Chapter Text
“For by Your birth those who adored stars
were taught by a star
to worship You, the Sun of Justice”
– Troparion of the Nativity –
19th December
“Blanc,” said Phillip, swallowing down the last bite of the croissant they were having for breakfast. “I want to go to mass this year for Christmas!”
On the other side of the table, still a little wrinkled from sleep and draped in his bathrobe like a grumpy Egyptian mummy, Benoit Blanc’s head fell backwards as he let out an irritated groan.
“Really?”
It was a quiet winter’s morning. The first snowflakes of the season danced from the cloudy sky and draped the waking city of New York in a soft, muffling blanket, drowning out the honking, blaring and rattling that usually musically accentuated their meals. Red and green and yellow glints from cars, neon signs and traffic lights blinked languidly through the crystals like Christmas lights, while a merry tune whistled up from the flat below.
Engulfed in this peaceful spirit, Phillip launched his battle plan. He didn’t want to brag, but it might just have been his best one yet.
Phillip raised his brows. “Yes, dear.”
“We have this conversation every year... dear,” Blanc countered, accurate to Phillip’s forecast of this conversation down to the mocking of the pet name. “And every year, I tell you that you are more than welcome to visit a mass, but I will not – and once again I remain adamant on that – join you!”
Phillip reached for the teapot. “Then I won’t go either.”
He didn’t look up from his cup as he carefully poured the steaming, amber liquid. He didn’t need to. Blanc’s heavy sigh was telling enough to mark the first step of his scheme as successful.
“Why?” Blanc sounded genuinely distraught. Phillip almost felt sorry for the poor sod. “Will you catch fire and be cast into hell if you enter the realms of church without your significant other by your side? Because I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Piggy, but we are homosexuals. In the eyes of God we are doomed eternally, no atonement and no paradise.”
“Please don’t be so cynical over breakfast, Blanc,” Phillip sighed. “I want to go with you because, by whatever madness must have possessed me when I asked you out these many years ago, you’re my chosen family, and I would like very much to spend Christmas with you.”
This time he was looking at Blanc when he spoke, and he was glad of it, because although this conversation was still following his meticulously planned manipulation script, the soft smile that wiped the frown from Blanc’s face like a summer rain nevertheless made Phillip’s heart jingle like a tattered bell.
“You asked me out because you thought my ass was hot. And now look where that frivolity brought you!” Blanc teased tenderly, one arm sneaking out from the cosy shelter of his robe to pluck a slice of apple in his mouth.
Phillip rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t just your ass. I also quite liked how clever you were. Always had a thing for the smart ones.”
Blanc shrugged. “If you say so.”
“I do,” Phillip said – and waited.
He calmly reached for a toast, then let his fingers dance over the lids of jams lined up on the table like a company of round, deliciously filled soldiers. Eventually, he picked up the plum one and carefully spread it out on his bread, making sure that all the edges were nicely covered in the sugary, burgundy paste. He even gave it an extra swipe, just to hear the lovely crunch of the knife scraping over the crisply burnt crumbs of the toast.
That finally made Blanc snap.
“You’re baiting me, piggy,” he deduced, heaving himself out of his slumping position on the chair to lean towards Phillip, hands crossed under his chin.
Suddenly, Phillip found himself caught in one of Blanc’s characteristic eagle stares; mercilessly x-rayed, taken apart and carefully sewn back together, cleaner and faster than any surgeon could. It was exhilarating, in a strangely comforting way. He felt naked, bare down to his soul. He felt known.
Phillip took a big bite of his toast. He didn’t bother swallowing before speaking. Blanc had seen more indecent things inside him than some half-chewed mush with jam.
“Am I?” he said innocently.
Blanc smiled.
“Yes, you are. You think you can win this!” He underlined each sentence with a lax jab of his finger towards Phillip. “You think I’m going to mass with you this year. You planned this entire conversation, and now you’re waiting for me to say something that will unveil your… your pièce de résistance, so to speak, the final piece in your puzzle. Your last act. What is it, Phillip? What do you want me to say next?”
Well, Phillip’s plan was slightly derailing now, but nothing that couldn’t be swayed back on track with a little bit of fineness. He still felt confident … ish about the whole thing. Slowly, he swallowed down the last bit of toast and wiped his mouth with the cotton napkin Blanc had embroidered with hundreds of tiny – and noticeably bloody – knives in his latest, dooming phase of unemployment.
Phillip cleared his throat and attempted his best Southern drawl (naturally, he failed pathetically in the first seconds but boldly battled on through): “My dearest Phillip, I love you more than I love obviously being the smartest person in the room, and an absolute asshole about it at that; but I simply cannot bear to spend even a minute in a room full of these ludicrous, silly characters who think a festivity created by Coca Cola and capitalist leeches is imbued with the spirit of a fairytale god and his mary-sue son who wasn’t even born on the day we are celebrating his birthday thousands of years later by putting pine trees in our living rooms and buying each other too many snuggly socks. So do tell me, my dearest husband, what incomparable gift you intend to offer me so I embark on this ordeal nevertheless and be at your side at mass this year.”
For a moment the room was engulfed in absolute silence. Then, Blanc snickered.
“That was an awful impression.”
Phillip waved his buttery knife at him. “Shut up and say it!”
Blanc squinted. Phillip could practically hear the gears turning in his head. “My dearest Phillip, I love you more than I love obviously being the smartest person in the room, and an absolute asshole about it at that; but I simply cannot bear to … to… I’m sorry, I forgot the rest of your wonderful performance. In my defence, I was simply too distracted by your lovely voice. Can I just skip to the end, please?”
Phillip nodded graciously.
“Thank you. Do tell me, my dearest piggy, what the fuck you intend to offer me to change my mind about something I have been absolutely clear about for decades!”
“I am so glad you asked, baby,” purred Phillip, salvaging the cringe he got from the pet name as retaliation for the swearing. “See, it’s not really something I’m offering you; it’s more a somewhere. Maybe even a someone?”
Blanc snorted, clearly taken aback. “You found my Chimney Rock files,” he deduced. “You are asking me to go to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude for Christmas Mass, aren’t you? But why? Why do you think that’s what is going to make me change my mind?”
The tea in Phillip’s cup had gone cold, and he grimaced, appalled, as he gulped it down. There was a very narrow window in which tea was palatable, he found – either it was piping hot and scorching his gullet on its way down, or it tasted like stale dishwater – but the gamble was worth it for that one perfect sip when the bergamot was blooming on his tongue, the milk clung softly to the roof of his mouth and warmth spread tingly through his limbs like a soothing hug.
And if he had lost this gamble now to win the war against Blanc’s mulishness and take him to church, that was a price well paid in his book.
“Maybe I am,” he said. “And don’t you already know why, Blanc? Doesn’t the fact that you knew exactly of where and whom I was speaking tell you all you need to know?”
Blanc sputtered. “I’m not… he’s… We never…” He ran his hands over his reddening face and fixed his gaze on the slowly melting butter, clearly avoiding Phillip’s amused eyes. “We barely talked.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Phillip corrected him softly. “I did read your files, remember? And you are very meticulous about documentation, so I know you spent half a night sitting on his bed watching him snore on the other end.”
“That’s hardly talking,” Blanc huffed. “And I wasn’t watching him, I was watching YouTube videos of Monsignor Wicked on Miles’ tablet.”
“Sure. And you couldn’t have done that anywhere else. Like, in your own hotel room.”
Blanc finally left the butter alone and instead grabbed a handful of apple slices for moral support. “He’s half my age,” he continued his defence, muffled by the bulk of fruit in his mouth.
“What a boring look on life,” chided Phillip. “You’re both very much grown men in full possession of their wits, aren’t you?”
He couldn’t so much hear the rising desperation in Blanc as see it in the more and more frantic waves of his hands that were now on their best way to knock over the teapot.
“He’s a damn Catholic priest! Celibacy, the sin of flesh and desire, remember?”
Phillip tsked and lifted the pot – a wedding gift from his niece – out of his husband’s flailing reach. “No one said you had to fuck the poor guy’s abstinence away on Christmas Eve. Just go there with me and let me enjoy my little Christmas treat while you are appropriately distracted from the horrors of Christianity by looking at your hot priest. And then… we’ll see what happens. You do miss him, don’t you?”
For a second he thought Blanc would argue back. Instead, the man sagged into his chair like a sack of potatoes. “I do,” he admitted. “I wonder how his parish is going, if people are still giving him a hard time about the whole killer priest thing. He wouldn’t fight back if they were, you know. He’s so annoyingly… holy.”
With a quiet groan, Phillip got up from his chair and circled the table until he was standing behind Blanc, reaching for his shoulders to gently draw him back against his belly.
“Holy,” he repeated, giggling. “You are adorable, Benoit Blanc, do you know that?”
Blanc winked at him from his lowered position. “I try. And you look pretty good from down here.”
“I know. Does that mean you’ll go to mass with me?” Phillip asked, hope blooming in his chest.
It had all gone according to his plan, more or less. But he nevertheless was astonished that after all these years, he had finally found the one thing that could override Blanc’s profound, passionate disdain for organised religion.
“Sure,” Blanc said. Just like that. “I never asked you why you want to go so badly, anyway. You’re not religious, I know that. So… why? Why bother trying to drag my sorry, stubborn ass along all these years?”
Phillip let his right hand wander through Blanc’s hair, wrapping the strands around his fingers as he considered the question.
“I don’t know,” he answered slowly. “It’s not about religion, I think. It’s… tradition, the nostalgia of an ageing man in a strange country. I always went to mass with my whole family when I was a boy. That was our Christmas. We would go to mass at this tiny church in Chiswick where the priest always played Elton John at the end of the sermon; I do not know why, but I’m sure he had his reasons. And when we came back home, our tree was decorated, and my mum had prepared cookies and an early present for us to open before bed. It was part of the magic of Christmas, I suppose. And I miss that. Not the mass, really, but being there with the people I love, singing soppy songs about love, seeing the candlelight in glass-stained windows… and even Elton John. I fear I’m sentimental like that, old boy.”
“And I am glad that you are,” said Blanc.