#cesarina is wonderfully belle-epoque and i love her

[il-papa-patata]

Say your Name Forever

(Cardinal Copia traces the path of his relationship with one Cesarina Gastone de Medici. Cardi C x Female OC. Some domestic stuff, flashbacks & a proposal. Rated T.)

Copia admits. He's a fuck-up.

Upon his rising to Cardinal, he was asked to take holy wine. A drink to ease the meeting of a human and a demon, something which relaxed the body and mind to an extent, encouraged the Unholy.

What a normal person would do is meet with a demon – usually from one's preferred sin, with the strength varying depending on the promise of the individual. A contract would be made. And it provided the new Cardinal with both power and direction. Secondo lives by his master's hand – the righteous wrath of Asmodeus; as does Terzo, who slinks along with the sinuous Lord Baphomet.

Copia had expected perhaps a demon of envy. And he had expected someone not-too-imposing.

Well- no, actually. Copia pretends now that he had expected that, but when he took the holy wine, the only thought on his mind was how bitter the drink was.

He wasn't raised in the Church after all. Spent his adolescence as a Catholic. To him, the sanctity and procedures of these rituals were far-removed, hazy to him.

But he didn't meet a demon. He didn't meet even an imp. He met a human.

Cesarina slips out of her clothing, down to her pretty chemise, trimmed with lace and embroidered in whitework. It's a little damp – her dark hair is still beaded with drops of rain that haven't sunk in. It looks pretty. Like pearls.

When he hands her his cardigan, she slips it on gratefully, pulling it around her body and smiling.

“Thank you,” she hums, pushing her curls over her shoulders again. She holds his stare for a few more moments, and then grins. “Am I that pretty?”

He shakes his head a little, and then balks – “Yes. Very pretty. Sorry.”

She laughs, her full lips parting. She steps out of her petticoats and begins to undo his soaked cassock.

This is maybe the twentieth time they've met. If not that many, certainly over a dozen. He tries not to count them.

Today they had been out when it began to rain, and so he had hurried them back to his little apartment, up the stairs behind the greengrocers', a couple rooms and a small kitchen. He flushed at the mess – a swirl of trinkets and old magazines and general clutter that somehow didn't disguise the sparseness of furnishings – but she had pressed by, unflapped by it.

She pulls the skirt of the cassock up, getting the last few buttons.

Cesarina is – hm. She's a nice lady – she's from Florence, although she spends some time in Rome, which is how they end up meeting more often than not. It's not like he can just head over to Florence any time he felt like it. Letters filled in the gaps between meetings, and though she could just summon him the way she did the first night they met, the issue is him getting back to the anti-Vatican, so she doesn't.

She's –

“All done,” She sing-songs, pulling the cassock off his shoulders, “You should get out of those wet clothes before you catch a cold, Faustino.”

-

Copia aches. He aches and shivers, cold and hot, groaning when a stony-faced Secondo smooths a wet cloth over his forehead.

He's burning.

He can feel the disapproval rolling off Secondo in waves, although the man has diligently taken care of him, at times replaced by nurses or Sisters or even occasionally the Mother Superiors. Mother Bonaventura brought flowers, had fed him some soup, had smiled but looked wrong doing it. That was when he was better, anyhow, could still think like a person, not like this.

Mostly it was Secondo. At first, he was his usual self – stern and quiet, but caring and gentle. Though Copia had fallen ill through his own carelessness, it didn't seem particularly worrisome. Just a cough, and a bit of a chill.

But then the fever came on. Slowly at first – he was still trying to work, to fill paperwork. Secondo brought him a lap desk and a small pile of papers until Copia had demanded more, which had set the first notch in Secondo's brow.

The fever worsened. The cough too. Soon he was hunched over the desk, his shoulders covered in blankets, trying still to work. Anything but stopping.

Secondo's brow notched again. And he took the papers and the lap desk away. When Copia had tried to argue – stood, from the sickbed, and took shaky steps towards him – Secondo had picked him up but the scruff of his pajamas and set him back down in the bed, pressing a hand to his breastbone in a silent demand to stay.

Terzo was nowhere to be seen. He'd left for somewhere else – outreach, maybe – after their fight. Copia simmers now in the need to apologize to his friend, his brother – not by blood but by bond. Copia is not sure Terzo even knows he's sick, or worse, if he knows – if he cares at all.

Copia cries. From the pain, from the loss, from the burning haze in his throat and eyes and limbs. Secondo wipes them away with the wet cloth, but it doesn't help.

“You're a fool,” Secondo says.

“I know,” Copia sobs. He just- he had wanted to hope. To hope that the woman he waited for would be – that woman from the dream, the woman he knew in an instant, who smiled at him and pulled him close, calling him by his name – his name that he chose himself – “Faustino.”

-

“It looks like we're trapped for a little while,” Cesarina says, combing her fingers through her hair. “Do you have any ribbon?”

“Ah, somewhere,” he says, stripping off his trousers and waistcoat. “Um, maybe that pile of Vogue?”

She pads over to it, her feet bare. It's a surprisingly sensual sound – her feet on the wooden floors of his home. He watches her lean over the pile of magazines, gently flipping through the stack. Her legs are very bare, and his cardigan fits well on her. That pale nape is exposed, the way her hair falls over her shoulder, and he has the sudden urge to bite there.

He focuses on finding another shirt.

“Found some,” she says.

He pulls the new, dry shirt over his head. He chafes at being wet, but being in dry clothes makes it a bit better. He lays some of his clothes on the radiator, hoping they'll dry fine.

She braided her hair along her neck in the meantime, and settled onto his bed with a magazine. He joins her, sitting next to her, hip to hip.

“I didn't know you collected old magazines.”

“I don't collect them,” he says, leaning into her, “I was there. I bought them at the newsstand.”

“Old man.”

He nips at her earlobe, to which she gives a little squeak.

“Crotchety old lady,” he grumps, nipping her more, fingers finding her waist and tickling.

She squeaks again and flutters her legs, trying to avoid his biting, wriggling until she's laid out on his sheets and gasping for breath before grabbing his hands to stop him.

“You're older than me!” She gasps, a big smile on her face, “By a hundred years!”

“Still rude to the elderly.” He flexes his fingers again, but her grip is firm.

But still, she doesn't stop him when he bends down to kiss her.

-

You wouldn't think summer rain could be so cold.

Faustino waits. He waits.

His cassock is soaked. His biretta is losing shape. His makeup is running.

But he waits.

Just for the glimpse of her. That woman.

It had to be her – although his dream had been hazy, he's certain now – the woman from his dream had been her, the small and pious Celestina. It had been her name he'd said, her waist he'd held, her voice that had said his name.

She's married. But he still – he needs to show her that she-

She comes by, out of the church, her woolen hood pulled over her head, the hem of her skirts pulled up from her delicate feet. She still has a rosary in her other hand, and when she looks up at him, she startles.

“Ah-” he says, stepping to her, “Signora de Medici-”

She shivers, but doesn't back away. “Yes?”

“F-Flowers. For you.” He holds them out. He'd bought them. They were a lot of money, but he needed to – to show that she meant everything to him-

She blinks. Her soft face pulls into a small smile, pleased, her cheeks filling with a dainty color. “Oh, why thank you.”

His heart leaps to his throat. The waiting was worth it for that smile, the dampness and the discomfort-

“Did my husband ask you to deliver these?” She says, perfectly, disastrously warm.

The heat rushes out of him. The warmth.

“Oh,” he says, the warmth replaced by a cold dullness, like winter earth, “yes. He sends... his regards.”

“Thank you,” she says, bundling the flowers beneath her cape, clasping it shut, “Have a good evening.”

“Good evening,” he murmurs. Watches her go.

After a few moments, she disappears from the street. He begins to walk home, soaked. Lifts his eyes to there – their home, where in the window he can see Celestina throwing her arms around her husband's neck, the look of confusion on his face that melts into the kind of joy Copia wanted-

Copia sniffles, wiping away the tears that spring to his face, the heel of his hand smeared with black kohl.

-

He brings in two cups of coffee. He hands one down to her, which she takes gratefully.

She sips, letting out a soft sigh when she's done – it's sweet, and Faustino smiles.

He settles beside her again on the bed, sipping his own cup. She idly flicks through a magazine, reaches out her hand to hold his.

He reads something else. Church documents. Leans over his lap and reads, their hands occasionally unclasping to flip a page but always rejoining.

The coffee is good. The beans were a gift from Primo, who knew about he and Cesarina long before anyone else in the church (she and him were friends, apparently.) They are deep and chocolatey, with a final mellow zing, good with milk.

The rain falls outside. The radiator lets out a soft tink-tink every once and a while, keeping away the chill.

He watches Cesarina, engrossed in the magazine. Her soft fingers find the end of her braid and fiddle with it, looping it around her fingers.

He smiles. Leans over to her and kisses her cheek.

She perks a little, looks at him, and smiles, before returning the kiss with one of her own.

They go back to reading.

-

He hears the call. And he likes it. Someone asking Baphomet to come fuck them, albeit in nicer terms.

He feels Baphomet reach for the call, but-

Copia gets there first, strolling through his apartment door.

He enters into a study.

It's nice looking – it's still night here, and it's warm, and the room is lit by the candles lit at the points of a rug – oh, that's clever, it's a rug woven to look like a summoning circle, saves some time and effort.

Probably more comfortable to be fucked on too.

There's a woman in the center of the rug. She wears a fancy dinner bodice, and a rich satin skirt, and her dark hair is tied up against her skull. She's arranged fruit, and candles in silver platters, and cakes in the shapes of- wow.

Her offerings are nothing like the usual meat and rope and rods that people put out for Baphomet. They smell sweet. She smells sweet as well.

“Well,” her voice says, and his ears perk, “That didn't work.”

“Not exactly,” he finds himself saying.

She spins, exposing her face, her wide dark eyes, and her-

Open bodice, which exposes a lovely swath of pale flesh, a deep fissure of cleavage.

He tries to suppress the grin. She's quite the lovely thing.

“Hello. You summoned me-?”

Oh.

“I didn't intend on you,” she says, softly, “Where's Baphomet?”

He swallows, staring at her.

Oh. She's-

“They're pretty hard to get a hold of,” he lies. Suddenly nothing else in the world matters.

It's her.

The woman he saw. That many years ago. Her dark hair, her dark eyes, that nose – even the soft line of her chin and yes, that swath of cleavage is familiar to him.

He kneels before her, taking the cup of wine she offers.

“So you came instead? I was really expecting Lord Baphomet. Are you that confident you can do just as well?”

He smiles, sipping the wine. Even that playful little grin. He wants to kiss her.

He shrugs.

He leans down and kisses her neck, his hand fanning over her knee, nibbling gently on the skin behind her ear, her little moan soft in his.

He has prayed ten thousand times, taken Eucharist and Inverse Eucharist, sat in the holy might of altars and in the infernal wisdom of the Leviathan, but nothing compares to this. The wholeness.

Has he really prayed before now?

“Do you have a name, Signorina?” he asks, fluttering delicate little kisses down her artery.

But, he finds-

As she says it, he says it too.

“Cesarina Gastone de Medici.”

-

She raises her arms above her head, slipping the hem of her chemise up along her milky thighs, releasing the stretch with a satisfied sigh.

“What do you want to eat? What do you have?”

“I still have some of the produce Giacomo gave me. And Swiss made risotto for me the last time he was here.”

“I could make arancini, then.”

“You know how to make arancini?” He gawps, hands stilling on a crate of summer vegetables.

“Yes!” she giggles. “Giacinta used to make them all the time. It was the first thing I ever tried to cook.”

“Well,” he says, heart still saddened at Giacinta's name these many years later, “The eggplant and tomatoes are perfectly in season.”

She giggles, pulling the small covered dish of risotto off his counter, handing it to him before taking the eggplants from him and beginning to cut them fine.

-

The woman weeps. Inconsolate.

She had been strong during the service, though he had noticed how her hands crushed the black gloves she held. She had not cried, she had simply held her dark-veiled head high.

Giacinta Vitale, after one death and nearly 200 years, had finally died. An impassioned member of the laity, she could often be found, six-foot-something and strong-browed, yelling at Terzo during his papacy. She liked Copia, and he liked her, and she was always telling him he just had to meet her charge.

“You would love her in an instant, Faustino,” she would say, lounging in his office with a glass of provided claret, “I'm sure of it.”

He meets her ward today, after providing the service, after the burial, after saying goodbye to his dear friend. Her charge had held it together this long, just as long as he had, but somehow, as they linger towards the back of the retreating mourners, it breaks for them together.

She sobs, falling heavily to the grass. It is a perversely beautiful spring morning, the grass still wet with dew, the trees flowering into delicate pink blossoms. It doesn't matter. The woman sobs, a bright, rough sound that pulls the tears from Copia's own eyes.

Despite the tears that stream down his face, he helps her up, carefully supporting her until they reach the door of the chapel, the small pew sat in the vestibule.

Loss never gets easier. Not even when you yourself have died. There was always the chance she could revive, but he knows better than to hold out for that.

She wails. He takes her gloved hand carefully, strokes the back of it. It's not much, but he hopes it's some reassurance.

Slowly, the crying ebbs. So does his own, watching the soft profile of the woman under the veil. The Inverse church wears white in mourning – this woman isn't one of theirs.

Eventually she turns to him, gently placing her own hand atop his, a stack of four hands upon her thigh.

“Thank you, Father,” she hiccups, her voice bashful, “I- thank you.”

“It's no trouble,” he murmurs, “I was a friend of Giacinta's.”

She hiccups again, taking a deep breath before speaking again. “Are you perhaps the Cardinal?”

“I am. Are you her ward?”

She laughs weakly. “I am. She told me a thousand times I had to meet you, but I was always so busy.”

“She told me the same,” he chuckles, “and I was also always busy.”

“It's a shame she didn't get to see us meet.”

“Yes.”

They sit for a moment, hands together, before she sighs.

“I have to go. The funeral feast doesn't wait, unfortunately.” She stands, seeming to collect herself, “But I- thank you, Cardinal.”

“Of course. My br- ah, one of the former Papas would have been better at consoling you, but-”

She lifts the deep veil from one half of her face – exposing a pair of lips like a blooming rose – and gently kisses his cheek.

“No, you were just what I needed.”

-

There's cold roast and the arancini and some sauteed zucchini, along with the zucchini flowers, fried in hot lard. They eat it down with a bottle of dry red wine Terzo had gifted him many years ago, and her ankle hooks with his as they eat at his meager, deck-of-cards sized kitchen table.

“The arancini are perfect,” he says, swallowing down some wine to soothe out the warmth of the rice.

“Well, I didn't know you could fry zucchini blossoms like this.”

He giggles. “We used to make them in the summer at the cloister. The Mother Superior would fry them in a pan with olive oil, since deep-frying was overindulgent.”

“And yet here you are,” she giggles, “Stuffing them with anchovy and cheese.”

“Lucifer prevents no such use of lard,” he grins.

-

“So what now, morningstar?”

Faustino cuts up the pumpkin that Giacomo gave to him as a welcome back gift. Whisks a cup of thin batter. Flicks a droplet of it into the hot lard. It sizzles.

The King of Hell is at his dinner table, in his tiny apartment, but Faustino couldn't care less. Right now, he just wants to fry this pumpkin. Not think about dying or death or the face of Celestina.

Lucifer hums, watching with another borrowed face. This one is lean, slim, with dark hair and a firm brow. It isn't Lucifer's first face, something almost soft and the color of fertile earth, but still, it looks like him.

“Do you keep chasing? She is still alive, still married. You weren't dead long. You could take what you want still.”

“I don't want it anymore,” he says, cursing at the spit of lard that lands on his hand. “I don't want her.”

Lucifer hums. “It doesn't seem so from here, angelino.”

Faustino says nothing, staring into the frying pot and furrowing his brow.

Lucifer stands, comes to his side, plucks a freshly-fried piece of pumpkin much to Faustino's disapproval. Lucifer grins, snakes an arm around his waist, and snarls, “Well, no more loving for my little Faustus, ah?”

-

Faustino swallows, hands over the ring.

It's- well, almost a joke, between the two of them, something that started the night he spirited her away from that masquerade, had disappeared in a haze of black smoke with her lifted over his shoulder, to her ringing, pealing laughter. The next morning, he had given over the small ring he'd bought – a gimmel ring, two hands clasping over a small onyx, their initials inscribed on each hand. The hollandaise she watched so carefully broke and the eggs overpoached in their haze of kisses, but he ate it all anyway.

It hadn't been a yes then, and it wasn't yeses the last times either but-

It's certainly not no either. It never has been. She might have waved him off- the distance would be troublesome, Cardinals don't get married – but she never said no to him. To them.

This time- is different. She doesn't laugh when he hands over another ring – maybe the sixth or seventh, a fine piece of rose quartz set into a delicately crimped band, meant for her right index finger. She- smiles, sort of, but it sits oddly, falls quickly.

He swallows.

“You know,” he starts, unable to summon the words, “Well...”

She puts it on, stares at it, how it sits on her finger.

Frowns.

Not frowns, but pulls her mouth into a tight line, her brow squeezing low.

“Ah, Faustino,” she says softly, taking it off and setting it on the table. “Hm.”

He doesn't like that look. How her eyes settle somewhere else, how her shoulder slump inwards. The difficult expression.

A stone sits in his stomach.

“What's the matter?” He manages to ask, throat tight.

“Ah.” Her expression shifts, as if trying to come up with words. Finally she slides the ring back towards him, taking the other three off as well and setting them by him. “I enjoy our time, Faustino. Really, I do. And it's nice to play pretend at these proposals, but-”

She falls silent again.

“But?”

“... But I don't think you could actually mean it.”

Ah.

The apartment creaks, in the way it always does when it rains. There is the soft tink-tink of the radiator, the scent of wool drying, arancini on the air, savory tomato. His heart beats, and so does hers, presumably. He doesn't know if he's breathing.

“What?” he manages.

She shrugs. “I think this is... a nice diversion for the both of us. And it's pleasant to be with you,” she smiles, “But I'm not someone to be married to.”

“Why not?” He leans forward in his seat, grasping her wrist.

She laughs, rattling off a list of words that don't seem her own. “I'm getting on in my years, and I'm too hedonistic and too occupied with my businesses to be much of a good wife, and I'm much more suited to taking lovers.”

“But do you want to be married? To marry me?” He insists, leaning into her. None of those reasons were enough. And they were not about them at all. All the shallow things others said about her.

She falls silent, staring at where he grips her wrist.

“I'm not-”

“I'm asking what you want, Cesa,” he urges, “Not what you think you are.”

She stares at his hand.

Her hair is dry now, falling over her shoulder in a thick braid.

A gentle color comes to her cheeks, and she murmurs, voice catching- “I do. I want to but-”

“But?” He urges, softly, leaning in even closer over the corner of the kitchen table, “But what, mia stellina?”

“I'm not- deathless, like you. And I feel like I'm rushing – we haven't known each other that long, but I always feel drawn to you, I feel like you know my thoughts so effortlessly and I'm-”

She reaches. Gently, softly – strokes his cheekbone with her thumb, their fingers lacing.

“I'm scared you might get bored, living as long as you have. That my- my future years won't hold your interest. I don't want it to be something we'd regret.”

He laughs.

He laughs right in her face, a guffaw of laughter. He doesn't mean to but- she can't be serious.

“What, what's so funny?” she pouts, and he laughs more, surging forward to kiss her.

She yelps against his mouth, but he's already moved on to her cheeks and nose and chin and is laughing, laughing, laughing.

“I died to meet you!” he guffaws, “Getting bored of you! Ha!”

She pouts, but it break into a smile, her hands reaching to ruffle his hair furiously.

“You're making fun of me!”

“No, I'm not! But- hahaha, Cesa! Cesa, Cesa, Cesa...” he trails off, settling against the surface of the table and smiling up at her fondly. “Cesa, I've been searching for you before I even died. One hundred years I've been searching for you. I couldn't get tired of you.”

He laces their fingers gently.

“One hundred...?” She ventures, furrowing her brows. She doesn't believe him.

“Yes,” he chuckles, “When we – the clergy – take the rank of Cardinal, we drink spiked wine to meet a demon patron. Usually they match your sin, and usually how important or powerful you are, and they tend to set a life path for the new Cardinal.” He pulls her hand close, kisses the knuckles. “I saw you.”

She blinks. And then another color ebbs into her cheeks, soft and warm. She pouts. “You saw me.”

“Yes. We held each other. I called your name, you called mine. That was all. But I spent from then until now just trying to find you. I died doing it. Thought I would swear off love and loving forever-

“When you summoned me to your study- I knew you. I knew you immediately. I knew I loved you in an instant, and bella, mia stellina, mia sposa, I've only fallen farther. You are a wonderful woman. And I love you.”

She blinks. Looks down at him, at where their fingers are laced.

It's a long moment, but he feels better for it, to have it all in the open – she knew he was old, knew he was dead, but now she knew a bit more, and it felt alright to have her know. He looks at the woman he died to meet, watches her expression change as she thinks about it all, the soft lips and her curving nose and those deep, dark eyes.

And...

She grins.

The expression lights up her whole face, a transformation worthy of some theatrical magic, and he smiles too.

She puts the rings back on, including the gimmel ring on the proper finger, taking his hand again. She is radiant here in his kitchen, his cardigan on her shoulders and her bare feet pressed against his.

“Well,” she says with her usual playful cheer, “Are we going to have a spring wedding, then?”