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had gone soft with the dew of late summer; the strawberries had overgrown the carvings within the stone again, their runners creeping through the cracks in the old walls despite everything the groundskeepers tried to do. Having grown exhausted, their last resort simply to rid the gardens of the sweetness of fruit; they gave up trying to tame the unruly vines.
The evening bells had already rung, leaving the grounds wrapped in that peculiar stillness monasteries seemed to hold after prayer — not silence exactly, but a hush heavy with held breath.
There was a large fig tree in the centre of the gardens, one that'd been there longer than the church had, and just beneath, Rasmus sat with stained fingers and lowered eyes.
The bowl between them was full of strawberries, and split figs Father Søren had brought from the kitchens, though Rasmus had barely touched them after the first few bites. One half-crushed berry bled pink into the linen cloth spread over the grass.
Across from him, Søren was speaking quietly about something mundane — repairs to the south corridor perhaps, or one of the brothers travelling in from Odense — but Rasmus could no longer follow the words. He only watched the shape of Søren’s hands as he spoke. Large hands. Gentle ones. Ink-darkened at the fingertips from copying scripture all afternoon, and every afternoon previous.
Everything about him felt unbearable in the sun, light overwhelming and reflecting off the beads of sweat forming on the man's forehead.
Rasmus lowered his head further, thumb pressing hard against the damp stain the strawberries had left on his skin. He had spent two years trying to starve this feeling out of himself, two years of prayer until his knees ached against chapel stone. Really, he didn't know how long he'd known this awfulness was within him, how long he'd only lied about it and pushed it away and out of his mind, but nothing would help now that it was all he could focus on.
Of course, it couldn't be lust, couldn't be corruption.
No, unfortunately it was something soft and barely there most of the time; fleeting thoughts of joy and delusional ideas of comfort.
“You’ve gone quiet again,” Søren said softly, not looking up from where he'd been watching a bee lazily buzz around a small patch of flowers near the door.
Rasmus gave a slight shake of his head.
“I am… only tired," The lie tasted sour as it escaped him, so obvious it made his cheeks flush more so than they already were.
Søren’s voice gentled further. “Rasmus...”
Rasmus stared at the crushed berry beneath his thumb until his vision blurred and colour lost its meaning, greying out around the red rush of liquid.
“I think,” Rasmus whispered suddenly, “there must be something deeply wrong with me.”
The words startled even him once spoken aloud, though the birds never stopped their distant chirping.
Søren set the fig in his hand down slowly. “Why would you say that?”
Rasmus laughed once under his breath, miserable and small. “Because I have prayed until I’ve become ill with it.”
His throat tightened painfully.
“When I was a boy, I thought God made me strange on purpose.” He swallowed hard. “Too soft. Too greedy. Too ugly. Too—”
“You are not ugly.”
The interruption came so quickly, so firmly, that Rasmus finally looked up.
Søren was watching him now, brows creased in such a serious concern it was as if he'd heard something truly upsetting.
Rasmus looked away as quickly as he could, tears beginning to gather at his lashes despite every effort to stop them. He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes hard enough to hurt.
“I should never have come here,” he said shakily. “I thought if I devoted myself completely, it would make me better, it would give me a purpose, it would make me… it would fix me. I thought perhaps if I loved God enough, He would take this from me.”
Søren said nothing as the evening breeze stirred the fig leaves overhead. Rasmus could hear his own breathing now, uneven and humiliating.
“But I have made a mistake; I have hurt you. I am only hurting you and I cannot stop,” he whispered. “I cannot! I can't stop… I love you. I love you in a way that no man should love another, and beyond that it is my great blasphemy that I..."
Rasmus's jaw locked up, his tongue dry as the thought of God forcing him into silence flooded into his mind. Only the birds made any noise now, the wind colder than before, the bees asleep within their flowers.
Rasmus kept his face hidden behind trembling hands, unable to bear whatever expression might now exist on Søren’s face — pity perhaps, or horror, or worse, anger. He wouldn't know what to do if it were anger, though that was most likely.
“I am not proud. I am not. I know I am disgusting, I know I am a monster; I know I will never be happy, that this is a curse I've condemned myself and others with,” he continued weakly. “I know what it is. I know what they will call me when they know.” His voice broke. “I am deeply ashamed.”
A long silence followed, and he felt his stomach turn and twist, nausea overwhelming all other senses, all other feelings than fear; a horrible, gnawing pit within his chest that seemed to claw and spit and eat away at him in the most painful sense it could.
Then fabric rustled softly across the grass. Rasmus startled when he felt Søren’s hands gently, slowly pull his wrists away from his face, the movement so soft as though trying to hold an injured dove.
Rasmus’s vision swam as he finally, with blurred vision, tilted his head back up to face the other priest.
He looked… heartbroken. Not disgusted, or angry or horrified; only a deep sadness within the recesses of his pupils. Heartbroken.
“It is foolish,” Søren murmured. "For you to have been so afraid."
Rasmus began crying in earnest then, breath hitching sharply with the effort to contain it. He bowed forward instinctively, ashamed of the sound, but Søren only moved closer, pulling him into the comfort of his arms.
“I have spent two years,” Søren confessed quietly, voice rough with something restrained and exhausted, “asking God to forgive me for feeling the same.”
For a moment Rasmus thought perhaps he had misunderstood the words.
But Søren’s thumb brushed strawberry juice from the side of Rasmus’s hand with unbearable tenderness, and the expression on his face was not one born of duty or pity.
It was love, wasn't it?
Rasmus made a wounded sound in the back of his throat.
“You need not lie to me; you shouldn't be— should not say things like that,” he stammered through tears.
“My words remain true.”
The bells began tolling faintly in the distance for evening prayer, but neither of them moved.
The light filtering through the fig leaves painted gold across Søren’s shoulders and caught against the silver beginning at his temples. Rasmus thought suddenly that he wanted to remember this exact moment forever. The warmth of the garden stones. The smell of crushed herbs beneath their feet. The sweetness of strawberries lingering on his tongue.
Søren lifted one trembling hand and pressed it against Rasmus’s face, so softly.
Rasmus leaned into it before he could stop himself, and for the shortest moment, he believed he was finally happy.