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It is November 25, Catherine of Alexandria’s Feast Day. Vincent gives Mass before the Daughters of Charity in the Palace of the Holy Office’s chapel. Thomas sits in the pews and prays with the Sisters, as he often does. On days when Vincent gives Mass, Thomas attends; the rarer days when Thomas performs the sacrament, Vincent takes his communion from him. They are reciprocal in all things, and together most days from lauds to vespers.
Thomas falls into step beside Vincent when they leave the chapel. He used to shy away from walking at Vincent’s side, alternating between being a step behind out of subservience, or a pace ahead, as if to shield Vincent’s body from all who wanted to touch or harm him. Vincent has patiently rid him of the habit. It was the work of months. Thomas, he knows, responds better to silent cues that he cannot warp into criticism. It was easy enough for Vincent to place a friendly hand on the Dean’s shoulder or to wrap his fingers around his wrist, a light pressure that subconsciously made it difficult to walk unless they were abreast. He learned to bestow these touches when Thomas was in the middle of a sentence, preferably in the middle of a rant, so that he would not blanch, or look like a hunted dog, or become otherwise distressed and self-conscious. Over time, Vincent has trained him well.
Their feet fall together at an even pace. Vincent still wears his Converse. Thomas wears expensive loafers with enormous cushy inserts that help his knees and posture. Thomas keeps his head turned toward Vincent, leaning in, curved like an apostrophe around the straight figure of his body. Vincent looks out, forward, and smiles when they exit the building and the sunlight hits his face.
Thomas recites his schedule. There is a meeting with Vincent’s new Camerlengo, then another with Cardinal William Achebe, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, to discuss Tremblay’s demotion and how to best deal with the eight cardinals who accepted his bribes. Thomas has divulged the names to Vincent, but they are otherwise secret; today, in counsel with Cardinal Achebe and a select group of his highly specialized and talented teams, they will decide how to move forward.
Thomas slides his clipboard down. He leans closer, which Vincent finds admirable; at his age, it is a feat to walk at a clipped pace half-bent over without seeming to feel much discomfort for it. “It is the Twenty-Fifth,” Thomas murmurs.
“Yes, I’m aware.”
“Five days until the First. Of December.”
Vincent stops in the middle of the walkway. The Swiss Guard stumble behind him, less composed than what videos Vincent has seen of the King’s Guard at Buckingham Palace, though otherwise, they remind Vincent of those soldiers and their equally antiquated hats. “No,” he says to Thomas, eyes widening. “No, it cannot be so close.”
Thomas nods grimly. “I have checked all the weather forecasts and finalized all flight plans. It seems….” He takes a deep breath. “It seems it is happening.”
Vincent crosses himself and folds his hands in front of his stomach. “Padre nuestro que estás en el cielo, santificado sea tu Nombre; perdona nuestras ofensas, como también nosotros perdonamos a los que nos ofenden; no nos dejes caer en la tentación, y líbranos del mal-”
Thomas breaks first. He laughs, first in a start, then in a cough, then full-out, and within seconds, they are both chuckling, their faces tilted toward the brilliant blue sky of the cold morning, and laughter echoes through the Vatican.
+++
Christmas in the Catholic Church is always an enormous event, though at least this year Vincent has an entire month without travel to look forward to. Despite his global career and his recent promotion to the head of the Universal Church, he has never gotten used to planes. For Thomas, though he cannot always travel with him (another detriment), plane rides, even in the most luxurious modes, are difficult on his back and knees, and he responds harshly to the dehydration impossible to avoid at such altitudes. Vincent hates to see him even uncomfortable, much less in pain, so he is pleased that they will spend the season in the Vatican.
Next year, he thinks he might like to travel, perhaps return to Mexico for his first Christmas there since he was twenty. It would be a break from tradition, but Vincent cannot fathom anyone judging him too harshly for going home for the holidays, especially if they announce plans well beforehand, and Mexico is, of course, entirely enamored with their new Pope.
This year, nine months into his pontificate, will mark his first Christmas as St. Peter’s spiritual heir, and the army of clergymen and attendants who man the Vatican have been running around like headless chickens getting everything prepared. Thomas is exhausted - it seems like all the cardinals feel the need to corroborate and confirm their own holiday plans with the Dean - and so is Aldo and Vincent’s newly appointed Camerlengo, the second cardinal he elevated after Marudo, his replacement as the Cardinal Archbishop of Kabul. Vincent, in contrast, has been having an easy enough time since they returned from celebrating World Youth Day in Argentina, with only a few important meetings and responsibilities.
In the Holy See, Christmas begins with the feast of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on December 8th, after which Vincent will become busy with appearances and appointments. There will be plenty of preparation and speech writing for the first week, but sandwiched between World Youth Day and the Christmas season, someone (Ray, if Vincent had to guess) has ensured that Vincent has downtime to recover and bolster himself. Nevertheless, despite his open schedule, their holiday plans had slipped his mind.
As Pope, one thing Vincent is still unaccustomed to is how far in advance his life is planned. It is one of the major differences between himself and Thomas - Vincent, who is used to taking quick, decisive actions and never planned more than a month or two ahead of time, and has not lived in the same country for more than a decade since he was a child: and Thomas, who has lived a regimented lifestyle within the Vatican and Rome for forty years and is responsible for the careful organization and event planning of celebrations attended by world leaders, and who gets itchy whenever he is less than five minutes early to an event on his schedule. Now, as Pope, Vincent is being inducted into the latter kind of lifestyle, one where his travel plans have to be vetted half a year beforehand with virtually no deviation permitted, at the risk of his life. The only reason he had attended World Youth Day internationally so close to the beginning of his papacy is because the previous Holy Father had planned the trip himself, and Vincent had eagerly insisted that he carry them through. He said that he didn’t want to let anyone down, though, in truth, he had been eager to escape the confines of the Vatican’s wall, and eager to travel and meet, face to face, the people he now serves.
Vincent had never been to Argentina before and he had found the time to enjoy the trip despite his endless engagements, and had also dragged Thomas around with him, forcing him to landmarks, to local eateries, and into gift shops that catered exclusively to tourists. (He and Thomas also have very different approaches to vacationing). They have both traveled extensively in their lives but to very different sectors and for different purposes, but Thomas, having been the constant traveling companion of popes, and the Secretary of State for a time, is far more used to papal pastoral visits than Vincent. He had visited South America before as well, while Vincent, despite growing up in Mexico, never had.
Their childhoods were certainly very different. Vincent grew up in an urban and impoverished neighborhood of Mexico City and joined the church at a very young age, thereafter educated privately in a religious institution that kept him away from home. Thomas grew up in a small town in the West Midlands called Bridgnorth. He self-describes the town in such terms as “quintessentially rural England,” and “entirely too much brick,” and “beautiful, admittedly,” but has not been there in a long time, since before he came into the service of St. Peter’s throne. His mother, by his own admission, kept him sheltered for most of his adolescence until he left to attend seminary school in Rome against her wishes.
So there are many ways that he and Thomas are very different. One way that they are similar, however - they both have sisters.
Thomas only has one, an older sister, Katherine, as well as her two daughters, while Vincent has four sisters, three brothers-in-law, six nieces and nephews, and one expectant grandniece.
Thomas speaks about Katherine with a strange exasperated reverence: the kind of sibling relationship that denotes extreme care and parentage, perhaps only encouraged by how far apart they have lived their adult lives. Katherine is a lawyer and a Councillor for the City of London. She is highly successful, career-motivated, a loud agnostic even in the face of her brother’s miraculous devotion, and a late-in-life mother to her daughters, Sarah and Nicole. Thomas says that Sarah is like her mother, and, with a quiet glint of pride, that Nicole takes after him.
Vincent’s sisters are a diverse set. Dolores, the eldest, is an estate planning lawyer in Veracruz, and her children, both in their late twenties, are following in her footsteps. Martha Benítez attended college in America where she met her husband and started her family, and where she still teaches Comparative Literature at her alma mater. Diana and Rita are Vincent’s younger sisters. Diana is a freelance artist and a wild spirit, and Rita is a former stay-at-home mother turned community organizer.
Family reunions, when they have found the time to host them, have always been chaotic, but Vincent is proud that he has stayed in contact with his sisters despite his sometimes unpredictable and often dangerous life, and he knows they are proud of him. It is the most impossible thing, he thinks, for one’s sibling to become the Pope - it seems even less likely than to become Pope oneself because none of them had chosen to dedicate their entire lives to the church. Martha tells Vincent hilarious stories of things her students have said to her, and Rita complains that her church friends don’t know how to talk to her now, as though they are worried she has a direct line to God and therefore won’t risk gossiping with her any longer.
Except for Dolores, they are all coming to the Vatican in advance of the Christmas holidays. Apparently, Katherine has the same capacity for organization as Thomas and she made arrangements with three of Vincent’s sisters before pitching the idea to him. So Vincent will see his sisters for the first time in years on the same day that he meets Thomas’s only family in the world.
He is thrilled. He is slightly terrified. He wonders, hopes, and prays that by the time the week is over, he and Thomas will both have larger families than they started it with.
+++
December 1st begins calmly. Vincent gives Mass to the staff and inhabits the Palace of the Holy Office, but retires to his rooms afterward. Thomas comes with him.
“Thomas Lawrence, taking a week off,” Vincent overheard Ray murmur to himself. “We are all in grave, grave danger.”
“Not until this evening,” Vincent commented, causing Ray to jump and startle and flush. “By vespers, there will be four Lawrences in the Vatican.”
“God save us,” Ray had said, unable to resist the joke. Thankfully, Thomas had not heard the exchange.
They are resting in Vincent’s room in the Casa Santa Marta, waiting for their families to arrive. Thomas spent the first half of the morning pacing anxiously - Vincent imagines that he will have nightmares about the work he could have been doing instead - until Vincent made him sit down for lunch. After they ate, he bustled Thomas onto the couch and then forced him to lie down. He knows from experience that the only way to get Thomas to remain remotely still is to read to him, so Vincent is sitting on one end of the couch, Thomas’s head pressed against his outer thigh and his eyes closed.
Vincent was reading from a volume of poetry but switched to a collection of Gabriel García Márquez’s short stories half an hour ago. The volume is old, the pages are worn, and the smell of the aging paper reminds him of Kabul and Mexico City at the same time. Perhaps in anticipation of his sisters, he can admit to feeling a little homesick for all the places he has lived before. He reads, “Then the priest noticed that seen close up he was much too human: he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mistreated by terrestrial winds, and nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels.”
“You are not subtle,” Thomas mutters, resting on the couch with his eyes closed.
“What?” Vincent asks innocently.
“This isn’t a very flattering comparison, Vincent.”
“What comparison? I am merely trying to share with you one of my favorite childhood tales,” he teases, lowering a hand to rest on Thomas’s doze-warmed brow.
“I don’t have wings,” Thomas says drolly.
“But you are very old?” Vincent asks, knowing that Thomas had queued up the joke for him, and delights in making it all the same.
Thomas heaves a sigh for Vincent’s benefit, but then checks his watch. “We will have to finish this round of insults later, Your Holiness,” he says dryly. “We should get dressed.”
In his quarters, Vincent religiously wears sleep pants and worn t-shirts. He is gradually teaching Thomas the art of dressing down, but today has only managed to rid him of his outermost layers. He dips into his bedroom as Thomas slowly straightens up, stretching muscles weak from rest and cracking his joints. Vincent reemerges, fully dressed, in time to see Thomas pause beside his window, still holding his fascia.
“What is it?” Vincent asks.
Thomas leans a little closer to the window, inspecting something outside of it. “Come, see.” A smile plays across his thin lips. “You’ll love this.”
Vincent approaches and peers around Thomas, and gasps. “A nest!” he coos, pressing his shoulder to Thomas’s so they can both observe it at once.
“A nest,” Thomas agrees. “It looks like they have only just begun building it.” There are twigs, feathers, bits of hair and fur, and, regrettably, a bit of plastic trash woven into the mostly flat and small nest. It sits on the broad concrete windowsill, tucked against the glass and the wall.
“Oh, how delightful,” Vincent breathes, swooning into Thomas’s side. When Thomas’s arm naturally finds its way around his waist, he swoons harder. “What kind of bird, do you think?”
“That kind,” Thomas says as a nondescript brown and grey bird with black spots on its wings and neck alights on the sill, causing Vincent to gasp in delight. It hops forward a few steps and then into its nest, tucking more twigs into the collection. “Turtle doves,” Thomas says, and as if drawn by the statement, a second bird lands, hopping into the nest, which is too small to fit them both comfortably.
“Oh!” Vincent’s hand flies up to cover his mouth, afraid that if he coos too loudly, the birds will be scared off through the thick glass. “Oh, two of them, Thomas! Are they together?” The birds hop around each other, taking turns adjusting their new home, preening their wings, and flapping them enthusiastically before they turn and dive off the balcony, flitting off and out of sight in a moment.
Thomas presses a kiss against Vincent’s hair. “I believe it is a monogamous species,” he teases. “They mate for life.”
Vincent sighs and leans into him harder.
They watch the nest quietly for a few minutes but the birds don’t return. Eventually, Thomas says, “Time to go. They should be getting in soon.” Vincent thinks he is trying to sound like a man about to go to war, continuing their joke, but when he turns, his eyes are bright. Happiness shows itself openly on his face in a rare way, and Vincent can see longing in the way he turns his body toward the door. He has a sudden vision of a boy racing through long grass, trying to keep up with his big sister, and a toddler, standing anxiously in an open doorway, waiting for her to come home.
Vincent finds his hand and entwines their fingers. He squeezes. “Let’s.”
+++
Thomas and Vincent do not meet their sisters at the airport or the gates of the Vatican. It is one of the many security concerns and compromises that will remind them, for the entire duration of the visit, that this is not as simple as a holiday vacation. Vincent is the Pope. This creates an innate danger for his family. These are circumstances that he is used to, and in some ways, Thomas is even more experienced. Because of their experience, however, they are used to it, and so they stand in the courtyard behind the Piazza of the Casta Santa Marta and make idle chatter as they wait to greet their families.
They arrive together. Katherine had arranged most of the travel details and had orchestrated their myriad flights - from Veracruz, Mexico City, Boston, and London - to arrive reasonably close together, and they had each waited in the airport until they were all gathered and only required one car to transport them to the Vatican. Thomas had arranged for a private room in the airport for their sisters to wait in and had procured a chauffeur and a guard to follow them on the last leg of their journey. Vincent had made his sisters swear to bring him Pulparindo and other Mexican sweets.
Katherine Lawrence is the oldest of their number and she approaches at the head in a pin-stripe pantsuit, grey hair slicked back so tightly Vincent wonders if it gives her a headache. Thomas has always told stories of her wild and defiant youth in the English countryside, and those tales still match the character of the tall woman striding toward them with her matching rolling suitcase. Beside Katherine are her daughters - adopted, Thomas has explained, because Katherine dedicated her life to the career she loved until she felt the call toward motherhood, and never found a man she loved half as much as either. Sarah is older, about to finish her final year of A-Levels, and named after her grandmother, who Thomas speaks of sparingly in worshipful tones; Vincent has heard the colloquialism that to children, their mother is their first God, and never seen it reflected more fiercely in any man than Thomas. Nicole is Katherine’s younger daughter. Thomas has spent little time with his nieces, but he schedules regular phone calls with them and he seems endlessly fond and squishy whenever they come up in conversation.
They greet each other with air kisses on their cheeks. Exchanging a glance with Katherine, Thomas takes both his niece’s hands in each of his and holds them for a moment, before breathing a sigh of relief. Vincent knows what that means: they are healthy. They are whole.
He witnesses their reunion while he greets his own sisters.
Vincent’s sisters are all close to him in age. The eldest, Dolores, had still refused to travel out of Mexico, claiming that she was unfit at her age, but promised to call them all often. Martha is also older than Vincent, and Diana and Rita are his two younger sisters. Diana is the wildest of their number and the least religious but she had found enough success as a traveling artist and photographer to support herself before Vincent’s ascension had dramatically raised the value of her work: “If people are dumb enough to think that matters, then I’ll take their damn money.” Rita, the youngest, met her husband in college and married him shortly thereafter, and devoted her life to raising her three children; now that they are grown, she has become more active in her suburb of Mexico City as a community organizer and spiritual leader. When Vincent’s detractors wish to insult him, they bring up Diana and showcase pictures of her often pornographic, sometimes sacrilegious artwork; when they wish to praise him, they use pictures of Rita in local soup kitchens and doing volunteer work at under-funded pre-schools. He loves them all equally and thinks that all expressions of their faith and love are beautiful.
(“They should be glad I wasn’t elected,” Thomas grumbled once. “Katherine would have taken out a couple of teeth the first time a reporter tried to shove a camera in Nicole’s face. And then, just for kicks, she would have declared that God is a ‘tool and a concept that can be used for good or bad, but not an ineffable force that can tangibly affect our lives.’”
“And would she have been wrong?” Vincent asked, just to see that outrage that had stolen over his dear Tomás’s face.)
Vincent’s sisters swarm him. Even before he was appointed Pope, it had been a long time since he was able to see them in person, as leaving Kabul was a difficult prospect at the best of times, and they would have been in great danger attempting to visit him. Over Rita’s shoulder, Vincent watches with enormous amusement as Thomas extends a hand to Katherine as though to shake hers, only to be wrestled into an enthusiastic hug as his nieces attach themselves to his sides.
“Goodness,” Thomas says.
Vincent laughs and squeezes Rita’s waist tighter.
He notices the far-off flash of a camera, and while it does not necessarily bother him - there are scheduled photoshoots in the coming days, after all, and he prefers these candid images to those - a Swiss Guard sets off at once to reprimand the photographer, lingering beyond the gates, and perhaps to confiscate the camera.
“Let’s go inside,” Thomas says, already ushering them along and trying to take Katherine’s suitcase, only to be swatted away. “Come along. We had planned to go to my apartment - it is, ahem, a little more spacious, but of course, we understand if any of you wish to retire early. You will be staying with Vincent in the Casa Santa Marta.” He performs tour guide so well and Vincent is strangely reminded of the Conclave, and surprised by how endeared he is by the memory. It is long enough in the past that the reality of Thomas’s exhaustion and anxiety, and his own shock and displeasure, have dimmed. Now, he thinks of the first days of their acquaintance with pleasantly rose-colored glasses.
“Italy is eight hours ahead of Rome,” Rita says. She takes Thomas’s elbow as an escort and Vincent is amused by the small start he gives - Thomas is not, as a rule, used to any woman initiating contact with him - and by the way he settles into it quickly. “It is the morning for us! I need to freshen up, but that’s all.”
“We traveled vertically,” Sarah jokes. She and Nicole hang on the outskirts of their group, obviously conscious of being the only teenagers in the company of grown adults. Vincent can practically see Rita melting at their twin looks of nervousness.
“Then you’ll be hungry,” she says confidently. “Come on, let’s feed you up. Vinnie, I hope you ordered the groceries I told you to - or else we will have words.”
He might be the Pope, but she has been his little sister for much longer.
+++
It is the most wonderful thing in the world, Vincent learns, to prepare dinner with one’s family.
The Lawrences respectfully bow out of the preparations but linger at Thomas’s table, watching and talking amongst themselves as the Benítez siblings jostle for space in the hardly used kitchen. It is an old and familiar routine. Their mother and father, regardless of their limited means, had instilled in each of them a love of cooking that has transcended time. Vincent rarely has the opportunity these days, but doing so with his sisters feels right. They make a feast and Rita mourns that they don’t have time to make the bread from scratch.
Rita and Diana speak very little English, and all of Thomas’s family are strictly monolingual. It is one of those strange details that surprises Vincent, given Thomas’s impressive collective of conversational fluencies, but they persist, and they find other ways to engage with each other.
Katherine convinces Thomas to play his grand piano for them, something that Vincent has rarely succeeded in doing, and he jokingly plonks out a few Christmas carols before actually capitulating and playing a lovely rendition of O Holy Night. Vincent is sure there are hearts in his eyes. Thomas doesn’t seem to notice because when he finishes, he insists on surrendering the instrument to Nicole, who is indeed a lovely player, and refuses at once to play Christmas music. “It’s not Christmas,” she says firmly. “It’s December. There’s a difference.” She launches into a fluttering piece and immediately Thomas breaks into chuckles.
When Vincent and his sisters look inquisitorially at him, he explains, “Vivald’s L’inverno - Winter.” He rolls his eyes. Nicole grins victoriously.
She’s a wonderful pianist and seems perfectly content to subdue her nervousness by playing for them instead of conversing with them.
They sit around the table catching up and getting to know one another. Katherine is immediately enamored with Martha (Vincent is pleased: he was sure they would get along), and Thomas translates for Sarah and Diana as they discuss her art and career. Vincent talks about home with Rita; she still lives in Mexico City, although far from where they grew up, but she has the news of all their tías and tíos and the hoards of cousins that Vincent hardly remembers. It makes him ache. He forgets, sometimes, especially in brief moments, everything that he has left behind, and the life he can never return to.
But Rita senses his melancholy and takes his hand without breaking her stride in recounting the last family reunion. Vincent glances at Thomas, finding him already watching with a concerned purse to his mouth. Vincent smiles.
Nothing lost at all, really.
His sisters don’t know about Thomas’s gifts, and Vincent has not expressly told them about their relationship either. While he has no regrets about keeping Thomas’s secrets for him, he does wish he could be open in all things with his sisters, but he is not entirely sure how they would react. They are good, loving people, more inclined toward community than strict doctrinal guidance, but all are observing Catholics. He thinks Dolores and Martha have likely guessed already.
(They are all aware of his intersex traits. Dolores was the first person in the world he told - he called her from the hospital, crying and asking if she knew, if their parents knew, and kept it from him and allowed him to live in sin. She had no prior knowledge but still demanded, What sin? Am I sinful? What sin, Vinnie?” The rest followed, though, by perfectly tacit agreement, have kept the information from their husbands and children. It had taken time for Rita to understand, but Vincent had never lost her love or faith, not for a moment. Without them, not even the Holy Father would have been able to convince him to retain his post. They have carried him to where he is.)
Despite their protestations, Vincent’s sisters tire quickly after a long day of travel and little sleep. They reluctantly follow Vincent back to the Casa Santa Marta, offering heartfelt goodbyes to the Lawrences, and tease Vincent about the presence of the Swiss Guards who trail after them. Diana asks if there are any spare feathers she can have.
They leave to the sound of faint piano music.
+++
They play cards. They watch Christmas movies. They tour the turtle pond and the lovely gardens the Sisters keep for the bees they harvest honey from. Thomas only disappears three times in the first two days to attend to urgent matters regarding the College, which is such immense self-restraint on his part that neither Katherine nor Vincent mentions his absences. Nicole comes out of her shell and has a hilarious time teaching Vincent about social media - she seems to find it funny that he doesn’t know anything about the subject, despite being younger than Thomas. Dolores calls and so do Vincent’s nieces and nephews, all grown up. None of them know Vincent well given his life’s work, and there is something of awe in their eyes, but they are kind men and women and Vincent decides he will make more time for them in the future, no matter what distance separates them.
It is normal. It is lovely. The turtle doves finish building their nest and Vincent checks on them every morning and night, taking dozens of pictures of them nestled in it together, tightly packed. He leaves piles of seeds on the windowsill for them when they are absent (he hopes they will return year after year).
Eventually, they are called to the formal photoshoot scheduled by the Press Office, and head to an outdoor stage set up in one of the piazzas. Everyone agrees to let Nicole and Sarah avoid it, due to their age and anxiety; Ray takes them on a tour of the Vatican’s gardens. Thomas, Vincent, and several other prominent Vatican cardinals with visiting family members line up at the behest of the PR reps and submit to awkward, stiff-looking portraits. Vincent and his sisters are the primary focus, although he personally thought that Thomas and Katherine had looked striking standing together, him in cardinal reds and her in a deep blue pantsuit. But before the photographer can dismiss them, Vincent calls Thomas over.
“A favor,” he says, smiling at the cameraman. “Another photo, please, with my Dean and his dear sister.”
Someone in the milling crowd whispers. Vincent assumes that the truly dogged reporters and rumormongers likely already know that Katherine is agnostic, but he has sworn an oath to God to love and protect all his children, and it doesn’t matter to him.
The photographer capitulates, looking pleased, and directs Katherine and Thomas back onto the stage, posing the groups with Thomas and Vincent in the center and their sisters behind and around them. Thomas approaches with a furrowed brow, eyes glancing at the other cardinals lingering on the outskirts.
“You show me too much favoritism,” Thomas murmurs as he reaches Vincent’s side. He doesn't seem conscious of the way he leans down and angles his entire body toward Vincent, like one would angle the pages of a book into unbroken sunlight.
Vincent laughs. “Why hide what is obvious? Why hide what is good?”
“Jesus Christ,” Katherine mutters, and Vincent’s sisters break out into a chorus of high, ringing laughter. “Get a room.”
“Katherine!” Thomas snaps, outraged at her easy blasphemy before the pope, but then- “Vincent!” when Vincent bursts into laughter as well.
The Vatican Press Office does not approve the image, but the photographer apparently believed that it was necessary to disseminate it amongst the staff anyway: Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, his arms folded petulantly across his chest, Katherine Lawrence, pointing an accusing finger at him, next to Pope Innocent XIV and his trio of sisters, all looking remarkably alike, all with their heads tilted back in laughter, teeth, and eyes catching the sunlight.
With little turnaround, Katherine reprints dozens of copies of the image and sends them out as holiday cards, the return address listed as the Sistine Chapel.
+++
The girls - Thomas’s delightful nieces, who easily become irreverent with Vincent, to his relief - insist on a party. Thomas says such a thing is impossible and they negotiate him down to a get-together. Thomas grumbles, but he organizes the entire thing, including having dinner delivered and a small, stunted pine tree set up in the corner of his living room for the girls to decorate. They string together popcorn and cranberries that Vincent plans on delivering to his birds after the holidays and cut out paper stars. Simple. Lovely things often are.
Aldo, Ray, and Villanueva, who has business in Rome for the season, are invited. Aldo and Katherine have a long history and the girls are affectionate with him. Ray is as awkward as ever, but he seems happy to be included. Villanueva delights Vincent’s sisters, who pepper him with a hundred questions about Peru. Nicole retreats to the piano again but looks happy there, content to participate in her own way.
It is lovely, and warm. It has been a long time since Vincent celebrated Christmas with his family.
+++
“You should know, your sisters are all currently hounding poor Tommy in his room.” Vincent looks up. He is not sure when Katherine appeared in his office or how she prevented the Swiss Guard from announcing her presence, but she is a Lawrence, so perhaps she simply demurred, lawyered, and riddled her way inside. “I imagine they’re asking him what his intentions are - but don’t worry. My daughters are chaperoning their shovel talk.”
“Oh, good,” Vincent says, signing the paperwork and setting it aside. He agreed to come into his office for the afternoon to tie up a few loose ends, but he is just about finished. It will require his seal to complete it, but he will need to find someone to help him with that - left on his own, experience tells him he will only end up spilling wax everywhere. “I was worried, for a moment there. Sarah will keep him safe, I’m sure.”
Katherine hums. She begins to circle his office, boldly peering at his pictures and personal effects on the shelves, next to the ancient collection of religious texts that he inherited from his predecessor. Since he has become Pope, Vincent has also received dozens upon dozens of gifts, from cardinals, from dignitaries, and from the faithful crowds that he walks through. Many he donates but a few he has kept: beautifully bound novels and collector’s editions, which he has no use for other than the innate pleasure they give him to look at: photographs from proud parents of their sons and daughters assisting in humanitarian efforts around the globe: crafty artwork from children with missing front teeth. He likes to be reminded of his true purpose. The hope and goodness he can inspire.
Katherine picks up a framed photograph, one of the few Vincent has of himself in the office. Of himself and Thomas. It is a recent addition, taken during their trip to Argentina. He and Thomas are posed, respectfully several feet apart, each of them dressed in full regalia. Vincent is smiling at the camera. Thomas is smiling at Vincent.
“Thomas has a bad track record with popes,” Katherine says. She brushes a finger over the photo, not quite touching the glass. Vincent again imagines Thomas as a young boy, getting ready for school, and can picture Katherine straightening his shirt and his backpack. He pictures their mother’s funeral; perhaps Katherine knotted his tie and brushed his hair. He can imagine Thomas as a young man, taking Holy Orders with a look of stern concentration on his face, and his sister adjusting his clerical collar until it sits perfectly flat.
“I know,” Vincent says. “He has told me.”
“I doubt he has told you all of it.”
“Thomas has told me everything he wishes me to know. It is more than enough.”
She puts the photo down carefully. “Our mum never wanted him to come here,” she says. “She wanted him to stay home, to stay safe. He couldn’t resist, though. He felt - I guess he felt a calling. It’s not something I understand, but I also can’t hold it against him. He wanted to help, and he believed the church would be the best place to do it.” She looks at him. “Forgive me, Father, but I think he was incorrect.”
“It depends on how you categorize helpfulness,” Vincent says, “and how you prioritize Thomas against people who need him. It would be a mistake, however, to discredit the work that Thomas has done in his life, and his dedication to healing. I can tell you, he has changed and saved countless lives, sometimes at great personal cost. There should be no downplaying how fierce his commitment has been. To the Vatican, yes, but to all people of the Earth.”
“I know,” she says sharply. Vincent shrugs, willing to bear her anger. “I know that. But he’s my brother, and whatever your relationship is with him, he’s been my brother for almost seventy years. And I’m not the pope and I’m not Catholic, so you’ll have to forgive me again if I’m selfish and I wish he had never come here.”
“That is easy to forgive.”
She huffs a laugh. “Right. I guess forgiveness comes easily to you.”
“Yes. More easily than many I have met.”
“Not Thomas.”
Vincent nods. “No. Not him.”
She folds her arms, then uncrosses them, and finally sits down in one of the large armchairs before Vincent’s desk. “He was horribly mistreated by most of the popes he served,” she says bluntly, “and when the last Holy Father came into office and treated Thomas like he was a person with agency and emotions, Thomas was so grateful to him that he worshipped the ground he walked on. The littlest bit of humanity and he was like a father - a real father, I mean - to him. So, I have to tell you what I’m worried about.” She closes her eyes. “I think you’re a really, really nice man, and you actually like Thomas and you genuinely treat him well, and I’m worried about the kind of loyalty that might inspire in him. I’m worried about how strong it will become.”
“I worry about that as well.” He rests a hand on the desk, palm up, with no expectation - but she takes it. Her hands are like Thomas’s, long-fingered, pale, bony, and uncallused. Vincent is losing the calluses on his own hands. “All I can offer you is the assurance that I will continue to treat him well. I will continue to factor in his happiness and health, and prioritize those things whenever possible. And, Katherine, I will continue to be as loyal, as steadfast, as trusting with him as he is with me.”
She meets his eyes in a serious exchange, then squeezes his hand tightly. “Can’t ask for more than that, I suppose,” she says. She detaches her hand and leans back in the chair. “You know, I’ve always been curious about the sex life of the Pope, but now that my brother is involved, for the first time, I actually don’t want to know.”
And Vincent laughs again. He does that a lot nowadays.
+++
Thomas meets Vincent in his apartment that night. They don’t discuss their conversations with their sisters, but they embrace, hold each other tightly, and the unspoken promise in this is enough.
+++
On the second to last afternoon, they exchange small presents after lunch, still sitting around Thomas’s table with the dishes laid out - the most casual meal Vincent has enjoyed since he arrived in the Vatican almost a year ago. Vincent understands that it is a difficult prospect to buy a Christmas present for the Pope, but he wishes they had more sympathy for him - what does the Pope get his sisters? At least he and Thomas have agreed to forgo an exchange of gifts since it suits neither of their temperaments, and because they both know that the greatest gift they give each other is their company and their shared devotion.
The group has the benefit of living in vastly different corners of the world, so a majority of the presents are local snacks, food, and knickknacks. Vincent is given an enormous box of sweets he remembers from his childhood, and Sarah and Nicole receive the same, as well as American candy from Martha and a tin of British cookies (biscuits, allegedly) from Katherine. It has been a long time since Vincent was able to indulge his sweet tooth so well. Sarah and Nicole give their uncle sheet music that makes Thomas pretend not to tear up. Vincent gives his sisters jars of jams and honey prepared specially by the Daughters of Charity, and Thomas gives them beautiful hand-maid rosaries from a local shop in Rome. Katherine pointedly insists on saving her gift to Thomas for last but finally takes an unwrapped box from her pocket and hands it over.
“Just in case you forget,” she says cryptically, while Thomas eyes the package, smaller than the palm of his hand, curiously.
Thomas slides the lid off gently and Vincent shamelessly peers over his shoulder. Nestled into red and green tissue paper is a silver key.
“I bought a house,” Katherine says.
Thomas raises an eyebrow. “Another one?” he asks dryly. “Really, Katherine, you are speaking to ascetic Catholic Cardinals - you should see the squalor Vincent lives in, it's frankly unbecoming.” He clears his throat and Vincent feels his insides swell with warmth and his eyes turn to hearts; he adores how silly Thomas acts around his older sister. “Jesus said, ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom-”
Vincent’s sisters are snickering. Katherine cuts her brother off by flicking a stray grain of rice at him which, for a second, sticks to his forehead. “In Bridgnorth,” she finishes dryly, raising an eyebrow.
The grain of rice drops onto the front of Thomas's shirt and Vincent plucks it off, admiring the shocked expression on Thomas’s face. “Bridgnorth?” he repeats dumbly.
“Bridgnorth.” Katherine is clearly triumphant in how much she has stumped her brother. Her children seem equally thrilled to see their usually eloquent uncle blinking and stuttering. “I checked, but our house wasn’t for sale.” She says it with a deep melancholy. Vincent knows that, with Thomas’s blessing, she had sold their childhood home to pay her way through law school. “But that place would have needed a lot of work anyway, and I’m looking for somewhere to retire. Found an absolutely stunning townhouse in Hightown, on this little dead-end road, right on the edge of the river.” She smiles. “Four bedrooms, Tommy.” She reaches out and folds his fingers over the little box and then pushes their joined hands against his chest. “And you are welcome to visit, and stay for as long as you want, whenever you want.”
Their childhood home, lost to them with the tragically early deaths of their parents. Thomas has told Vincent that he has never returned, not since he first came into the service of the late Holy Father. (There are rumors in Bridgnorth. Rumors of miracles.)
Thomas stares at her for long enough that Vincent’s sisters quietly stand and begin to clean up the remains of the meal, shuffling presents into organized piles and taking away empty plates, before retreating toward the kitchen. Eventually, Thomas clears his throat. “That’s wonderful, Kat,” he says quietly. “I will… I will come visit.” Vincent reminds himself that, once, Thomas had planned to leave the Holy See. To leave and not return. He had been tired, sad, and disappointed. Vincent knows that Thomas is those things no longer, but he imagines the promise of a home waiting for him anyway is a powerful thing. Thomas clears his throat again and blinks his eyes rapidly before turning a watery gaze and a fond smile on Sarah. “Perhaps when you graduate - I wouldn’t miss it for the world, darling.”
Sarah flushes but grins and then turns her attention to Vincent. “You too, Your Holiness,” she pipes up. “If you ever make it out of here.”
“You’re always welcome,” Katherine says, perhaps a little dryly, but with, Vincent thinks, complete sincerity. He doubts she will ever express her true feelings about the romantic entanglement between her younger brother and the Pope, and the vast and prevalent danger such an attachment could bring to Thomas, but when she rolls her eyes at them, it is all affection.
“I think it might be unlikely,” Vincent admits. Under the table, he puts a hand on Thomas’s knee, and Thomas gives him a soft look. “But with God’s blessing, my papacy will be a long one. I will hold out hope.”
Vincent gave up on the quiet desire for a home of his own and family and children to fill it a long time ago - he has always had the children of his parishes and ministries before the Vatican, anyway.
And now, he supposes, he has this.
+++
On December 8th, they celebrate the Feast of the Solemnity and Vincent leads the ceremony in St. Peter’s Square as they unveil the massive, sparkling pine tree that will remain there until the Sixth of January. Like most other Christian sects, even the Catholic church has bowed to these non-traditional traditions, but Vincent, unlike some previous popes, believes it is a good thing. How could he not? The lights of the tree are reflected in Sarah and Nicole’s shining eyes.
The next morning, their sisters depart from the Vatican. Katherine is returning to England with her daughters, while Vincent’s sisters are staying in a hotel room in Rome and planning to explore the city’s tourist attractions without bringing the Pope in toe. They will return to the Vatican to celebrate Vincent’s Gaudete Sunday Mass and then go home. Even knowing that he will see them again in a week, Vincent finds it hard to let them go.
Thomas, embracing his sister and nieces, has a much harder time. His sister’s invitation to visit probably only makes his reluctance to break the hug more painful.
But they do leave. Vincent and Thomas watch until their cars are gone and their feet hurt.
They retire to the Casa Santa Marta quietly. The air is heavy with melancholy even though, to the outside world, the joyous Christmas season has just begun. But Vincent knows they are both thinking of their families who live so far away - of their sisters and their children, and the things they have left behind and sacrificed for faith and for safety.
They reach Vincent’s suite. When the door closes behind them, as has become their habit, they both automatically head for the window to check on their new companions.
Vincent’s breath catches.
One of the doves is on the windowsill, pecking at the seed Vincent had left out that morning.
And in the nest, there are eggs.
Vincent takes Thomas’s hand and squeezes it. They have left things behind, yes, but not always. Not forever. And there is so much they have gained in the meantime.