Chapter 10: The Confession in the Garden
The iron gate groaned a familiar protest as Benoit pushed it open. The scent of wild roses, thick and cloying as confession, hit him immediately. It was the same. The garden hadn’t changed. But the man waiting on the stone bench had.
Jud looked up. He wasn’t fidgeting with his rosary. His hands were clasped tightly in his lap, knuckles white. The late afternoon sun cut through the tangle of thorns and painted him in stripes of gold and deep shadow. He looked exhausted, hollowed out, but his eyes—those kind, weathered blue eyes—cleared when they met Benoit’s. A focused, desperate calm.
“You came,” Jud said. His voice was scraped raw.
“I said I would.” Benoit didn’t approach, not yet. He leaned against the gatepost, giving them both space. The southern gentleman in him, the detective, both cautious. “You look like hell, Father.”
A ghost of a smile touched Jud’s lips. “Feel like it. The dreams… they’re vivid. Lots of screaming. Mostly mine.”
“I know the variety.” Benoit pushed off the post and walked slowly across the cracked flagstones. He stopped before the bench. “We don’t have to talk about the darkness today, Jud. We can just… sit.”
“I can’t just sit.” Jud’s composure fractured on the last word. He looked down at his hands, a priest’s hands, now trembling. “I have to say it. Before I lose my nerve again. Before I convince myself it’s a sin just to want it.”
Benoit’s breath caught. He lowered himself slowly onto the bench, not touching, but close enough to feel the heat coming off Jud’s body. “Say what?”
“Everything.” Jud turned to him then, and the look in his eyes was one Benoit had seen in war zones, in interrogation rooms—the look of a man poised on a ledge. “I love you. It’s not a gentle thing. It’s a crushing, fucking avalanche. It’s all I think about when I try to pray. Your voice. Your hands. The way you look at me like I’m a puzzle you’ve already solved but want to keep studying anyway.” The words tumbled out, ragged and unpriestly. “I want you. All of you. I wake up hard and aching, dreaming of your mouth on my cunt, of your fingers fucking into me while I beg for God’s forgiveness with your name on my lips. I am torn in half, Benoit. Every morning at the altar, I offer the host and I taste you. It’s blasphemy. It’s the only truth I have left.”
The vulgarity, the raw want, so at odds with the clerical black, hit Benoit like a physical blow. He had expected a stumbling confession. Not this torrent of filth and devotion. It was the most beautiful, horrifying thing he’d ever heard.
He reached out, his own hand not quite steady, and covered Jud’s trembling ones. “Jud…”
“Let me finish.” Jud gripped his hand hard, anchoring himself. “I am afraid. I am so goddamn afraid. I’m afraid my God will reject me. I’m afraid this… this body, this oddity, will repulse you if you see all of it, know all of it. I’m afraid the cult will come back and take you from me because they know you’re my weakness. But more than any of that… I am afraid of a life without you in it. A long, faithful, empty life where I never get to have this. I want forever. However we can steal it. However damned it makes us.”
Tears were streaming down Jud’s face now, cutting tracks through the dust of the garden. Benoit felt his own eyes burn. The careful walls, the loneliness he’d worn like his tailored coat, shattered into dust.
He brought Jud’s hands to his mouth, kissing each knuckle, tasting salt and earth. “Oh, my dear, brave man,” he murmured, his Southern drawl thick with emotion. “You think your body could repulse me? After what I’ve seen in the dark? It’s a part of you. It’s the shape of the man I love.” He shifted, cupping Jud’s wet face in both hands, forcing him to hold his gaze. “And I do. Love you. Fiercely. Irrevocably. I have for months. Watching you wrestle with angels and demons, watching you choose kindness again and again… you laid waste to my solitude, Jud Duplenticy. I’m terrified, too. I’m terrified you’ll choose a concept over a person. Over me. But you just did choose. And you chose us.”
He leaned forward, resting his forehead against Jud’s. Their breath mingled, hot and shared. “So let’s be damned together. Let’s have our forever. Let’s build something they can’t burn down.”
Jud made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. He nodded, his forehead rubbing against Benoit’s. “Yes. Okay. Yes.”
“Good.” Benoit pulled back just enough to see his face. He smoothed his thumbs over the tear tracks. “Now. Practicalities. I would like to take you to dinner. Tomorrow night. A proper date. No church, no monsters. Just you and me and a painfully expensive steak.”
Jud blinked, dazed. “A date?”
“A date. Where I pick you up at seven, hold your hand across the table, and shamelessly flirt with you over a bottle of Cabernet. Where I take you home and kiss you goodnight at your door like a teenager. If,” Benoit added, a slow smile spreading, “you’d like that.”
Jud’s answering smile was like the sun breaking through storm clouds. It lit up his whole face, erasing the shadows, the exhaustion. He nodded, the motion quick, eager. “Yes. I’d like that. I’d love that.” His enthusiasm was sudden, pure, a bounding energy that reminded Benoit of the whippet puppy his sister had when he was a boy—all joyous, uncontainable zeal.
“Excellent.” Benoit leaned in and finally, softly, covered Jud’s mouth with his own.
The kiss was not desperate, not like the others born of fear or adrenaline. It was a seal. A promise. It tasted of tears and rose pollen and a future, terrifying and bright. Jud sighed into it, his hands coming up to clutch at Benoit’s lapels, holding on as if to life itself.
When they parted, Benoit grinned, a real, unguarded grin that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “I’ll pick you up at seven. Wear something sinful.”
Jud blushed, a deep, beautiful crimson that spread from his cheeks down his neck. But he held Benoit’s gaze, his smile radiant. “I’ll see what I can do.”
A year later, the scent in the air was not roses, but lemon polish and the peppery aroma of fresh arugula from the weekly farmer’s market box. Sunlight streamed into the spacious, book-lined living room of their shared apartment in Richmond, glinting off the simple platinum band on Jud’s left hand.
He was curled at one end of a deep, wine-colored sofa, a laptop balanced on the generous swell of his belly. His clerical collars were packed away in a box in the hall closet, next to Benoit’s old case files from his most traumatic investigations. Both relics of past lives. Jud’s black hair, longer now, fell into his eyes as he typed, his brow furrowed in concentration. A half-drunk cup of chamomile tea steamed on the side table.
The click of the front door lock, the familiar tread of Italian loafers on hardwood. Jud didn’t look up, his fingers flying across the keys.
“Darling, I’m home,” Benoit called out, his voice warm with amusement. He shrugged off his overcoat, hanging it with precise care on the hall stand. “And I come bearing gifts. The aforementioned pastries from that French bastard who still refuses to like me.”
“He’s intimidated by your verbosity,” Jud said absently, tapping the ‘save’ button with a decisive click.
Benoit sauntered into the living room, placing a brown paper bag on the coffee table. His sharp eyes took in the scene: Jud, nestled in the pillows, the focused energy, the way he subtly angled the laptop screen away. A detective’s curiosity, never fully off duty.
“What has you so engrossed? The definitive theological critique of mid-century modern architecture? Your secret manifesto on the proper brewing of tea?”
Jud jumped, a slight, guilty movement. He stammered, “Oh, it’s… just my work. The, uh, the article for the… quarterly review.”
“The quarterly review that pays for our obscenely expensive coffee machine and this apartment?” Benoit raised an eyebrow, moving around the back of the sofa. He leaned down, his chin nearly resting on Jud’s shoulder. “Let’s have a peek, then. See what linguistic genius is funding my retirement.”
“No!” Jud’s hand shot out and slammed the laptop closed with a thwump. His cheeks were flaming. “It’s… it’s in a rough draft. Very rough. Unreadable.”
Benoit straightened up, a slow, knowing chuckle building in his chest. He’d seen the bank statements. He knew the pseudonym—“J.D. Plenty”—and the direct deposits from niche publishing houses that were staggeringly large for theological commentary. He’d never pressed. Until now.
“Jud,” he said, his voice dripping with faux-innocence. “My love. My fiancé. The father of my future child. Are you… embarrassed by your writing?”
“It’s not embarrassment, it’s…” Jud waved a hand, flustered. “It’s private. It’s my process.”
Benoit simply looked at him, the smile playing on his lips. The silence stretched, comfortable, charged with fond suspicion.
Jud deflated. He looked down at his hands, at the ring, then back up at Benoit. A giggle escaped him, bright and sudden. “Okay. Fine. You’re a detective. You’ve probably already deduced it.”
“I have my theories,” Benoit conceded, coming around to sit beside him. He took Jud’s hand, lacing their fingers together over the curve of their daughter. “But I’d much rather hear it from you.”
Jud took a deep breath. “I… retired from the church. You know that. But the writing, it… it kept calling. And I had all these… feelings. Experiences. This body. Our… experiences.” He met Benoit’s gaze, his own shy but defiant. “Turns out there’s a… a market. A very enthusiastic market. For explicit, well-written erotica featuring… um… men with… my specific anatomical configuration.”
Benoit’s eyebrows shot up. “Is that so?”
“It’s bizarrely profitable,” Jud whispered, as if sharing a state secret. “I write under a pen name. ‘Breeder’s Gospel’ is my best-selling series. The last royalty check bought us that new crib.”
Benoit stared at him for a long moment. Then he threw his head back and laughed, a rich, full-bodied sound that filled the sunlit room. “Oh, my brilliant, filthy-minded heretic,” he gasped, wiping a tear from his eye. “You’re writing porn.”
“Character-driven, thematically complex smut!” Jud insisted, laughing now too, his embarrassment melting away in the face of Benoit’s delight.
“Of course, of course,” Benoit said, pulling Jud into his arms. He kissed him, a deep, loving kiss that spoke of pride and endless amusement. “Our little secret. Saint Judah, patron saint of lost causes and exceptionally lucrative dirty books.”
Jud kissed him back, giggling against his mouth. The laptop was forgotten on the cushions. Benoit’s hands slid under Jud’s soft sweater, stroking the warm, taut skin of his belly. “I think,” Benoit murmured, his lips traveling to Jud’s ear, “this calls for a celebration of the author’s success.”
He shifted them down until Jud was straddling his lap on the wide couch. Jud sighed, settling his weight, the hard press of Benoit’s erection against his own swollen heat sending a jolt through him. Benoit reached for the remote, flicking on the television. A soap opera burst into life, two actors embroiled in a melodramatic hospital room confrontation.
“Perfect,” Benoit muttered, nuzzling Jud’s neck as he deftly unbuttoned his own trousers. “Background noise.”
He poured them each a glass of wine—a non-alcoholic Shiraz for Jud, a rich Burgundy for himself. Jud took his glass, sipping, his eyes on Benoit’s as he raised himself up. They’d done this a hundred times, but it still felt like a revelation. He guided Benoit’s cock, thick and eager, to his opening, already slick with want.
“Fuck, you’re wet,” Benoit breathed, his hands gripping Jud’s hips.
Jud sank down slowly, taking him in with a low, shuddering moan, his head falling back. He was so full, so perfectly stretched. The stretch was different now, deeper, more profound with the pregnancy, a constant, thrilling reminder of the life they’d created. He began to move, a rocking, grinding rhythm that had Benoit’s knuckles white on the couch fabric.
“That’s it,” Benoit gritted out, his hips meeting each downstroke. “Ride me, darling. Show me what inspires the great literature.”
Jud laughed, breathless, his breasts shifting under his sweater. He kept his eyes half on Benoit’s rapt face, half on the ridiculous soap opera. “Look,” he panted, nodding at the screen where a woman in a white coat was swooning. “She’s faking that angina. Her pulse is… ah, God, Benoit, right there… her pulse is too steady.”
“Terrible actress,” Benoit agreed, his thrusts growing sharper, deeper. He pushed Jud’s sweater up, taking a pebbled nipple into his mouth, sucking hard through the soft cotton of his undershirt. Jud cried out, his rhythm faltering for a moment.
They fucked like that for a long, lazy hour, trading sips of wine and tea, mocking the terrible dialogue on screen between gasped profanities and choked-off pleas. Jud’s skin was flushed, a sheen of sweat on his brow, his movements becoming more erratic, more urgent.
“I’m close, I’m so close,” he whimpered, his hand pressed between them, rubbing frantic circles over his swollen clit.
“Come on,” Benoit urged, his own control fraying. He gripped Jud’s ass, driving up into him with relentless force. “Come on my cock, Jud. Let me feel you.”
Jud shattered with a ragged shout, his cunt clenching rhythmically around Benoit, milking him deep inside. The intensity triggered Benoit’s own release, a hot, pumping rush that had him groaning Jud’s name into the crook of his neck.
They slumped together, a tangled, sweaty, sated mess. The soap opera credits rolled. Benoit, still buried inside Jud, reached for the remote and turned off the TV. Silence settled, broken only by their slowing breaths.
Jud nuzzled into Benoit’s neck, his hand resting on the firm curve of his belly. Beneath his palm, their daughter kicked—a swift, strong flutter.
Benoit felt it. He smiled, a quiet, private thing, and pressed a kiss to Jud’s damp hair. “She approves of her papa’s chosen profession,” he murmured.
Jud laughed, soft and content. He was pregnant. They were in love. The future, once a terrifying void, was now this room, this couch, this perfect, impossible weight in his womb and in his heart. It was more than he’d ever dared pray for. It was everything.