him and God and his thoughts.
Actually, he felt a crackle of annoyance that he knew anything about it at all. One perk of moving into an administrative rather than pastoral role was no longer feeling obligated to keep up with sports happenings for the sole purpose of making conversation with parishioners. When he was in New York it had been the NFL and having at least a tidbit about the Yankees' season; then in Milan it had been Serie A. When Aldo had taken his first position within the Vatican administration, he had promised himself he would never look at a sports score again. He had even toasted to his promise (his freedom) with a celebratory bottle of wine in his new apartment, whose tranquil air would never be broken with the sounds of a sports channel. But despite his personal embargo, Curial chitchat was impossible to completely tune out.
Aldo was torn from his irritated daze by the sound of fabric ripping and a sharp gasp he immediately recognized as Thomas'. To his immediate and growing horror, someone had trod on the hem of the Holy Father's cassock and torn a long, unwelcome slit upward. He closed his eyes at the nearly knee-high striped athletic socks. A pope who could head straight to a football game, he thought hysterically. Just the image they wanted to project to the early skeptics of the new pope's reign.
Thomas already had one hand pressed to his sunburnt forehead in misery. The man had an unenviable gift for aging a decade or more in a single moment.
"My god. What on earth do we do? This is a disaster!"
Innocent laid a gentle hand on his shoulder with a small smile, voice pitched to soothe. "I really do not think this is a big problem, Thomas."
Aldo, however, joined Thomas and, now, Ray (who had appeared and obviously hadn't melted yet, although he too was more red than usual) in their fretting. Despite Innocent's repeated claims that he was a mortal man like anyone else, despite Thomas' wish for a pope who doubts and who sins, Vincent Benitez was no longer such in the eyes of the Church. He was Innocentius XIV; he was more than a man to over a billion people across the globe. He couldn't face the public in a ripped cassock, flashing leg to anyone with a smartphone. He might not think it mattered, but it did.
Aldo despaired. Caserta wasn't the middle of nowhere by any means, but they hadn't planned for a sartorial disaster in any of the spreadsheets. The calamities they had outlined in contingency plans were mainly somebody trying to kidnap the pope or one of their brothers breaking an ankle (or, God forbid, a hip) on the charmingly rough-cut stone of the chapel steps. Not this. Not something so trivial and yet mortifying, something so perfectly chaotic, as if it had been specifically designed to give Aldo the most embarrassing of heart palpitations. Why - and here, Aldo lifted his internal voice to God - had they left Sister Agnes in Rome? She would have known what to do.
There was a panic in the camp, in the field, and among all the people;[2]
As his mind continued to spin in a (moderate, this wasn't a full diplomatic incident yet) panic, he felt someone push past him with a loud calmati, calmati in an unfortunately recognizable voice. And then there was Tedesco, digging in the leather satchel held by his assistant (Pietro? Piero? Aldo wasn't sure he had ever heard him speak. Just seen him hovering, carefully out of Tedesco's line of sight, because Tedesco hated to be managed but somebody had to have the vape charger ready. Or an energy bar if Tedesco got hangry. Whatever his name was, Aldo pitied the man.).
Aldo wasn't sure what he was expecting Tedesco to pull out of his bag (an ancient tome on ecclesiastical aesthetic tradition, perhaps? To fuel his diatribe over what a ripped cassock and an obscene flash of papal ankle mean for the state of the Church?), but it wasn't a small plastic case, opened to show tiny spools of red, black, gold, and, crucially, white thread. And he surely wasn't expecting, or prepared for, Tedesco to sink to his knees at Innocent's feet with a grunted "Mah, sono troppo vecchio per questo." [3]
Suddenly a bit short of breath, Aldo watched him slide pins across the rip, something - something Aldo really didn't want to name right now - curling alongside the panic still swirling in his stomach. Watched him hold the needle close to his thick glasses, squinting as he fed the white thread through the eye with an obvious familiarity.
Unfortunately - and Aldo could not stress enough how deeply, profoundly unfortunate it was - being attracted to Tedesco was an all-too familiar affliction. One that Aldo had tried and failed to smother for decades. Like an ember that would never quite extinguish, smoldering, waiting for the next breath of oxygen to ignite it once more into a flame.
It wasn't the fact that Tedesco was a man; Aldo had spent several decades warring with his faith, with interpretations of Scripture and doctrine, with his own shame and that of others, and had come out the other side victorious. He was not ashamed of being gay. He was strident in his conviction that God had made him this way and there was nothing sinful about it, no shame to be had in his nature.
What he was ashamed of was whom his traitorous libido found... enticing. Tedesco was not the only attractive man in the Church. Thomas had been a trial for the purity of Aldo's thoughts in their younger days, even though he seemed completely unaware of his allure, and he had aged with more grace than many of their brothers. Adeyemi was blessed with dashing features and a devastating smile, and he knew it. But Tedesco was a different sort of beast (in more ways than one), at least according to Aldo's despicable lizard brain.
He remembered their first meeting, decades ago. When they were both young bishops, both making a name for themselves in influential circles as future heavy-hitters within the Church. Tedesco in his thirties could have passed for a seminarian with his giant brown eyes (the strength of his prescription doing some of the heavy lifting there) and dark curls. He would have done numbers on the gay circuit in New York, looking like that. The twink priest with his glasses and doe eyes. The soft curve of his mouth. Not that the illusion usually lasted long - only until Tedesco opened those pretty lips and vitriol poured out.
Despite running in different Church circles, and Tedesco a few years ahead of Aldo on the advancement track given his age, they crossed paths with a frustrating frequency. Aldo watched as Tedesco became an archbishop, then a cardinal, vestments changing but still with a jaunty cigarette tucked between his ear and his zucchetto. A picture Aldo's mind supplied with far too much ease. Curls grayer every year, yet it truly only made him more handsome. More of a strain on Aldo's values. He didn't want to lust after someone whose views made him despair over the future of the Church, but how many in the Curia, or any men north of sixty, could boast a full, thick head of hair? Could wear horn-rimmed glasses and make that stupid cape look elegant rather than downright ridiculous.
And the raw magnetism he was blessed with only grew with time; even when he was spouting the most terrible rhetoric, feeding off the reactions of his audience as he decimated theological arguments, you couldn't help but lean in. Like a neutron star. A gravity well, his scornful grin dragging you over the event horizon.
No, being attracted to Tedesco was nothing new. But the tingle in Aldo's fingertips, watching Tedesco kneel before the Holy Father, was new. Not the kneeling itself, so much, although Aldo would admit within his own mind and his own mind only that the concept was tempting. Aldo itched to push his fingers into those curls, Tedesco still on his knees.
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.[4]
Aldo wasn't so sure.
But there was something else - something about the damned pins sticking out of his mouth as he muttered stai fermo when the Holy Father shifted. Head bent beneath his zucchetto, one hand clasping the hem of Innocent's white cassock, the other holding a needle. The quiet concentration on his face as he maneuvered the needle back and forth through the thick fabric, pulling, gentle but firm, on his stitches to draw the torn edges of the fabric back together.
And then Tedesco, the infernal man, had the audacity to look up at His Holiness. The image crystallized, still and frozen in front of Aldo's eyes like a painting. The bell tower, the Holy Father in white, looking down with an expression Aldo would almost call fond. At his feet, Tedesco, in black and red, sunlight gleaming off his silver curls, face upturned.
Aldo barely even registered the quiet grazie, Eminenza from Innocent as Tedesco used a tiny pair of scissors to snip the thread, nor Tedesco's confident assurance that the repair should hold until they got back to the Vatican tailors. Aldo wasn't sure how long it had been since he last breathed.
A gruff exclamation from one of the workers assembling the pedestal broke the tension of the moment. Like snapping a thread, if Aldo was feeling poetic. He wasn't, obviously. Too busy desperately hoping no one had noticed where his eyes had been fixed for however long it had taken Tedesco to sew up the rip. Or at least that they assumed he was simply shocked at Tedesco's uncharacteristically solicitous gesture. Aldo shook himself and then hoped that, too, was discrete.
Hours later, the event was finally winding down, and Aldo found himself at a picnic table with Thomas and Giulio as they waited for the Holy Father to speak with a few more children in the herb garden. Their parents were furiously snapping photos that would surely end up on Instagram with the current trending hashtag #thepeoplespope. And no photos of an Adidas sock peeking out of a holey cassock, Aldo was relieved to say.
He fidgeted with the label of one of the jars of honey he had purchased from the monks. Made from native primrose nectar - Aldo couldn't wait to try it in a pastry the next time he had an afternoon for himself and his oven. After some water, a couple of slices of sourdough with hand-churned butter and a rather remarkable fontina, and some time to breathe while examining the frescoes, Aldo was feeling more like himself. He had barely seen Tedesco in the hours since the guests started trickling in and the cardinals had dispersed under Innocent's soft but steely command to mingle.
There had been a flash of silver curls bent low as he spoke with a small mob of schoolchildren, which Aldo kept firmly relegated to his peripheral vision. Another flash in the chapel as Aldo examined the delightful frescoes, but, again, he kept the image firmly at a distance. As unfocused as possible. He had been waiting for weeks to see this snail and he had refused to let any traitorous, inconvenient thoughts intrude on their moment. He didn't want to know if Tedesco thought the whimsical illustrations charming or heretical.
Giulio, of course, had to be the one to break the fragile peace between Aldo and his own thoughts.
"Do you think he bought the white thread immediately after the call informing him the throne of the Holy See was empty? How long do you think it took? An hour?"
Aldo felt the corners of his mouth turn up, relieved; this was normal, familiar. An antidote to the revelations of the day.
"I'm sure Amazon Prime does same-day delivery to the Palazzo Patriarcale." Would Venetian Amazon have their own boats? He hadn't thought about the logistics of ecommerce in a city built atop a lagoon before.
Thomas' voice, with the unique blend of amusement and chastisement that made even the most confrontational members of the Curia bend to his words, interrupted that particular rabbit hole before Aldo could get too far down it. "I think we can give our brother cardinal the benefit of the doubt of the rochet. Those things catch on everything."
Giulio snorted, but kept any acerbic retort to himself. Aldo patted Thomas' hand, and made sure to inject a conciliatory tone into his own voice. "Of course, Thomas, you're right. I admit it was unexpected, but it was… kind, I suppose. Considerate."
Words Aldo had never expected to say about Tedesco. Aldo refused to voice another - competent - which he had indeed said about him before, even if it was said with a sigh and sometimes a wish that it wasn't so true. While his views were repugnant, no one could deny that Tedesco was brilliant. But Aldo couldn't bring himself to say it this time, not when it felt so… charged. The word had an unfamiliar depth to it, when he weighed it on his tongue; a layer Aldo hadn't anticipated, and didn't know how to categorize within himself. Not yet.
He cleared his throat and continued. "Though I am curious if he has a separate set for liturgical vestments. Green for Ordinary Time, purple for Lent..."
Giulio raised an eyebrow. "Pink for Gaudete Sunday?"
Aldo knew him well enough to know that Giulio was likely holding in, out of deference to Thomas' newfound reticence to trade sarcastic comments about their brothers, a sardonic joke about the color pink and a certain outspokenly homophobic patriarch. A patriarch who, if his and Giulio's gaydars meant anything, was also deeply closeted. They had been there at one point, too, when they were younger and filled with more shame, after all, and like recognizes like. Tedesco might pull off the ferraiolo better than he had any right to, but he still chose to wear a cape in the twenty-first century, long after it had fallen out of fashion for most of the Curia.
Instead, Giulio pulled a pack of cigarettes from his robe and shook one out, though he didn't light it. Not for the first time, Aldo wondered if Giulio smoked as much for something to do with his hands as for the nicotine.
"A surprise, though. I would have expected a comment about slipping standards, not a needle and thread from his magical carpet bag."
Thomas hummed, considering, before his eyebrows drew together. "Is it, though? When you think about where he came from?"
And there, Aldo felt a sick curl of shame in his stomach. Of course. As a child growing up in three-bedroom apartment in the Upper East Side, when he tore a hole in his jeans, he got a new pair of jeans. And Giulio, well. Repairing something wasn't a skill he would have had reason to learn either. Aldo doubted Thomas had either, though his own upbringing in Suffolk had been more modest in comparison to theirs. But of course Thomas, deeply empathetic already and with a fresh determination to err on the side of grace since he began working closely with the Holy Father, would make the connection.
Tedesco's childhood poverty was no secret. It wasn't something generally discussed, except when a new member of the Curia found his manner of eating curious and made a delicate inquiry, or when the liberal contingent of cardinals, amongst themselves of course, bemoaned Tedesco's frustrating inability to connect the detriments of his upbringing to current church teaching. But, as the youngest of twelve in the poorest (and famously so) part of Italy, he wouldn't have gotten new pants when they tore. He would have likely gotten hand-me-downs of hand-me-downs that had seen a needle and thread more than once. And while the seminary covered room and board and uniforms, it didn't cover everything. They had all taken a vow of poverty, but very few of them had truly experienced it.
Aldo hummed - lightly, he hoped. Not like the events of the day had knocked something loose, leaving him feeling exposed and unsettled. Giulio had an eagle's eye for any chink in armor, friend or foe. A foe's he would use; a friend's he would note. "I suppose not."
He smiled at Thomas, rolling one of the small jars of honey between his palms. Trying once again to quiet certain voices in his thoughts.
"I think His Holiness spoke well today, don't you? A good crowd. I think I even saw the dairy farmer smile when he sold the last of his cheese. A tent would be nice, though, next time."