Chapter Text
Vincent had nightmares. It took Thomas a while to realise this. When they slept apart, it was impossible to tell, but once they began sharing a bed, their existence was slowly revealed. Still, it took him a while: Vincent did not thrash in his sleep or moaned or cried. A few times a month he woke up, usually bathed in sweat, and slowly extricated himself from the bed to go wash his face. Sometimes he did not return to bed for many long minutes, preferring to sit on their small couch, or at the kitchen table with a glass of water.
To his great shame, Thomas did not always wake up. For the first couple of months when they slept together, he failed entirely to realise what was going on. One night, when he himself was suffering through a bout of insomnia, he heard Vincent’s sharp intake of breath, and watched him as he sat on the bed, his head bowed, trying to regain his breath. Thomas placed a concerned hand on Vincent’s back, only to feel the dampness of his shirt.
“Vincent, are you feeling well?”
“Sí,” and he left the bed. Thomas heard water running in the bathroom. Vincent reappeared a few minutes later and sat on the edge of the bed, without meeting Thomas’s eyes.
“Vincent,” Thomas started in a low voice. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” The word came in English, and as sharp as Thomas had ever heard Vincent use with him.
“Is there anything I can do?”
Vincent shook his head. Thomas sat against the bed’s headboard in a compelled silence, watching Vincent work through the dregs of his nightmare. It was not an easy sight to behold: with his elbows on his thighs and his head bowed, Vincent looked small and troubled. It was wrong. A man like Vincent shouldn’t look like this.
“Vincent…” he said, at last, unable to keep it in any longer. He thought back to the term that Vincent had begun using to refer to him: ya gharami. My love. It was significant that Vincent did not use English or Spanish’s terms of endearment. Love, amor. Perhaps it was easier to speak Arabic, the language that adopted them, the language of the place where they came together. Thomas couldn’t even do that. He wished he could be better than he was, he wished he could use language, any language, to express his feelings. He pitied Vincent in that moment, stuck here with a man who couldn’t even muster enough words to console him. “Please, let me help.” Vincent turned his head to him. Thomas could barely make up the whites of his eyes in the weak light of their flashlight.
A few heartbeats later, something in him seemed to give in: Vincent dragged himself to him, collapsing on the top of his chest. Thomas cradled him in his arms, kissing the top of his head as one does to a hurting child. Vincent shivered against him and Thomas pulled the sheets up to cover them. He felt, with a small sense of triumph, Vincent’s heartbeat slow down against his chest.
Ever since that occasion, Thomas felt, perhaps a couple of times a month, a shift in how they fitted together at night: Vincent’s arm tightening around his waist or Vincent rolling into Thomas’s chest. In those moments, Thomas’s body, even in his sleeping state, accommodated him: he turned around and opened his arms to gather him against his chest or he placed his hand on Vincent’s neck, his lips grazing the other man’s brow.
It amazed Thomas: they knew each other, their bodies recognised each other even in near unconscious states. Even in the world outside, it had become so much easier to read Vincent, to know, just by looking at him, what he was feeling, whether he was tired, happy or frustrated. He knew Vincent could do the same to him: all the times Vincent brought him a cup of coffee precisely when he felt like one or squeezed his shoulder when he was tense or distracted him with a silly anecdote. What a feeling of safety and wellness Vincent’s presence always exuded! Thomas knew that when Vincent showed up, no matter the situation, everything would be alright. Thomas wondered if this was what happened to other people, people who fell in love and had relationships. Was it always like this?
It happened just a week before of what Thomas had come to think as their anniversary: a year since Norwich, a year since they first shared a bed together, a year since Vincent told him his secret. Thomas would remember that day, and all the days that followed, keenly, with obsessive and analytical detail. It went like this:
Vincent and Thomas were in their cabin. It was late in the afternoon, after work. Vincent was taking advantage of the last hours of electricity to cook them dinner, and Thomas had just finished showering and was shaving before the bathroom mirror. From Vincent’s CD player, flew around the shelter a soft and slow Bossa Nova. An impatient knock on the door and Carolina’s voice, “open up you two!”
Thomas cleaned his face with a towel and went to the door. Carolina waltzed in, brandishing her phone. “Well?”
“What?”
“You haven’t…you didn’t…you haven’t seen the news?!”
“No,” Vincent joined them, having turned off the music. “What happened?”
“For God’s sake,” and she showed them, breaking news from the BBC.
The Pope was dead.
A barrage of phone-calls followed: Ré called them, Thomas called his old contacts in the Vatican, Ray O’Malley, who’d been sent to some God forsaken post in Poland, called Thomas, Francesca and Lina called Vincent. It had been a stroke; apparently, the Holy Father hadn’t felt well for a few days, but everyone put it down to tiredness and stress. His blood pressure was fine; Tremblay, famously, had the health of a bull. A few hours after waking up, on the Wednesday, he collapsed: a vein had burst in his head and he died almost instantaneously.
That evening a Mass was said for him in the camp. The homily was delivered by one of the Franciscan brothers and it was, even for all their generosity and good will, weak in praise. Thomas couldn’t help but think, all that mendacity and duplicity for this. Even the Franciscans are unable to find it in themselves to celebrate him. God forgive me, but he was a weak-willed man, and he won’t be happily remembered. It was an ungenerous thought, one that didn’t dignify him and one Thomas wouldn’t dare voice aloud. But, still, it was true.
They debated whether Vincent should attend the funeral; but he was too busy, and he was already going to be absent from the camp for an unknown while during the Conclave. His mission, in this at least, would have to take precedence. Perhaps his absence was more felt than they thought, because a few days later Aldo Bellini, Secretary State, called Vincent. He didn’t answer at first; He"d spent the morning in an hours-long team meeting, but Aldo insisted and called him during lunch. “I suppose it will be easier to travel from Jordan to Rome, than from Kabul.”
“Indeed, Your Eminence. I will be in Rome in three weeks, as scheduled.”
“Good, that is good. We will be waiting.”
Thomas wondered why Aldo had called Vincent in person. He knew from personal experience that this was not the done thing. He imagined that Aldo was not calling him in any official capacity. Was it a soft rebuke for Vincent’s failure to attend the funeral? He and Vincent discussed the issue at some length, with Vincent suggesting that maybe Aldo was trying to figure out, through him, whether Thomas was returning to Rome too. Thomas had dismissed the idea, but Vincent seemed convinced of it. “He’s your friend and he cares about you. He must miss you greatly.”
Those three weeks went by without Thomas discerning the dangers of their situation. Vincent’s birthday on the 7th of November was celebrated as a big party, organised by Carolina, Thomas and Guille. Vincent surprised him yet again: Thomas found out that somewhere along the line, Vincent had learned how to dance the dabke, and proceeded to spend half of his birthday party teaching the basic steps to Guille and Carolina. Gifts were exchanged, and although Thomas wasn’t able to match the significance of last year’s gift, he had been successful with a case of Faber-Castell colour pencils – at least judging by how Vincent’s eyes light up when he opened it.
One early Friday, he woke up, Vincent still sleeping next to him, and realised that this was the last night they would spend together for at least, if they were lucky, 2 weeks. If the Conclave took 3 to 4 days, then Vincent would get back before the month was out. He prayed God it would be so. He kissed Vincent’s brow and caressed his hair. He watched, happy, as the other man smiled and buried his face in his neck.
He worked from home that day, checking emails on his computer while Vincent finished some phone calls and made sure that he hadn’t forgotten to pack anything. It took Thomas’s keen eye and profound knowledge of Vincent to sense the nervous energy in the air.
“You don’t want to go,” Thomas said, coming up to him.
“Not particularly, no. I am not proud of it. This is a duty I am meant to undertake with joy. It is important.” He sighed. “But what do I know about the Curia? What do I know about Rome? How can I make a meaningful contribution? Furthermore, I have a lot of work to get done here. Aisha,” he said, referring to one of his programme officers, “is very good, but I don’t like to overburden her.”
Thomas took his hands. “You underestimate your capacity for clarity, my dear Vincent, of which Conclaves are often lacking. Your knowledge of the world will be very useful. And in any case, it will be over soon and you will come back.”
Vincent looked down at their joined fingers. “I confess I am…not looking forward to be without you.”
“Ah. So it is not just me,” Thomas murmured. The room seemed to have shrunk around them. Thomas could see and feel nothing else other than Vincent’s skin against his.
“Of course not, Thomas. What you feel for me, I feel for you. I sleep poorly when I go to Jerusalem and whenever you’re in Amman because I miss you.”
“You’ll come back,” Thomas said. “You’ll come back here in no time.”
Vincent’s eyes met his. There was a strange intensity to them, one that Thomas, for once, could not decipher. He felt Vincent’s hand curl around his neck. And he said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, “Te amo. Mi alma pertenece a Dios, pero mi corazón es tuyo.” (I love you. My soul belongs to God, but my heart is yours).
Thomas felt as if his breath was robbed from him. Vincent’s eyes, deep and dark, bored into his as if trying to reach out to the depths of his being. “Vincent…” but he didn’t finish. Vincent’s hand on his neck pulled him forward and their lips met.
The last time Thomas had been kissed was as a teenager 41 years ago. A girl from Norwich, on a warm summer holiday, Jane had been her name. It had been nice, but not nice enough to tempt him away from his path. This was different. Vincent kissed with all the inexperience of a virgin, and all the fierceness of a man in despair. Thomas wondered, briefly, what prompted this, but the thought soon dissolved, along with all the others, when Vincent cupped his face, deepening the kiss. A moan escaped from the back of Thomas’s throat and he parted his lips, which spurred both of them on. Thomas felt himself being pushed against the door; he groaned. Vincent stopped immediately, “are you hurt?” and Thomas, unable to speak, shook his head, and went for another kiss, because even a small break was too unbearable to countenance. His hands, one was on Vincent’s hair, the other found its way under his coat, and as his fingers tightened on the cotton of Vincent’s shirt, he became aware that there’s only flimsy fabric separating them. All those months, all that time, and it was just cotton separating them.
Kisses, Thomas found, have taste: Vincent’s taste of coffee, and a hint of toothpaste, and something else that he couldn’t quite place, but he wanted to spend the rest of his life trying to figure out.
He also discovered that if you kiss someone for long enough, eventually you have to part for air. When they did, eventually, surface, they held each other close, foreheads linked, their breath mingling together. “Vincent,” he murmured. “Vincent,” say something else, a voice whispers inside him. No, he thought, rebelling: if his name were the last word on my lips, I would die happy.
Vincent’s fingers stroke the skin under his ears. His thumb crossed Thomas’s upper lip.
“I am yours,” Thomas whispered with a fervour that was alien to him. He nearly didn’t recognise his own voice. “I love you. I will always…” he closed his eyes, trying to get his breath back and with it a measure of reason. Vincent kissed him again, a soft, gentle kiss, different from the others they had just shared. His hands came to hold Vincent’s face. “Vincent. Come back to me. Promise me you’ll come back to me.”
“I’ll always come back to you, Thomas. I promise.” This time, Thomas was the one pulling him to a kiss, and from then on, they lost track of time. Thomas thanked God for the door holding him against Vincent, otherwise he would have sunk to his knees long ago.
There was, at some point, a knock.
“Boys,” it was Carolina. Her voice was just behind the door against which Thomas was pressed. “We have to go.”
Yes, she was meant to drive Vincent to Amman.
Vincent pulled away in a feat of self-discipline that Thomas would always think extraordinary. Thomas’s eyes widened when he took him in: His hair in disarray, his lips swollen, his collar and shirt rumpled. Carolina was going to take one look at Vincent and guess what had happened. Vincent read his thoughts, and smiled, “she already suspects, Thomas. I trust her.”
Thomas took his hands again. “We…You’ll have to go to confession before the Conclave.”
“I am sure to find a priest in Rome who can confess me.” And as if to underscore some point, he leaned and kissed Thomas’s lips for the last time. “I will call you when I get to Rome. Que Dios te bendiga, Thomas.”
“Yes,” Thomas said. “Have a safe journey. May God keep you.” And he watched as Vincent hauled a backpack onto his shoulder, opened the door, and left.
For years afterwards, Thomas would think that Vincent had known. He had known, in the way that we know such things, through grace and instinct, that he wasn’t coming back. He would have the opportunity to ask Vincent about this and Vincent would deny it. And although Thomas would never accuse him of lying, he thought something had been created in that moment between the two of them which had allowed Vincent a clarity that Thomas didn’t have.
And hadn’t Thomas, perhaps, known too? Why else would he have begged Vincent to come back? Love has its mysteries, but so does fear. Yet fear obscures, while love reveals.
The possibility did occur with clarity to Thomas the day after Vincent left, after a horrid night of tossing and turning, where he only managed to fall asleep around 4 in the morning and woke up with his alarm 2 hours later.
He thought, what if they elect him? The thought struck him like a ray of lightening, and he tried to enumerate the reasons why that would never happen. They were good, solid reasons. No, Vincent would return to the camp, would return to him. They would learn themselves anew.
What if he doesn’t, the dark whisper in him insisted.
He will, Thomas insisted. I will not doubt this. He will return.
He will.
He didn’t.