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there went up a smoke out of his nostrils,

Cardinal Tremblay falls out of the picture like a dead dove—it grips your heart when you witness the splatter on the ground. The man clings to his cross out of desperation, despite it hanging around his neck and providing no upper hold to stop his end. He’s reaching for some kind of support that isn’t there or would cave as soon as he touches it; no way up, no way still, only down. He leaves the dining room in a flourish of red robes and long after he’s gone, the closed door upholds heavy stares still.

The thick air left in the wake of his clash with Cardinal Lawrence—Sister Agnes showed up like a woman, and thus left like a ghost: impossible for the College to acknowledge her impact—is hardly sliced through by the clutter of knives and forks against plates. The end of breakfast is spent in fake silence, with whisperings amongst the men as they pass each other salt.

Outside of these walls, Bellini and Lawrence clutch hands and reconcile.

Lawrence had not realized how touch turns breathing into an easy thing, and not a task to be performed. Letting the papal name fall out of his lips grounds him, like a cannonball that threatened to sink his entire ship, and the anchor that comes to the rescue in his troubled waters holds his hand with the devotion you expect in prayer.

Aldo believes in him. Lawrence let him catch a glimpse of a future he doesn’t want, but has nurtured all the same. He says John, his fingers are squeezed, and he finds company, a steady heart to which he stitches this awful knowledge close for the next remaining hours.

Hours, because it does feel like only a handful of them are left before the doors open.

The weight of the moment hangs on Lawrence’s shoulders like a paradox. He feels unburdened, but in a single name, he has just opened the door to responsibilities more abysmal than those of Dean. He shudders, not because of the touch. Bellini, obviously, doesn’t let go.

“It does sound heavy when you say it out loud,” Lawrence adds, looking down on the floor as if he could find the word there, laying with all its weight.

“Must be because you already shelve the responsibility into it.” Bellini looks away, too, a sigh falling out of his mouth. “The box seems too small.”

Lawrence closes his eyes. His hand loosens and Bellini slowly slips away, reachable in case he should regret the act.

“Thank you for telling me.”

Of course, Lawrence wants to say. But I fear I’ve put hope in you.

He doesn’t want to inspire—that’s a whole other job, and not his own.

The hand leaves. He stands up, trying to shake out the thought. Aldo follows.

Somewhere in the gardens, a bird is singing. Lawrence’s mind is taken back to Sister Agnes’ office, with the little canary in the cage, observing the copy machine spit out one hundred and eight reports, and then curiously tilting its head at him waiting to the side. The features of his face unknot for a moment, bordering on a peaceful smile. Bellini smoothes his cassock and checks his zucchetto with his hand. Their talk has quite undressed them.

Then Lawrence takes a step towards the nearest door, only to be greeted with the sight of Cardinal Tedesco emerging from it.

The man, ever the bull, crosses the threshold in long strides that make it seem like he’s barreling out rather than walking. One might think he was going out for a smoke, if he hadn’t repeatedly established his disdain for the local ban with the rectangular tin he clutches as much as a Bible, and if two strokes of vaporous white weren’t already flanking his exit.

Tedesco bursts through the doorway like an apparition, escorted by wisps; for once, his herd of followers is not shadowing his footsteps. Lawrence tenses for this rather than for his imminent collision with the Patriarch of Venice. Anomalies have been plaguing his days recently. He’d like for them to go away, just once.

Prodigiously, the man comes to a full stop before the impact. Despite his broad build, he reigns in his momentum the moment he witnesses the Dean, and all his inertia is transferred to the white fumes around him, curling around in the wind, rushing past. A starking reminder, Lawrence thinks and dreads, of his ability to bend space to his will.

“Ah, Dean Lawrence.”

His tone is amused, if cautious—they’re talking as rivals, now.

“Il rompi-sigillo”, he adds with unhidden snark, eyes leveling up and down the man in front of him. “Still refusing to deliver the names you blacked out, eh?”

“Goffredo.” Lawrence has to summon all of his might not to say something else. He refuses to call out to God for this, given as it is unworthy of His time, and frankly would be a most tedious customer request. “The vote is starting in an hour.”

Tedesco scoffs, greying the dissolved smoke around them. Lawrence can’t help but wrinkle his nose when the cloud engulfs him. The smell, which he expected to be pure tobacco, is oddly chemical and sweet.

Tedesco barely has time to finish his jab before Bellini emerges next to Lawrence.

There is ice in his speech. A bitter frost blankets the Secretary of State’s gaze as he spits out his please with as much contempt as one can cram into a single word. Lawrence thinks about language being too small, and the temperature of the conversation drops below zero.

It only rouses Tedesco’s fire which, even if he hasn’t taken another drag yet, lits his eyes when he’s faced with his ex-opponent.

He waves his red little device around, emphasizing, “Or perhaps your lot is searching for another viable candidate again? What would it be now, the fourth?”

Lawrence sighs, reduced to using a name again. “Goffredo-”

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” Bellini jumps in, completely ignoring his attempt at peace. “Evangelizing the faithful, slandering the dead, despising women? Refilling your poison tank, perhaps?”

“Talking about poison,” Tedesco snickers as he brings the mouthpiece to his lips, resting it there as if to tempt himself into sucking, “I fear there is something in the water we’ve been drinking. I mean, how many candidates have we lost already? Spreading like an epidemic, non crede? Forgive me for cutting breakfast short.”

Leaning towards Bellini, he purses his lips and takes a drag, breathing deliberately hard. The rippling sound crackles around in his throat like embers.

“Il mio bicchiere sapeva di aceto,” he adds, voice low like a confession grazing his fellow Cardinal’s face. My glass tasted like vinegar.^[1] Psalm 69:22.

Still not quoting it in Latin, Lawrence notes.

“I don’t think your thirst could ever be quenched to begin with.”

Bellini never blinks. He stands still as a pillar, almost merging with the architecture of the place, whereas Tedesco leans into him like a draft seeping through the cracks, hoping to chip away at the stone. Despite his stature of a battering ram, the destruction brought forth by the Patriarch of Venice always looms rather than crash; at this moment, Lawrence feels infiltrated by a vicious, intangible force, and he reflexively shakes his hand to get rid of it, missing Aldo’s on top of it, grounding and solid.

Then an awful smile breaks Tedesco’s face as he stops drawing the vapor in.

“Ah, wouldn’t you know about thirst, Cardinale Bellini.”

On that word—names, Lawrence thinks: it always comes down to the load they carry—Cardinal Tedesco cracks his mouth and openly breathes out his smoke on Bellini’s face.

Gobsmacked by the injury, Lawrence doesn’t find the swiftness in him to react, but wonders if what happens next is a hallucination invoked by the drug.

Aldo doesn’t falter, does worse, does this: he parts his lips when the smoke sickly kisses his mouth and lets it in, gently drawing in a breath to sweep it along, casually, all too unbothered, face twitchless. He keeps it in for a few seconds, rolls it off his tongue, savors the taste. He swallows not.

Then, judging he’s tasted enough, he exhales it back to Tedesco’s face in a long puff dissolving where it lands.

Aldo keeps his eyes fixated on Tedesco’s mouth, eyelashes lowered because, being face to face, dropping his gaze means superiority. Lawrence is rather sure he would have coughed out his lungs in this little stunt, yet Aldo never yields; it’s hard to see through the white screen engulfing the two men then, but he catches that trademark eyebrow raise of his, as if to say, that’s it?

And when the fumes fade, Tedesco sways.

The Patriarch of Venice is stilled in time. His fire, smoldering beneath embers, is struck down like lightning, and he ends up self-surprised by its vanishing. It stifles the air around him, stroke cast from the Most High, as the power of the blow leaves him dazed—his eyes slightly wide, the door of his mouth ajar to let out the last of his vapes. He remains frozen rigid. A messy curl falls on his forehead in shock. It adds a touch of raggedness to the whole tableau.

Bellini, unbothered, sniffs. “Si quis sitit, veniat ad me et bibat.”^[2]

Lawrence wouldn’t have gone that far, but he swears before God that Tedesco’s eyes flash pale.

The man doesn’t step back, still occupying Bellini’s space like he owns it, but the emotion on his face is a rarity—firstly because it’s visible, and secondly because it’s helpless. His features harden, and worse, they're sagging: his entire ideology, though built on centuries of solidified thoughts and backward opinions, seems cut short by a single second, too quick to catch and striking fast. Tedesco is searching Bellini’s face up and down in stupefied frustration, making a discovery he’s missed a hundred times before, lower lip twitching, hopelessly trying to fish out useful words. At first Lawrence is tempted to say Aldo’s audacity infuriates him, but the rage comes too late.

The truth is, it doesn’t seem like it wants to come out at all.

Silence lingers. Even Aldo, pleased with his answer, starts to raise a second eyebrow.

Then Tedesco’s face colours, oddly pinkier than usual. “... Eminenza Bellini.”

Something is shifting there. Lawrence doubts Aldo senses it too.

“That would be my name.” His friend sports his usual attitude, challenging and fierce—inches from the red-seeing bull, waving the flag in his face, and hoping to lure it into the wall behind. “Now, if you could be so useful as to move aside.”

Doesn’t he see how Tedesco suddenly leers?

The question smacks of irony, but worse than that, it carries interest.

The two men breathe each other out for a few seconds. Aldo tries on a scornful smile.

Lawrence knows the layout he’s overseen. Although his own suite is next to Adeyemi’s, Tedesco’s is, thankfully, relocated a floor below Bellini’s.

“Sì, I can hear the whispers crawling through the walls at night.”

The Patriarch recovers his trademark grin, but his fist tightens around the vape he’s intuitively pulled over his heart. The sight of Tremblay clinging to his cross, when everything crumbled down around him, comes back to Lawrence full force.

“You should try another room, Eminenza, where those insects of shame don’t swarm.”

Bellini nips the irony in the bud with a chin raise. “Like yours, I presume.”

The pink on Tedesco’s cheeks suddenly spreads lower. Lawrence expects him to retort with another sour jab, but the man reconsiders, and veins pop up on the hand he grips his vape with. Something furious shadows his face. He hovers around Aldo with a wish too big for his mind.

Lawrence has heard enough confessions to sense when a man is on the verge of taking something he’s not allowed to. Fearing a punch or a collar grab, he latches onto words, the only force he’s ever known how to use back.

“Goffredo. Now would be your cue to leave.”

Tedesco looks up in near-surprise. Lawrence savors the reaction, delighted to learn he still has the ability to go unnoticed.

The Patriarch frowns like he’s been pulled out of a vivid dream; when he fastens his gaze on the Dean, the strange spark ignited by Bellini’s injury dim. For a split second, panic scatters around on his face, wrinkles on his forehead are dismantled, and his mouth conceals the thoughts within in a thin line. His free hand, dangerously flexing near Bellini’s cassock, finally relaxes.

Next he straightens up, recovers his usual scorn, and storms off with a “Bah!”.

Lawrence watches the red cape fluttering away below the arcades until it disappears, then catches Tedesco double checking in Bellini’s direction over his shoulder. Aldo bizarrely tenses in perplexity. The two friends don’t comment on this.

The silence that follows is shattered by the cooing of a turtledove.

“Good riddance.” Aldo wrinkles his nose, making a funny face. His tongue is running on the inside of his cheeks and trying to push out something. “Heavens, that strawberry taste is awful. Sticks everywhere like bubblegum.”

“Well, you’ve certainly silenced him up good… For a moment, at least.” Lawrence can’t help but let his affection intermingle with admiration. It desperately conveys a deep veiled thought. This is the kind of nerve managers lack.

Aldo scoffs, lets his gaze lingers on the far end of the hallway, and there is a question afloat in the lightness of his voice, for those who know how to listen. “Dogs don’t forget how to bark, I fear.”

“You know how to put on the muzzle.”

Bellini turns his face towards him, shocked and, ultimately, wildly amused by the thought.

Lawrence’s smile hinges on malice as he looks back. “Shall we?”

“We shall,” his friend agrees and pats his arm. He does not let go.

When they cross the threshold together, love is overwhelming Lawrence.

“Strawberry?”

“Yes. It’s overly sweet. You wouldn’t like it.”

To silence Tedesco, Aldo chose to quote John.

and fire out of his mouth devoured:

After Benitez’s speech, every cardinal looks up at him. The gradual emptying of the room is something out of a dream; all of them, touched by the light their unexpected brother shone on them, linger in the room to bask in its special faith. There are whispers, there are glances. There seems to be born some newfound grace.

Lawrence is no exception, perhaps even a precursor. Standing on the last row of seats, he catches Benitez’s eyes and only sees benevolence.

He smiles.

Benitez smiles back.

For the first time ever since the Casa Santa Marta closed its doors, Lawrence knows exactly what he’ll have to do next. He nods, exits the stage and begins to climb the stairs. On his way up, he looks for Bellini, expecting a little talk on what just happened.

Curiously, the former Secretary of State is not waiting for him outside.

He meets his other brothers, nods at the silent glances, in which a single question shimmers—do you consent, Eminence, for us to take back the papacy we would have given you? And Lawrence, too relieved, please, take it and never give it back, hurries on and fights off a grin, thinking he doesn’t need to turn around and make sure he hasn’t offended anyone. At this moment, he must speak with the soul who came closest to his aborted future; he must find Aldo, and share with him the joy of his crownless life to come.

He strides off in a flutter of cassock, listening to the turtledove, his steps echoing down the hallway. He looks into the dining room, empty of life. He looks into Sister Agnes’ office, back to the canary. Lawrence spares the singing soul a sorry glance, and reaches the only exhausting conclusion: Cardinal Bellini is somewhere in the residence, lost in the five-story building and its six-hundred suites.

Lawrence doesn’t doubt logic, heads for the number assigned to his friend, and tells himself he will search the chapels on floors 4 and 5 should his quest prove fruitless. The lift takes just a few seconds to start, Lawrence thinks back to Benitez’s smile, he can’t stop his own from blooming back in the mirror. He steps off to the third floor that he and Aldo share. Although Adeyemi’s room is next to his own, Bellini’s is only at the end of the corridor, demanding a few more steps and a little extra effort on the knees.

Lawrence reaches the end, but the door is closed. He pulls the handle in vain.

A hum.

He hears a hum, somewhere in the walls, and his ears perk up. It’s an insidious sound, reverberating like pins and needles. Lawrence looks up and frowns when he can’t track down the epicenter. He’s been told he isn’t supposed to be a shepherd; he shouldn’t have to collect his missing sheep in the mountain, merely ensure the farm is still standing. A frustrated sigh escapes his lips, then a single word strikes him in the chest.

Insects.

It sounds like insects, crawling through the walls.

Call it perception, or guiding. Lawrence is not so sure he knows the difference by now, but he turns towards the staircase not far from Aldo’s room and remembers the layout with outstanding ease.

Not counting the chapels, there is a room left he hasn’t thought of.

Lawrence doesn’t take the lift, fearing, maybe, that it will bring him too soon to his conclusion. He takes the stairs instead, joints aching in every step, and he finds that the swarming sound grows steadier, louder. Like an argument.

Lord Almighty, he prays as he reaches the second floor, may we not lose a brother Cardinal before this conclave is over.

Agitated mumbles swarm in the air, like bees rushing to the hive.

“And you think you can still stand and let God search your soul for a shred of dignity inside?!”

“Dignità! Non parlarmi di dignità! Your lot have rotten this church to the core with the softness of your morals, and you, you-!”

As he starts to round the corner, Lawrence catches the sight that awaits him: Tedesco and Bellini, palpitating with anger, almost plastered to each other with how close they stand in front of the former’s room—without noticing the red cassock of the Dean fluttering into view.

“I what?!”

“Too weak to take and too feeble to stand!”

Tedesco overshadows Aldo like a mountain, but behaves like a tree battered by a storm on its flank. He waves his arms around wildly, and his whole being is a clash of red fabric and white dust caught between anticipation and destruction—his hand, clenched around his damn scarlet vape, paints the menace of dissolving traits around them like powder trails to a detonator, whereas his shoulders, shaking in indignation, sends specks of the Sistine’s rubble tumbling to the ground in the aftermath of the ignition.

Bellini, nicked by the pride he’s always carried, meets his face close and doesn’t seem fazed by the fact that their noses are almost touching. He’s raised a hand, pointing to the left as if the logic he’s using could be standing right there, with fingers floured by the dust he’s wiped out from his mozzetta.

“Oh, you think I’m lapping?”

Their argument seems sealed in caulk.

On an impulse of both self-preservation and charity, Lawrence stops dead in his tracks.

He finds himself a match in a gas vice, with any sudden move feeling like he could set off a bomb on the verge of explosion. A measured thought, which he’d like to call wisdom and not passivity, urges him to stay half-hidden, and to listen in hope of seizing the right time by the wrist when it comes.

“You lecture me about thirst without solving your own hunger, Cardinale Tedesco.” Aldo hisses with a dangerous glint in his eyes. “You brew emptiness, you swallow oblivion. Every single thing that comes out of your mouth has no substance; with you everything is smoke, and nothing is solid. You think of my thirst—despair of your hunger first.”

“My hunger?” Tedesco whispers, taken aback. It is surprising, the faintness with which both of them talk. It borders on intimacy.

“You don’t know how to absorb. You cry fear, you invoke chimeras, but you never digest the causes. Cardinal Benitez was merciful in his speech. He did not call out the craving that gnaws at you deep inside-”

“You’re talking- sciocchezze! Absolute nonsense!”

“-and makes you grasp for scapegoats and distracts you from the dreadful, tangible reality,” Aldo hardens and scrapes his voice with urgency, “that of an empty man, unable to fill the void inside!”

“Filling the void!” Tedesco exclaims in English, his Italian drawling the whole outline of his speech before taking over. “Ma che scherzo–the papacy slipped through your fingers, Eminenza Bellini, and I’ve seen the way you look at the Dean.”

“No, you haven’t.”

Lawrence stills, stricken to his core. He puts a hand to his heart as if the wound sliced it open.

Bellini endures the look Tedesco is giving him with icy eyes. His chin is held high, defiant. He’s pulsing with every word he’s said, in what Lawrence knows is the way of men talking out of their heart. His back is still pressed to the closed door.

“I will not libel the Lord’s name in saying you can’t feel love. Make an effort, Patriarch.”

Then he waves his hand, casually, meeting fury with indifference, and Tedesco’s terrifying stare follows suit.

“So, yes, veniat ad me et bibat—only if you find yourself something to eat first, lest you be intoxicated.”

A silence settles. Lawrence, even feet away, can hear Tedesco’s laborious breathing. The rosy shade of red that graced his cheeks, earlier this morning, bursts all over his face, sketched in the color of abashment.

“You are playing a very dangerous game, Eminenza.”

“The game, as you put it, is already over. I trust you are smart enough to sense how Cardinal Benitez not only won over our brothers’ votes, but their hearts as well.”

“I am not talking about the papacy.”

Lawrence witnesses Aldo’s eyes widen, and feels himself do the same.

“Tell me,” the Patriarch croons suddenly, “why do I find you at my door?”

Bellini frowns, brought back to the physicality of their argument, then blinks to settle the unexpected question in his mind. His staring shifts. Confusion flashes within. He glances left and right in the corridor. In doing so, he misses Lawrence’s silhouette in the corner, seeking the same answer.

Tedesco senses his doubt, curls around it, squeezes so that it doesn’t slip away. He leans forward and waves his vape around in emphasis. “You used to play chess with His Holiness. Dai. How do you call the reckless move that singles out the queen in front of the rook?”

He feigns mockery, but seriousness weighs down his face. Something has upset him since their meeting in the gardens, and he fingers the wound as if to relieve the pressure of his own.

His analogy brings some irony back into Aldo, who indulges in a thoughtful whisper. “The rook. Yes, you certainly move unidimensionally.”

“And you throw yourself in so many directions you lose sight of the end goal.”

They are too close, Lawrence thinks. This is the moment someone gets hurt.

Yet he finds himself rooted to the spot, fascinated by how Aldo’s attitude bends Tedesco’s to its will. Their proximity is on the verge of shattering in an awful outburst and still, he trusts wholeheartedly in the Patriarch’s submission. It has to do with the vulnerability lighting his gaze, and the red on his cheeks.

It has to do with Benitez’s speech in the theater room. La lucha està aquí, dentro de cada uno de nosotros.

Slowly, Tedesco brings his device to his mouth. The absence of a rippling sound proves that he doesn’t take a drag, that he merely taps the tip to his lips. Bellini’s chest deflates nonetheless.

Tedesco lowers his chin to cast an upward look of expectancy above his glasses.

At that moment, Bellini understands something that Lawrence does not. The Dean, transfixed, sees his friend stiffen and display an expression of pure astonishment, bordering on worry. Aldo is so out of his depth that when Tedesco dusts the red shoulder of his cassock, and when Lawrence expects a masterful slap to send the Patriarch flying across the hall, he merely looks down on the veins of the faux-caring hand. His jaw clenches, in curiosity.

He seems to consider.

Tedesco tilts the mouthpiece towards Bellini. It’s hard not to think of a serpent offering a vice.

Lawrence, suddenly recalling his free will, steps out of the darkness. He couldn’t possibly explain why he makes sure his cassock ruffles loudly, or the forced cough that punches his throat. He makes noise, he has to exist, he stumbles into view like a card falling out of its house, sending the rest of it crumbling down.

The Patriarch whips his head around, spell broken, and his face contorts in scarlet as he looks at the Dean striding towards them. Territoriality sticks to him like oil. “Here comes the bishop”, Lawrence hears him say. And yes, sure enough, he comes from a corner.

Bellini, however, moves too late, is the last to notice. His eyes remain locked on the vape hovering in between them, struck by realization–then he looks back to Tedesco, and from beyond the glasses Lawrence swears he’s drafting. They’ve worked enough time together in an office, by dim lights and subtext glances, to sense when the other is about to chart a risky plan.

“Aldo,” he calls out in hope of waking him up. “Is there a problem?”

That brings him Bellini’s attention, albeit blinking, and Lawrence finds that he doesn’t like it when a sun flickers.

Tedesco’s hand slides away. It swipes some of the Sistine’s rubble with it.

“Thomas.” Aldo straightens his spine, forcing the Patriarch to step back in a grunt. His voice softens with relief, and yet there lingers a hint of concern. “I have been looking for you.”

Those three days, and those that came before, have been so hard on believing. Lawrence didn’t think his hardship would endure, but he politely nods.

“So have I.”

When he reaches the two Cardinals, they’ve fully parted. Tedesco looks away and shields his face from the Dean’s gaze as he hits his vape. This time, that despicable sound rumbles behind his closed lips.

Lawrence insists and hopelessly pursues truth. “Is there a problem?”

“Nessuno.” Tedesco grates like an old door about to close.

“I wasn’t asking you.”

Lawrence hears impertinence overtake his own mouth and doesn’t have the time, nor the will, to be bothered. In normal circumstances, the Patriarch would have barked back, but his somber gaze falls on the tiles like a brick. Another anomaly. It shouldn’t happen. The vote is starting soon.

Aldo, on the other hand, acts like he’s been slapped in the face. Now that he’s been singled out in the discussion, he turns to the Dean with eyes wide open. He glances one last time at Tedesco, but straightens his spine and raises his chin, adjusting the frame of his glasses like he does when he wants to express scholarly concern.

“Yes, let’s walk.”

He clears his throat then. There must be some sentence left clogging it.

But Lawrence merely takes him by the arm, hoping Aldo does not linger too far behind.

coals were kindled by it.

Innocentius XIV has been elected as Pope, and Thomas strangely feels like breathing again.

He stands by the pond and allows himself to live through the vibrant cheers echoing beyond the walls. The turtles, deaf to human jubilation, are splashing around in the pond at his feet, sounding their own little applause. A light breeze ripples across his face.

Urgency seems like a delirious concept.

His walk back to the Casa Santa Marta is paced with a lighter step, with his whole being afloat. He thinks of Benitez’ smile, he thinks of their new Pope on the balcony, he thinks of kissing the ring back. Lawrence steps and thinks and steps and thinks and steps and thinks until it turns into a song synchronized with his heartbeat, with harmonious highs and lows the likes of a choir. Doors are no longer obstacles, but gateways. Dark is a synonym of emptiness no more—it hums with possibilities, and Lawrence senses the Lord through each uncertainty that Innocentius’ papacy raises.

That, and then he spots a familiar silhouette on the other side of the gardens, hastening through the Piazza Santa Marta.

Lawrence stops.

He should be hurrying to Aldo’s side, to his unbalanced hustle, rushing down the arcades in a scarlet-red swirl, he should come up at arm’s level and grab it, ask what’s wrong or smooth out the perpetual smart wrinkle on his forehead, come on, Innocentius will be starting his speech, it will be wonderful, I need to be there, he should slow his friend’s steps down and slowly hijack him from the closed door standing in his path, he should, he should but instead, he does this: he watches Aldo place a determined hand on the handle and within this gesture, where something triumphant shines through, the Dean finds confidence in distant relationship with the sin of pride.

And it screams danger, certainly, but also animation, judging by the spark that has been missing from his friend’s eyes for so long, and it seems cruel to snuff it out just when it has started to light back. Another voice in the chorus of his heart tells him to still and let go. He’d like to say this is a sign.

Lawrence, tired of intervening, watches Cardinal Bellini rush into the Casa Santa Marta and decides that he will not question the room he is aiming for.

He decides to trust, and not manage.

What Thomas Lawrence doesn’t know—and won’t ever, for that matter—is that at the exact moment he chooses to turn around to bask in Innocentius’ light on the balcony, Cardinal Bellini strides through the shadows of the guest house and blazes to his room. Cardinal Lawrence won’t know, either, how his friend brings himself to the lift with discretion, quickly pushing the button in the hope of not triggering a bomb. He will never witness the glint of his glasses lit by the artificial light on the ceiling, nor the flexing of his hand near his cassock, as if about to lift the mystery veil. The Dean of the Cardinal College will remain unaware of how the former Secretary of State enters the third-floor corridor, and the spirit in which he walks towards his own door.

Thomas Lawrence will never know, but will certainly entertain some doubt, about Goffredo Tedesco’s presence on the threshold.

“And here I thought you’d packed your bags. The defeated don’t like to linger in the arena.”

Aldo Bellini pats his pocket and takes out his key, feigning indifference but, frankly, quite annoyed by the sight.

The Patriarch of Venice manages to stand and lean like the tower of Pisa. His cape, in which he’s draped again, ready to leave and return to his city, bestows him the archaism and imposingness of a monument in all its regular angles. But, bent over his vape and tilting towards the room, the sturdiness of his foundations wavers. The usual glint of mischief in his eyes doesn’t succeed in smoothing out the tension that creeps on his jaw. He ends up occupying the space in front of Aldo’s in a half-turned, hunch-backed sort of way, like an obstacle refusing to behave like one.

And so he snickers.

“Then you should have been among the first scurrying out of the building, Eminenza.”

Bellini understands, again, that he’s facing a man angered to be there, but unable to land elsewhere. He’s come to know this attitude well, by dint of looking into the mirror.

“O che?” Tedesco takes another draw, but carefully avoids blowing it out on Aldo’s face. “Did you not want to rejoice in habemus papam with the crowd? Innocentius will certainly praise your liberal views to the world. Not to mention drafting speeches is your specialty. Surely we won’t live through another one of these.”

Bellini motions closer, unsheathed key in hand, and does not spare a single glance towards the Patriarch. He despises this man. He despises him and all he stands for and the ugly emotion they unfortunately share.

“Forget what I just said. I know you wouldn’t pack your bags—you have someone who does that for you.”

He slides past Tedesco’s right shoulder without a care, almost shoving it in the silent hope of toppling the tower. A strawberry-scented breath stretches along his nape.

“Che ipocrisia. Noi siamo Cardinali. We all have someone who does something for us.”

Not bothering to hold the door behind, Bellini scoffs and unlocks his suite.

Not that Tedesco would mind, of course. The man slithers in without an invitation. Somewhere, a mountain turns liquid smooth, erodes its own shape to fit into the gap, emerges on the other side, then puts its parts back together in a straightening of shoulders.

It’s careful, however, in closing the door on its former crater.

Bellini turns back and witnesses the last stage of the metamorphosis—Tedesco stretching his neck, drawing his vape away for a moment, parting his lips to let out a phosphoric breath. He watches the cloud disseminate in his room, prays that it does not imprint on the bed’s fabric, then catches the haughty look aimed at him and thinks, there is the most toxic weapon.

“You do realize,” Bellini stings and readjusts his glasses to make sure he’ll see the retaliation coming, “that there are people with healthy lungs cleaning those sheets.”

“Don’t lecture me about cleaning.” Tedesco takes a step, reluctantly. His vape waves around as if of its own spirit, gesturing to the room as a whole, almost asking why it ended up there. “As a man, you’re stained. You should have bent over in humility, but instead you can’t help putting your filthy hands on the walls and sully the name of our own institution.”

It’s a classic attack, one he’s heard for years by the conservative fringe, and he’s not the only one it has targeted. Sabbadin has been told numerous times to put his wrists under the sink and is no stranger to being cursed with a black spot. It’s a hollow, repetitive imagery, but Bellini can’t help it—anger brews inside, bubbles up until his finger points at the man like he did in the theater room.

“Stain? Sully? Oh, that’s funny. Ask me to picture dirt and all I see is your hate blotching the way. Is that why you’ve come all this way, Tedesco?”

“Ah, but I did not come first, see.” White teeth flash at him, seething irony. “What were you doing in front of my door earlier?”

Bellini wants to say, because you don’t just get to walk out after spreading such a hateful message, but his jaw clenches on the lie.

“Clearly, Eminenza, we have unfinished business here.” When Tedesco grins, the brash glint of his smile slits his pupils too. “Wouldn’t you agree? Something about thirst and craving, if I remember well.”

“Well. You mock my ambition. I think that’s the entire chimney calling the kettle black.”

The Patriarch frowns, distraught by the English saying, and furthermore by the caustic alternation that makes it impossible for him to grasp. A petty kind of satisfaction creeps up Bellini’s spine. He arches an eyebrow, takes the time to adjust his glasses, about to give a lecture.

“Also, what did you say? That I’m lapping at the pond? I wonder, really, what other kind of positions you picture me in. For a man who despises gay people, you sure like to talk at length about me bending over.”

Bellini says it out loud like any other jab he’s thrown at the man—incisive, unregarding of the consequences.

For the third time today, it doesn’t land how he expects it to.

Tedesco stills, struck dumb. The scarlet red of his cassock suddenly seeps through his face up to his ears, surging on his throat, digging his cheeks, and soaking his forehead. His face suffuses the color in a scowl. Amidst the screaming shade, his lips part in shock before he registers his own attitude, and the muscles of his mouth lock up like a bear trap. His eyes flash dangerously. He becomes the perfect icon of combustion.

Bellini waits for the shoe to drop—the screaming, the pointing, the hands.

And waits.

And waits.

When Tedesco’s bashful red turns darker, his heart misses a beat.

Jesus Christ.

Again?

Cardinal Bellini loses all lightness in his face, can’t find the strength in him to speak again. His eyes widen. His jaw goes slack. Curiosity seizes him by the throat.

He wonders, briefly, why he doesn’t forsake its chokehold.

“You… You are a vice,” Tedesco eventually hisses in what sounds like worry beneath the anger.

He creeps closer, hand clenched around his vape—not like a weapon but like a shield, Bellini understands, because he’s seen countless teens in confession doing the same with their crosses.

“You’ve put a black spot on me. You’ve exhaled soot. It sticks! And, however I scrub at it—you, Benitez, Pope Innocentius! It’s like coals. You all kindle at it.”

The space between them has been nullified. Bellini refuses to flinch, and watches the man lean towards him with an odd sense of authority. Smoke and fanaticism devour his face. It is the theater room outburst all over again: Tedesco shakes, overcome with passion, and does not control what comes tumbling out his mouth next.

“It shadows God’s calling on me.” His voice, low and obsessive, rides out a merciful smokeless breath to Aldo’s face. “This is what Dean Lawrence has been struggling with, and I won’t fall for it.”

First his heartbeat, now the missing reaches his lungs—Bellini feels his breath catch when Thomas’ presence materializes between them like a scarecrow. His whole body stiffens, effectively frightened, but Tedesco doesn’t care, having thrown out the sin in the open, sowing away the seeds he doesn’t want to see sprouting on him.

His gaze locks into Bellini’s to bring about order.

“It started with you. Quindi lo riprendete, Cardinale Bellini, qui e ora.” So you take it back, here and now.

But there’s a prayer, old and universal, shimmering in the far end of his dilated pupils.

Tedesco tilts his vape out, towards Bellini. The suite, in all its marble glory, fails to echo his whispering. It stifles on itself between them like a disease.

“It’s hunger, you say. Va bene. Come volete. You’ll learn I’ve grown accustomed to the lack of food. But, since you’ve so amiably suggested, I’ve chosen my meal. Nah, nothing to do with the so-called craving you think inhabits me. It’s modest, and I don’t waste. And don’t you worry, I have a good appetite.”

Tedesco’s gargoyle mouth twists. His gaze doesn’t hold Bellini’s anymore—it’s fallen on his lips, in a desperate attempt to kill the sight.

“Go on, take a hit. What you did in the gardens, this morning. Do it again. Take a hit and give it back. Let me watch you choke on it, cry, fail and crush my visions to dust. You’re used to destroying morals—provide me with the rubble, because I swear on the Holiness of these grounds, I am not leaving until it’s been wiped out into oblivion. Out with it! Thus you’ve said: si quis sitit, veniat ad me et bibat. So, after I’ve had my fill, I come to you then drink from you—to the uselessness you evoke me, to the indifference you bring me, and to the contempt I know you deserve.”

He talks so low, you have to lean into him to hear it. He talks so vibrantly, you hear the speech rumble in your chest. It’s the danger with Cardinal Tedesco—orality is his gift, and Bellini finds himself tipping forward, intoxicated with how he’s being blamed.

He pictures himself back in the gardens, next to Thomas, rewinds his thoughtless act to silence Tedesco with his own device then flashes forwards to how it backfires now, prompting the most urgent voice he’s ever heard. The languid tone, the frantic eyes, the desperate grasp for normality to get yourself out of queerness—he knows this. It’s begging disguised in an order.

But queerness comes with pride, and Bellini wants to indulge, too. He was a smoker once. His little trick from this morning showed he hasn’t fallen out of practice in inhaling and igniting, and the embers in the Patriarch’s eyes certainly back this up. He could shatter his mind; he could take this, do it again flawlessly, and build those visions back up and worse. The conclave has proven this, at least: his urge to prove Tedesco wrong constantly bests the menace of compromising himself.

The man leans in one last time, pressing the tip of his vape to his lips, and drawls.

“The papacy didn’t escape me—you drew it away, and breathed it out until it was out of my grasp.”

Bellini can win this, and above all, he can finally make sure Tedesco loses.

He scarcely represses a hiccup, snatches the vape out of Tedesco’s hands, and closes his lips around it. He takes a long draw under the Patriarch’s burning gaze, nonchalantly, looks down from behind his glasses as he raises his chin and the chemicals come washing on his tongue. He keeps the vapor in, down to his lungs, nostrils flaring. All the while he tries to sense if the metal piece tastes of the mouth that sucked on it before he did. Then he tilts it and, when the strawberry flavor tickles his throat, he confidently pulls the tip out. It makes a pop.

He exhales a long wisp, right to Tedesco’s face.

“Does it come back to you, then, your Beatitude?”

The mighty light in the Patriarch’s eyes goes out like a power cut.

“Or, maybe,” Bellini mocks in the fumes, taking another hit and ignoring the sickly-sweet taste on his tongue, voice overloaded with anticipation, “you haven’t had your filling yet? Dear me. I fear you’ll find-”

“Shut up.” Tedesco’s tone is a fuse about to blow. The gears of the generator are breaking down, his current flickers, and a dangerous spark is fueling the rest of his machine. “Ma, ma state zitto-”

It’s the smoke, maybe, but Bellini blows on the tip again, drinks himself to power, has to acknowledge his fellow Cardinal wasn’t wrong, that he does know thirst a little too well, and welcomes satiety by already looking forward to the moment the tank empties out and has to be filled up again. This is how one gets addicted to this. Another cloud, and he might keep the damned device to himself.

Bellini parts his lips for a bitter sneer, but the laugh never comes out.

It’s gargled in mute shock when the Patriarch seizes him by the collar, strangling the fabric of his cassock like murder, and pulls him close with the strength of a vice around his silver cross. Tedesco tilts his head to the side, lowers his lips so close they graze his own, then purposefully misses at the last second. In that unfinished act, he annihilates decades of repression and sets off his fire to Bellini’s hills; the former Secretary of State is flamed at his loins, angles himself back to catch up, but the mouth he seeks lands on his jawline, spreads lower until it reaches his throat, and kisses him there, in fury and reverence.

“Holy-”

The gasp that escapes him is never ending. Bellini shuts his eyes and instinctively folds his free arm over the red cape, scratching the fabric despite it already bleeding red, and flails the vape upward with the other. He clutches it hard, sketches white over their heads like incense. The worst thing to ever happen to him is when he arches his back to stay on his feet and Tedesco thrusts forward, making his hardness known.

Bellini wonders if he’s become a placeholder for the vape when the mouth on his neck starts sucking, then waits—hopes—for the teeth to sink in. But Tedesco only bruises his own lips on him. He’s being kissed hard, like a toy, then a groan.

“Don’t drop it, Eminenza, or I break you in half.”

The rumble against his throat nearly causes Bellini to faint.

One hand slithers down his waist, low then lower. Of course, a groper, but Bellini’s contempt is cut short when the palm on his ass keeps sliding down and forces him to lift a leg, obliterating his balance. He smothers a yelp, ruthlessly pulled forward by the knee. They interlock like two unfit pieces of a puzzle forced together.

“I bet you think of the Dean like this,” Tedesco mocks as he stops kissing, scraping his nose against Bellini’s throat up to his cheek. He presses there, mouth hauntingly close, within a head-spin’s reach. His beard itches. His glasses are in the way. A petty and urgent laugh shakes his shoulders.

To survive his fall, Bellini runs his fingers up Tedesco’s nape and grabs a fistful of silver hair.

“You must be pitiful, now that he’s looking at Benitez like a moon at its plan- oh Cristo-”

The moan Tedesco lets out when Bellini pulls is shivery, and downright miserable. He pants like a wounded man feeling the gunshot too late. Their glasses clink together in an awkward toast, like the original deal—a drink, plain and simple, shared. Bellini hasn’t even raised the chalice to his lips yet.

The hand on the underside of his leg squeezes, and the one grabbing his collar tugs. “I, I bet- I bet you’ve sullied your lips with his name countless nights, you degenerato-”

“You sure have thought about it, haven’t you.”

Bellini’s voice is cold and scornful. There was a time when there was truth in this accusation. He’s not confessing this to the man.

He twists Tedesco’s head away by his hair, glaring, and faces half-lidded eyes with a monstrous flame inside.

“There’s a bed in this room. Use it.”

Lord, he doesn’t know where his might comes from, but hearing Tedesco sigh when he orders him around must rank in the top ten moments of his life.

“Always the fierceful little thing,” he hears, with disgust lurking beneath the mocking tenderness.

Tedesco complies nonetheless.

The hand on his leg slides up again, paws at his ass with no shame like it’s judging the ripeness of a fruit on the market. Bellini tsks, but can’t help his moan when he’s pulled flush against the Patriarch’s body, rocking itself into him. His knees are shaking. He thinks it’s not long before they give way.

Tedesco grabs him by the hips with both hands then, and Bellini entertains the dangerous thought of them clasping all around his waist like a chastity vow, despite the fingers that start untying his fascia, curling in between the cassock and the sash. The Patriarch doesn’t care for the overflowing white rochet nor the tiny mozzetta sitting on his shoulders—he strikes at hunger’s heart, deftly undoes the knot, and even though Bellini should be able to breathe more easily, his breath is cut short when he feels the fabric sliding down his clothes to pool at his feet.

Then he’s dragged along, around the frame, his stork weight swallowed by the chimney. Tedesco walks back until his calves hit the edge and refuses to face the mattress in a prodigious fit of denial; he places himself right between Bellini and his bed, crafting the symbol all by himself. He’s attacking his fellow Cardinal’s cassock now, from the bottom up, undoing each button with a greed that casts doubt on the premeditation of his desire. Is this the first time, Bellini vainly wonders, that Tedesco has been possessed by the urge of ruining him like this? The Patriarch comes at him like a plate of food—holding him in place with one hand, and devouring him with another.

A hand slips in between the folds of his cassock and slides up his naked thighs, prompting a startle in Bellini’s heart. Tedesco starts fondling him through his underwear, impatiently feeling at his length, fingers tracing the outline of his cock straining against his boxers in a satisfied grunt. At the same time, he undoes the last buttons under the rochet. He leaves the former Secretary of State with all his flaps opened, properly indecent.

“Your waist, it’s so tiny,” the Patriarch mumbles, fanatic-like. “Your whole body is frail. One squeeze and you’ll fall apart. How do you even bend?”

Bellini bites down on his tongue, too focused on getting rid of the damn cape that is one layer ahead of him, and too distracted by the hand that feels him just right, thumb slowly circling the head of his cock in a damp patch. He starts unbuttoning the cape singlehandedly, takes another unsteady drag and blows it out without an aim, curious about what happens when one doesn’t use the device as a nuisance.

In return, greedy fingers rush to his mozzetta. With the clumsiness of a kid and the privilege of a king, Tedesco hungrily sheds him of his cardinal color and discards the garment on the floor with no concern for the symbol he’s knocking down—then Bellini stands in half-opened, loosened clothes, slim figure all the more so stark against the sturdy mass of red he still has to unravel. For better or worse, he still bears his cross around his neck, wildly tossed around in the crumpled folds of his rochet.

He smoothes out the man’s collar, slithering a hand up to his nape again.

“And as sturdy as you look, Patriarch, here you are. Pliant.”

Bellini pulls at the fistful of hair he’s grabbed again, and reaps the glorious sight of Tedesco’s eyes rolling hard back in his skull, whimpering. Bellini hates that he thinks of going down on his knees at the sound.

Then he witnesses Tedesco sitting down on the bed before him, looking up obediently, and feels his heart stop in indecency.

His hand slides up, ruffling the Patriarch’s zucchetto, barely knocking it over; Bellini shakes so badly he nearly drops the vape, which he hurriedly brings to his lips to take a hit on. The taste is horrible, but it gives him something to suck on, and he understands Tedesco’s addiction all over again. He blows it all down on the man, enjoys the shiver he inflicts them both. The Patriarch’s cape has fallen behind him, like a carpet you stomp on.

It’s when Tedesco spreads his legs to haul him between them that he senses the mutual trap. His waist is grabbed again, possessive hands sliding up and down his ass and the small of his back as if to unravel the mystery of his girth, and Bellini feels briefly indignant about Tedesco seizing the initiative of closing his thighs around him first. He purges his exasperation by jerking the man’s head backward, earning a crooked smile and a tug at his underwear.

“Show me how small you are down there,” Tedesco teases as he fiddles with the waistband without looking at it, an attitude that sows fire on Bellini’s cheeks.

He wants the man’s back flattened on the mattress.

He wants to put constant panic in his lazy, half-opened eyes, he wants to force sinful sounds out of his nasty mouth, he wants to drag Tedesco down in the mud he thinks Bellini’s lot are living in and spill a never washable stain, he wants to stigmatize him, he wants to prove him wrong and weak in the most magnificent of ways, he wants to cast doubt.

Certainty kills their faith, Thomas said—he’s sure he can cause a crack in Tedesco’s façade.

He pushes his knee forward, right in between the Patriarch’s legs.

“Oh Dio mio-”

Bellini fights the cheeky urge to ask, Something wrong, your Eminence? and busies himself with the buttons he’s almost through with. Christ, the size of this chest.

Tedesco stutters like a broken coffee machine, tugging at Bellini’s waistband then resting his forehead on an imaginary belt to chase the cold of its buckle.

“Is- is that all you can give?” His strangled laugh barely conceals the fear in his voice. “A leg, like for a dog humping?”

Bellini ignores the question, and presses further down.

“Yes yes, keep on undressing me. That’s all you’re ever good at—stripping people down to shame, a-and- oh, cazzo.”

There is a special kind of satisfaction that comes with shutting Cardinal Tedesco up.

The man tilts forward. He mumbles swear words, turns his face to the side, yields and suddenly buries his cheek in the red and white folds of Bellini’s opened cassock. He squashes his nose, bends the frame of his glasses and mouths against Bellini’s bulge in panting breaths, desperate to feel its hardness, but refuses to fully take what he’s longing for. He tries suppressing the rage and the lust a bit more, as he’s been taught to.

Ashamed, ashamed. We should all be ashamed. The Patriarch was counting himself in.

Bellini, sensing he’s being clung to like an idol, wills himself to ignore it lest he finishes right there. He undoes the final, collar button, and feverishly tosses Tedesco’s mozzetta far ahead. He takes care of not getting rid of the cross, too. Half the bed is now covered in fabric blood.

The white rochet he meets underneath is laughable. Of course, Bellini thinks and agrees with himself, such a glow only fits Innocentius. It is right to dispose of it. Ample sleeves spill on Tedesco’s arm in a fluent motion, enlarging his already strong build, and the suppleness of the fabric makes him look too ethereal. White is not a color fit for this man—he can claim his vaporous, shifty greyish curls of smoke and the broken pieces of dusted white on his shoulders, but never the solid light. It’s simply wrong. He fixes that.

Then he faces the scarlet of the cassock, in all its 33 buttons. Bellini undoes each year from the age of Christ and feels the mouth on him starting to kiss through the fabric. He groans, helpless, yanks a bit of hair to pull Tedesco away, hears a mocking laugh soon followed by a gaping sob. Bellini pulls at his sleeves, his shoulders. He didn’t have to do this with the previous clothes—but he wills the Patriarch’s muscles to roll under his touch, fold their angles and reshape.

The metamorphosis, he’s making it happen now.

Bellini wishes he could say Tedesco looks bad in black—that the humbleness of the color doesn’t fit, that the Roman collar is too strict, too docile. But contrary to him, the man doesn’t sport the usual cleric shirt: he’s dressed in a white shirt with rolled up sleeves, tucked in his blue jeans, and it complies with Bellini’s self-imposed white prohibition: the color is starting to turn see-through due to the sweaty skin underneath. It hugs Tedesco’s shape too close, suggests the laughable idea of averageness, clasps his broad chest and shoulders in patches that conceal the brutishness of his character. Even the glasses give off a ridiculous amount of style and subtlety. He could pass off as a teacher, philosophy major. The watch on his wrist, too, is a hypocrite. It’s the antithesis of all the progress its owner ever stood against. Only the golden cross left resting on his lungs, with its four rubies glinting with pride, echoes how the Patriarch is silence’s worst enemy.

Red, in all its flamboyance, was a definitely better suit: in undressing him, Bellini meets the danger of disclosing a simple man. He fears the color of his flesh, too human, then reminds himself he just has to make it blush scarlet.

“There are layers left, Eminenza,” he asserts.

“Ma, don’t you know how to get rid of them?” Tedesco barks, voice muffled.

“I’m not talking about yours.”

The shudder that starts in Tedesco’s body and ends against his own would have caused Bellini to fall over. Thankfully he’s being gripped with a thousand hands force; the Patriarch moans into him once more, and Bellini is pretty sure he’s mumbling a slur.

“You think,” Tedesco angrily snaps, “you think you’re so smart-”

He springs to life, pulls him away by the hips and looks up. Bellini nearly loses ten years of his life when he witnesses Tedesco and his ragged hair falling all over his face, the tip of his messy curls brushing his glistening forehead, the flush soaking his cheeks, his slipping zucchetto and misplaced collar; the Patriarch of Venice sits demolished, asking for more. He singlehandedly takes down Bellini’s underwear then snaps his legs open, using his free arm to circle his back and bring him to his lap.

“Siediti,” Tedesco instructs. Sit.

And Bellini, despite being thoroughly manhandled, can’t help but think: he’s obeying.

The whine he lets out is one he’s only ever heard in the dark.

“I could ruin you in your cassock.” Tedesco seethes like a beast, sitting Bellini on his right thigh, and starts fondling him like it’s his God-given right. “I bet you’d like it, eh? That’s the kind of things you sodomites like. Yes, I know. I know you’d like it. Hear yourself.”

His hands are rough and wide and inconsiderate. They hurry and rush at Bellini, knowing their touch inevitably destroys him more with each stroke and enjoying the slow progress towards his helplessness. The former Secretary of State writhes, gasps, he’s been electrified—his whole being, already tense on a daily basis, turns into a bundle of nerves at the mercy of the Patriarch’s teasing fingers, enjoying the power surge. He haphazardly plasters his hand on the side of the Tedesco’s head, who is leaning against his shoulder and endlessly sizzing out fantasies.

“I’d stain it, and you’d be unable to wash it. I bet you’d revel in wearing it to mass. You’d think of my hands on you, così. I bet you-”

Bellini, not trusting himself to hear more, promptly shoves the vape pen into Tedesco’s open mouth.

Compliantly closing his lips, the Patriarch nearly chokes in surprise when he reflexively inhales—smoke comes out of his flared nostrils and ears like a cartoon, but his widened eyes soften a bit, soothed by the nicotine hit. The transfixion lasts mere seconds, after which he aims a furious glare at the cardinal on his lap.

Bellini pants and try to deepen his voice with sternness as much as he can.

“You’ll have a lot to say during your next confession.”

The hand between his legs has stopped stroking him. It’s a tragedy.

Tedesco swiftly brings it up to pull the mouthpiece out.

“Confession,” he drawls, the word almost a foreign construct, “e a chi?”

Bellini gives out a weak, mocking smile in between his shaky breaths.

“Pope Innocentius.”

He should be ashamed, truly, of invoking His Holiness’ name, currently learned worldwide and still infusing within their reality. There’s also the reward of seeing Tedesco’s face colors, his brown knitted in disgust, then subtly rearranged into consideration, and eventually mortified after he’s enjoyed the picture.

Bellini takes advantage of Tedesco’s stupor and grabs his hand to guide the pen to his mouth. He’s well aware of the incandescent gaze he draws upon his lips when he inhales.

“He’s the only one who could forgive this,” he explains calmly, nodding towards the space that sits between them and insisting a little more on Tedesco’s side.

He takes his time to exhale, aiming down this time. Tedesco, entranced by the scent, parts his lips then sucks in his breath.

Catching up with the white line he’s cast, Bellini leans in, and meets him halfway.

At first it’s almost unsettling, how their two mouths interlock just to let the air pass through, but then he feels sucked in a groan, and tasted by a tongue so eager to chase off its drug it licks at his teeth. Tedesco pulls away for a second and mutters an angry, Italian no, betrayed by his own desire, before he yields and comes back full force, angling his jaw better. He’s thrilled by the moans that get lost inside as he pushes Bellini flush against him, and disentangles his hand from the vape to catch his silver cross dangling between them. Bellini feels the leg he’s sitting on tiptoeing upward. A show of strength that, at their age, inspires dizziness.

They’re knocking the frame of their glasses together, and Tedesco pulls apart to whisper maniacally.

“You know what Innocentius told me? That he longed for my counsel.”

He presses his crooked nose against Bellini’s cheek then smells it, in a deep, muffled breath, one that tries to catch human skin through all five senses. His voice borders on a frightened snicker.

“He said-”

He’s roughly kissing at Bellini’s face, used to being quickly fed: Tedesco skims his lips on him, presses down but never dwells—as if to stop his unbridled mouth from running.

“-that he wanted to hear me.”

Then he reaches Bellini’s ear, tantalizingly.

“And He said-”

He hiccups then, putting on a fake, all-soothing voice.

“I hope you keep on talking, your Beatitude, for it is silence that divides us.”

Tedesco nibbles at the flesh there, possessed with a fright that sends a shiver down Bellini’s spine. The Patriarch impersonating their new Pope is a jealousy that can’t be lost on him, but it is suddenly overshadowed by the hand that leashes him harder by his cross. Bellini flinches, devastated, and is forced to bend down.

He hears Tedesco carry on with his diligent quoting, like a possessed preacher.

“I hope you keep on telling us, with your whole heart, the worries that cloud your judgement.”

Oh, this is horrible.

This is horrible and so, so merciful.

Tedesco doubles down on his quote, guiding Bellini over him as he lays back on the bed, fierceful, exhausted, and burdened with too much faith.

“ ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’ ”

Bellini immediately identifies what Innocentius has referred to, and he thinks of Thomas. He thinks of Thomas as he straddles Tedesco, as he witnesses his furious and terrified eyes and misplaced glasses and panting breath, as he sees the Patriarch of Venice unable to stop himself from disclosing the softest violence their new Pope could have offered him, John 1:1.

And, finally, as Tedesco props himself against the pillows and starts undoing his own pants, fingers shaking so much he accepts Bellini’s help without protesting, least breathtaking miracle of the day, the end of Innocentius’ quote rings out in the room like a sermon.

“I hope you keep on talking, so that I can answer.”

What a glorious thing to say to Cardinal Tedesco.

Innocentius is bold, but then again, so was Benitez. Bellini acknowledges the reverence of his answer in a nod. It’s not that he’s tougher—he seems made from a whole other kind of timber.

Exhausted by his recital, Tedesco looks like he’s on the verge of a coma. He gets rid of his jeans and loafers in a hurry, face so red it’s become hard to spot if shame, anger or lust fuels most of it. Bellini lifts himself out of the way and barely listens to the rest of his monologue—he becomes too self-absorbed in the naked thighs he’s flanking, as large as trunks, and the big bulge poking from under the Patriarch’s black boxers.

He drags those down and away without asking, tries not to look at first. Bellini would like to say a life devoted to the Church taught him to put his needs after others, that he excels in this, so much he hasn’t dared to picture a friend’s body on top of his own for years now, and he wouldn’t dwell on the fact that his will rarely equals his thinking, that his strenght often fails his convictions, and that his fate is too small for his wishes. So his gaze is drawn, madly, to the soft skin-on-skin slap Tedesco’s cock makes when it bouces against his stomach. It's large, like the rest of him. A few drops are beading at the tip, begging to trickle down his shaft. Bellini resists the tantalizing touch and tells himself he’s fueling his discipline.

“Then he smiled,” Tedesco rambles on in a frenzy, not caring about how Bellini parts his legs to settle in between. An incredulous and bitter laugh bites his face down. “He smiled and- giuro davanti a Dio, I knew he meant it. Eh! When I kissed his ring-” On that word Bellini bends, grabs his hand, lovingly brings his ring finger to his lips, and he lets out a whimper. “-w-when he had me on my knees, he brought me up and- and for a moment I thought he would embrace me.”

His voice breaks on the last word.

Bellini, still kissing the golden episcopal ring, looks down and raises an eyebrow. Tedesco looks back.

A new shade of crimson flares up his face.

“He said all that to me when we went and greeted him, one by one. Ah! He said all that,” he repeats with a tinge of contempt and hard-admitted admiration, as Bellini rids him of his shirt like he’s putting him to sleep, fed up with undoing buttons, “even though he won. He could have just shaken my hand, see. But no-”

He’s cut short while his head gets through the collar, emerging on the other side with his hair so disheveled Bellini thinks he might just hit him square in the jaw. Instead he reaches out and takes off the twisted frame of the man’s glasses, then his own, which he sets on the bedside table.

“-Innocentius wants my counsel. He should have lied to my face, or said nothing at all.”

Bellini leans back in, just as Tedesco points a wobbly finger to his face, scowling.

“So I’m not confessing this to him, Eminenza Bellini. This is your dirtiness—lavatemi.”

“The way you just listen to yourself talk is remarkable.”

Tedesco blinks, owlishly. Unglassed, he loses his panache, and looks oddly exposed.

Bellini grants him two seconds before he hooks the man’s legs to his waist, folding them in half, and bends forward with a fire of his own in his mouth. He lets his hands run up the fat thighs encircling him, pets his counterpart’s hairy chest, fascinated; he grasps all the rigid angles of his girth, right to where the weakness hides, then imprisons his chin, eager for victory.

Tedesco is built like a mountain. He’s shaken as if after an avalanche. His breath catches under the weight that has just fallen on him, but he puts up with it: you can tell by the way he reflexively crosses his ankles behind Bellini’s back and breathes out a sigh.

“You’ll think of my hands on you, così,” Bellini warns, waiting for the thrust, quite unbelieving of his own impudence. He flattens the Patriarch’s hard cock under his belly, feels it twitch and finally dampen his skin, gorged with lust. It nearly kills his patience. “Bene?”

Holy Father, the look he’s being given.

Two sharp points of pressure hit the small of his back. Bellini stumbles forward, awkwardly plants his elbows on the sheets, and Tedesco locks his arms around his neck in a vicious grip.

“Presto”, the Patriarch whispers, and despite his short cut nails he succeeds in leaving a scratch right between his shoulderblades. “Presto, put it in, let’s hear you a little-”

Wrath, lust and pride claw at each other’s throats in the sinful mix that crafts Bellini’s voice. “Ti piaceresti, no?”

“It will barely tickle.” Tedesco arches his back like a bridge. He curses and gropes through the nicely smoothed out sheets they’re about to ruin for some support, impatiently tugs at Bellini’s white rochet falling over their joined bodies like a shroud. “Will barely- o-oh-”

Bellini pulls the Patriarch’s head back by his hair, reveling in the perfect O-shape of his mouth and the way his eyelids droop halfway down. Like this, he looks bearable, and so he slips his fingers past his wetted lips to top off the sight.

The habit of vaping, surely—Tedesco closes his eyes and sucks on immediately, going so far as to snag Bellini’s wrist to manage the thrusting motion himself. He dedicates himself to it, lazily focused, by producing sounds like it’s a speech he’s giving to salvage votes. When he pulls Bellini’s fingers out, he barely manages to lift one sore eyelid. A trickle of saliva stretches from his ruined mouth and breaks over his chin. Some of it catches in his beard—Eminenza, he calls out in a daze, and Bellini knows he’s making a mess on his stomach, the sight absolutely inevitable.

He tries to sit up, is stopped by Tedesco’s iron grip on his shoulders, whines. The stiffness of his cock sliding along the Patriarch’s puts lust to shame and curses him with a thousand more visions he helplessly blocks out. The man below him scoffs in delight. It’s hateful.

“You can be louder than that,” Tedesco prompts. “Mewl.”

And Lord Above, Aldo Bellini does just that.

He rocks against Tedesco in despair, jerks himself off with the motion and precome pooling in between their bodies. It makes the gliding easier and noisy, unforgettable and thus hard to repent, Bellini reckons—it’s impossible to focus on anything other than the sting in his loins, the rustling of his robes caught in the folds of their skins, the excruciatingly attractive risk of a stain. He turns into a red and white moth, mating on its chrysalid. He’s lost his zucchetto and thrown Tedesco’s away when pulling at his hair.

Each thrust lits Bellini on fire—he mutters a name, in spite of himself, manages to swap out the first that comes to his mind for a secret one that can pass for a prayer. John.

Tedesco pretends to kiss him on the mouth, misses a bit, and the willingness of it would cast madness on the sanest man on Earth.

“Put it in,” he orders again, urgently, but Bellini is pretty sure he knows begging when he hears it. “Cazzo, put it in-”

He squeezes him with his legs, under the folds, and Bellini has the lustful misfortune of thinking it may leave bruises.

His hand wriggles down their flushed bodies, twists up against Tedesco bearing down on him, and reaps success this time. As he positions himself and sits up, Bellini thinks he’s looking down on a clatter of wood, spread out and undone. He brushes past the Patriarch’s happy trail, reaches a sparse mass of silver hairs and the bobbing head of a cock he wipes with a thumb. He gives it a long stroke, obssessed with the fat drops leaking out of the slit each time he presses up, running down his hand, wetting it more.

“Ma, presto put it in-”

The more Tedesco urges him on, the more he plants horrible future memories in Bellini’s head. Then there’s a sob, his calves flex and his toes curl—at the first glide of a finger, Bellini closes his eyes to ground himself for a second. He doesn’t wait long until he prods at the man again, gliding in almost immediately.

It’s too easy.

Gobsmacked, Bellini barely catches himself before thinking, and therefore asking God, if Tedesco has come prepared for this.

His surprise must show on his face, because Tedesco’s wary frown perfects the fierce blush that bursts on his cheeks.

“What?”

“Pliant,” Bellini sighs, in what he’d like to say is mockery first and admiration second, but merely betrays silent wonder.

He starts fingering the Patriarch until he writhes on the bed and holds on for dear life at the sheets, eyes screwed shut in pleasure, mouth opened wide. Tedesco tries to speak, and fails, and sighs. Pleasure overwhelms him like the tide. His frantic stare opens then, searches for something to cling to; in his perdition, he clutches at the cross on his bare chest and secures the golden symbol with a handful of his left breast, gaze locking onto Bellini thrusting into him like a fever.

There is so much flesh on him.

“Oh, oh Cristo Cristo-”

Bellini catches himself muttering God, God, God, too. He catches himself whimpering like a kicked dog, then pulls out his fingers and thrusts in with faith, the one that plagues him into believing he can hold the race in the long run.

From the legs clasped hard around his waist, Bellini knows he will be unable to pass this off as a dream once his skin bruises red in the morning. Tedesco heaves loudly through his nostrils, as if pushing weight, and nearly rips his cross off of its red and gold cord. His hands jump up, shaking, inhabited by the need of motioning around. Bellini brings them to his shoulders and lets himself be pulled down.

Tedesco’s kiss is inhumane, or wants to be so. Bellini is greeted with a mouth so violent it nearly bites his lower lip off. A furious tongue explores him in a moan, devouring strawberry poison and iron molecules. Bellini feels picked apart, entire pieces of him scattered around like the shatters of stained glass in the Sistine Chapel, rebuilt on the Patriarch’s shaking grounds. He sees a weak man choked out in his fist, he feels powerful, he feels vindicated, he feels terrified—how does one do that to a fellow brother? He gets close to the definitive truth of Cain, the detestable love that lives in the stone you cast. He rests an almost comforting hand over Tedesco’s cheek, expecting a tear he doesn’t feel, cradles it as he looks into a malleable aghast gaze, slides up and tugs at Tedesco’s hair, slightly, in gentle reminder of the hope he has of ripping his head off his neck.

The mattress creaks. Bellini struggles to forget the fact that it is perhaps the first time this bed in the Casa Santa Marta is used like this.

His cock throbs when he hears Innocentius’ name be called.

“Ah,” Tedesco exhales when they part. He takes each thrust in muffled grunts, canting up his hips to deepen the motion, and their lips touch every time Bellini pushes down. It doubles the smacking sounds. “Hear how loud you are, Eminenza. Hear how- Oh please. Please, please do that again. Oh, God.”

He's cracking in half, like a rock. He doesn’t find the strenght to be tense anymore and relaxes in scowl, head lolling back like he’s been fighting against and waiting for it all his life.

Bellini feels himself growing erratic, the end nearing so fast at their age. He thinks he should ask, still, but-

“Inside, inside. Mi lasci venire a voi e bere.”

Let me come to you and drink.

Bellini knows he will never confess to hearing this anywhere.

He fumbles for the Patriarch’s jutting cock, softly slapping against his stomach each time he bottoms out. He watches as it spits some of its spill on the rolling flesh, the trail breaking rhythmically, before he gives it a loving stroke, careful to tease at the slit he now knows is so sensitive. Tedesco makes the most beautiful sound on Earth—that of a man forgetting how to speak, and swearing in Italian. He reaches his end in a cry, all over Bellini’s hand.

Bellini intuitively smears the dirty mark all across his ribcage—he leaves his stain, sullies, there is his stigmata—and presses down on Tedesco’s lungs just to feel the strength of the muscles pushing up against him. He uses his leverage to better fill the man, brain short-circuited by the sight of sticky white on chest hair. Here comes the paradox: in every room shutters are finally letting in the sun, and nobody will ever see what happens here. The vision is his to take. The Patriarch of Venice stares glassy-eyed at the ceiling, covered in his own mess and wrecked in the afterglow.

Beatific.

Then the former Secretary of State collapses in a yelp, numbness sweeping him like a scythe, and feels the rumble of the Patriarch’s sensitive whines reverberate through his own body. Heels dig into his back, forbidding him from slipping out. Semen trickles down his thighs when he tries readjusting himself, prompting a mutual shiver.

“Bibi,” Tedesco rasps in a hoarse voice. I drank.

A lopsided smile tugs at his swollen lips, but his eyes fill with dread.

His whole architecture is ruined.

Moaning, Bellini feels him folding further in half, forcing another lazy thrust that sends him seeing stars. He starts complaining, “Go-”, but before he can finish, he mixes up the syllables and retains only the first. Realizing he almost swapped Goffredo’s name for God’s, Bellini scrambles for forgiveness in a prayer, the tenderness of his own voice putting him off.

His call is unanswered, fortunately. Tedesco grunts, then rakes his nails up his shoulderblades to hook his trembling fingers there—they slipped as their rocking reached the pinnacle. He pulls down. He does not want this to end, Bellini realizes. Because the end brings forth realization. Because realization means clarity. It means light shining through. It means that Someone has watched.

It’s no surprise, then, that Tedesco ends up saying, “Where is it.”

Bellini huffs, trying to recover from the firmament he’s just seen. Annoyance floods his tongue reassuringly.

“Let me sit up.”

“Try. I find it entertaining,” the Patriarch drawls with a funny glint in his slurred eyes. He clenches his legs harder. Bellini huffs, sent forward again. “Sì, così.”

His cheek rubs against Tedesco’s beard, snagging its Cologne. The man is all smells; vaporous scents, heady perfumes and intangible will. It seems out of scope to be able to lay yourself flat against his heavy body, to collide with its solid size and mass. But rub up long enough against it and you meet a soft, supple frame that gives in.

Still sheathed inside, Bellini limply rolls his hips, and grins when he hears the distraught gasp against his ear.

“Like that, Eminenza?”

He rocks harder, in spite of the soreness.

“Sì,” An urgent and aroused sigh confesses to him.

Had they been forty years younger, such an answer would have prompted a second round immediately.

But for all his arrogance and arousal, Tedesco can’t fight against his age; he finally unwinds his legs, having a hard time suppressing the hitch in his breath at the emptiness while Bellini slips out in a soft gasp and a wet sound. His hands feebly slide away, resting on Aldo’s sides, squeezing a little. The Patriarch’s obsession with their difference in width didn’t die out.

With another man, with another name, with Thomas, Bellini would have taken the chance to rest there on the chest offered. Instead he sits up, pats at his ruined clothes, scans the crumpled bed sheets and eventually spots the vape in the middle. He reaches out. Tedesco’s gaze suddenly lights.

He takes a drag, encrusts his lungs with a vile taste, and he exhales it all on the man below.

For a while, Cardinal Bellini merely smokes on top of Cardinal Tedesco, and he wonders if there’s a sanctified picture to be taken there, him in his ruined robes, and the Patriarch ogling him like he’s a feast to be eaten out. Painted, perhaps. He breathes in the vice calmly then he hands over the vape, merciful.

“Quenched?”

Tedesco’s extended hand, which was closing around the device, stills. The question strikes it like an arrow, pierces the flesh, nails a fresh wound at the wrist. It’s unusual for Bellini to draw blood on the first round.

“No,” Tedesco utters in a lost voice.

It seems to come from very far in his knotted throat. The cloud in his eyes is starting to lift, and there settles the devastating light of understanding. Inevitably, hatred rears its ugly head.

Bellini knows it’s, in part, self-oriented.

“No.” Tedesco realizes again, taking a long drag before he exhales it to Bellini’s face, too.

He doesn’t have to be told the hunger will never leave. The moment will outlive the place where it has happened—will stick, like soot, like coal. Inevitably running the risk of being ignited again. Talking about it would rouse the flames, and they know better than temptation.

“And you?”

Bellini snorts, almost caught off guard, and stops himself from smashing Tedesco’s chest to pieces with his fist, spreads his hands out flat instead, pushes down. He grazes the golden cross with his fingertips, and makes it clink.

The question is oddly vulnerable, tenderly exposed. Bellini refuses to answer, knowing the jaw only opens wide to better snap its teeth shut.

“Ah, the shame.” Tedesco mocks. The goosebumps on him betray his fright. “It’s liquid in your system.”

There’s something awful about not getting closure—so Bellini stays silent, and watches the Patriarch’s brow furrow when his jab doesn’t spark another. He keeps on touching the chest offered, absent-mindedly kneading his lungs, stomach and kidneys, in small up and down motions that aren’t too dissimilar from those that took place minutes earlier.

Bellini knows he’s indulging—he’s charting a territory there, mapping the weakest points of his adversary, and at the same time he’s feeling up the broad build of his frame and speech, Don’t drop it, Eminenza, or I break you in half. He could. Tedesco could take him from behind, bend him over until he snaps like a branch.

He blinks the gluttonous thought away, shivering.

Tedesco calls out when he hears only silence.

“Careful, Eminenza, it leaks through you.”

“Stop thinking about Innocentius.”

Bellini’s hands graze the underside of Tedesco’s thighs, resting there and slowly pressing into the tender flesh. The Patriarch, gagged, can’t will away the fearful shadow that storms his face.

“It’s loud,” Bellini adds, unmerciful.

A hand shoots out, then yanks the cross around his neck by the cord; Bellini weighs on Tedesco’s chest to resist being pulled down, and their little game of push and pull lasts for five seconds until the Patriarch releases his grip, without letting go. He keeps his fingers curled around the cord and, vaping, he looks like he’s leashed rather than leashing.

Tedesco always grabs for the cross when doubting, and this must be why he grips it so tight when he speaks.

“Va bene. As if your thoughts weren’t louder.”

“But that’s all there is to it. Thoughts.”

Bellini casts a pointed look on them.

They’ve grabbed at each other in the hope of meeting an outline that isn’t theirs and, in the wake of this impossible task, are left with the remnants of the pile-up—the smoldering lust underneath that threatens to roar again at the slightest glance, hand tremor, or word twist. Tedesco lost something in him, and will forever try to fish it out. It should be a cruel win. Except Bellini has never been a winner, not by a paradigmatic landslide. He’s already cursed with next-time thoughts: robes hitched upwards, hateful jabs, urgent needs and hot hands on his waist.

And, out of mockery, perhaps, because he’s heard Bellini moan the name during the sin and he finds it laughable, or because he understood from which shadow it seeped from, given as he, too, prayed to a man he’s now forbidden to touch, Tedesco stares at him through the fumes with a sour smile on his crooked face, and a deliberate quote on his lips.

“And every man went unto his own house.”

John 7:53.