Chapter Text
As the door of his apartment closed behind them, Thomas dropped the grip he’d kept on the back of Aldo’s neck for almost the entire walk over from the Apostolic Palace. Aldo felt its absence as if he was a hot air balloon that had suddenly lost its ballast: unnerving, destabilizing, catastrophic. As he stood there nervelessly, just inside the doorway, Thomas took his bulging briefcase from him and began walking toward his bedroom.
“Get undressed and go to the archway,” Thomas ordered over his shoulder, as he went; his voice was curt and confident, admitting no possibility of being disobeyed.
It had been a long time since Aldo had heard that voice. He scurried to obey it, arousal and guilt and gratitude and apprehension and relief swirling in his gut until they mingled into an odd morass of cramping stress. It had been just over a week since the Conclave ended. Ten days since Aldo had accused Thomas of trying to steal the papacy out from under him. Nine days since he’d told him to ignore the evidence of Tremblay’s simony. Eight days since he’d stood by and watched as Thomas looked at Innocent XIV with the same heart-shaped eyes that he’d once reserved for Aldo alone.
He’d had faith that his relationship with Thomas would endure, even through this. He had. Surely he couldn’t blow up a nearly forty-year relationship with a few poor decisions during the most stressful and exhausting three days of his life… But despite his trust in Thomas’s fidelity, the wait had given Aldo far too much time to work himself into a lather of anxiety, fretting about the severity of the punishment Thomas would surely feel obliged to dish out for his misdeeds… And at the same time, fearing that Thomas would decide that he wasn’t even worth punishing.
That fear, at least, was groundless, it seemed, and Aldo tried to lean into anticipation as he closed all the shutters throughout the front room of Thomas’s apartment. But the disappearance of one dread simply allowed the other free reign, and he found himself sweating with apprehension as he crossed the room toward the archway at which they’d set up their suspension rig. He liked pain—in moderation; and Thomas enjoyed inflicting it—as a reward. But when Thomas felt it necessary to hurt him as a punishment, he went hard, ensuring that Aldo didn’t enjoy it in the least—and Aldo had never failed him this badly before.
This is going to be bad… Lord preserve me.
Taking a deep breath, he detached the plant pots that normally hung from the doubly-reinforced, load-bearing iron hooks on either side of it, leaving them on the floor nearby. His heart was pounding now, with apprehension and anticipation both. For even as he feared the pain, he ached for it. He longed for the brief span of time when the pain would be so great that it would make his brain shut off. For the blissful absence of guilt and anxiety that would follow. For the way it broke down his defenses, allowing him to respond to Thomas without inhibition or distance.
At least Thomas had decided to get straight to it—Aldo could scarcely have focused on anything else with this weight hanging over his head.
All that was left now was to peel himself out of his cassock and the sweat-stained dress shirt and trousers he wore under it. His hands shook as he pulled down his boxers as well, and he swayed indecisively in place for a moment before gathering up the scattered articles of clothing and taking them over to the couch. Thankfully, Thomas returned before he’d had time to anxiously refold them more than twice, and pulled him gently away from the neat pile of fabric.
“Shhh, darling,” Thomas murmured. He positioned Aldo under the archway, then kneaded his shoulders for a moment, trying futilely to relieve the tension in them. “It’ll be alright.”
He’d already removed his own vestments—Aldo wasted a brief moment regretting the lost opportunity to help undress him—and changed into a simple turtleneck and jeans. The smooth polyblend brushed silkily against Aldo’s bare, clammy flesh as Thomas pressed a kiss into his temples. He squeezed Aldo’s shoulders once more, then shrugged a small bag of supplies off his own. Aldo couldn’t stop himself from glancing down as he bent down and rifled through it, trying to figure out what his lover was planning. They couldn’t keep anything in either of their apartments that too obviously indicated the nature of their recreations, of course—they both had assistants and housekeepers who might choose to be nosy one day (whether on their own accord, or acting on someone else’s behalf; the list of people who might reasonably want to dig up dirt on them was not small). And so Thomas pulled out two red band cinctures to bind around Aldo’s wrists, ensuring that he would be held without any telltale rope burns, and used lengths of silk pectoral cord to secure the knots as he looped the bands up through the hooks, pulling Aldo’s arms slightly up and far to either side, until he was forced up onto his tiptoes, hanging like Jesus on the cross. Aldo let out a grunt at the strain the position put on his shoulders, and silently prayed that Thomas wasn’t going to leave him like this for long.
“There you are,” Thomas said approvingly. He ran his hands up and down Aldo’s back and hips—gentling him like a horse, Aldo thought wryly, even as he melted into the caress. “Relax, dearest.”
Aldo snorted. “Easy for you to say.”
Thomas’s fingers dug into his waist for a moment. “It really isn’t.”
Aldo hung his head guiltily at the reminder that Thomas did this all for him, not for his own enjoyment. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Thomas sighed. “Are you, darling?”
“Of course I am!” Aldo said, jerking his head around. He couldn’t manage to turn it far enough to the side to see Thomas’s face, and after a second he gave up and slumped back down. “I’m sorry I let you down, Thomas, I am, I’m sorry that I’ve made you angry with me—”
Thomas stopped Aldo’s penitent babbling with another squeeze to his waist, then stepped away, rifling in the bag again—this time he pulled it far enough back that Aldo couldn’t hope to see what he was taking out. Aldo whined.
“And why do you think I’m mad at you, dearest?” Thomas asked.
Aldo shivered at the quiet menace in his voice. “What, do you want me to list all the reasons?” he asked, with false bravado. He strained his ears, trying to figure out what Thomas was doing behind him. “I’m not sure we have enough time for me to go through them all before my shoulders dislocate.”
He heard Thomas chuckle softly, followed by an odd whistling sound.
“Fuck!” Aldo screeched, as fire landed across his bare back. “Thomas—”
“Yes. I would like you to list them all,” Thomas confirmed.
Aldo breathed slowly out through his nose. He closed his eyes, coping with the pain by identifying what implement Thomas was using. It had to be one of his disciplines, of course. Thomas had an entire collection of the traditional floggers that self-flagellants used in penitential rituals. No one who knew him would be remotely surprised at his collecting such a thing; Aldo was only grateful that—as far as he knew—Thomas had never used them on himself. His forms of self-mortification tended toward the more deniable—scalding showers and uncomfortable shoes and overtight fascias, shorting himself on food and sleep and the other comforts of life.
Yes, it had to be a discipline—and from the sound it had made as it swung through the air and hit multiple points across Aldo’s shoulders and back, and the combination of sting and thud, Aldo was even fairly sure that he knew which one this was: made of seven strips of leather, one for each of the seven deadly sins, with iron balls at each end to drive in the message. Aldo had given it to Thomas several years ago, as a half-joking, half-serious Christmas gift. Thomas had laughed when he’d unwrapped it, and said that he could only hope that Aldo would never be naughty enough to convince him to use it in earnest.
I guess I was finally naughty enough, Aldo thought giddily, as the pain of the hit slowly faded, and the endorphins started flowing in its wake.
“Whenever you’re ready,” Thomas prompted gently.
Right. Reasons I’ve failed him, Aldo recalled. “Well,” he said, aiming for a cheeky tone, “I suppose this is a good time to confess that I voted for you to become Pope in that last ballot, after all.”
There was a moment of silence, then Thomas laughed softly; a looser, more free sound than his earlier chuckle. The lash that landed across Aldo’s shoulders was thus an utter surprise. He bit back another yell, and craned his neck around, trying to aim an indignant look in Thomas’s direction.
“Wrong,” Thomas said merrily. “My dear Aldo, you truly thought that I would be angry at you for having faith in me?”
“But—I ignored the Holy Spirit!” Aldo protested. “I had the hubris to put my own opinions and petty jealousy over God’s will—”
This time it was just Thomas’s hand that stopped him, slapping hard on his ass. It was a laughable pain compared to the agony of the discipline, but the shame of it, being spanked like a baby (or worse, like a faggot) had always sent equal amounts of horror and arousal through Aldo, and it didn’t fail him now. He squirmed in impotent humiliation.
“I’m not your confessor, and I cannot judge your sins against God, my love,” Thomas said quietly from behind him. “I suppose I did feel the Holy Spirit, there, in the end—like a great wind, that swept me up and then spat me out, only to go after someone else. But given that I voted for myself in the ballot before—blatantly violating my oath, as I did not believe myself worthy… I am scarcely in a position to judge.”
Aldo squeezed his burning eyes closed. Finally, he nodded. “Fine, but—”
Thomas lashed him again with the discipline, across the buttocks this time—a lighter hit, but it still made Aldo startle and squeal.
“What was that for—” he started, only to cut off by another lash, to his lower back, harder and more punishing. He growled, tears of anger and frustration springing to his eyes—but he said nothing, knowing that Thomas was trying to provoke him into arguing with him.
After a long pause—waiting him out—Thomas went on, sounding unholily amused. “You still need to come up with a good reason for me to be angry with you.”
Aldo took a deep, wet breath. “Well,” he said, striving to keep his voice calm as they neared more dangerous ground. “There was my misjudgment of Tremblay. You saw through him immediately. I should have trusted your judgment there as well—”
The lash landed across his shoulders again, the hardest hit yet, and he couldn’t hold back a curse, even as a few tears escaped from his eyes. He could feel each and every iron ball impact his skin separately—he was going to have a very odd bruise pattern to explain if anyone someone caught sight of his naked backside in the next few weeks.
“My judgement was scarcely better, darling,” Thomas pointed out, his voice infuriatingly calm and unaffected. “I agreed with your plan.”
By contrast, it took Aldo a few tries to clear his throat enough to speak, and he cringed with embarrassment at how wrecked his voice already sounded. “But—but only because… I talked you into voting for someone you didn’t believe should be—breaking your oath before Go— fuck!”
“Darling,” Thomas said sharply, “you are not morally responsible for my actions. Yes, I detest Joseph Tremblay—the man is insufferable—but I did think that voting for him was the best choice, until I discovered what he’d done to poor Sister Shanumi. Putting her in a position to have all that trauma from her youth brought back up—”
Aldo swayed in place slightly, and Thomas sighed. “Sorry to blather on; it just makes my blood boil,” he acknowledged. “But honestly, dearest; you can scarcely be blamed for not being clairvoyant.”
Aldo struggled with the oddest sense of… frustration. But then, it was absurd, wasn’t it, for Thomas to be demolishing the very excellent reasons Aldo had presented for the righteous anger he must be feeling? When he was the one who insisted that Aldo list them in the first place!
“Maybe not,” he grated, “but I can be blamed for continuing to push you to support him even after we knew how he’d taken advantage of the cardinals from the most impoverished dioceses, making them compromise themselves to get the funds they should have been granted from the beginning—”
The sting of the discipline cut him off again, hard enough to force his body forward this time. Aldo clenched his teeth against the shout that wanted to emerge and his fists around the restraints, fighting to keep from losing his toes’ purchase on the slippery polished wooden floor. Thomas’s arms went around him immediately, bracing him up until he could regain his equilibrium. He slumped into his lover’s chest, not too proud to take the comfort and support for as long as it was on offer.
“Oh, sweetheart, no,” Thomas cooed in his ear. “Yes, I was angry with you at the time. But you more than made up for that moment of weakness. How many men are strong enough to face a mistake head-on, as you did, acknowledging their error and and reforming, rather than clinging to it?”
“But—” Aldo protested, “I didn’t, I— fuck! ”
The lash had been light—Thomas couldn’t get the kind of leverage pressed up against Aldo’s back that he could from farther back—but it went up between his legs, landing against his balls and cock, the leather stinging like saltwater on a sunburn. As he fought for and regained his balance, Thomas pressed one last kiss just below his ear, then stood back. Aldo got a firmer grip on the stoles—they were damp in his hands, soaking up the sweat from his palms.
“Would you care to try again?” Thomas asked, with false nonchalance.
“I accused you of ambition,” Aldo spat out, his temper flaring at the show of indifference, “when it was me, the whole time—”
The last word came out in a strangled yelp as Thomas hit him again, on the back this time. He managed to keep his footing through that one—but not the second, coming in only seconds after the first; and the third sent him lurching forward, swinging in the restraints, feet desperately flailing in the air—
Thomas’s arm braced around his waist again, taking his weight, making certain that he didn’t actually dislocate his shoulders. Aldo gratefully sagged against him, only then fully registering the agony still echoing through his back—the panic of scrambling for balance had driven it entirely out of his mind, but now that he was out of danger, it came flooding back, triggering aftershocks…
“Not that one either, darling,” Thomas whispered in his ear. “I’m not immune from ambition, or pride, as I admitted in the end. Denying it was very self-indulgent of me.”
“But I should never have thought you were trying to pull some kind of Machiavellian maneuver to take the papacy from me,” Aldo argued. “I should have trusted you, Thomas.”
Thomas sighed and nuzzled at his neck. “Yes, you should have done,” he conceded. “But you already apologized for that, Aldo. And my homily may well have cost you the papacy. I can’t regret it—it was God’s will, and I’m so grateful that you were spared—but you weren’t wrong to feel betrayed.”
“I wouldn’t have felt betrayed if I hadn’t sought the papacy in the first place,” Aldo said hotly, “I knew I wasn’t worthy, I should never have—God fucking dammit, Tommy, I think you broke the skin with that one!”
Thomas clicked his tongue. “Really, Aldo, language.”
Aldo laughed, long and hysterically. His back felt like it was on fire.
“You’re not bleeding,” Thomas added, running a light hand along his back. Aldo caught his breath with pain as it skimmed past some of the welts. “I’m being careful, darling.”
“Yes, well,” Aldo said, the words poison in his mouth. “We both know that I’m a coward.”
If he’d thought any of the earlier blows before were particularly painful, the three lashes that Thomas laid on him now, one after another, proved how very wrong he’d been. He screamed, loud and shrill, utterly uninhibited.
“Don’t insult the man I love like that,” Thomas said, his voice icily gentle.
“You—you said it first—” Aldo gasped, over the tears that had started rolling down his cheeks.
“Oh, my dear Aldo,” Thomas said. He spooned up behind Aldo, his strong chest pressed agonizingly into his back, and spread his palm across his bare belly. Aldo quivered and pushed himself forward into the warm, grounding touch. “That’s not what I said.”
“It—it wasn’t?” Aldo asked, barely managing to speak past the lump of tears blocking up his throat. For a moment, he genuinely couldn’t remember the exact details, and he felt an odd surge of relief. Their altercation in the wee hours of the third day of the Conclave had been playing in his head on repeat since it had happened, and despite the circumstances, its sudden absence was a blessing.
“No,” Thomas affirmed. His other hand came down over Aldo’s heart, fingers spread wide. “I said you lacked the courage to be Pope.”
Aldo made a confused, useless noise, unsure what distinction Thomas was making.
Thomas hummed softly in his ear. “You said, on the eve of the Conclave, that you were not merely God’s passive instrument; but you can be too quick to exercise your free will, my dear. The Holy Father must have the courage to make choices based on what is right, without fearing the consequences. Trusting that God’s plan will out.
“But not having that particular kind of courage doesn’t make you a coward, darling,” Thomas concluded, “and while I was disappointed in you, I wasn’t angry.”
A broken sound emerged from Aldo’s mouth as the last of his composure broke. The tears that had just started to dry began streaming again, harder, shaking his slender frame. “But I—I did disappoint you,” he repeated. “I disappointed everyone, Thomas—I was too cautious, too incremental, not diplomatic enough, too liberal, too belligerent, too gay, I—I don’t even know what all I did wrong, but I wasn’t good enough. I was never going to be good enough—”
As he cried harder, his toes finally slipped irrecoverably away from their perch on the floor. Aldo didn’t even bother fighting it, releasing his grip on the bands and letting himself hang from the bindings, heedless of the way it made his shoulders scream. Why should he care? He deserved the pain.
“—Giulio trusted me, and Jan and Franz, Gianmarco, Rocco, the others—I let them all down, I—”
The bands snapped—cut by a pair of scissors, he realized belatedly, the snips ringing in his ears even as he fell, bonelessly—
—into Thomas’s arms.
“It’s okay, darling, let it out—” Thomas murmured, even as he pulled Aldo more securely into his lap, cradling him like a pieta.
Aldo curled into him, hiding his face in Thomas’s chest. “—he never wanted me to follow him,” he wept, “he just—I was a stalking horse, Tommy. The scary radical faggot for everyone to be afraid of and disgusted by—a distraction for the man he actually trusted—he used me—”
Thomas clutched him closer. “I’m so sorry, my dearest. He should never have done that to you.”
Counterintuitively, Thomas’s agreement just made Aldo cry harder. He’d wanted him to scold him again, to lash him again, to tell him that the Holy Father had cared about him, had been proud of him, would never have deliberately set him up to fail—
—but he had.
Thomas held him, rocking back and forth slowly on the floor, whispering reassurances and endearments, until he’d cried himself out. Finally, Aldo pulled his head away from the damp, tear-stained fabric of Thomas’s shirt. His eyes felt sore and swollen, his head ached distantly, and his nose was so stuffed up he couldn’t breathe through it at all. But at the same time, he felt better than he had in weeks.
“I love you,” he mumbled, exhaustion settling over him like a sandbag.
“I love you, too, darling,” Thomas murmured fondly.
They got to their feet slowly, and Thomas led Aldo to his bedroom, pressing him into the mattress and then vanishing. In another mood, Aldo might have been alarmed by his departure, but there was no room in his full heart for doubt at the moment. And in any case, once he lay down, he felt like he might not move in a hundred years—fatigue weighted down every limb and made his mind move like molasses.
Thomas returned a minute later, with a tub of arnica cream from the bathroom. He straddled Aldo’s ass and rubbing it slowly and gently into his back and shoulders, praising Aldo for how bravely he’d taken the punishment, telling him how much he loved him and how proud he was. By the time he finished and turned off the light, laying down on his back and pulling Aldo over to lay on top of him, Aldo was half-asleep and nearly purring like a cat; he felt satiated and full of drowsy contentment, despite the ache of his incipient bruises.
“Why were you mad at me, then?” he asked, realizing—on the very verge of unconsciousness—that he’d never managed to list the correct reason, in the end.
“Oh, my dear Aldo,” Thomas said, a wide smile in his voice. “I wasn't mad at you.”
“—What?” Aldo yelped. He craned his neck up to peer at Thomas through the darkness, roused from his languor. “But you—”
“Sweetheart,” Thomas said. His broad hand, with those long, thin pianist’s fingers, cupped the back of Aldo’s head, squeezing tightly until he laid it back down on Thomas’s chest. “I won’t ever punish you because I’m mad at you. May God strike me down if I ever raise a hand against you in anger. I do it because you need it, darling.”
“—Oh,” Aldo said, dumbly. He’d known that, really, on some level so deep he’d never consciously thought about it. Hadn’t he even thought about how much he needed the cathartic release, the freedom from worry and guilt, that would come with their session? And he knew what Thomas sounded like angry, and aroused, and affectionate, and his lover had never brought the first into what they did together.
Aldo simply… hadn’t been able to conceive how Thomas could have possibly not been angry with him, after his monumental failings.
“Thank you,” he said, in a small voice, almost immediately swallowed up by the dark room.
“Go to sleep, my love,” Thomas said, kissing his head.
“—mkay,” Aldo managed to get out. The command erased the last of his defenses against the exhaustion that was suffusing every cell of his body, and the dark shadows were closing in.
He fell asleep to the sensation of Thomas petting his bald head, slowly and tenderly.