Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He rarely dreams, anymore.

Instead, Thomas lies awake for hours. He doesn’t move, doesn’t shift, just stares at the ceiling while the darkness around him thins to grey. His alarm finally , mercifully, goes off at six.

The shower is lukewarm—anything hotter feels like indulgence. He allows himself exactly three minutes before stepping out. Toweling off, he avoids the mirror, but eventually he must look. While brushing his teeth, a stranger meets his gaze: deeply lined face, heavy-lidded eyes, and that familiar, unbecoming frown that he long ago gave up trying to correct.

He attempts a smile. It flickers at the corner of his mouth, quickly devolving into a grimace.

Pain blooms behind his eyes in a dozen pulsing pin-pricks, a telltale sign of an encroaching migraine. Or maybe it’s a brain tumor. A hemorrhage. He pushes the thought away. It returns anyway, twice as loud.

The old grandfather clock ticks too loudly in the silence of his quarters—accusatory, a metronome for the damned. Tick, tick, tick. Each beat a reprimand for his sluggishness, his lack of faith, his inability to start the day like a good man ought to.

He drinks two cups of coffee before leaving his small apartment in the Casa Santa Marta, briefcase in hand. The halls outside are chilled, clinical. Not dead, exactly, but suspended in a strange, sterile hush. They remind him more of a hospital than a place anyone might willingly call home. Thomas walks quickly despite the stiffness in his knees. His footsteps echo throughout the corridor in a dogged count of three.

In the courtyards, mist clings to the stones, wreathing statues and curling around the base of buildings like incense. Thomas pulls his coat tighter. His breath puffs visibly. Somewhere nearby, bells begin to peal—not the grand klaxon call of Mass, but the domestic ones: breakfast shifts, kitchen duties, morning chapel.

He passes through the Apostolic Palace’s side entrance. The Swiss Guard stationed there straightens. The young man salutes him crisply.

Adrián, if Thomas remembers correctly. Blue-eyed. Too young. Everyone looks too young these days.

The Secretariat building is already in motion. Junior clerics hurry past with sleep-rumpled hair, clutching folders. Someone drops a sheaf of papers in a flurry of Polish curses. A nun glides past without acknowledging any of it, a heavy stack of sheets in her arms.

The Vatican is cold, yes—but never silent.

Ray is already in the office, seated behind a small fortress of paper. He looks up and smiles like it’s the most natural thing in the world to be wide awake and fully dressed before dawn. “Good morning Eminence,” he says, “Coffee’s fresh. There’s breakfast, too.”

Two cups sit on Thomas’s desk, alongside a small plate of cornetti and blood orange slices. His food has been sitting untouched more often than not lately. Thomas prays Ray never learns the depths of his asceticism. He wouldn't understand.

But Where Aldo had been patronizing, Ray is persistent. Quietly so. He never nags. He simply… provides. And expects. And waits.

It would be irritating from anyone else. But Ray has a way about him that makes resentment impossible.

“Yes, thank you, Ray,” Thomas mutters. He squeezes Ray’s shoulder—lingering for a moment—before shedding his coat and sitting down. He takes a sip of the coffee. “Heaven preserve us, three cups in before dawn and no closer to resolving a schism.”

Ray huffs a fond breath, more than familiar with Thomas's uniquely bleak sense of humor. “You should eat.”

“I did,” Thomas says. He hopes the quick refute is enough to direct Ray's pity elsewhere. Later, he confess this dishonesty, and atone.

Ray doesn’t respond. Just raises a brow. The same expression he uses when junior priests try to lie their way out of late reports.

“I’m not hungry,” Thomas concedes. “Byt your concern is admirable.”

Ray doesn’t press. He simply nudges the plate closer.

He hands over the schedule—pages printed in slightly enlarged text. Thomas doesn’t comment. He harbors a childish dislike for his glasses. Ray knows this and works around it.

“We’ve got the meeting with Archbishop Zurek at nine,” Ray says, scanning his notes. He huffles them occasionally. A nervous tick. “Then two cardinals visiting from Bogotá and Manila for the Immaculate Conception. You’re expected at the liturgy this evening. And Pope Innocent requested your presence before any of that—he, ah, left a note.”

Thomas takes the slip of paper. Vincent’s handwriting is unmistakable. Sharp, elegant. Familiar. Thomas reads it once, twice, then folds it with ritual care. He does not clutch it, though he wants to.

They finish reviewing the docket before heading to morning Mass. The Vatican chapel—Capella Paolina—glows dimly in the early light. Intricately cut stained glass casts a kaleidoscope of colors across the pews. The gathered congregation is small, made up of the devout and the dutiful, bleary-eyed but present. Vincent gives grace as he always does: personable and warm as if speaking to each parishioner individually.

When it’s time for Communion, Thomas kneels before the Holy Father.

Vincent—Innocent—approaches. He looks radiant in his vestments. Backlit by the stained glass, haloed in divinity.

As the wafer is placed on his tongue, Vincent’s finger brushes his lower lip. A flicker of contact. It’s nothing. an accident, surely, but Thomas feels heat crawl up his neck regardless.

They walk back to the Papal Office in relative quiet, Ray at his side, both men flipping through papers, murmuring about meetings and liturgies and curial squabbles. Ray shares bits of gossip he's heard around The Vatican.

“Did you sleep at all?” Ray asks, not unkindly.

“I laid down and waited for the Lord to take me,” Thomas replies, dry. “That counts, I'd say.”

Ray snorts, but doesn’t press.

Janusz is waiting for them by the Pope’s doors with a breakfast tray, looking anxious as ever. Ray gives Thomas a quick nod before peeling off toward his own tasks. Thomas offers a small prayer under his breath, then pushes the door open.

Vincent is seated behind his desk, a rosary coiled serpentine around his wrist. An untouched cup of tea rests at his elbow.

“Ah, Thomas—Janusz,” he greets warmly. The lines beneath his eyes betray his stifled exhaustion. "A lovely morning, isn't it?”

Pleasantries are exchanged. Janusz, fidgeting, sets down the tray and flees the room in his usual fashion—like judgment was clawing at his heels.

The meeting is brief. Too brief. Thomas absorbs Vincent’s presence greedily, like sun on stone. He does not miss the way Vincent flinches—barely perceptible—when addressed as Your Holiness.

Something inside Thomas aches.

He remembers the gardens during the conclave, the brief but infinite intimacy: Vincent’s hand in his, the shared silence, the way they moved through the hedges uninterrupted by ceremony or expectation.

Now every second of Vincent’s life is scheduled, every breath accounted for. Although Thomas still believes—absolutely—that Vincent was the right choice, he can see it now, written in the shadows of his face, in the curve of his shoulders: the papacy is consuming him.

As it did the late Holy Father.

Every day, a little more of Vincent Benítez disappears—sacrificed to become something sanctified. A living reliquary, venerated and untouchable. A man made a living icon.

Before Thomas can rise to leave, Vincent stills him.
“Thomas,” he murmurs, tone unreadable, “will you pray with me before you go?”

“Of course, Your Holiness,” Thomas replies, folding his hands.

Vincent begins, speaking in elegant Spanish. Thomas doesn’t understand every word. But he watches—the curve of Vincent’s mouth, the gentle press of each bead between his fingers, chasing the reverence in every motion.

When he leaves, Vincent tells him: Go with grace.

Thomas nods and murmurs something in return. He clutches his pectoral cross as if ut might guard against this ugly longing.

The Apostolic Palace is alive now. Nuns sweep past with veils fluttering, young priests rush in and out with bundles of vestments, officials pretend to be busy whenever a superior rounds the corner.

Thomas makes his way toward St. Peter’s Basilica, where Ray awaits him to begin the day’s administrative demands.

As he turns a corner, he’s met with the familiar, unmistakable sound of raised voices. Two men. One argument. A liturgy of spite.

Aldo and Tedesco.

They’re standing far too close. Their cassocks brush as they gesticulate wildly. Aldo’s hand slices through the charged air like a blade; Tedesco stands unmoved, eyes narrowed venomously, daring the other man to strike him.

Thomas tries to backtrack. He is not quick enough.
“Decano!” Tedesco calls out, waving him over. “You must settle this. Your compatriot refuses to admit defeat. He will take it better from the lips of his beloved friend.”

Thomas resists the urge to sigh out loud. “What is it this time?”

Aldo pinches the bridge of his nose. “Don’t involve Thomas in your—your medievalism. He’s above it.”

“Ah, and you think you’ve outgrown our history entirely,” Tedesco sneers. “He’s defending that ridiculous proposal for synodal consultation on episcopal appointments. A laughable overreach. You may as well invite the laity to rewrite canon law.”

“It’s not an overreach to involve the local Church in decisions that affect them. Collegiality is not heresy, Tedesco.”

“Collegiality becomes heresy when it unseats order.”

“Order? Or your personal authority?”

That strikes a nerve. Tedesco’s face twitches, the faintest flare of offense breaking through his theatrical veneer.

Thomas steps between them. “I’m no theologian,” he says, tone clipped. “Surely any point I could make has already been dissected by the two of you—thoroughly, and at great volume.”

Tedesco spreads his hands, mock-pious. “So humble, Tomasso. Your friend here could learn something from you.”

That begins the argument anew: canon versus context, hierarchy versus pastoral reality. One cites Ratzinger; the other counters with Rahner. They seem to forget Thomas entirely.

He leaves while they’re distracted. Their spat chases him until he retreats far enough that their individual voices becomes one shared cacophony.

There are worse ways to spend your time, he supposes. And worse company to suffer it with.

Chapter Text

Thomas finds himself in the gardens at dusk, drawn by the sound of running water. The path winds toward the Holy Father’s turtle pond, quiet and liminal in the golden hour. To his surprise—and worse, to his pleasure—he sees Vincent kneeling by the water.

He isn’t wearing the papal white. Instead, it’s the black cassock from the day he first arrived at the Vatican. The day they met. The memory curls around Thomas’s heart like a fist.

He scuffs his foot against the cobblestones, a graceless, unconscious motion. The sound breaks the hush. Vincent lifts his head and, upon seeing him, beams.

“Tomás,” he says, beckoning. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

“Nor I,” Thomas replies. He approaches slowly, as if wading through deep water.

The déjà vu hits him like vertigo—sharp and reeling.

Vincent reaches up and touches his shoulder lightly.. “It’s been too long, my friend.”

“Ah—yes,” Thomas answers, breath catching. Even through the layers of fabric, Vincent’s touch burns. Like fire licking up his arm. Something is terribly wrong with him.

Vincent’s eyes are molten in the sun’s dying light. His gaze seem to strip Thomas bare. Finding the softest parts he’s tried to cauterize.

Beside them, the pond glows faintly; impossibly. A turtle breaches the surface with a soft splash, then slips beneath again. The air is thick with the scent of overripe camellias—cloying, sweet almost to the point of nausea.

“You stray so far from the path, my shepherd,” Vincent murmurs, voice fond, almost amused. Then, softer still: “Sometimes I fear I’ll lose you entirely.”

“I am already lost,” Thomas confesses before he can stop himself.

But Vincent only smiles—sadder now, but no less warm. “Then stay with me a while, hm?”

He opens his arms like this is something they’ve done before. Like it’s a habit. An inevitability. Thomas steps into the space without thinking. His body responds before his mind can mount a defense. His knees threaten to buckle.

Vincent’s hands settle lightly at Thomas’s waist. They stand forehead to forehead. Vincent’s breath is warm. His presence is so achingly real that Thomas forgets, for a moment, that this cannot possibly be happening.

“You are suffering without cause– without end,” Vincent says. Not an accusation. A simple truth.

Thomas doesn’t answer. Cannot. His throat is tight. Something hot and bitter claws behind his ribs.

“Vincent,” he says, helplessly, putting everything into the name—shame, longing, reverence,.

“I miss you,” Vincent says. “Your company; Your guidance. Won’t you return to me?”

Then he kisses him—not on the mouth, not quite. The corner of Thomas’s jaw. It sparks like a struck match.
It’s too much. And not nearly enough.

Thomas clutches at Vincent’s cassock, desperate, as if he might fall through him otherwise. “You can’t be here,” he says, hoarse.

Vincent hums. “Neither can you.”

The garden shivers. The camellias wilt. Dusk splits at the horizon.

A bell tolls.
A second.
A third.

—————

Thomas jerks upright at his desk. The coffee cup beside him topples and shatters, ceramic shards scattering across the floor. The remaining dregs ooze out like bile.

His breath comes shallow and fast. His pulse gallops, his collar soaked through with sweat. His hands ache—stiff and clenched, as if he’d been holding something too tightly in his sleep.

His back screams in protest. His mouth tastes oddly saccharine—syrupy, almost chemical. Disconcerting.

Ray is nowhere to be seen.

The office is lit only by the pale twilight filtering through the shutters. leaking through the shutters. Somewhere far off, a bell chimes thrice for Lauds.

Thomas stares down at the documents beneath him—wrinkled, smudged, illegible. He doesn’t remember falling asleep.

He does remember Vincent’s fingers on his arm. The scent of the garden, sickly-sweet. The way his name sounded in that voice—soft, sacred, whispered like a prayer.

His hands shake. He curls them into fists. Counts his breathes in a looping count of three. Get ahold of yourself, Thomas.

He exhales, a sharp, trembling breath that leaves him emptier than before. Eventually he stands, stretches, winces. Moves toward the window.

His reflection stares back at him: pale, hollow-eyed, faintly monastic.

A traitorous part of him wishes to wander through the gardens. Just to look. Just to see if Vincent is still there, waiting by the water.

Chapter Text

He lingers at the window far too long, watching the courtyard below with a strange sense of dissociation. Everyone else moves with purpose. With momentum.

He checks his watch. Starts. Swears under his breath. Over an hour late.
The meeting with the archbishop—he’d forgotten. Ray would have been left to field it alone. Again.

He shrugs on his jacket—no time for his briefcase—and leaves.
Useless, he thinks. Utterly useless.

He walks quickly through the basilica, breath unsteady, hands twitching. When he arrives, the meeting is already dispersing. The worst part: He missed the obligation, but not the embarrassment.

“So he’s deigned to join us,” someone mutters—quiet, but not quiet enough.

Thomas tenses his jaw. Swallows the reprimand that rises like bile. It’s the least he deserves.

Ray is one of the last to leave, gathering notes with his usual precise efficiency. His head is bowed, unreadable.

“Ray,” Thomas says, placing a hand on his shoulder. “I can’t even begin to apologize—”

Ray turns. His clipboard is clutched to his chest like a shield.
Thomas lets his hand fall. He feels suddenly off-kilter— ungainly and exposed. A familiar sensation. It had plagued him most of his life, but lessening with age— until lately.

He can't quite parse Ray’s expression. Relief? Frustration? Apathy? Did he even notice Thomas was absent?

No. That's unkind, he chides himself. If Thomas knew anything about his assistant it was that that Ray notices everything. Worries at things endlessly until they’re as smooth as the worn steps of the Scala Regia.

Thomas takes a breath, taps his fingers against his thigh in a count of three, and tries to focus

“No, no—I should apologize,” Ray says, thumbing the frayed edge of a file. His brow is furrowed with quiet intensity. “I thought to let you sleep. Forgive me, but… it seemed like you needed the rest.”

Heaven help him. Ray had seen him slumped over his desk like an ailing invalid.

Humiliation pulses through him— irregular and sharp, like a skipped heartbeat. He ducks his head like a boy scolded, though Ray’s voice holds no scorn. Only concern. Gentle, yes— but with the same strained delicacy one might use when handling a relic too brittle for public display.

How pathetic, Thomas thinks, to be treated like something already broken. And Ray— a bishop in his own right, brilliant, busy. It was shameful to burden him like this.

And yet they’re standing close, as always. Heads inclined. Voices low. Something in it always feels vaguely confessional.

Ray must mistake his silence for displeasure. He speaks again, faster now: “I did not mean to overstep, Your Eminence.”

That wouldn’t do.

Thomas straightens and reaches out, cupping Ray’s elbow in a brief, grounding touch. “Oh no, no. Ray,” he says softly. “You've done nothing of the sort.”

Ray’s brow smooths a little.

“But in the future— If I should have a similar lapse,” Thomas adds, voice dry, “you must wake me. I can’t have you bearing the burden of two men. Do you understand?”

Ray opens his mouth to object, but quails when Thomas fixes him with a firm look.

“We can't have you burnt out, my dear Ray. The Basilica would fall to siege within two days of your absence.”

Ray blushes fetchingly, gaze skittering away. He’s always had trouble with recognition— let alone genuine praise. Thomas watches him fondly.

When Ray finally looks up again, he studies Thomas with an impossible look. The way pilgrims look at old statues— not worshipful, exactly, but reverent. As if he was something fragile and holy; battered by time, touched by grief.

“How did it go?” Thomas asks, changing the subject. “Zurek didn’t give you any trouble, did he?”

“It was civil,” Ray says, adjusting his glasses. “It’s over. I handled it.”

“Of course, yes,” he murmurs. Of course Ray had handled it. He always did. They rarely needed Thomas, in the end.

Ray hesitates, then says quietly: “All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Julian of Norwich. Clever boy.

Too optimistic, thomas always said. But coming from Ray, the words melt through the tension in his shoulders like heated chrism.

They stand like that for a moment— breathing together. Familiar. Almost human.

Then Thomas steps back.

“Thank you,” he says. “For covering for me.”

Ray dips his head. “Always, Eminence.”

——

The day slips by quickly after that.

The Vatican’s rhythm is old hat— almost numbing in its routine. A well-trod path of movement and demand. Thomas disappears into it gratefully, anchored by the rituals of administration.

Ray keeps pace beside him through the Basilica’s eastern halls— where altar boys are running rehearsals, and the scent of frankincense hangs thick in the air. It makes Thomas’s eyes sting.

He blinks, rummaging in the deep pockets of his cassock, unfolding the short list written in his cramped hand— smudged from sweat and restless rereads.

Minor tasks: ceremony candles, missing banners, itineraries. They handle each with quiet precision, like a pair of monks tending altar linens.

“The ambassador from Chile was delayed,” Ray says, soto voce, a satisfied edge in his voice. “An issue with airport security. We’ve sent a car.”

Thomas hums, adjusting glasses he’d borrowed at Aldo’s insistence. They pinch at the bridge of his nose. “Right, right,” he says absently, pasting on a smile as an Italian prelate approaches.

He manages half a conversation before the pain begins in earnest.

It starts behind his left eye, a sharp edge of agony. Familiar; foreboding. He attempts to breathe through it.

His peripheral visions flickers, then bends. He excuses himself from— Renaldi? Rossi?— and leans against a pillar, pressing a hand to his temple.

“You’re pale,” Ray murmurs. Noticing. Always noticing.

Thomas drops his hand in an attempt to look revitalized. “Just the light.”

But the Basilica is dim, flickering with candlelight and weak sun. The excuse falls flat, even to his own ears.

Ray, blessedly, lets it be.

——

They regroup near the narthex as the dignitaries arrive.

The entryway churns with motion— attendants adjusting sashes, shifting vestments, hurrying to and fro at the behest of their superiors. Papal guards take up their stations. The anticipatory buzz of ritual.

Vincent is already present, the white of his robes nearly swallowed by the darkly clad security personnel. He’s speaking in low tones with his personal secretary, Sister Guadalupe, a fierce, efficient young woman. Her appointment had stirred the usual grumbling among traditionalist members of the curia, but even they could find little fault in her loyalty or her competence.

Thomas notices a flash of deep Marian blue beneath Vincent’s mozzetta. A bold choice. He struggles to ignore how it flatters the Holy Father. The color sings against his skin, radiant and unrepentant.

As if privy to his thoughts, Vincent turns and finds Thomas almost immediately.

Their eyes meet.

Vincent’s gaze is mild but searching. He steps forward, then stops. Waits.

A strange dread coils in Thomas’s stomach, whereas the promise of speaking with Vincent would usually consume him with weightlessness. The last thing he wants is to burden Vincent with ever-declining health. Besides, he has no wish to cast doubt on his competency— especially as the Feast of the Immaculate Conception closes in.

And yet— God forgive him— he yearns to reach for him. To guide him through the crowd with hand at his back, pretending he was still a brother Cardinal. Confiding in whispers. Just a moment shared between two men, as if Vincent had never been elected to the Supreme Pontificate. As if Thomas had any right to crave his company.

He knows that if he asked, Vincent would offer him every minute between now and the address. He would not hesitate.

But his temple throbs. His breath catches.

Thomas gives the barest shake of his head. Not now. Please.

Vincent’s face flickers with hurt— just briefly— before smoothing into a serene mask once more. He turns back to Sister Guadalupe.

Thomas stands rooted in place, sick with regret. He wants to call out. To undo it. But what good would it do?

He indulges in imagining himself as scum drifting atop the surface of the turtle pond, waiting to be skimmed off and discarded.

The ceremony begins.

Vincent’s remarks are brief, striking in their clarity. He speaks of unity. Of faith as labor; as mutual aid. Thomas catches pieces but the rest slips away like rosary beads from numb fingers.

The light behind Vincent’s head is blinding. His voice echoes strangely in the cavernous nave.

Thomas’s mouth is dry— he swallows but it offers no relief. His knees ache. His hands are cold.

He counts: Hail Marys. Breaths. Blinks

He endures. Or, manages, if he were to quote the late Holy Father.

—

As soon as it ends, he slips away.

He doesn’t wait for Ray, or seek Vincent. Dodges Aldo’s attempts at intercepting him. He can feel nausea building in his gut as he moves on instinct through hidden corridors and side staircases.

Time becomes liquid. His eyes threaten to roll if he turns too hastily, like a compass spinning in stormy waters. Sounds distort. He thinks he sees Sabbadin— or an uncanny statue of the man. It doesn’t matter.

His door. Keys. Fumbling.

Blessed silence is heightened by the unforgiving marble walls.

Marble? That wasn’t right—

A wave of dizziness forces onto the divan, fully dressed. His eyes slide shut.

The Migraine crests—
And breaks.

—

Shadows seethe against his closed eyelids.

His head is full of sound, amplified in his overworked senses— pipes groaning, distant voices, footsteps. Someone knocks, once. Twice. Maybe more. The din blends together.

He wants to answer but does not. Cannot.

His shoes are still on. Glasses vanished.

Light from a half-shuttered window crawls across the floor.

There are no dreams, which is a mercy. He sleeps fitfully.

He rouses once. The pain has lessened but still lingers, like ash after incense.

He lies there. Listening.

No bells. No music. No voices. Just slow, thready beat of his own heart.

A small sacrament.

He exhales gratefully.

And drifts off again.