A/n: So, in honor of the holiday and more minds opening every day, more minor character love to fill out the ranks, this time from episode 2.11, "Getaway." Second-person present-tense is not my favorite person/tense to write in, but nothing else felt quite right for the characters, so please look on me kindly. Contains clerical love and gratuitous usage of the word "and". Hence, for lack of better inspiration, my borrowing the title from Yes.
And You And I
The fields abloom in red poppies around the ruins of the Aqua Claudia remind you of cardinals, tipping their heads together in whispered conversation with the gentle breeze. And it makes you smile, you don't know why, if only just to think for a little while of the Curia as something no more serious than a field of wildflowers.
"I've never seen so many red caps outside the Vatican," says a voice you don't recognize.
And you follow it to find a young man you haven't seen before, about the age you were when you arrived in Rome—not so many years ago, really, but enough that you'd begun to feel it's been a lifetime. Until the whimsy of that shared thought reminds you that though you may pass your days in the company of old men, you needn't think like one.
Or maybe it's the warmth of the day, awakening this body of matter that's been sound asleep while you've pored over tomes and letters, but Christ, he has a beautiful smile.
"You're Father Perazzo?" And while you wonder where his accent hails from, the way he pronounces your name, you catch the haughtiness of a seminarian, perhaps some nobleman's third or fourth or fifth son, that yet lingers, and it makes you want to grab hold of it, like some part of yourself you only just realized had begun to slip away. "I've been sent to find you."
You don't know yet how prophetic those words will seem, when you turn to look back a decade down the road.
—=o=—
You spy him across the aisle at morning mass, and you think that for a moment he looks your way and your eyes meet, but you can't be sure.
You run into him in the library, somehow get to talking of Copernicus and his mad theories, end up completely losing track of time and space, and at the end of it, almost as an afterthought, he tells you his name is Randall.
And while you lie wide awake, trying to get to sleep, the madness starts to make a certain sense. Randall brands the insides of your eyelids like the afterimage of the sun, and you discover you have already been pulled into orbit.
—=o=—
You burn.
You can't concentrate.
When he is near, your tongue ties itself in knots and you are sure that everyone must see it on your face, must know.
That he must know. Why else has he been turning his eyes away when the two of you must occupy the same room? Why else has he not said a word to you in weeks? He knows your thoughts, your dreams, your desires, like he knew what you were thinking of the poppies, and he hates you for it. But then, how could you ever have expected him to share in your sin, just because you've forgotten a sin is what it is?
And then you feel the back of his hand rest against yours halfway through the Creed, and it stays there, with intention, waiting for you to pull away, and you know you were wrong.
And you don't pull away.
—=o=—
Time dulls your luster. It leaves the mind and tongue sharp as ever, while it etches new valleys beneath your eyes and rounds your edges.
Strange, though, how when Randall complains he's getting soft around the middle, you don't believe him. You make jests about age and temperance (not that you're about to give up your own love of wine), but when you look at him, you still see the bright young student whose smile outshone the sun. When you hold him in your arms, changed or unchanged, he is still perfection to you. More each day: your all, your universe, the reason you exist. . . .
When you're made cardinal by the new Pope, the first thing you do is make sure he's appointed your personal cleric. You know it's only a matter of time before the Vatican sends you abroad to conduct its business, but your heart will never be in it so long as Randall is back in Rome.
The reminders are all around you: Life is short, and uncertain. Each time the two of you head off on a journey together, you feel as though you're fleeing something forever at your heels. You escape this time, and the next, and dare not think that there may ever come a time when you won't.
—=o=—
You freeze.
You can't sleep.
What warmth you had you have given to him. What need have you for it anyway, if it's all to be over in another day? What's one more night, when your heart is already breaking into pieces inside yourself? You will never be warm again.
Your soul rages at this injustice, at this farce concocted by cruel and selfish men. But can you deny that you were selfish, too? You did this, your weak flesh and your wicked pride that let you believe you two were invincible, and your mind races with thought of all those times you could have steered him on a safer course—a course away from you.
The night passes like a thousand years; but when the time does come, you're still not ready. The moment to prove your devotion to God and your vocation, and everything that ought to be righteous and holy and greater than yourself, everything your colleagues have entrusted you to carry out. . . .
And all you can think of is a field abloom with red poppies.
—=o=—
In the safety of a carriage, flying from what-could-have-beens and what-almost-were, you hold his beautiful face between your hands as you should have done from the very first day, and you kiss him like you will never let go. He is life to you. That is the simple and perfect truth.
And he knows it. Even as the tears at last roll down your face, he won't pull away.
—=o=—
St Valentine's Day, 2015.