Chapter Text
When the last of the newly-ordained bishops have left for their lodgings at Casa Santa Marta, Bob finally lets himself heave a sigh of relief. Another year, another training course finished. He just hadn’t expected for this year’s plans to be cut short by a papal promotion.
The press and photographers have also retreated for the evening. Veronica has texted him about his dinner being kept warm in the oven in his apartment. And while Edgard’s suggestion to leave off work until tomorrow is very tempting, Bob knows he’ll never get through some of these documents if he didn’t start reading them on his own time. So he heads back to the third floor of the Apostolic Palace, to the still-being-renovated papal apartments.
To his surprise, that’s also where Chito is waiting for him. This time, he’s not sleeping, but rather browsing through the latest draft of Bob’s first apostolic exhortation, only looking up when Bob closes the door to the study behind him.
“Oh, I probably shouldn’t have—” he begins, guiltily setting the sheaf of papers back down on the desk, but Bob merely smiles and shrugs at him.
“We talk about our speeches and homilies all the time, Chito. There wouldn’t be much in there that would surprise you, anyway.”
Chito clears his throat, gestures vaguely to the papers. “I remember Francis starting this.”
Bob nods. “It’s the least I can do, to bookend his pontificate and mine, to show the unity of our visions,” he says, swallowing down the lump in his throat that still rises at the thought of their former Holy Father, mentor, and friend. Though he’d said in his interview with Elise back in July that he hadn’t been personal friends with his predecessor, there was still a fond camaraderie borne of well-timed jokes and their shared history in Latin America that lent itself to deeper and deeper trust…
“Dilexi te,” muses Chito now, nodding at the title sheet. “And they shall know that I have loved you.”
“Though you have but little power, I will make them come and bow before your feet,” finishes Bob. “A call for the Church to remember that caring for the poor is caring for the Lord Himself.”
“A Church of the poor, for the poor,” agrees Chito, his eyes crinkling in that familiar fond smile as he thinks back to Bob’s words from earlier today. “A Church that walks with her people in love and service.”
“A Church that shepherds and serves,” whispers Bob, stepping closer. Chito inhales sharply at that, one hand flying to cradle the crook of Bob’s elbow.
“Your Holiness,” he begins, but Bob raises a hand to stop him.
“Just a bishop who wishes to serve,” he corrects, brushing a bit of Chito’s hair out of his eyes. “So let me serve you, beloved.”
Chito exhales and meets him halfway, closing the last breath of space between their lips. Soon enough, his beloved’s arms are wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him in. Bob hoists him onto the desk, uncaring of all the papers that go flying as a result. The only thing that matters now is Chito: Chito’s breath mingling with his, his fingers tangling into the short ends of Bob’s hair, his knees bracketing Bob’s hips to let him in closer. In between kisses, his fingers slip down to the front of Bob’s cassock, and Bob can’t help the heat that rises in his cheeks at the memory of Chito buttoning him up earlier today.
“What are you doing?” he gasps.
Chito pulls back just slightly in order to send him a fondly exasperated look. “What do you think I’m doing, sinta ko? The opposite of what I did in front of the baby bishops today.”
“Our poor baby bishops.” Bob chuckles a little, his hand drifting back to his pectoral cross out of sheer nervous habit. “You don’t think that was a bit too obvious? I could have done it myself.”
“The only authority we have is service,” quotes Chito this time, mischief dancing brightly in his eyes as his fingers skillfully dart downwards, loosening Bob’s lamb-white burden one tiny button at a time. “Does Jesus not draw nearer through an open hand that caresses and comforts?”
Saying that, his hands begin to untie Bob’s fascia. Bob inhales when the white silk finally falls from his waist, taking only a moment to reacquaint himself with his freedom before swooping in to reward Chito with another kiss. In turn, Chito’s fingers drift back to the last few buttons of the papal cassock; within two short kisses Bob is able to push it down past his hips to join his fascia on the cold, marble floor.
And now he is a man again. Not the Vicar of Christ, just Robert Prevost—just a simple priest from both Chicago and Chiclayo, a shepherd with the smell of his sheep. He cups Chito’s cheeks with both hands, holding him like a holy relic, like something sacred and divine. Most beloved, he thinks with each successive kiss, each lingering touch. Most beloved, what would I do without you?
How quickly life changes; how sudden and capricious the Holy Spirit can be! How much easier it would’ve been to hide this new aspect of their bond as a pair of cardinals—as the inseparable Bishops-and-Evangelization heads, architects of the new and more inclusive baby bishops school! How much lighter the burden, how much sweeter the plans: if it hadn’t been for the papacy, he would’ve been at the San Augustin Church in Intramuros on his birthday, celebrating the Feast of Our Lady of Consolation with the people!
(He and Chito had joked, once, about meeting up in the Philippines in September. Of going around Cavite together, or even Cebu—of seeing the Laudato Si’ farm in Tagaytay, and meeting Chito’s parents in Imus. Now all of that hinges on a potential future papal visit, which would likely be his final trip there.)
The feeling of Chito’s hands in his hair brings Bob swiftly back out of his thoughts, back into the present moment and their present need to be even closer. He lets himself be walked back into his chair, his gaze never leaving Chito’s face as the other man clambers onto his lap. Pulling his cardinal in closer by his fascia, Bob quickly unwinds the crimson cincture from his slender waist like the ribbon of a highly-anticipated Christmas present. Chito, in turn, unfastens Bob’s papal collar so that he can lavish a trail of kisses down the side of Bob’s neck.
“You left marks last time,” says Bob, thinking back to the delightful discovery he’d made the night after the canonization mass. “Did… did you want to do that again?”
“Do I?” Chito pulls back, fixes him with a wry look. “That’s like asking the fire if it wants to burn.”
Bob chuckles, but his amusement quickly melts back into pleasure when Chito grinds down against him, the skirt of his cassock riding up against Bob’s stomach. Heat curls at the base of Bob’s spine, tensing in his legs; he reaches up to grasp Chito’s hips, hoping to control the growing friction between them.
The office soon fills with nothing but breathless ecstasy, with the sweet little whimpers Chito makes when Bob’s hand encircles him just right, with the bitten-off groans Bob makes when he can feel the edge approaching and he doesn’t want to fall just yet. He tries to slow down, to make it last longer, but all that does is make Chito’s bucking more impatient, more wayward.
“Hold on a moment,” he gasps, as Chito’s hands bury themselves in his thinning hair. “Hold on—mi vida, por favor—”
Thankfully, Chito slows the cant of his hips for just a moment, pulling back from where he’d been marking his claim on Bob’s neck. “Malapit ka na, sinta ko?” he wonders with a teasing smile, his hands now unfastening the buttons on Bob’s white clerical shirt. “Sa tingin mo mas masarap kung—tayo nang sabay—”
Bob leans back heavily in the chair, his hand still tight around them both from under Chito’s cassock. He groans as Chito slips a hand down to join his own, matching him in pace and friction until he’s falling, falling—breathing all his love against Chito’s lips—their sighs mingling in the aftermath as he cups Chito’s cheek with his other hand.
“I’ve been waiting to do this to you since this morning,” he murmurs, as Chito presses a line of kisses down the exposed line of his chest. “Doing up my button and yet undoing me completely alongside it…”
“The bishop is a servant,” Chito teases back, this time marking each kiss with a slowly re-fastened button. “And that service is a gift. As Benedict once put it… submission becomes union, because He to whom we submit is Love.”
He leans into Bob’s hand against his cheek, turning his head just slightly to press the corner of his mouth to the pad of Bob’s thumb. In spite of himself, in spite of the arguments they’d had in the past over Bob’s protective streak, Bob still feels his heart pound against his sternum at the simple gesture of devotion.
“Mahal kita,” he says, as Chito finishes the button at his collar, covering up the last of the marks.
Chito’s hands tremble a little; he blinks, pauses, and cocks his head at Bob. “Oh, talaga?” he shoots back, as he tucks them both back in and slowly clambers off of Bob’s lap to readjust his cassock. “And who taught you that?”
Bob quirks an eyebrow. “You don’t think I haven’t been watching your homilies?”
When you are in love, you believe, Chito had said at a Mass in Manila just a couple weeks ago. When love is strong, you believe. When love is weak, you begin to doubt until love is made firm.
Well, here he is, making it firm again after all that upheaval, after the nights of the soul and the misunderstandings and betrayals. True love is an anticipatory gift; it is not based on what is received, but on what one wishes to offer.
I offer you the little I have and am.
Chito’s cheeks are pink. He swats fondly at Bob’s elbow just as they reach the door to the office. “If that’s all the Filipino you know—”
“It’s the most important thing, isn’t it?”
“I could teach you more.” Chito pouts at him, before leaning in closer as if trying to check up on his buttons once again. “John Paul II spoke a couple lines of Tagalog when he visited the Philippines; you could do so much better than that, I’m sure.”
“You place great faith in my linguistic abilities,” says Bob wryly.
Chito’s response is to lean up and kiss his cheek. “I place great faith in you, mahal,” he replies—this time sincerely—before making his way back out the door. He’ll have a flight to catch very soon, so that he can be in Manila in time for Bob’s birthday and the fiesta Mass homily that should have been Bob’s, back in his old life.
But until then, Bob is content to watch him go, one hand still touching his cheek where Chito’s last kiss has left a lingering imprint.