Disclaimer: As stated previously--if you recognize it, I don't own it.
Chapter Two
"I'm not unreasonable, you know."
This is the statement Carl presented to Gabriel as a warning. They were lying in bed and Carl held up his hand and said this as Gabriel reached his arms around him. Gabriel hesitated, gave Carl an amused look, then hugged him close. In the small bed their bodies were pressed close without effort; Gabriel considered it an unholy talent that Carl seemed able to pull away and not fall out.
He considered it an unholy talent also that he and Carl had, over the years, been in physical contact so rarely that the lines and contours of Carl's body surprised him. He had looked at that body, at least as much as one can look at a body sheathed in friar's robes, but he had never noticed, for example, that Carl was actually quite tall. He thought Carl to be short. What else would he think? Carl's head was always close to Gabriel's shoulder. But he hunched, scurried, and generally avoided standing up straight. Now they were nose to nose and Gabriel knew two things about Carl, first that he was taller than he appeared and second that Carl's complaints of chilly extremities were not exaggerated, nor limited to his fingers.
The man who did not flinch at Mr. Hyde, who counted the Frankenstein monster among his friends, who laughed in the Rue Morgue, resisted the urge to yelp at the freezing toes brushing against his legs.
"Not unreasonable about what?"
"I don't know, anything," Carl replied. "Well, not about facts, of course, but otherwise I'm open to discussion."
Gabriel laughed softly. He wondered, did Carl know what he wanted to say? Or were these babbling fits simply realization of an unresolved mind? "It took me six years to get you into bed, Carl. Most women, it takes me a somewhere from six minutes to six days. You're unreasonable."
True to form, Carl quibbled over fact. "To be fair, you weren't actually trying for six years…"
Gabriel smiled. Reliable Carl. "Yes, I was."
"What—really?" Carl asked. "But… we have only been in the field together for three years," he observed. He wanted to say that if anything they were less likely to pass beyond friendship here in the abbey, but considering what had just happened the response was less powerful. In fact it was plain foolish.
Gabriel admitted, "Yes, I have been attempting to get you into bed for the past six years." When they first went into the field together, three years ago in Transylvania, Gabriel thought he had his chance. Isolated transients, no reputation of these deeds would follow them. They were far from Rome. But the friar kept himself in contact with those darned cables, and though he skirted as many rules as possible, Gabriel's advances were ignored, if noticed at all.
But then, as far as Gabriel knew, Carl had lived most of his life in the abbey and needed more than subtle hints. As obvious as comments like 'your eyes look beautiful at sea' or 'oh, are you nauseous, may I hold your hair while you vomit?' were in the regular world, in Carl's world they were strange pleasantries.
"Why did you think I requested you?" Gabriel asked.
Carl shook his head. "You didn't request me. I was assigned to you as pen—" he began, then realized what he was saying and quickly concluded, "I was assigned to you."
Gabriel gave Carl an incredulous, amused look. "You were assigned to me as penance?" he asked. That was a new one. Gabriel had been given his share of penance. He was not sure how many hours he had spent in prayer and he had seen Carl doing other penances, mostly scrubbing floors.
"I didn't say that!" Carl replied. "I did not say that."
"No, but you started to say it," Gabriel said. "You thought it. It's fact. What sin did you commit to deserve me? Did you think impure thoughts?" he asked, managing to shake his finger at Carl which in so small a space was a considerable accomplishment. "You shouldn't do that, you're a monk."
Carl gave Gabriel his best schoolmarm look. "Yes I did think impure thoughts, if you must know. And I'm still just a friar," he added as an afterthought, "but no Catholic should think impure thoughts, and some are impurer than others. Everyone knows Brother Bernardo thinks impure thoughts about the confectionary. You may think confessions are sacred but they aren't. Everyone knows everyone's business in an abbey."
"So everyone knows your sin?" Gabriel asked.
"Well, yes," Carl replied, surprised Gabriel would ask. Everyone knew about Bernardo. Of course everyone knew about him, too. The only worse rumor mill than an abbey full of monks was an abbey full of nuns.
Suddenly Gabriel wanted to stay in the abbey more often. "So what is it?" he asked. "Your sin, what is it?"
Carl smiled wryly. "I wanted to do what we just did," he said.
"Specifically? The thing with the…?"
"Ah. No, no, no, more general."
"You wanted me to…?"
"Yes—well no. Well, yes," Carl admitted, "but not. It wasn't you. I simply happen to prefer men," he stated, as though it was nothing unusual at all, then he groaned and buried his face in his hands.
Gabriel nearly started to laugh. It wasn't appropriate, he knew. Carl was upset, and even if this was a one-time occurrence and their relationship dwindled to an awkward shadow of friendship, laughing while Carl was miserable made Gabriel feel dirty. Fewer and fewer acts bothered him these days: making a man cry was acceptable, laughing while he did was not; endangering a man was acceptable, killing him was not. But everything changed with Carl.
So he stifled his laughter and hugged Carl, who whimpered and latched onto Gabriel like a starfish.
"So… because you prefer men, they sent you out of the abbey?" Gabriel asked. He rubbed Carl's back. The questions were inevitable but there was no reason to be an ass.
"No, I requested a transfer to another, ideally much smaller environment. I asked to be the holy confessor to a nunnery," Carl admitted, and both men laughed at that, leaving Carl blushing at his self-mockery. "It seemed the safest place, no temptations of any kind. And I truly thought it would happen—then they sent me into the field. With you."
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. With him, that was the worst part?
Something must have tipped Carl off to Gabriel's thoughts, or he simply guessed them, because he said, "Well it's not as though you have not been trying."
Gabriel laughed. "In what way?"
"Patience. You try my patience."
He only laughed harder.
Carl squeaked as he protested, "You said I looked like a pastry!"
"Now Carl, you know that's not true—"
"It is true!" Carl remembered very precisely; he had a very precise memory, very useful for a scientist. Or a Biblical scholar, for that matter. They had been on their way home. It was a warm spring. They slept in a field by a stream, a field with too many gnats and wasps and nettles, and in the morning Gabriel said…
"I said you looked like a sausage roll."
Triumphant, Carl yelped, "Aha! You admit it."
"Well, I admit I said you looked like a sausage roll—"
"Which is a pastry," Carl concluded. He liked being right. That was one advantage to a less intelligent companion, ample opportunity to be right.
Gabriel disagreed: "It's meat. It's sausage-based."
"Like the rest of your thinking!" Carl quipped, and Gabriel chuckled. It might have been a pity chuckle. Carl accepted the bruising his self-esteem could take from that and explained, "It's a sausage wrapped up in pastry. Pastry! Therefore, it's pastry."
Gabriel grinned. Oh but Carl was cute when he had a point to make, just going on and on to make sure everyone knew he was right. "All right, but you do look like a sausage roll when you sleep; it's because you wrap yourself up in the blanket, which makes you the sausage."
Carl sighed. "No, please, this torrent of praise must cease. Vanity is a sin," he remarked sarcastically. It was not that it bothered him, per se. If Gabriel wanted to use sausage rolls as the basis of sweet nothings, so be it. Carl was simply so accustomed to responding to teasing with belittling sarcasm, he found himself sniping before thinking.
Gabriel shifted slightly. With two bodies pressed close on a cot, this caused obvious physical reactions for both men.
"Just what I need. Late to Vespers and naked and…" Carl couldn't bring himself to say it.
Gabriel had no such qualms. "Erect?" he supplied.
Carl attempted to speak, failed, and groaned. Gabriel kissed him. "My God, but I love you."
"'s blasphemy," Carl murmured by habit. Both men began to laugh.
to be continued
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