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"My first Mass is coming up if...if you wanna stick around."
Jud loves him, Blanc knows, in a multitude of ways. That warm and ceaseless love he has for every person, for life itself— the light in his eyes that always makes Blanc's breath catch, that earnest adoration and empathy for humanity. As a good friend, someone he's stood together with through all manner of tumult and absurdity, stalwart in their shared experience. As something more, though Blanc is somehow still unsure whether Jud himself knows this. Blanc can tell, though, of course he can. The way Jud's eyes linger, the way his voice goes sweet, his puppy-like excitement. Blanc knows what attraction looks like.
Blanc loves Jud, too. As he does all his Watsons, every scrappy, fiercely kind person who stands their ground in even the most tangled web of vengeance and spite and greed. As a good friend, one of the kindest people he knows, whose ability to care for and comfort, both others and Blanc, nearly beggars belief. As something more, obviously as something more. Blanc knows himself, too. Recognizes his instinct to reach for Jud, whether to gently cup his face or scruff him like the puppy he is. Recognizes the admiration that softens all his edges, turns his smiles fond and unrestrained.
Blanc also knows that sometimes love is not enough.
Often, over the last year, Blanc has looked at Jud with the powerful urge to steal him. Scoop him up, nurse his wounds, take him somewhere far away and never return. The worst is over, of course, but Blanc can see that it's never truly done with— or maybe he doesn't see, but he knows from experience. Jud was completely cleared of suspicion, the true killer found and offered grace even in her last moments. Even Cy's determination to unearth Eve's Apple has been slowly drying up. But it was never about any of that, was it?
Blanc thinks of Jud that weekend. Of I'm just as bad as Wicks and there's no hiding from that and there's no solving it and that same sin rose in me. Of Jud on his knees before the altar; Jud in the dirt, a frightened animal; Jud standing, so certain, so small, before the flock, ready to confess to a murder he did not commit. It was never about anything anyone else was doing. It was about Jud, about who— and what— he believed himself to be.
Believes himself to be. God, for all the ways Jud now is different from the skittish thing Blanc met that Good Friday, there are so many ways in which he's the same. He flinches easily, avoids touch or getting too close to anyone; he wrings his hands or tucks them behind his back; he shrinks in on himself, ducks his head, hunches his shoulders. He always qualifies everything he says, throws doubt on his own assertions before anyone else can, apologizes before any wrong has been done. Blanc wants to shake him. Blanc wants to hold him in his arms, give him a safe place to sleep.
But Jud wouldn't accept it, he knows. Might accept his affection, maybe, but not his offer of escape, and the two are inextricably intertwined to Blanc. They're hurting you, he thinks, almost pleading, the same way they hurt me. Can't you see it? But Jud doesn't see it, never has. Jud has made his choices, and Jud is happy, and no matter what Blanc feels, Jud is entitled to his own decisions. He is not Blanc's damsel in distress, and Blanc cannot steal him away from a life he clearly wants, and loves. You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved. Or, you shouldn't.
Blanc wonders if Jud thinks the same about him. It's ungenerous, perhaps. Jud is never judgemental. He's staunchly respectful of Blanc's own beliefs, bears his jabs with good humor, and never even suggests that there might be something about Blanc that needs fixing. But why, then? Why are you still here? Jud is a part of a system that preaches that humanity is fundamentally broken, that desire and pleasure are evil, and that obedience is a— if not the— moral good. Jud doesn't believe those things, unless Blanc has wildly misread him (which he hasn't, he never does). So why? Why stay?
But Blanc knows why. Knows Jud will always be able to hold two irreconcilable worldviews because one of them only applies to himself. The guilt and the atonement and the constant, suffocating restraint are meant for Jud alone. It aches to know Blanc can't take the weight from him, for him. But there's another way it aches, too. Because Jud may not believe in the part of the Church that hurt Blanc, but he still believes in the whole, and Blanc does not share Jud's confidence that they can be separated. And regardless of an individual Catholic's feelings about queerness, about second chances, about finding common ground with those unlike themselves, they all share the belief that submission to God is the way to salvation. That people like Blanc are either doomed or will fall in line eventually.
My first Mass is coming up, if you wanna stick around. It's well-intentioned, painfully so. Everything Jud does, really, thrums with earnestness. And if Blanc reels it in, the old hurt and the festering resentment, stops himself from thinking ungenerously again, he thinks Jud means it as a wholly neutral offer. Not an attempt at proselytizing, but simply an offer to spend time with him, to share in his life.
If Blanc thinks less charitably, he thinks it is an offer to help him. Well-intentioned but inevitably condescending. Jud believes that God is the way to happiness and love, so surely he must hope that Blanc makes his way to Him eventually? Maybe Jud is capable of reckoning with the contradiction of it all, his seemingly opposed acceptance of Blanc and belief in the Church. The Catholics call such things mysteries, Blanc knows, ineffable works of God that humans cannot comprehend, only stand in awe of. It's almost too on the nose; Blanc refuses to meet a mystery he cannot solve.
However Jud means it, there is only one way Blanc can take it. The thing that Jud believes would save Blanc is the thing that Blanc knows would kill him— that has, in fact, come close to it in the past. And regardless of the love Jud has for him, that hurts.
Blanc has no room for shame in his life, not anymore. Has gotten used to fighting it off, to barring the door and swallowing the key no matter how loud and fervent it gets. He likes who he is, what he is, and does not need saving. The fight is hard, sometimes, but it's always a fight— it's been a long time since he backed down, rolled over, let shame tell him what was true.
Is this man worth inviting shame back in? Is any man?
He smiles. It's brittle. "That's so nice of you. There is, uh...nothing I would rather not do."
And Blanc leaves.