Chapter Text
Rome, 1964
The air was hot and thick with salt as Tim tried desperately to focus on the text in front of him. The scorching Italian summer was taking no prisoners that year, and despite the blessedly cool sanctum of the main hall, the library in which Tim now studied, hunched over a wooden desk pristine from decades of delicate handling, did not let in any more than the slightest tantalising breeze. Sweat collected on the bridge of his nose, loosening the grip of his square glasses and forcing him to push them up constantly. Ever-conscious of leaving a mark, he turned the pages slowly and carefully, pinching them against each other to avoid getting them damp. He squinted at the tiny words, edges fuzzing together in the midday heat. A growl of frustration crawled up his throat and stuck there, heavy and uncomfortable.
A hand on his shoulder, light as a suggestion, startled him out of his focus.
“Tim,” his friend intoned, in a voice reserved for pews and shelves, “will you be joining us for lunch?”
Truthfully, Tim had been ignoring the clawing ache in his stomach for several hours, and was intending to go on ignoring it until dinnertime. He had a lot to catch up on, and the interminable dry warmth they had been experiencing for the last few weeks had not helped with his progress. Although his fellow seminarians had dived headfirst into Italian ways of living, he was not yet accustomed to the food — slow mornings with flaky pastries and deep, rich coffee, braised artichokes swimming in silky olive oil at lunch, risotto and gelato for dinner, fresh and thick and creamy.
He watched the others enjoy it, great whoops of laughter slipping from their lips as they dissected the goings-on of the day, arms wide and mouths full, languishing in their youth and lack of responsibility, balancing on the precipice of respectability. Locals touched their robes as they went past, reverence for the clergy mixing with soft affection for the new generation, beaming down with crinkled eyes. The beginning of the rest of their lives, bursting with flavour.
Tim had never been one for dining out. Shy, slightly unconvinced of his place in the world, he preferred to sneak into the small kitchen reserved for students and make his own food. Mealtimes in the Laughlin household had been plain affairs, his mother always impressing upon them the privilege of eating at all, let alone eating well; porridge with a twist of soft brown sugar, a slice of toast topped with briny kippers, leek and potato stew. He ate alone, and quickly, thinking always of the virtues of restriction, the pitfalls of indulgence. His friends joked that he put them in mind of a red-breasted robin, wide-eyed and skittish, shoes polished and ready to take off across the flagstones at a sudden noise.
“You don’t have to eat, you know.” Tim recognised the sigh in his friend’s voice, the long-suffering tone of someone who has asked a question while already knowing the answer. “We’d just like for you to come along.”
Perhaps it was this infernal heat, the sluggish firing of his brain, the ink crowded on the page making the words bleed ever-closer; or perhaps it was something more, some whisper of the universe tugging at his sleeve, the day imbued with shining importance, but Tim suddenly had the urge to go. He rose to his feet faster than he expected, squeezing a fist through the sudden dip and whoosh of the room as the gold leaf glittering around him spun with effort. He felt something speak through him as he placed a convivial hand on his friend’s shoulder, told him with more confidence than he felt that he would love to come.
And so the whole affair began in June, under a searing sun high in the cloudless sky, with the fine dust from the road collecting at the tips of Tim’s brogues.
—
Hawk was so far unimpressed by the meal in front of him. It had looked promising when first placed in front of him by a bowing waiter, the guanciale beautifully rendered, the spaghetti glistening in a lustrous sauce, but he had known from the first bite that the chef was inexperienced, or maybe indifferent. The black pepper, while freshly cracked, was altogether too abundant and overwhelming, and he was fairly certain that they had removed most of the pork fat before making the sauce, relying solely on pecorino and pasta water for creaminess and thereby ruining the texture. Pasta alla gricia was one of the four traditional Roman pasta dishes, and was he not in Rome? His pen scratched disapprovingly. His review would be scathing — or, worse, he may not write one at all. The owner had better hope his wine pairing was better than his pasta.
He paused his scribbling to take in the sight of the table across the way from him. He was in the habit of people-watching while he wrote his reviews, as he considered the company and energy of a restaurant to come second only to the food, and would often include quick notes about which dishes seemed the most popular, what kinds of people the place attracted, and so on. This time, however, his gaze was caught not by the food piled high on the table, but by the people — well, person — around it.
Seven seminarians huddled around the small round table, splaying out like petals in their black clerical shirts and white collars. They were talking animatedly, gesturing with the same hands they held their forks in, full with pasta and with joy. But the one that caught Hawk’s eye was different from the others, back held straight rather than leant back against the chair, bottom lip held tense between his teeth. Hawk had only been watching for a minute or so, and already he had noticed the man’s distinct nervous tics — one hand pulling on the white of his collar, the other arranging and re-arranging his thick glasses that almost, but not quite, hid the deep furrow of his brow. He reminded Hawk of a deer, huge doe eyes focused intently on the conversation as though he was studying it, which, perhaps, he was. Hawk noticed also the lack of food in front of him, nothing to occupy his roving hands but his clothes. Unlike the others, his sleeves were not rolled up to the elbow, but carefully pressed into place around his delicate wrists, and he fiddled with the buttons from time to time.
Hawk stood before he could stop himself, his slow pacing towards the table betraying nothing of the hammering in his chest. He prided himself on moving languidly, settling in liquid-smooth to la dolce vita, but there was something about the man he now approached that made him want to be near him as soon as possible. The seminarians looked up as he walked over, acknowledging him with warm smiles and friendly nods before returning to their conversations. Only the doe-eyed man, unused to being sought out, did not, watching Hawk’s every movement with apprehension.
“You’re not eating.” Hawk spoke close to his ear, taking in the sweat-salt of the man’s hair mixing with the cologne he had sparingly applied that morning.
“Yes, I am.” His accent was charmingly English, clipped and short with a thread of anxiety woven through it. “I’ve finished my food, that’s all.”
Hawk tilted his head to the side. “Yeah, I’m not so sure about that. You see, I saw you guys come in, and I saw your food come to the table, and yet I have not seen you take a single bite of any of the dishes.”
A deep flush crept up the back of the man’s neck. He turned his deep brown eyes on Hawk, burning with a kind of fury, or as close as Hawk imagined he could get.
“Why on Earth have you been watching me?”
Hawk forced out the laugh that had been caught in his throat.
“I’ve been watching everyone. I’m writing a review of this place, so I like to know what people are eating, how long they’re staying here, and all that. It’s important to paint a picture — I might be trained in this, but everyone eats.”
“Except me, apparently.” Some of the heat from the man’s gaze had subsided, but still his words were clipped. Hawk couldn’t tell if it was a Britishism or if his presence was ruining the man’s day. His hand came up to pull at his clerical collar. “So I can’t imagine why you’d be interested.”
“Well, not eating at a restaurant is one of the most telling things you can do.” Hawk let out a low chuckle. “What, you didn’t like the food?”
“I… haven’t tried it.”
“What, ever?”
“Yes, ever.” The man was getting upset now, tone arch and eyes turned away from Hawk’s. Something in Hawk’s chest began to wobble at the discomfort he was causing, but he ignored it and pushed on anyway.
“Well, then, you must come and try some of mine— I’m sorry, I didn’t think to ask your name.”
“Tim.” He looked as though he would rather not give it, but politeness and social convention forced it from his lips. The furrow on his brow had deepened, and Hawk resisted the urge to press his thumb to the wrinkle. “And no, thank you.”
“Come on, the pasta’s good- well, it’s not that good, but for someone that’s never tried it-”
“No, thank you.” Tim stood up suddenly, and Hawk was aware that he could be kind of abrasive at times, but he couldn’t think of anything he had said that would warrant the tears that had sprung to Tim’s eyes, the sharp turn of his heel as he scurried away, pushing his glasses around his face.
The other seminarians turned to Hawk, shooting him disapproving glares. He spread his hand wide, shrugging, and turned back to his own table, where a glass of white wine was now waiting for him, sweating in the sun. He took a sip, felt the vinegar and sour grapes hit his tongue as it recoiled in his mouth. He forced himself to hold it there for a few more seconds, whether to taste it better or to punish himself for scaring away gentle Tim, with his soft eyes and aversion to having a good time, he didn’t know. Then, he swallowed it around the curious new lump in this throat, writing something else in his notebook. Perhaps dessert would save the meal.
—
Later, when Tim ate his soup with a hunk of crusty bread, he felt something spreading through his chest that he couldn’t identify — not quite warmth, but a feeling that something had happened to him, something which had significance not yet revealed. It was the same way he had felt when, as a child, he had seen their local priest come round to their house to talk to his mother, his voice low and contemplative, and his mother’s face shining with the joy of someone who has finally been listened to. A swelling of importance, of cosmic jigsaw pieces settling into place, something taking root in his brain. It wasn’t until years later that he had understood that he wanted to make people feel the same way, and had accepted the priesthood as his calling; a clumsy word for what was really more of a decision made after careful thought than some kind of celestial magnet, but there it was. Something had happened today.
The thought of it made his food turn to hot mush in his mouth, and he swallowed with effort, tasting for perhaps the first time the blandness of his supper. The man at the restaurant had found something within him, and was pulling it out. Tim ran a shaking hand over the cross around his neck, and prayed he would not unravel him.