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Blanc stares fixedly out of an overlarge floor-to-ceiling window, alone in a crowd of busy airport chaos, mind abuzz as he turns his phone over and over between his fingers. Traveling home after a case is always a tedious bore, leaving Blanc feeling restless and irritated — worse when, like now, there's an element of the mystery left just loose enough to rankle. It's one of the suspects — a teenaged girl, bared teeth and dark curly hair, the kind of angry that comes along with being hurt for quite a while — bugging at him like a wiggly tooth.
She hadn't been their killer, of course, although one of her teachers had certainly made a concentrated effort to pin the crime on her. A deception the other involved parties had been all too eager to swallow, much to Blanc's displeasure. When he'd finally succeeded in clearing her name, her gratitude had looked an awful lot like an overwhelming desire to bite him. There is some part of Blanc that worries about her, the way he worries about all the temporary companions he leaves behind after a case is finished, but he'd done what he could for her and her future. No, what's really bugging at him now is who she'd reminded him of.
Sighing, Blanc resigns himself to the inevitable and flips his phone right side up.
'Coming through NY after a case,' he types out to one Father Jud Duplenticy. 'How's your schedule looking tonight, padre?'
'For you, open 24/7,' he gets back not a moment later. 'Just let me know when.'
Feeling simultaneously gratified and aggrieved, Blanc pushes himself up out of his uncomfortable plastic chair and goes to find a counter to change his flight at.
The fact is that the Good Friday murders have been caught in the hollow space beneath Blanc's tongue for months now, impossible to ignore or spit out. It'd be easy to pin the blame on Cy Wicks' dedicated campaign for attention, but truthfully that doesn't bother Blanc more than a little yappy dog nagging at his heels would. No, Blanc knows it's Father Jud that's been leaving his tongue half-numb from worrying over months now.
It's that damn confession. Blanc still can't get it out of his head.
The two of them have kept in sporadic contact since Blanc had left him, and Jud assures Blanc he's been doing just fine there in Chimney Rock, but Blanc doesn't buy it for one second. The boy's one of the most earnest liars Blanc's ever had the pleasure of meeting — the more readily the vague reassurances come, the less inclined Blanc is to believe them. The church leadership had been all too eager to allow Jud to remain in the closed down church, of course, rather than reassigning him elsewhere. It keeps him out of the way; not quite swept under the rug, but confined for now — left to his own devices enough for the problem to be kicked soundly down the road, good enough to ignore or wind up someone else's problem eventually. How else does a church deal with its problem children?
That sharp-edged thing caught ceaselessly under Blanc's tongue is shaped an awful lot like the question Who the hell's looking after you? The more time passes, the harder it is to refrain from asking it.
So when Blanc does finally pull up to the church's rectory in a shiny new rental car, watching as Jud stumbles out onto the lot before Blanc has even finished parking, it takes everything Blanc has to bite down on the edges of the question once again.
Not because it's not worth asking — not when Blanc can clearly see the way Jud's knees half-buckle on every step he takes, the way his hands tangle together in ways that fail to hide their persistent tremor; the vivid split in the center of his lip from dehydration that flashes when he smiles; the heavy shadows under his eyes; the frizzing, greasy texture to his curls; the rumpled and dirt-stained appearance of his clothing; the sickly pallor to his skin that is only highlighted by the open, genuine expression on his face — but because Blanc already knows he won't like the answer he'd get.
"Blanc," Jud breathes, eyes wide and searching as he stumbles to a halt in front of him, looking nearly overwhelmed as he drinks Blanc in. "It's good to see you," he says, so earnest it makes Blanc's teeth ache.
That incessant, demanding instinct in Blanc's jaw that makes him a good detective wants to turn on him. Crowd Jud against the side of the rental car and demand to know what's going on, get in Jud's face and refuse to relent until he cracks, until Blanc can understand how it is that Jud looks worse now than he had four months ago, and then push and keep pushing until the problem resolves.
"Right back at ya, Father," Blanc manages to say instead, swallowing back his more unsightly impulses with effort. The planes of Jud's face fold under the force of his answering smile, so nakedly relieved that Blanc nearly chokes. So much for that pretty tale about them looking to hire additional help at the church, then; what other stories has the good Father been telling now? "I hate to say I hope you haven't eaten yet, the hour being what it is, but I did take the liberty of stopping to pick up a late dinner for us to share on my way into town."
"Oh, no," Jud says predictably, trailing at Blanc's heels back indoors, hands tucked away inside of his pockets. "Thanks-, thank you. I've been busy, trying to keep up with the yard work lately; haven't had too much time left for cooking. I appreciate you bringing something."
It's easy enough for Blanc to hook his ankle around a leg of the table, dragging it a mite closer to the sofa. "Must be hungry then, taking care of the whole property on your own," he remarks, making a show of opening up the take-out containers, placing one pointedly on the coffee table in front of Jud as the priest half-collapses down onto the couch.
Jud doesn't react to the prompt. "You said you just wrapped up a case?" he asks instead, shaky fingers plucking restlessly at the fabric of his pants, those long legs of his folded up around the sofa's diminutive height. He keeps his eyes locked on Blanc, ignoring the food entirely in favor of staring openly as Blanc sits himself in the adjacent arm chair. "How did that go?"
Storytelling is one thing, but acting's quite another — Jud isn't quite as good at the latter, and it means Blanc's disinclined to play along and allow the illusion of normalcy. "Settle down and eat," he says plainly, maybe a little too stern, and wills himself to back down when Jud begins to obligingly spoon up his potatoes. It's good enough for now, Blanc tries to convince himself, struggling to get comfortable in his seat and fill the expectant silence. "It was an interesting caper," he allows finally. "Began as a series of burglaries at a boarding school-,"
Jud continues to pick halfheartedly at his meal throughout, only occasionally letting Blanc's own bites prompt him into taking his own. Quite the contrast to the nearly desperate way he clings to Blanc's story, something hungry bleeding out into his voice as he asks questions to keep Blanc talking, drinking up every word with obvious relish. It isn't quite the mirror of their first meeting — Jud so starved for connection and hope that he'd burst into tears after a single conversation with a stranger — but not much an improvement, more of a more wrung-out redux.
Could Blanc have really expected to find anything different? How does the church handle its problem children? It foists responsibility onto someone else, ignores the problem in the hopes they'll go away; it isolates and punishes them, pressures them into punishing themselves, and pretends it's out of their hands and left up to the so-called will of "god".
And sure, Father Jud had painted an earnest picture of a church keen on actual responsibility, insisting he was a norm and Wicks was nothing more than an isolated outlier. Blanc had been willing to indulge him in the notion, willing to stake a corner of his reputation manifesting its reality, but Blanc knows better, truly. At a certain point, it falls out of an institution's nature to do anything other than endlessly perpetuate its own need for power. Wicks wasn't an outlier, he was exactly what he had seemed to be: a man in a position of power, benefiting from that position in exactly the ways he had been enabled — even encouraged — to. Regardless of what he'd like to believe, Father Jud is the only definitive outlier here.
So, isn't this what Blanc had expected? Hadn't he known that the other men in positions of power had no inclinations to risk that power by interceding on someone else's behalf? That the other christian members of the flock would be too preoccupied with their own comfort zones to step outside of them, unwilling to undertake the uncomfortable burden of truly helping somebody else who needed it? Why would they, when they could instead offer quoted reassurances or scorn in equal, rote measure? When they could claim to lean on a hypothetical deity and wash their hands of any guilt or effort with a dreaming conceit of some future, better world draining the meaning out of this one?
Doesn't Blanc remember not to expect any better?
The sudden yank down a bitter memory lane nearly sends Blanc stumbling to a halt, his tongue tangling around his read of the innocent suspect Veronica, how her blisteringly angry demeanor had struck him as familiar, albeit only hypothetically. "Maybe I ought to let you get some sleep, Father" Blanc says abruptly, cutting himself off before he can admit to theorizing about Jud's so-called 'former life', and taking the out Jud's sleepily dipping head offers him.
"No!" Jud yelps, voice cracking. He digs his nail into the edges of a scrape along his palm and jolts himself straighter — exhaustion forcibly swept away by an abstract panic that sets Blanc's teeth on edge. "No, I'm fine. I'm listening! You don't have to leave, or anything; I'm listening, I promise."
"It's hardly a matter of listening," Blanc tries, a little flustered by the abrupt panic — he'd hardly meant to scare the boy. "But you look about dead on your feet, Father. Are you sure you've been looking after yourself?"
Jud sets his teeth against the direct question, nose wrinkling. "Yeah, Blanc, I'm fine," he says, aiming for a light tone and missing terribly.
"Well, pardon me for saying so, Father, but fine feels a bit of a stretch from here," Blanc finally retorts, taking in the way Jud bristles at the words — an echo of an echo. "You said you haven't eaten, but you've barely touched your food; you look like you haven't slept in about a week. I-, how long have they had you up here all alone?"
"I'm fine, Blanc," Jud interrupts, bracing his hands against his knees defensively. An echo of an echo — two teenagers blend into the tick of Jud's jaw, tired of being shut down, scolded, and shuffled around — maybe it wasn't just a younger Jud the young Miss Veronica had reminded Blanc of after all. "I don't need anyone's help. I can take care of myself, and this church, fine."
Blanc feels his lip curl before he can think to stop it; That damn confession, he thinks angrily. Jud walking into that police station, and all the way back to this church — not 24 hours after he'd verbalized an understanding that he was being deliberately framed for these murders, mere hours after the scene at Dr. Sharp's house had proved unquestionably that more elements were at play, and still desperate to shovel blame and guilt onto his own shoulders. Ignoring all evidence to the contrary and martyring himself against a crime he would swear to have moved on from if asked. "Former life" a paper thin facade over a festering wound still eating away at him — what healing the church offers!
"Look," Jud sighs, rubbing his hands tiredly over his face as Blanc seethes. "You-, you don't have to leave. I'd really, really like it if you stayed. It's just-, been a long day." He shifts his weight before Blanc can demand to know when he'd said he'd be leaving, saying, "Here, let me-," as he pushes himself to his feet all at once, and then falters.
Blanc swears as Jud knees fold abruptly, jumping forward in an effort to keep Jud's head from cracking open against the corner of the coffee table. "I'm fine," Jud protests hazily, so marble-mouthed it's nearly unintelligible, head lolling against Blanc's shoulder. He paws clumsily at the sofa, at Blanc's lower back, breathing harshly through his nose as he fights to regain his bearings. For a split second, Blanc feels so incandescently frustrated he can't speak.
"The hell you are!" he grows finally, altogether fed up. He cups his palm around the back of Jud's neck, helping him brace himself against the bottom frame of the couch and snatches the priest's still largely-untouched cup of water off the table. "Drink," he commands sharply, forcing it into Jud's hand, retaking his seat on the couch to loom threateningly above him. "Now."
Jud's cheeks make a pale attempt at flushing, looking up at Blanc through his eyelashes. "I just stood up too fast," he says stubbornly, even as his shaky grip nearly causes him to upend the cup entirely as he finally concedes to drinking it.
To hell with it then, Blanc thinks, sinking his teeth into the nagging problem of Father Jud once and for all. Enough of all this wibbly-wiggling nonsense; if no one else is inclined to do the work, then Blanc will just have to pick up the slack himself.
"You don't have to-," Jud starts to protest when Blanc takes the emptied cup from him, something sheepish beginning to creep into his face.
"Now, clearly I do," Blanc interrupts, ignoring the renewed mulish turn to Jud's features in favor of leaning forward to pull the remaining portion of Jud's meal over towards their newfound corner of the table. "It's quite clear to me that you've been awfully neglected for a while here, and since you've found yourself in need of a reminder of how to care for yourself properly, I am more than happy to oblige you."
It earns him an outright eye-roll from the young man. "Because I got a little dizzy?" Jud scoffs, putting on an air of incredulity that doesn't amount to much when he's still kneeling on the floor at Blanc's feet, clearly unwilling to test his luck getting back up. "I just didn't sleep well last night; I'm doing fine here."
"Oh, sure," Blanc replies, voice thick with condescension as he surveys how much food Jud had left untouched. "I suppose that's why you've had that persistent tremor since I arrived, then? Why you have the appearance of someone who's spent a few days in the same set of clothes? Did you think the swoonin' did a good job of convincing me you've been taking the time to eat or sleep at all recently? Would you like to try telling me when the last time you stepped foot outside of the church was?" he challenges, glancing up to meet Jud's eyes and feeling no particular satisfaction when Jud looks away, silently conceding.
"Now," Blanc says, plucking up a piece of fried okra and holding it out to Jud expectantly. "Eat."
Embarrassment and stubbornness war messily on Jud's face — brow furrowing, eyes tightening as he fidgets restlessly on his knees, shifting his weight uncertainly. Clearly searching for a rebuttal and failing to find one. It's only to be expected; when Benoit Blanc finally lays out his case, it's always airtight. "I-," Jud starts uselessly, and then stops again, visibly biting his tongue when Blanc raises an eyebrow sharply. Not much of a push, but finally enough to get Jud to sigh in resignation, relinquishing his white-knuckle grip on the sofa to reach up for the bite.
Only for Blanc to pull it back out of reach. "I didn't say take it, did I?" he says, not particularly asking. "Eat it."
"Blanc!" Jud snaps, aggrieved. He puffs himself up like a little fluffy cat — shoulders jumping up around his ears, lips curling, his hands stiffening out into frustrated claws. For just a moment, Blanc wants to chase it. Wants to dig his nails in and push until Jud's face crumples completely, teary-eyed and vulnerable. A more intentional mirror of their first introduction — how far would Blanc need to push before Jud can admit to himself that the church is hurting him more than it's helping?
He reigns the thoughts in, leashing them firmly out of the way. Blanc remembers well enough that Jud won't stand for it, and they have more pressing matters to attend to. He holds the bite up to the unhappy twist of Jud's mouth, dialing back down to the simple needs he knows he can fix for now. "Eat," he repeats, catching Jud's eye and holding it sternly.
Jud's face is still lined with stubbornness when he finally leans in, keeping his hands knotted uncomfortably in his lap as he carefully takes the little piece of okra between his teeth, brow furrowed in disconcerted concentration. The satisfaction of being obeyed clashes nauseatingly with a faint sense of despair — Jud should push back, should argue in his own defense, needle to suss out Blanc's intentions and refuse to back down until he's satisfied with them. Why is it that Jud will turn on his heel and fight back against Blanc only in the name of the church or his guilt? Where is that shouting, seething instinct when he needs to defend himself? He's all but torn out his own teeth in fear of biting anyone, giving no mind to whether such a wound could ever be warranted; Who on earth is looking after you? Blanc thinks despairingly.
Well, he resolves, getting out the next piece of okra; at least for now, it's going to be him.
The fried dough is greasy and gritty between his fingers, held expectantly in front of Jud's face. Jud looks straight past it, mouth twisted into a halfhearted glare as he meets Blanc's eyes searchingly, all but challenging Blanc to throw up his hands and give it up. If he's waiting for Blanc to determine he's too much work, he'll be waiting there a while — Blanc's never backed away from the challenge of helping someone else in need, and he's not inclined to start now. He waits, patiently demanding, until Jud breaks first, leaning in to take it.
Jud's first handful of concessions to Blanc's demands are stiff and mechanical; determined more to weather the concern than enjoy it. Blanc tells himself it doesn't make a difference either way, so long as Jud eats, but he still feels it like a physical relief when Jud finally pauses to savor the taste of something before swallowing it. Gradually, the longer Blanc refuses to subside, Jud begins to relax. His shoulders drop back down away from those big ears of his, hands smoothing out over the breadth of his thighs instead of picking restlessly at the fabric, the deep furrow in his brow easing. Another piece of the fried okra, a long-cold green bean, a torn piece of chicken — until Jud is breaking that furious eye-contact to glance curiously over at what Blanc will pick next, closing his eyes around a sigh as Blanc feeds it to him, his teeth gently grazing the roughened pad of Blanc's thumb as he leans in.
Blanc focuses on keeping his own breath steady, trying to keep from reveling too hard in the satisfaction of watching Jud finally acknowledge the hunger that's been knocking at his door, the pleasure of being the one Jud allows to help sate it. It would've been better if they'd excommunicated him, Blanc can't help but think, adjusting his leg to steady Jud when he wavers exhaustedly. Or at least reassigned him — surely there was somewhere out of the way they could have sent him, let him actually do what it is he thinks he's here for. Blanc can't say he's surprised the church couldn't pass up an opportunity to punish someone, but at least if they'd defrocked him for it, Blanc would've had an excuse to bundle the boy up in his car and drive them both out far away from here. Blanc's the one taking care of Jud anyway — at least if he could do it properly, he'd be able to find him a collar far nicer than that little plastic trinket around his throat now.
But this isn't a matter one can force. It's all Blanc can do to focus on this moment instead, allow himself to be turned into a little pit stop for Jud to rest in, do what he can and try not to chase him out into a storm all over again in the meantime. Blanc breathes, breaking apart a corner of a biscuit, and avoids shivering too obviously when Jud presses his temple into Blanc's knee, opening his mouth to wait for Blanc to feed it to him, passive and trusting.
Blanc obliges — pressing the bread down onto the flat plane of Jud's tongue, allowing the pads of his fingers to brush deliberately against the wet muscle, just to see if Jud will allow it. Letting himself indulge in the fact that he does. Jud closes his mouth, teeth catching around Blanc's knuckles lightly before he pulls back, watching as Jud pauses to relish the slight saltiness of the buttery biscuit before he swallows it, opening his eyes to meet Blanc's heated gaze deliberately.
It's easy enough to stay in the moment after that. To feed Jud the rest of his plate, drag his fingers tantalizingly over the tip of Jud's tongue, set his hand under Jud's chin and coax him into taking sips from Blanc's cup of water, comb his fingers through Jud's hair encouragingly, pressing him into taking one bite after another. Until Jud's eyelids are drooping heavily; until Blanc's entire body feels flushed and half-electrified with it all.
Jud's weight against Blanc's leg grows increasingly heavier, until Blanc is all but holding him up, watching Jud struggle to pry his eyes back open. It's not the absent dizziness of exhaustion and dehydration any longer, but something warm and almost painfully trusting. An open, naked appreciation that tightens Blanc's chest to the point of aching. He feeds Jud the last piece of the biscuit almost mournfully, feeling a warm rush of pride flood through his gut when Jud obliges to lick the last of the buttery grease off of Blanc's fingers without an ounce of prompting.
"Good," Blanc hums huskily. "Good boy," he adds, just to chase the thrill of seeing Jud flush prettily under the praise, big eyes blown nearly black behind his eyelashes. "You finally finished your plate now. Good, wasn't it?"
Jud's head jerks in a weak nod, responding almost more to the tone of Blanc's voice than his actual words. Blanc feeds him the last sip of water from his cup, and readily accepts the weight of Jud's head back on his knee when it tips dazedly to the side. In the warm silence of the room, Blanc kneads his fingers into Jud's scalp, quietly lamenting the way his curls frizz and clump together under the attention. He briefly entertains the thought of coaxing Jud to bend over a sink long enough for Blanc to wash it for him, but after that little display of Jud's earlier, he's more likely to give the boy another head injury.
That in mind, however; "Straighten out your legs for me, son," Blanc says instead, repeating the encouragement until Jud fumblingly readjusts out of his kneel, allowing the blood to get flowing through his legs again.
"Ah, shit," Jud hisses, bracing his back against Blanc's shins as the numbness begins to give way to those painful pins and needles all throughout those crazy long legs of his. Feeling a dangerous blend of spiteful and indulgent, Blanc flattens his palm over the column of Jud's throat, tipping his head back over Blanc's knee to allow himself to watch the grimace of pain play out over Jud's face.
"Breathe," Blanc reminds him, brushing away an overwhelmed tear with his thumb. Most likely it's a little bit much to take in his current state, but better to get it over with now before Jud starts to drop any. "There we are," he says soothingly, as Jud's squirming starts to ease and he opens his teary eyes to meet Blanc's once again, breath shuddering.
Maybe it ought to count as some sort of sin, getting a priest to look at you like that. Good thing Blanc doesn't believe in god, then.
"You need to get some sleep, Father," Blanc says gently, brushing curls back away from Jud's forehead carefully, tracing his thumb around the shell of his ear. "We need to get you up to bed."
Jud jerks hazily. "No," he protests, voice startlingly loud in the quiet of the building. "No, don't-, you don't have to go. I-,"
"Alright!" Blanc says hurriedly, absorbing the very real panic threading through Jud's voice and changing course. He pins one of Jud's hands lightly under his foot, catching Jud's jaw and forcing his head back until he meets Blanc's eyes again, holding him carefully. "No one's goin' anywhere. Just breathe."
He keeps Jud caught underneath him just long enough to stabilize him, keeping his own thoughts turned firmly away from any mention of the church, or hell, Wicks or Martha or Dr. Sharp, or even that bishop Jud had knocked out that had started this whole mess to begin with. "Come on," Blanc says finally, threading his fingers through Jud's hair and pulling gently until he begins to shift. "Get on up here."
Blanc coaxes Jud up onto the sofa next to him, until he's laid out with his head set firmly in Blanc's lap. He means to budge over, allow Jud to stretch his legs out as much as he can on a couch this size, but Jud curls in on himself before Blanc gets the chance — knees practically up around his shoulders. Nearly infuriating, how small he makes himself, Blanc thinks, and then pointedly shuts that train of thought down.
"Not going anywhere, see?" Blanc whispers, letting Jud tangle his fingers into the hem of his jacket, knotting his own fingers into Jud's hair again in return. "Just get some sleep, son."
It isn't nearly enough, Blanc laments to himself as Jud finally drops off to sleep — the weight of him growing warm and heavy against Blanc's thigh, nose tucked in against his belly. Nothing Blanc can do here in these moments will be enough to make any tangible difference in Jud's life, not if he's determined to remain here, in isolation, under the heel of a system that does not care about him the way he'd like to believe it does. Blanc slumps tiredly against the back of the couch, an arm thrown over Jud's side, nearly possessively — the gesture all but empty. So long as Jud believes in the shape of the mirage, temporary relief is all Blanc could hope to give him. He can't convince Jud to leave, not when Father Jud is busy telling himself prettier stories than Blanc's cold rationality and evidence could ever conceive.
But what else can Blanc do? He swallows back a bitter laugh, pressing his free hand over his eyes. He can't just leave the boy with nothing; surrender him to this suffering and wash his hands of it. It would solve nothing, and render Blanc no better than the church he's spent decades resenting for its callous irresponsibility. The only thing he can do is continue to try, and help where he can, and hope that it makes any difference at all.
Maybe one day it will mean something; convince Jud to leave, pack up his earnest belief and drive to help, and move on to greener pastures and brighter organizations. Save himself before his situation grows any more dire.
(Despite himself, Blanc doesn't quite manage to get his hopes up.)