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It ends badly. Well— it started badly, continued badly. That Holy Week, Jud's time in Chimney Rock, Jud's life: it all goes badly.
He's excommunicated from the Church. They (begrudgingly) admit he's innocent in the eyes of the law, that Martha's confession is genuine. They tell him he broke the Seal of Confession by accepting it in others' presence.
Bishop Langstrom pleads his case. Benoit Blanc, inexplicably, tears the clergy a new one, seeming genuinely angry. Jud is numb. Jud is unseeing eyes and trembling hands and too much body, always has been, Jud is Judas in the field and Isaac at the top of the mountain. Jud is not a priest anymore.
After everything, Blanc forces him into his car and drives him back to the motel he was staying at in the next town over. He's rigid yet burning with anger the whole time, but Jud, miraculously (if he's allowed to have those anymore) isn't scared. Blanc feels like a knight or a german shepherd or St. Michael. The anger's all pointed outward, and Jud is tucked behind him. Safe.
Safe was hard to come by before all this. Now Jud hangs his life upon the grace of a man he just met. "Hardly knows" doesn't feel right to say, though it's objectively true. Some strange electric current formed between him and Blanc this weekend, from the very moment Blanc entered the church; it thrummed with life, compelled Jud to trust him. He still does— Blanc may be the only person he trusts now.
Though I walk through the valley in the shadow of death. Fuck.
Blanc pushes Jud through the door and toward the shower. "I'll fix this," he says tersely, then jabs a finger at him. "But you. You're gonna be safe, and clean, and rested. I'll fix this."
Jud shakes his head at the last assertion but does as told. Mud runs down his arms, chest, legs. Blood under his fingernails, crusted in the creases of his palm, smeared under his eyes and across his knuckles and on his teeth. The mud and the blood blur together; it seems his whole body is made of it, none of it where it's supposed to be. But physically, he gets clean, and steps out of the shower to put on the flannel pants and sweater Blanc put on the sink counter. They're Blanc's clothes— Jud is taller, but Blanc's shoulders are broader, and the sweater is just oversized enough to make him feel small.
He pads back into the motel room, listless. When Blanc sees him, he strides over and grasps his face, looking him over as if for injuries.
"Holier-than-thou, bureaucratic bullshit," he mutters to himself. "Throwin' out the only man among them with a single lick of goddamn— sorry," He winces. "I know that's not the kinda attitude you want. I only— you did nothing wrong, you hear me? I need to know you hear me, F— Jud. Jud Duplenticy. I need to know you hear me."
Jud shakes his head, and, impossibly, the corner of his mouth ticks up. "Can't lie to you, Detective," he says hoarsely. "Don't believe you."
For the barest second, Blanc's face crumples. Then he steels himself, squeezes Jud's jaw where he's still gripping it. "That's alright. Don't have to yet. Just have to trust me enough to get through the night. Can you do that for me, Jud?"
...huh.
Jud can't reconcile with what's happened. Any of it, really, though the final blow has truly thoroughly rendered him useless. But. Trust me enough to get through the night. He doesn't have to know how yet.
"I can do that." His voice is weak, but it's there.
"Good boy." Blanc looks dead serious, and something in Jud flips. He can't tell if it makes everything better or worse. His hands slip from Jud's jaw to his shoulders. "You think you can eat, son?"
"No," Jud says helplessly.
"You think you can try?"
"Okay."
Jud makes it through half the pbnj Blanc quickly makes for him. When he shrinks back into the room's one chair, shaking his head in surrender, Blanc simply claps him gently on the shoulder and says "Good job." Jud doesn't want to think about the words, or the sandwich, or what it means that Blanc is the one steering him towards the bed. He can't; his mind is all a horrible buzzing static.
Blanc turns from the bed to— do what? It doesn't matter, Jud's not thinking complexly enough for it. Instinctively, he croaks, "don't go," certain that he'll shatter into pieces without Blanc here to hold him together.
"Not goin' anywhere," he says softly, "Just grabbing the extra blanket from the closet."
He does, and then he spreads it on the floor. The thing in Jud that has no fight left, broken and limp and accepting, speaks without his permission. "Just come up here."
"Jud," Blanc begins, patient, denying.
"Just come up here," he repeats, feeling pitiful.
Blanc sighs. "Alright, son. Alright."
Blanc climbs into the motel room's full bed beside him, as respectful a distance away as he can manage. Jud curls into himself, long legs pulled towards his middle, his bleary blinks growing longer and longer. "Sleep, darlin'," Blanc says, any frustration or demand in his voice now completely bled out. It's only what sounds like affection, though Jud can hardly believe it. "I'll be here in the morning."
Blanc sets a hand on Jud's upper arm, rubs the skin gently. Jud's eyes fall closed; he sleeps.
~
The sun rises the next morning; the sky is dawn-pink and cloudless. Jud feels almost surprised it's still allowed, like everyone's world should have ended along with his. He's used to waking up early, to austerity and denial and prayer conducted in gray half-light. Blanc, however, is clearly no such creature, and Jud blinks awake to the sight of him splayed across his side of the bed. Restful, indulgent, taking up space. The abundance of it all is almost frightening.
His first instinct is to kneel beside the bed and pray. From sheer habit, even before the need for guidance or absolution. But he reconsiders it. Excommunication doesn't actually prevent him from participating in Catholicism completely; it bars him from the Eucharist, but not from Mass, not from a relationship with God. But even if on technicality he's still Catholic, he knows both Chimney Rock and likely the Catholic population in general considers him removed from the Church entirely.
It shouldn't matter. Either way, nobody could or should stop him from praying. It matters anyway. Or something does, something that keeps him under the blanket, absently watching the slow rise and fall of Blanc's chest, for several more minutes. When he gets up, he does not pray.
The motel room doesn't have a kitchen so much as a corner. There's a mini fridge and a microwave and a toaster all practically on top of each other. If there'd been more than that, Jud would've cooked something for breakfast. His hands are itching for something to do, some way to feel useful, a way to assure Blanc how grateful he is and remind himself that he's not an entirely lost cause. But there's only the bread, peanut butter, and jelly Blanc used to make his sandwich last night, and the idea of leaving the motel room makes Jud want to throw up. Time is suspended here; he can hold his fate in trembling hands and not worry about dropping it. Out there, it will become real. Out there, someone other than Blanc will see him, and they'll know, he's sure of it. His own damnation written across his skin.
So he makes toast. He doubts Blanc will wake up before it's ready, but he makes toast. He's absurdly careful about it, fiddling to find the exact right timing, twisting the loaf's twist tie into a knot. Like properly browning the toast or saving the bread from mold will redeem him.
The toaster finishes with a far louder ding that Jud expects, and Blanc wakes with a bleary groan. "Mornin'" he says scratchily, slowly rolling over. One arm stretches over his head, his undershirt riding up to reveal a soft waist. Jud meticulously covers every corner of a slice of bread with jelly. Blanc seems to come more to himself with a couple minutes to wake up, and he says "ah, Jud," as if he'd forgotten he was here.
"I made toast," Jud says uncertainly, and Blanc smiles.
"Come on then." Sitting up against the headboard, Blanc pats the spot beside him. Jud goes.
They make quite a study in contrasts, Jud thinks, the two of them on the bed. Jud has his knees bent and his arms folded atop them. He rests his chin on his arms and nibbles at toast reluctantly, stealing glances at Blanc from the corners of his eyes. Blanc's posture is open, his legs stretched out, and though he is charmingly fastidious about avoiding crumbs in the bed, he doesn't look ashamed of— what, eating? Being alive? Whatever it is Jud's ashamed of, none of that shame exists in Blanc.
After a few quiet minutes, Blanc asks, "How are you feeling?"
Jud blows a long breath through his lips. He opens his mouth to speak, closes it again. Can't think of anything to say.
Blanc seems dissatisfied with his silence. "...I know it may be difficult right now, but..." He seems to carefully consider his choice of words. "I'm not so sure it's a good idea to go shovin' all this down."
"M'not, promise," Jud murmurs. He turns his head where it's propped on his arms to look at Blanc, his cheek pressing into his forearm. "Just don't know."
Blanc considers him, those blue eyes inexorable. "Try for me. Start with— how'd you sleep, how about that?"
Jud gives a wry, defeated frown. "Like the dead." Blanc is unmoved. "Really deeply. No dreams. Too tired, I think."
Blanc nods slowly. "Makes sense. You've had quite an ordeal."
"I'm tired." Not sleepy, tired. Jud wishes he could leave this place— Chimney Rock, New York, the country. Wishes he could melt into honey and wash down the drain. Wishes Blanc would stick him in his pocket so he'd never have to leave the warmth and quiet.
"I know." Blanc looks sad. He hesitates before asking the next question. "...have you talked to him, Jud?" He nods upward. "No pressure— of course not, you know me. Just curious."
Jud shakes his head. "Doesn't feel right."
"That's just fine. Can't blame you."
"Can't you?" Jud's eyelids flutter. The sun feels too bright, even though he's not facing the window, just looking in Blanc's eyes.
"No, Jud, and I don't think any reasonable person would." Blanc sets his shoulders, as if bracing himself. "The Church abandoned you when you needed them most."
Jud sucks in a breath. "That's not—" But it hits him like a blow, the way it articulates what he's been avoiding voicing, didn't know how to. The knee-jerk reaction is that it's not true, that God wouldn't abandon him, but it comes more from anxiety, from a fear of disparaging Him than it does from true belief.
Jud feels abandoned. He feels helpless, and scared, and alone. And for the first time in a long time— or perhaps, the first time he's willing to admit it— he's not sure that God is here.
Blanc is here. Quiet and open. "It's alright, go on," he says.
"They did," Jud admits, his voice so, so small. "They— I needed help. I needed help, Blanc."
"I know."
"What did I do? I know I— I know I'm not much good, but I try so hard. Why didn't they want to help me? Why didn't— why didn't they care?" It's easier to say they, to ascribe it to the Church as an institution. Jud knows what he's not saying, but he's terrified to look directly at it.
"You didn't do anything. Like I said, Jud, you did nothing wrong. You were perfect." Jud raises an eyebrow, and he amends it. "You were put under extraordinary pressure and through terrible treatment, and though you were frightened and reactive and not always sensible— as anyone would be, under those circumstances— you were also brave and kind. You're a good man, Jud, and they left you behind. You didn't deserve that."
Jud opens his mouth to speak again and chokes on a sob. He buries his face in his knees. Blanc shifts on the bed, closer; he reaches for Jud, one arm wrapping around him, the other hand resting on his head, buried in his curls.
"You did good," he says, "You did good, son." And Jud weeps.
~
When Jud has cried until he can't anymore, Blanc bundles him into the shower and then into more clean clothes. These are his own; Blanc sheepishly admits to having grabbed a few things from the rectory while Jud was still giving his statement to Geraldine.
"Didn't want you on your own after all that," he says, "Wasn't sure where you'd want to go. Figured it'd be good to have 'em just in case."
When Blanc says they ought to go get something to eat, Jud doesn't balk exactly, but he freezes.
"We'll go the next town over from this one," Blanc soothes. "Little bit of a drive, but nobody'll recognize you, not just from your face, and if they do, I doubt they'll care much. You need to eat, Jud, somethin' besides toast."
Jud sighs. Acquiesces. "Where are we going?"
"What would you like to eat?"
Jud shakes his head, doesn't know how to say I can't choose something right now. Blanc seems to understand anyway. "How 'bout somethin' simple. You like diner food?"
Jud makes an attempt at a smile. He follows Blanc to the car. There's a moment of delay where Blanc digs through his tapes for something, pops it into the deck and turns the volume down to something low and soothing. Acoustic guitar fills the car as they exit the motel parking lot.
After a moment, Jud's brow furrows slightly. "John Denver?"
"Thank god I'm a country boy," Blanc jokes. "He's a bit of a guilty pleasure; I do miss the South sometimes, much as I love the city."
The idea that John Denver is a guilty pleasure but the dozen-odd original cast recordings Blanc dug through to get to him aren't makes Jud smile, just a little. John Denver sings about growing a garden. Blanc hums lightly along. The sun is warm and the roads are nearly empty, in the middle of a work day in the suburbs.
It's about a twenty minute drive to the diner, and the waitress— a woman around Jud's age with a streak of blue in her hair and a tired but genuine smile— leads them to one of several empty booths.
Blanc opens his menu almost ceremoniously. "What I wouldn't do for a good egg sandwich."
It's for his benefit, Jud thinks, or mostly, anyway. The vitality, the charm, the melodic way of speaking, those are all Blanc, but he's dialed them up this morning, all to make Jud feel more like a person. It makes his heart ache, the kindness of it all.
"I don't have money," he blurts suddenly, his brain finally awake enough to trip down paths of deserving and owing and instinctive guilt.
Blanc raises a deeply judgemental eyebrow. "Now what kinda friend would I be if I let you pay for breakfast after all you've been dealing with? I'm treatin' you, obviously."
Not pity, not exaggerated reassurances. A friend treating him to breakfast. It's deliberate, again, the defusal of his guilt. Jud knows how to talk to people, how to comfort people, and he recognizes the strategies when used on him. Doesn't stop them from working, though. Just the fact that Blanc cares enough to try to ease his conscience moves him, and he finds himself reluctant to contradict him.
"Thank you," he says, nonetheless. "...I kind of want pancakes." He's not sure when the last time he had pancakes is, much less the massive fluffy buttermilk pancakes promised by the diner menu.
"Ooh, they have 'em with chocolate chips," Blanc points out.
"Maybe I'll get those, then." Jud smiles, a small thing. "Something sweet."
Blanc orders coffee; Jud gets orange juice. A toddler a few tables away stands in her seat and turns around, slinging her arms over the back of the booth. She stares at the two of them with wide eyes. Jud waves, then sticks out his tongue. She giggles and returns it.
When he meets Blanc's eyes again, the man is smiling fondly. "What?" Jud asks.
"You just can't turn it off, can you?"
"Turn what off?"
"That." Blanc inclines his head in the direction of the toddler. "You've been run into the ground and you still can't resist tryin' to— to connect with people. Make a little girl laugh."
"I think you're reading into it too much." Jud looks down into his juice glass, his face slightly pink.
"I read into everything too much, it's my job." Blanc lets it go. "Do you think you wanna go out anywhere today?"
"Where would I go?" Jud asks, nonplussed. And then he thinks about the long-term where would I go of it all and begins to feel queasy. "Christ, I don't have— it's not like I can keep living in the rectory—"
"No, no!" Blanc looks alarmed and raises his hands placatingly. "I didn't mean to start another one of those, I only— we'll sort all that out in time, Jud. I was just wonderin' if you're feelin' stir crazy, if it would make you feel better to be outside."
We'll sort that out in time. Blanc doesn't stumble over the world in the slightest, as if it's the most natural assumption. It hits Jud like that too, like of course we'll do this together. It's only with a moment's thought that he questions why, that he wonders if it's fair to expect anything more from Blanc.
But Jud is tired, and the diner is warm, filled with the comforting sound of quiet conversation. And Blanc is not an easy man to argue with— nor the kind of man, Jud suspects, who does things he does not actually want to do. In a move he is very rarely capable of, Jud lets the anxiety keep for later. It says something in itself, that he's able to do that. Something about the way the dust has settled; something about the man in front of him.
"...is it terrible that I'm almost relieved?"
Blanc looks confused for a moment by the non sequitir. "Relieved...about what specifically?"
"All of it, I guess. That it's done. I was so terrified and now it's just— all the things I imagined, they happened. Nothing left to be scared of."
Blanc hums. "After the weekend you've had, I think you're well within your rights to be glad it's over with."
Jud shakes his head. "No, Blanc. Not this weekend. I've been terrified for years, my whole life maybe. I didn't— I never felt good. Like a good priest, or a good man at all, really. And now, it's like...I don't know the answer, but it doesn't matter. I don't have to prove it anymore."
A conflicted look passes over Blanc's face. "You never did, Jud," he says quietly, then shakes his head. "Either way, I think it makes perfect sense. I only worry— are you alright with it?"
"Blanc, if I think about that question too long I am going to be very not alright with it."
"Okay, alright, save that one for later," he allows.
Jud picks his straw wrapper up off the table and begins to fold it into smaller and smaller shapes. "I should check my phone. Langstrom may have tried to call."
Jud's been avoiding looking at it, shut it down as soon as he left the police station. Langstrom was there yesterday, was the one who told Jud the news. The Church supposedly thought it would be better for Jud to hear it from him; Jud thought it was cruel to them both. The bishop earnestly said he'd call, though, that Jud was still welcome with him. It meant little in the moment, but Jud appreciates it now.
"Oh, I don't know if—" but before Blanc can stop him, Jud is powering his phone back up. "That may not be a good idea."
"Probably not." He sets it on the table and stares at the little booting-up logo.
"Well, at least wait until after your pancakes," Blanc cajoles, looking somewhat anxious, and something about the whole thing feels so absurd that Jud chuckles. He drags a hand down his face.
"Sure, okay. I'll wait until after my pancakes."
Jud's pancakes look fucking delicious. He really doesn't know the last time he properly enjoyed food, wasn't just trying to keep himself upright. But when the food arrives, he's greeted with a stack of intimidatingly large chocolate chip pancakes, complete with powdered sugar dusted on them and a little baby bottle of maple syrup on the side. The extravagance of it feels simultaneously so mundane and so important, like a treat he'd get for good grades as a kid.
Alright, why the fuck is Jud tearing up about pancakes. He scrubs the back of a hand across his eyes and begins to eat. Blanc changes the subject as he starts on his egg sandwich, starts telling a story about how he doesn't care much for Easter himself, but his friend Helen, she's a teacher, and she asked for his help coming up with good hiding spots for eggs in her classroom...
The rest of breakfast passes much the same way. Jud doesn't have it in him to do much more than nod along and make affirmative sounds, occasionally chuckle when Blanc recounts something particularly ridiculous. But Blanc has no shortage of winding stories, and his rhythmic drawl and the shapes of his hands as he gestures soothe Jud into something like peace. When they've finished and paid, they walk past the little girl's table on the way out. She waves at Jud with both hands, and he actually grins.
~
His almost-hopeful mood fades as they return to the motel and Jud sinks to sit on the bed, pulling his phone from his back pocket. Blanc grimaces sympathetically as he takes the chair.
"If you want, I could take a look through it for you? Filter through the worst of it?"
"No," Jud says, shaking his head. "I just— need to see. Can't keep waiting for another shoe to drop."
He opens his phone; his lockscreen does have a few notifications, but not the horror show he'd feared. He guesses that means no one has access to his phone number, and is grateful that he's never been particularly active on social media. He's sure his instagram has been beset by commenters, but he hasn't checked it in a month or so, so it doesn't matter much. There's a few missed calls from Bishop Langstrom, but they're from Sunday, while everything was still going on.
"It's— I haven't gotten anything. Guess no one's figured out how to contact me," he says, still staring at the empty screen. He hesitates, then opens his email. "Well, not by phone at least."
His inbox is, in fact, a horror show. Several subject lines are just the word "MURDERER," which is at least succinct, he supposes. There are some more creative ones about Wicks being a saint who was risen from the dead to smite him. Assertions that he does not deserve to be a priest, that everyone knows what he did and he should turn himself in, that even if he didn't do it this is all a punishment for his depraved and ungodly ways—
Blanc waves a hand in front of his eyes, and Jud sighs, looking up at him. "It's not good." Blanc reaches to pull the phone from his hand, but he pulls it back. "I need to read the news. This is just— this is just my email, it doesn't actually..."
Blanc makes an exasperated face that Jud resolutely ignores as he opens the internet. His name's in the Washington Post and New York Times. NBC has been running one of those update pages on the case. (The latest post reads: On April 21st, Martha Delacroix, longtime parishioner of Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, confessed to the murders of Jefferson Wicks and Nathaniel Sharpe...) The bulk of the most recent articles are thankfully about Martha and the logistics of her plan, which doesn't actually involve him all that much. There's also some about the value of Eve's Apple, and now that the police have confiscated it, who the rightful owner is.
(Jud had put it in his pocket at Blanc's prompting, but after the news from Langstrom had been too rattled to hold onto it. He'd given it to Geraldine and hoped that wasn't a complete mistake. It probably was, but he wasn't sure he could handle any more secrets to confess. Blanc had made no comment to Jud about it, and Jud was grateful. He was worried the detective would be disappointed in him, and maybe he was, but he was at least doing him the decency of not showing it yet.)
But there's no shortage of articles about him, either. The recent ones mention his role as witness to Martha's confession, and even explain his subsequent excommunication and the reason for it. The ones from over the weekend are worse, sensationalized cries of "the dark history of the killer priest." Jud's hands are beginning to shake, but he keeps scrolling. Phrases drift up to him from the screen: disciplined by the Catholic Church...a history of violence...previous incarceration. He feels bile creeping up his throat.
He flings his phone onto the bed, then sits— collapses, really— on it himself, pressing his hands over his eyes.
"So everyone hates me," he says in an attempt at snark, undercut by the way his voice trembles.
"Not really," Blanc says, "Just the people who would've been on Wicks' side anyway."
"I didn't want to— I'm open about it, I tell people, because I think it's important that I could, could do something like that and still grow and become a person who— who does better, but. But everyone's..." He rubs a fist over his heart. "They see it. They see what I am."
"And what is that?"
"A killer." He huffs a rueful laugh. "The truth comes out."
"Jud." Blanc's voice goes flat, quiet. "You said you were seventeen, when it happened?"
"Blanc..."
"Answer me, please."
Jud heaves a sigh. "Yes. Seventeen."
"You shouldn't have been in a position for that to happen in the first place. In any kinda sport like that, but especially— seventeen."
"Do you think I don't know that?" he asks tiredly. "It doesn't change what I did."
"It means someone should have been responsible for keeping you safe, and they failed. That seems to happen to you a lot."
"Please don't, Blanc."
But Blanc pushes this time. "You've done a lot of things you're not proud of, I know that, but many of those things happened because of the negligence of the people who should have helped you."
"That's not an excuse, you know that."
"It's not about excusin' it." Blanc stands, all barely-restrained frustration. "It's about explainin' it. Christ, Jud, if I actually believed the things you say about yourself, I'd think you were a terrible person."
"Maybe I am!" Jud stands too, eyes wild, and spreads his arms as if to show him. "I killed a man. And I tried to get better, but— but if you want to know the fucking truth, I never really did! I just— just put myself on a fucking leash, tried to shove it down where it couldn't hurt anybody, but if I slip for a second, it happens again, because that's what I am, Blanc. That's what I was 'born to do.' I've been doomed from the start, and all of this was just— just borrowed time. It was always going to end this way, always, but God fucking damn it, He could've at least done me the decency of letting me die with them—"
At that, Blanc loses composure. He reaches forward with both hands and pulls Jud toward him by the collar. He looks furious, in a way Jud only saw when he'd been talking to the clergy earlier.
"You fucking listen to me, alright?" Blanc jabs one finger into his chest. "Everyone is goddamn lucky you were here— I am lucky you were here. You were a good priest, and you're a good person, and if I have to hear you talkin' like you're some kind of— devil himself, irredeemable monster, one more goddamn time, I might actually hit you. If that's what it takes to get it through your damn skull that—"
Jud kisses him. Just— darts across the small gap between them and presses his lips to Blanc's. It's not much, hard and close-lipped, and Blanc doesn't move with him. When he draws back, eyes going wide, Blanc is staring at him, something soft and confused in his eyes.
"Jud, you— oh." Blanc blinks rapidly, stunned.
Jud grins— bares his teeth, really. He feels reckless. "Finally got you speechless, huh?"
Blanc's eyebrows go up at the challenge, and then he's hauling Jud in. "Goddamn impossible," he mutters, and then—
Well, shit. Then Jud is kissing someone for the first time in about a decade. It's a good kiss; Christ, but it's a good kiss. Blanc still clutching his collar as if to keep him, to put him exactly where he wants him; the high hum, almost whimper it draws out of Jud that he doesn't bother to feel embarassed of; Blanc's continued mutterings between kisses to his mouth, then down his neck, fucking— wonder that you are, all angelic in the sunlight, with the gall to say you're not— not good, you— and Jud is laughing or maybe crying against Blanc's cheek, the shock and awe of it all, and Blanc pulls back to wipe at his tears. The moments it takes for him to do that, for the two of them to get their breath back, put a crease in Blanc's brow.
"Are you sure this is— if this is just, just a way of copin', I understand, but I'm not so sure you should— you're not entirely in your right mind, and you might regret..." There's worry, care, and also maybe something a little fragile in Blanc's gaze, and suddenly Jud is filled with conviction, determination to get this one thing right, and right the fuck now.
"Blanc, I've known I was gay since I was fifteen and realized I liked losing a boxing match just as much as winning. Fucking kiss me again."
And he does.
~
Blanc brings it up again, later, when they're sitting against the headboard again— this time curled into each other, Jud tucked beneath Blanc's arm.
"I know you said— but if this is somethin', somethin' spur of the moment, to make you feel better about everything. That would be completely understandable. I just want to make sure you can handle it alright when the impulse wears off."
"I thought you were hot the second you walked through the church door." Jud doesn't move from his spot, one hand on Blanc's chest, the other tucked between his back and the headboard. "You were strange and new and, and it was just immediately apparent, that your mind worked in a way I'd never seen before, and you were so—" Jud's hand clenches into a fist against Blanc's chest. "You were right, before. I don't have a lot of people who've looked out for me, and...and even fewer who would do that without me having to, to prove myself to them. But you just— you just came in and you—" His voice breaks, and he pauses to take a breath.
"My point is, I'm not going to have a gay priest mental breakdown, we're way past that, and I'm not just using you to cope, you're— I would never, not you." It's only as he reaches the end of his impromptu little speech that Jud considers that maybe Blanc wants this to be a fluke. He very quickly decides that it doesn't matter. Jud is sure of very little, even less now, but love comes easy. The work of it, the finding the right way to show it, that's hard, but Jud could never regret caring about Blanc, regardless of what happens.
(It's a lot, Jud knows, and people get weird about the l-word so he's careful about where he uses it, but Jud is full to the bursting with love, and he doesn't discriminate on where it goes. Whether they'll fall in love, or they'll never see each other again after today, or they'll become casual friends who talk once a month, doesn't matter. The nature of their relationship is immaterial; Blanc is a good and odd and wonderful man, and Jud loves him.)
Blanc relaxes. "Well. That's good, then, because I quite liked it. And you."
"Me too." Jud smothers his grin in Blanc's chest.
~
Langstrom calls a little while after that. He's frustrated, apologetic, earnest; insists that Jud can come stay with him, or he'll help him find a place, that this isn't Jud's fault and he should know that. Jud thanks him, tells him he's still reckoning with everything, but he's with Blanc, he's not alone, he'll be okay. It's a little more optimistic than he maybe believes, but he's sitting at Blanc's feet with Blanc's hand in his hair when it happens, so he's feeling indulgent.
When he hangs up, Jud lightly tosses his phone across the floor. Blanc sits on the bed above; Jud leans against his legs, tilting his head back slightly as he speaks.
"Did you ever believe in God?" he asks.
Blanc hums thoughtfully. "Sure, when I was young. Not sure it ever really took, per se, or if I was just too young to fully understand what I was echoin', but I was a practicin' Baptist for a time."
"...when did you know you— you'd stopped? How did you..." Jud trails off.
"Took a lot of time. Thinking. Gettin' real scared alone in my bedroom at night, prayin' to nobody." Blanc begins to scratch at Jud's scalp. "You won't figure it out all in one day."
Well. No pretense of the hypothetical, then. "I'm kind of...I'm not scared. But I'm scared of how not scared I am."
"Catholicism will do that kinda thing to you, I hear."
"I should feel more guilty. About Martha's confession, I mean. It's what the Church excommunicated me for and I just...can't bring myself to wish I hadn't done it."
"If it helps, I thought it was a very kind thing to do."
"I thought so too." Jud hesitates. "Okay, maybe I am scared. I just...I have no idea what happens next."
"Kind of exciting, though."
"Is it?" Jud's brow creases. "Makes me feel like— like I'm about to fall off a cliff, every time I think about it."
"Yeah, exciting." Jud can hear the amused smile in his voice now.
He sighs. "I really don't know what to do. I know you said take it slow, but...I mean, I don't have a home. I don't have a job. I don't really have friends—"
"You can stay with me. If you want," Blanc cuts him off. "Or I'm sure you could call Langstrom, or I could call some people, I only mean— there are places. And we could get you out of the area, somewhere more welcoming. And the rest we can sort out."
"You keep saying we," Jud acknowledges quietly.
"I asked you, at the beginning of all this, if you'd allow me to help you." Blanc cards a hand through his curls. "You said yes."
"I didn't think...you don't have to, you know. I think you've helped me plenty."
"I want to. If you'd still allow it."
Jud closes his eyes, leans into Blanc's touch. "Yes. Please."
"Then there it is." Blanc leans down and presses a kiss to the top of Jud's head. A benediction, Jud thinks, then catches himself. No, something better than benediction: care. Honest and mortal and human. Blanc cares about him.
Jud thinks he could survive hell itself, so long as he still has that.