EMPRESARIO

This close, the swinging lantern sends the shadows pitting Diego’s face sprawling, and retreating, and sprawling again. A hypnotic motion that draws the eye in until he’s counting every fleck interrupting the irises; amber, green– all ( and always ) surprising colors. No matter how intimately he’d known them, once. The Chaplain’s rebuke has just barely sunken in before he regrets it, eyes widening. He reckons he began to regret each word the moment they left his mouth. 

No one is beyond it– isn’t that what he was taught? Christ, isn’t that what he preaches? And yet, Laurents won’t take it back. Won’t, can’t– Whichever sounds more convenient. 

The thing is, this man rouses the animal in him– the one caged behind his ribs and beating ceaselessly, senselessly, against them: I want, I want, I want. But wants are the original sin of the body; the one he supposes the pious man, the righteous one, is supposed to spend his days carving out. But blades get dull, don’t they - and as it stands aboard this ship, they’re quite far from the Church’s watchful whetstone.

And of course it isn’t the only animal their commotion’s stirred. Rotifer slithers out from hiding, ears pressed back - tail rigid and spine shocked into an arch with tawny fur on end. As if an extension of him, or his guardian, she speaks to what he can’t. She hisses bitter warnings. Don’t come too close.

Is this your home now, then? When Laurents responds, he shrugs the language off his tongue like the greatcoat from his shoulders. “Yes.” A single word with a speech’s conviction. A confidence only found when facing that which makes your world shake. “I’m her Chaplain,” and the Promethean his place of worship, her timbers his chapel, her belly his bed. It’s true he felt the damning thrum of Diego’s pulse but he feels its absence even deeper. He slumps a shoulder against the wall, drops his hand as if it were lead weight, then lifts it with great labor to comb its fingers unsteadily through his hair. “Why,” pray tell, “are you here.”

He waits impatiently for an answer to his question, eyes mapping out Leo’s face in the dim light of the chapel, straining to divine what he’ll say next. He anticipates remorse on Leo’s behalf, or half-hearted contrition, at the very least, for deeming Diego beyond God’s absolution. He receives neither. He appears to have resurrected the wilderness of Leo’s spirit, and Diego is as loath to see it as he is rapt. Leo’s always been loveliest like this, in Diego’s estimation: aflame, bristling, teeth bared, mouth full of war, eyes full of life. It’s a spectacle, to be sure, as magnificent as the vessel they occupy. 

It figures that damned cat—Rotifer, the passengers call her—has taken to Leo. They’re beasts of like kin, the two of them: too clever for their own good, as fickle as a tempest, mercurial affections, viciously protective of those beloved to them. What a fine, headache-worthy pair they make. Unimpressed, Diego scowls at Rotifer, first, and then at Leo, eyes hooded and eyebrows arched. “You’ll blanch at a toothless mutt but share quarters with that foul thing?” he deadpans, voice dry. The embers of a memory flicker in the smoldering coals of love lost: London’s slums; Diego and Leo walking shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow, hip to hip; a shaggy-looking hound ’cross the street; Leo, sly and steadfast, stepping in front of Diego, shoulders squared, as if to shield him, safeguard him— 

Diego shutters the lens of his mind’s eye and folds up the memory in tiny quarters, stowing it someplace he hopes he’ll forget. “The flaws of your logic yet astound me.”

He pauses, purses his lips; weighs the risks and rewards of answering Leo’s question truthfully, in earnest. Diego is a skilled liar, to be sure, a connoisseur of half-truths and white lies with a silver-plated tongue primed for deceit. It was Leo who had taught him the merits of candor, the heady intimacy of honesty, the thrill of sharing bone-deep truths, of being well and truly known. There was a time, years ago, when he would have confessed his wretched schemes to Leo in full detail, no holds barred. 

Times change. 

e : the silent one / l : common mess / t : evening / p : @dondiegocortez​

the sun has long since set, and it’s the time for bets and drinks to be had instead. or rather, for those who are crowded around her as she tells her tale of survivng a volcanic explosion on the border of argentina, it’s the time for stories and drinks. for herself and diego, it’s about the bet. if the wasiters believe her, he’s got to give her a day’s worth of drink and do a handstand on the deck. if they don’t believe her, it’s her dignity on the line instead.

her tale spins ever more elaborate, from mere fossil searching to the earthquakes underfoot, to the race to the plane, then setting off as lava flows towards their heels, red and cracking as the heat burns their legs - she shows a burn scar on the back of her calf and they all murmur in appreciation ( she got it by dropping a pan of water, not that they would know ), then her hotwiring the plane to get it to start as llullaillaco belches ash and smoke into the air as they finally start and fly away, fossil wrapped in her coat.

the thing is, there are elements of truth, and perhaps that’s enough to fool them - she really did deliever a fossil found in argentina to the british museum, she has had to hotwire a plane before, she has seen a volcano explode. it just that this particular sequence of events may be a tad exagerated, but none have to know.

and those elements are enough to satisfy the crew, who all pepper her with questions as she finishes the story, but she waves them off with a dry throat as an excuse, and makes her way to where diego is sat, listening to her outlandish tale with amusement.

‘ so, ‘ she starts, smiling with an unrepentant grin. ‘ what did you think? ’

Diego watches in awe as Lijin artfully weaves together a tapestry of lies to rival his own. She sews together a patchwork of untruths with the thread of half-truths, forging just enough credibility to spin gold from straw, fact from falsehood. They eat out of the palm of her hands like disciples at the last supper, and Diego has to make a concerted effort to swallow his laughter. Fools, the lot of them.

He knows Argentina like he knows the lines on his palms, and so he knows that Llullaillaco is dormant, and has been for decades. But even Diego, with his well-endowed knowledge of Argentinian geology, finds himself captivated, held hostage by her tremendous skill of storytelling. Each of her turns of phrase are inundated with details so thorough that he begins to wonder if perhaps he’s mistaken, if perhaps Llullaillaco isn’t dormant. He’s not, and it is, but brava to Lijin for tampering with the merits of his rationale. She’s nothing if not a gifted raconteur.

She notices his accent immediately. His drawl is colored with sounds and pronunciations that aren’t quite fully designed for English. Just like her’s aren’t. Spanish, she thinks. 

All sorts of questions are piqued just by his presence but she has no time to enjoy it. His words slip out in all its smoothness and challenge and she resists the urge to roll her eyes right then and there. If he had met her merely two months ago, she would have shrunken under the weight of his obvious ego. 

But her time on the island, isolated with personalities much stronger than hers, has taught her how to deal with men like him. Men who turn prodding at weakness into sport. She straightens her back, and cools her expression. She protectively pulls her journal closer to her, closing it in the process. Pursed lips and narrowed eyes meet him. “You’ll find that my heart is quite resilient, señor. And that I don’t require advice from strange men who step out of the darkness only to underestimate me.”

To her credit, the girl—a canary-like thing, little and lovely and soft-edged—doesn’t retreat. She doesn’t even blanch, posturing about like some bird of prey. He’d scoff at the folly of such a notion were he not so impressed by her gall in the face of danger. She’s either very smart or very stupid, this one.

The way her mouth curls around “señor” leaves little to be desired, and he cocks one eyebrow in silent question. From the sound of it, Spanish is as native to her tongue as it is to his, and he revels in the prospect of a fellow comrade aboard the Promethean. He’s spent more years in England than he has in Argentina, but his blood yet runs the same shade of blue as el Río de la Plata, and he reckons he could navigate the streets of Buenos Aires blindfolded, even now. Home will always be Argentina, and he will carry her always in his heart, from port to port, continent to continent.

“you scared them away,” he quips; he wonders how much longer they’re going to drag this out for, which one is going to get bored faster. or if edward loses his temper first and leaves the man to win (as if there was a prize at stake; there isn’t anything, it’s a never ending game with no finish line in sight). they’ll talk and talk, same words, same bite, waiting to see if they can seep through the cracks and make the other give up. the purser doesn’t want to admit defeat so he takes diego’s words in, seemingly unbothered.

he is though, very much so and he hates that diego knows it. edward tries not to show it but he knows, of course he does.

an unamused expression and a heavy sigh is what edward offers in return. maybe he is going to be the one that gets tired first, though he has a feeling that diego won’t let him; the man’s drained ed’s entire energy with a few words and touches but he seems far from being done with exhausting the purser’s patience. “Your efforts are far from charitable and we both know it,” he says. “I’d sooner jump overboard than thank you for something, too.”

‍

It’s a spectacular thing, this little game of theirs. Cat and mouse, tongues whittled sharp, provocation for sport, ugly intentions dressed up in pretty turns of phrase, give and take, and then take, take, take. It’s a tango in limbo, and it’s one of Diego’s most prized diversions aboard this ship. Escapism a la repartee. (“A la harassment, you mean,” he can nearly hear Boyne say.)

“You look tired, Boyne,” Diego says conversationally, as if he’s not the source of the purser’s exhaustion, the culprit to blame for each and every of his taxing headaches. “Are you not sleeping soundly?” he asks, voice affected with concern that doesn’t become a man of his gross self-interest. “Perhaps I can be of some assistance.” He cants his head, index finger pressed flush against his pursed lips. “I’m certain I have a vile of something-or-other in my cabin to induce a deep and restful sleep.” There’s a brief but intentioned pause, then, a wolfish grin that stretches ear to ear, pearl-white teeth bared in full. “I can’t guarantee you’ll wake from it, though,” he purrs, voice a drape of black silk, smooth and sensual in spite of the threat issued—and made all the more harrowing for it.

he can hardly stifle a roll of his eyes at the other’s theatrics  —  any other and snow would be walking away, but admittedly  —  even though the boy would rather be shot dead than say it to his face  —  there is a charm to diego’s antics. 

boredom and stupidity are a toxic concoction, snow reasons. the only explanation for why he even entertains him, yes, that’s it. 

“i would likely find your absence refreshing. some tranquil at last.” a flicker of a smile threatens to light on his lips, no matter how much he tries to bite down on it. “when you are thrown overboard, i will sleep like a baby, darling. should i wade into the depths of the ocean, it will be for purely poetic reasons that have nothing to do with you at all, rest assured.” 

a laugh escapes his mouth, a childish sound for diego’s childish pout. they are fitting, matching things with all the wrong pieces of opposite puzzles making a mosaic of trouble, jagged corners clicking with blade edges. a kind of fate, if you were foolish enough to believe in it. 

“i am as helpless to pointing my fingers to you in blame as a compass’ arrow to the north pole, my sweet. some things are merely a part of nature that way.” they are not both faultless, but diego wears it better. this, snow will gladly admit. “i am always adventurous when it comes to your schemes, dearest. how offensive it is that you would think i would not be.” 

“… now, tell me, how do you plan on feeding him to these mermaids? these wicked hands are positively itching.” 

“Something tranquil?” Diego scoffs, leveling Snow with a look that reeks of disbelief: mouth slanted, brows pinched, eyes narrowed. “Peace breeds boredom, beloved, and the latter would kill you faster than a bullet between yours eyes.” He tries to picture it: Snow without Diego’s company, and Diego without his. They’d waste away at sea, he reckons, starved for a playmate fit for their breed of entertainment, restless as caged ravens, aching for wilderness. Snow’s presence is one of God’s small and few mercies, he thinks, for perhaps none else aboard the Promethean complement the writhing, feverish beast inside of him quite like the clairvoyant, who snake-charms Diego nearly as well as Laurents—and without the years of practice. Perhaps he should try his hand at hypnosis after his clairvoyance schtick runs its course.

“Point your fingers if you must,” he drawls, dark humor flaring in his eyes. “Who would believe you, I wonder.” Grinning ear to ear, he reaches out to pat Snow’s cheek thrice. The gesture errs on the side of affection, not aggression, but as with everything Diego does, there’s an undercurrent of danger that rumbles about him like the quiet roll of thunder, a red flag held between his teeth to ward off predators and bait prey. He isn’t sure which Snow is yet. “Perjury is your native tongue, my sweet. How many times can that lovely mouth of yours cry wolf before the villagers hunt you in the beast’s stead?”

                  —  They have no humane ( human aussi, it needs to be said, it needs to be admitted ) feeling left for anyone. Especially not for those who approach them unaware. A special circle in hell, or how the saying goes. In the few past days, droves have come to them uninvited, dagger of politesse drawn up, and lapsed into a speech on the illuminating nature of disaster. Then, of course, the questions: then, of course, the reciting of lines.

                The actor finds it disgusting enough when people try to be all inconspicuous, sujet impartial, as though they don’t care one chit if they murdered their capitaine in cold blood or not. As though it’s all a parlor game. Either or, tu sais? Yes: that is sickening enough.

                But what truly has them mad, maddened, what lowers them down into a half-animal state, is the fetishizing. Spooling suffering on your fingers like your own spend. Taking pain as taboo and placing it on the same mantelpiece with pleasure. They belong together, oui, bien sur, go hand in hand as old lovers. But there’s a specific place for that, the bed chamber or the rack, and there’s talk that precedes it. Such pulling of flesh needs to be negotiated. You cannot go to a stranger in the middle of the day and dig your fingers in the cavity of their chest. No more than you could go and swipe your tongue over their neck. Though, what do you expect? An Englishmen would just as probably do both.

                If we shadows have offended. Only — the man before Bastien is no shadow at all. The actor has thought himself gorged and sated on surprise. That nothing could be abrupt, spectacular enough anymore, to cut through the ravine which stupor has dropped them into. Here it is, now: the shaking. Like a chrysalis tearing off. Bastien blanches the minute Diego speaks. Diego. His Diego. ( though, no, never, a flutter of maybes, too many to count, to count — if Paris was worth fighting for, if anything could ever be enough for either of them, if Monsieur Cortez did not desire an empire, and Sylvain the spy their own Icarus act ). If, if. He never would’ve met Cedric; never would’ve ended up here. Though perhaps they were always meant to be this, no, if we keep to our nursery notions of meant and meaning - someone who follows people with absurd and foolish dreams, and sips at the rivers of blood and gold they leave behind. He’s never given it a once over, before: how similar Diego had been to Cedric. And how utterly, starkly apart. Like court jesters in reverse - the crimson and the white.

Face gone waxen, they back away four solid steps. One, two, three — that’s all the room there is, until their calves reach the square edge of a staircase and ouch. It’s one of those sodden things built to separate the passageways, not twenty inches high, but they’re fucking everywhere, making for a terrible prop when you’re dazed. He all but falls back in his retreat, balance thrown off axis. One arm flies behind to brace for impact. They half-trip, half-sit themselves down - taking up the space of stair step like a daybed. ❛ Mon dieu. ❜ It’s onto a whisper. Trembling, Bastien brings both his elbows in, cradles his head in his palms. There’s a thud of a pain in his hip and arse, where the wood is only now staking some claim, but it’s not even, lord, not even comparable to the tumult this apparition brings. When they speak again, the words fly out through their fingers, muffled by shock and skin and bruises. ❛ By God, they’ve let the devils out by the bucket, je crois. Are they airing out hell this spring, or what? ❜

There’s a brief intermission before act two of their play unfolds. Time suspends, and Diego wonders if perhaps he’s made it all up. Paris. Drinking tournaments. Lessons in French rewarded with sordid treats of the flesh, wicked hands and a mouth thrice so. Laughter that seemed to stretch on and on and on for years to come, a phantom echo to remember one another by. The delicate art of espionage taught and traded between two vessels of vice, each emboldening the other’s misconduct. Mischief-makers, kings with no crowns, the fox and the fae.

Has he imagined it all? Was any of it real? The devilry, the camaraderie, the cloaks and daggers, the mischief, the kisses full of teeth—were they all mirages? Illusions forged by his mind’s own eye? He takes in his fill of Sebastien—pale, gaunt, sallow-eyed—and he reckons he has imagined it all, for how else is he to make sense of the sickly herald of melancholia before him, a far cry from the wicked sprite he’d dreamt up years—lifetimes, perhaps—ago. He can’t bring himself to reconcile Sebastien-then with Sebastien-today, a bright palette of sunset-oranges and poppy-reds and moonshine-silvers faded gray, browned at the edges, now, as if held too long beneath a flame. 

Were they ever so full of life, Sebastien? Were they ever so spirited, so sprightly? Were they ever so prone to folly, to passion? 

Diego grasps at the loose threads of the tapestry laid out between them, desperate to find some truth to unravel, some pattern to divine, but he comes up empty, dazed, bewildered. 

Their gazes collide, and Diego thinks he at last sees some sign of life, however dim, spark in the blue of Sebastien’s eyes, there and then gone, a fleeting comet splashed against the backdrop of a sunless, starless galaxy. He can’t put a name to whatever it is that stirs Sebastien, but he thinks it might be a hybrid emotion caught halfway between fondness and fear. 

He watches, rooted in place, as Sebastien stumbles like a wobbly-legged fawn. The instinct to reach out and steady Sebastien seizes Diego, but he swallows the urge and remains still as a gargoyle, afraid that a gesture of that nature would send the skittish thing scrambling overboard. He does deign to inch nearer to them, though—just two steps, slow and measured, posture lax as he leans one shoulder against a nearby post. “‘My God,’ you mean,” he corrects good-humoredly. Everything about him, from his voice to his words to his countenance, all but bleeds flippancy—a well-intentioned sleight of hand meant to soothe the frayed edges of Bastien’s nerves. “You’re on an English ship now, old chap,” he says in a positively ear-grating impression of the Queen’s English, posh and prim and nauseating, in his opinion. Diego recalls, idly, his first months in Paris: the smitten mirth with which Bastien would mock his then-horrid grasp on the French language, his outlandish accent, the way he mangled the French ‘R’ (a crime worthy of the gallows, Bastien would lament, aggrieved by Diego’s mispronunciation). “How ever will you seduce the English passengers without the aid of your French prose? They shan’t understand a lick of it, I reckon.”

Diego shrugs one shoulder, expression passive, if not a little mischievous. “Devil calls to devil, lover.” And you have always called to me, and I, to you. Wicked serendipity. Slowly, so as not to spook Bastien, and casually, so as not to shame him for his jitters, he reaches into the pocket of his overcoat, withdraws a hand-rolled cigarette, lights its end with a loose match, and draws a deep-bellied inhale. “We’ve been to hell before, you and I. We’ve always found our way back, no?”

The sound of music rends the air like a tuning-fork struck upon a star, and Diego nearly stumbles in his haste to search for the score’s maestro. He finds him just across the street, head bent and brow pinched as one hand scales the fingerboard of his violin, the other seesawing the bow to and fro. It’s dizzying to watch, a magnificent kaleidoscope of strings and fingers that appears to have entranced a small throng of spectators. Unanimously, they’ve deemed the one-man orchestra worthy enough of their coin, which they promptly toss into the hat at his feet. Diego, eighteen and haggard and hungry, has half a mind to loot the hat and flee, but even thieves have honor, and his forbids him from preying on a fellow kinsman of London’s slums. A beggarly street musician does not a quarry make.

He pushes his way to the fore of the little crowd gathered ’round the violinist, deft hands darting in and out of the pockets of the nouveau riche who have come to London’s underworld to indulge in vices not fit for the likes of uptown proper. They won’t miss the spare change, he reckons, and if they do, he’ll be too far gone by they time they notice to do much about it. The violinist’s concerto crescendoes and then diminuendos, and the audience applauds before dispersing. Diego crouches before the musician, slinging the stolen coin into his hat.

He isn’t prone to sentimentality, and so he reckons there won’t be much he misses at sea, but God, he’ll miss the sun. Face turned up, eyes half-lidded, he leans against the rail of the Promethean’s bow and gorges himself on the sun’s warmth, soothed by the opium of heat. It’s a sunny day in London, one of maybe a dozen a year, and he can’t help but feel like the cloudless sky—a bloody relic in England—is mocking him, as if to say, “The sun you’ve longed for will shine in your absence, and you will reap none of its warmth.” He glares up at the sky, clear and crisp blue, and curses London for her tactless sense of humor. Born to the balmy shores of Buenos Aires, warmer climates have always suited him, and he’s never made peace with London’s gray skies. 

In his peripheral, the sun catches on something—an earring, he thinks, or a jeweled broach, maybe—and he squints against the firework of silver light that blinds his field of vision. He blinks twice, and when his eyes adjust to the light of his surroundings, blinks a third time, and then a fourth, because he’s certain what he sees is a trick of the light, an illusion of some sort. A fifth blink settles the truth of the matter: an illusion she is not. 

Pantea. 

Something warm and ancient and familiar stirs in his belly, and the smile that stretches from his left ear to his right is one of devout fondness, smitten through and through. His is a friendship hard-earned but long-endured, and the ties that bind Diego and Pantea are iron-cast, perennial. Neither storm nor siege could cleave their heartstrings apart, entwined as they are.

Foxlike, he sidles up behind her, lips flush against the shell of her ear. “Pray tell, little dove—what’s the going rate for a private audience in your cabin?” he purrs, voice dressed up in a gruff baritone meant to disguise his identity. It’s a shoddy gambit, for Pantea, he suspects, could detect his voice in the eye of hurricane, boisterous tornado-winds whipping this way and that. Alas, he plays the game in earnest all the same, for this is their love language: smoke and mirrors; parlor tricks; wit and whimsy; tournaments of mischief. “Thirty shillings? Forty? If your price tag is grander than fifty, I’ll expect to see God himself in bed with us. What say you, lover?” He jerks his head a few inches back, just far enough to avoid the right hook he taught her how to throw some-odd years ago, should she feel inspired to swing at him (and she should, if she learned anything from him at all).

Son of a whore. Immigrant. Racketeer. Sudaca. Thief. Crook. You’ve been knighted with these titles, judged a malcontent by virtue of your heritage, your roots, your mother tongue, your luck of the draw. You grew up looking contempt in the eye, so you know it when you see it, and here, in the officer’s mess, you see it in spades. The blue-bloods gather their furs and hold them close ’round their necks to stave off the cold, or maybe the fear. They cling to the lap of luxury like they cling to their antiquated notion of hierarchy, and you watch them turn up their noses as they lament the looming dangers of welcoming strangers—outsiders—into their fold. You share their wealth, but not their bloodlines, and certainly not their fear-bred entitlement. They bleat like sheep without a shepherd, so frightened by the darkness ahead that they fail to take note of the wolf that prowls among them already: you. None of the Agathe survivors, you suspect, are half as likely to put a match to the Promethean as you are. And yet… The guests turn a blind eye to your ill will—not on account of your person, but your purse. New money you may be, but coin calls to coin, and the aristocrats aboard have acquitted you of malice before the trial’s even begun. Ah, the spoils of classism. They think you a sheep—a black sheep, but a sheep nonetheless. They think you one of their own, heedless to what big teeth you have (all the better to eat them with). 

Your pursestrings are loose, but your code of honor among thieves is not. You can take the man out of the whorehouse, surely, but never can you take the whorehouse out of the man. You have one saving grace, and it is this: your devotion to the outcasts. What are the Agathe survivors, really, if not outcasts? Immigrants on an Admiralty-christened ship. Refugees deemed madmen. Tragic, downtrodden beasts who know now that survival tastes the same as blood in your mouth, acrid and sour. They’re kin to you, outsiders of the same ilk cut from different cloth. You consider telling your audience to fuck off in express detail, damn their snobbery, but you’re an empresario through and through, and there’s little room for folly or feeling where business is concerned. You’re here to secure a trade route to the Far East, and your objective must remain paramount. Your word carries some weight among these people, so you must think carefully about what you say next. Your notorious repute precedes you, but so, too, does your impressive fortune, and among the upper crusts, the latter accrues more merit than the former. What you say next could be taken to heart, you think. What you say next could be meaningful. You stand at the helm of fate’s piano, and you, maestro, must choose carefully which keys to stroke. 

You weigh the risks and rewards: DO YOU RILE THEM UP?

Should your labors bear fruit, the Agathe survivors will be banished from the Promethean, and so, too, will THE AMBASSADOR—and the threat he poses to you and your voyage. You don’t mind getting your hands dirty, but if there’s a way to depose l’ambassadeur without slitting his throat in the dead of the night... Well, you won’t object.

A plague of boredom is catching like wildfire aboard the Promethean, and if there’s anything in this world worthy of your hate, it’s doldrum. Inciting a quarrel between the Promethean’s guests and the Agathe survivors might bear the fruit of an exciting diversion.

Reinforcing the protests of the Promethean’s nobles could catalyze dissent among the ship’s passengers, which would likely delay the expedition and put a kink in your plans to outwit the Queen and negotiate trade with the Far East.

Your moral compass hasn’t worked in a long, long while, and though lawlessness becomes you, you’re not altogether without principle. Some things are sacred even to you, heretic. Your black heart has always bled for the outcasts—the immigrants, the vagrants, the criminals, the lepers, the down-on-their-luck—and you don’t think orchestrating the eviction of a homeless people will sit well in your gut. You’re unacquainted with guilt, and you want to keep it that way. It’s hard enough to sleep on this godforsaken ship without the complication of remorse in your belly, fitful and sleepless. You need your beauty rest, after all. 

If the Agathe survivors remain aboard the Promethean and learn of the role you played in the guests’ bid to exile them, there will be bad blood aplenty. You don’t need any more enemies on this ship, and you could certainly use a few more allies. What’s more? There could be potential allies among the Agathe survivors, lucrative resources to be tapped and wielded to your advantage. Who knows what kind of folk walk among them? Translators, perhaps, to help facilitate relations between you and leaders of the Far East. Mutineers, perhaps, to help you sate your greed—no matter the costs. Wolves, perhaps, to help you hunt the sheep aboard. Sheep, perhaps, to quench your hunger. There could be many a friend or many a foe among this crew, but you’ll never find out if you oust them all. One of these people could be your key to fortune. 

The Promethean could stand a little je ne sais quois. How frightfully boring this lot of well-bred Englishmen can be, and how marvelously electric you know the French to be! You’ve spent many years in Paris, and you know with some surety that the French are connoisseurs of le tête à tête and le budoire. If good conversation doesn’t lie ahead, a good fuck surely does. You would be remiss to encourage the eviction of the Agathe survivors and forfeit the opportunity to break bread with them—and break beds with them, if the occasion calls for it.

It’s decided, then, laid out for you like the blueprints of a ship: riling up the guests is a venture that would benefit you little, likely, and cost you much. 

It’s decided, then: for profit, for alliance, for resources, for carnal pursuits, for excitement, for honor among thieves, you opt not to stir the pot.

Forgive me, Father. Their collision course could have shaken the ship’s timbers. Could have, might as well have, did. Already, the commotion leaves a lantern swinging in the hallway– its sickly yellow glare splashing light on their sharpest edges. Flickering a threat in morse; a bastardization of the language tavern candles once spoke in. Forgive me, forgive me. Diego’s voice is capable of splicing nerves, and used like this, it reaches in and rearranges him. “You,” Laurents utters. He takes one step back for each his partner takes forward ( a dreadful dance ). “–Are beyond it.”

For a man always straining at the seams, he thinks he feels a stitch split. And then another. Now, a third. His shoulder-blades meet the wood of the lower deck’s wall - splinters ( whether tangible, whether imagined ) must be biting through his shirt. Sloughing off on the back of his vest. For the brunt of Diego’s diatribe he can only gawk - speechless, jaw slack as a fresh caught fish. 

Then comes the finger in his chest, pressing into his sternum. Tripping something deep and buried – the flintlock ignition for an old instinct within him. It writhes to life, this serpent sleeping in his bones, and he remembers. He remembers how it feels to fight. Laurents’ callused hand clamps around the offending wrist with enough vigor to wrest it from his shirt. Fingertips pressing far enough to feel the man’s molten pulse. Feel it searing straight up his own nerves.

The look in his eyes is unmistakable: I heard you the first time. Phrases once whispered in corner rooms are now spat in ships’ chapels. Sheared from their context and given new meaning. “Pertenezco aquí–” I belong here. My home. My Promethean. In this moment, he covets and loathes the vessel at once. She is his castle; she is his confinement. Both, dangerous tendencies for a chaplain. “I could ask you the same.”

“Am I?” he asks, mouth full of gravel (and maybe a little grief, too). “Beyond it,” he clarifies, eyes tracking Leo in a predatory kind of way. “Am I beyond it?” You didn’t used to think so, he doesn’t say. He doesn’t need to. The words, mute, nonetheless hang in the air between them like a stage curtain dividing fiction and reality, theatre and audience. The fiction of it is this: Diego is beyond atonement. The reality of it is this: a decade and change ago, Leonard Laurents looked at Diego and saw something good, something worthy of being loved, and being loved well; taught him the grueling art of trust, of patience, of kissing without biting, of sleeping with both eyes closed; sewed seeds of kindness in the dead soil of his heart and left before reaping the bounty that bloomed thereafter, a lush flowerbed gardened and abandoned. Back then, lifetimes ago, Leo believed there was nothing Diego was beyond, nothing he was not capable of.

Beliefs change, Diego supposes.

There’s a tangible shift in Leo, one that echoes the wilderness they once shared, two rabble-rousers combing through the streets of London, sharp-toothed in the name of survival. It summons a similar shift in Diego, and he’s struck hot by something he can’t quite put a name to, something caught halfway between anger and longing. He nearly chokes on it. Leo’s hand closes around Diego’s wrist, and he curses his telltale heart, the frantic pulse of which he’s sure is raging against the pad of Leo’s thumb, revealing what his tongue will not.  

This close, beneath the dim light of the lantern flickering overhead, he can make out every line on Leo’s face, and like a glutton proper, he drinks his fill, gorging himself on his eyes, nose, lips, cheeks, chin. Leo’s scarcely aged in their years apart, the bastard. The only indication of his age, really, are the worry lines that bracket his mouth and eyes. Eyes. Those eyes—they’re the same as Diego remembers them: roasted chestnuts framed by dark lashes, full of warmth and grace. His nose—is different. A little crooked, maybe, in a kind of imperceptible way that perhaps only Diego would take note of. Curious, he raises his free hand, as if to trace the bridge of his nose. But his good sense shatters whatever small trance of lunacy has overcome him, and his hand drops to his side, flexing (a vain attempt to purge the desire to map out the planes of Leo’s face with his fingers). 

he thinks he can tell who it is just by step alone, no need for clairvoyance with how floorboards creak to warn those listening that there is a scoundrel afoot. with diego, everything is a wanted sign with no crime. snow raises his eyebrows in greeting, straight-backed next to the other’s lax form, lounging. 

“if only prophecy was as easy as a little rhyme. business either be too easy, or i will be starving on the streets.” he is wry, though there is a fondness to how he entertains the other. camaraderie among crooks and thieves. “your monsieur naryshkin could throw you overboard and no one would ask for an explanation, i think. perhaps you overestimate your importance.” 

there is a sly grin, makes him more mischief than usual. call the entrepreneur a bad influence, maybe. boy has always been a touch more wicked in boredom and the weeks at sea has been a tedium at best, a fright at worst. you can hardly blame him for needing some form of distraction. 

“and what have you done to his monsieur naryshkin to have him hold such ill-will towards you, my darling? shall we start a game of hide-and-seek, or should i provide some distraction while you pick his pockets before we both make a run for it?” 

‍

“No one?” he repeats incredulously, eyebrows darting high. “Are you to tell me that not even you, my sweet urchin, would investigate my absence?” A thespian with a Grecian flair for the dramatic, he makes a show of outrage, shoulders hunched as places his hand over his heart and makes a noise of protest, jaw slack. “You wound me, as ever,” he laments, draping his hand over his browline. The truth of the matter is this: the pair of them are made of the same stuff, wolves dressed in wolves’ fur, no sheepskin about it. They will hold survival in their maw by the skin of their teeth, and no hand, not even those that feed them, will ever be safe from their ruthlessness, their wilderness.

Fond of each other they may be, but their heartstrings are as loose as their pursestrings, and Diego suspects neither wolf would mourn the other. Still, he jests, as beasts of their ilk do. “Have it your way,” he sighs. “When Naryshkin does away with me in the dead of the night and you can find no other sufficient playmate on this ship, I expect you’ll fling yourself overboard and join me at the bottom of the sea to stave off the boredom.”

He huffs a scoff at Snow’s next lint of inquisition. “What makes you think I’ve done anything at all?” His reputation for always being guilty of doing something to incur homicide, likely. “Perhaps I’m a only a victim of his arbitrary hate. A lover scorned. A victim to his foils. Must you lot always point your fingers at me?” They must indeed, because he’s guilty as sin, historically. “I’ll forgive your undue judgment of me if you lend me one of those wicked hands of yours and aid me in feeding him to the mermaids below.” He pauses, shrugs, holds his hands up in mock surrender. “Or,” he sighs, “if you’re feeling less adventurous today, I suppose stealing the clothes off his back will suffice.”

“you should follow in my footsteps. Get lost as well,” he replies; Edward’s amiable mood has dispersed and he’s left feeling annoyed—the feeling that he always associates with the other man. He can’t quite imagine it could ever change, not when Cortez is—being Cortez (the purser refuses to believe there’s any blame to be put on his side; in the question of who started it and who’s to blame for it, it being their relationship tuning sour, it’s always the other man, never Edward—they’re both liars, though, so in the end it doesn’t matter whom you believe, it’s still a lie at the end of the day). 

he holds onto the cup and fights the urge to smash it against the man’s head ( he wouldn’t, but a man can dream). “See, I’d take the rats over you any day. They make for a much better company.” With each next word, Edward grows tired of the bickering but there’s something inside him refusing him to let Diego win (as if there was anything to win; it isn’t even a competition). 

he has to shake off the hand again, make room between them again; Edward could just step into the crowd and free himself of the man. And yet he doesn’t, for some reason; as if his pride was at stake, I was here first and whatnot. So he remains fixed in his spot, praying that the man grows bored. The purser rolls his eyes at his words. “It means you should find different company, if you really need me to spell it out for you, Cortez.”

‍

Diego huffs a scoff affected with outrage, and for good measure, he holds one hand over his chest, jaw slack. “How uncouth a thing to say, Boyne.” He clicks his tongue reproachfully, the way parents do when their children have done something naughty. “Pray tell, where have your manners gone, good sport?” he asks, one eyebrow arched high. So gauche a display of animosity is unlike Boyne, and perhaps even more so unbecoming of him. Diego basks in the small thrill of being at the helm of it all, of inciting the temper of a man whose composure is foolproof (but not rapscallion-proof, evidently).

There’s no lovelier sight than that of an even-tempered man unraveling at the seams, and Diego wonders, idly, which string he ought to pull next.

“Oh, come now—quit your bellyaching,” he drawls, shrugging one shoulder. “Imagine how frightfully dull your days aboard this ship would be without me by your side. The rats aren’t half so witty as I, and their skill for conversation is lacking.” Negligent of those very boundaries Boyne was droning on about moments prior, Diego leans forward and taps his index finger against Edward’s temple. “At the very least, Boyne, you have me to thank for keeping that sharp mind of yours fit as a fiddle.” His hand retreats in haste to his side before Boyne can break it. “Think of our repartee as”—he pauses, makes a sound of exclamation, snaps his fingers—“exercises of the brain.” They say madness and folly are plagues of time spent too long at sea, and who is Diego but a mere philanthrope, spitting vitriol at the purser for no other reason than to preserve his intellect and sound mind? “I’m sure you’ll think of some way to recompense my charitable efforts,” he purrs, one eye bright with mirth, the other dark with mischief.

his question was given a swift answer — her knife impaled deeper into the table, finding a resting place between middle and ring finger, the cold metal pricking his skin once more. ( only a touch, only a kiss from the blade; only a warning from her. ) she leaned back in her chair, lazy and relaxed as a kitten stretched in sunlight. with a flick of her wrist, she shooed the watching sailors away; did they not have work to do? “and just why would i need to cheat my way to victory? do you really think so highly of yourself?” her expression, a quick look up and down, simply said: how sad, diego. 

“if your pickpocketing skills are anywhere near to your boudoir skills — ” she lifted the key to the provisions room, a dangled bait she could not resist. your move. their dangerous game had become more and more enjoyable with each moment they raised their stakes or padded their bluff. and, truth be told, he was impressive in his own right, although she’d rather drink a flask of saltwater than let him know that. “ — remind me to go visit all those unsatisfied souls you’ve left behind and offer my sincerest condolences.”

He doesn’t flinch when she drives the tip of her blade into deep into the wood of the table—and flush against the inside of his middle finger. It’s a feat not easily achieved, and were he a man of any less composure, a man any less practiced in masks, he would’ve blanched, and Jules would’ve preened, smitten with the small victory of striking fear into the black heart of Diego Cortez.

He raises an inquisitive eyebrow at the ease with which she commands the room, sends the shipmen scattering like swatted flies on a sticky summer day. They cede to her will with no resistance at all, and though he’s impressed by her mastery of authority, he’s not surprised by it. He’s seen seafarers of all sorts bend a knee to her, keen to her wishes, and the Promethean’s crew, it seems, stands no exception. “A scant a month at sea and already the crew is besotted with you.” He shoots her a look that has all the makings of mischief. “El capitán ought to thank his lucky stars you’ve haven’t got an appetite for mutiny,” he purrs in jest. He reckons such triumph wouldn’t be terribly uncharacteristic of her, not in light of her uncanny talent for piracy and all things foul, but the jab is intended to do no more than disarm her, thwart her concentration, and there’s no real weight behind it beyond sordid humor.

His gaze snags on the key she dangles before him like a carrot on a stick, and his hand flies to the pocket of his waistcoat, which is, indeed, empty. “Little witch,” he scoffs. “How?” He hasn’t the faintest idea how she’s managed to reclaim the key from his own person, but she has her devices, this one. Deftly, he grabs her dagger and wedges it free from the table, balancing the tip of its blade against his left index finger and the hilt of it against his right palm. “I’m afraid, Julita, I’ve only ever left my lovers wanting for their purses, nothing else.” Purses thieved in the dark of the night; lovers tangled up in bedsheets, sated and asleep, and none the wiser to Diego’s ill intentions. “But you’re welcome to put that theory to the test, if you wish,” he says suggestively, tossing her foxlike wink. He leans back in his chair far enough that she won’t be able to wrest the dagger from him should she wish to well and truly lop off his hands in answer to his lewd proposal.

“I’ll play,” Laurents’ voice had relented over the din with a garish roll of his eyes, face heated by utter delight as he tuned up the instrument in preparation. Moments like this took their throne among the many blessed things in life. “If it pleases you lot, I’ll play.” It’s all in the Chaplain’s Handbook, if you know your way around the pages well enough ( and he does; study is the scaffold of service, after all ): should a chaplain possess the requisite tools, live music can be utilized as an effective therapeutic tool. Music is, after all, the very veins of expression. The lifeblood of it. And in that sense, an access point to faith, to connection. 

And at a point in his own winding life, it’d been an access point to something deeper, still. 

But here? Now? Is this an act of chaplaincy – the way he practically shreds the strings with a fiddler’s fervor, a companion piece to the crew’s soaring shanties? Turning a blind eye to all the drink and rouse and rabble? The bandaged pads of his fingers that haven’t already hardened from the craft, surely blistering for it, later? Later in his journal, he will mark it down as such: 12th july, common wardroom. musical therapy as to bolster morale. But right now, in his heart and emboldened by the cheers of crew and flush of drink ( so subtly partaken in ), he’s more inclined to call it what it is: entirely fucking fun.

Until it ceases to be. He’s laying into the crescendo when his stare strays the room: coursing over faces alight in joy, in relief– and one that isn’t.

A face he has plastered over behind his eyelids until it, too, was lost to the burial ground in which all his past selves lie: A Laurents for St. Anthony’s. Another for the Street. One for the Church. The Last for the Sea. He has changed much and quickly in his life, each time burying a Laurents in the yard when he goes. But now, the Leo he was at twenty stirs– no, crawls up from the bitter earth impacting his chest to ask remember me? 

By the way his setlist clamors to a sudden close, he does. Remembers damned Diego Cortez, too. His focus slips, bow wresting an unholy screech from the strings. The gathering of listeners beg for their ears, though sporting about it: “Good God, Chaplain!”

“I’m sorry–” he sputters as his arms drop to his sides and his face blanches a dreadful hue. “I think a bout of seasickness’ is come over me–” his track record aboard the Promethean lends the excuse more than enough credibility. “Pardon me, my friends.” And he’s off. Weaving his way through the throng of bodies to make a break for the ship’s chapel. A place to gather his wits about him. To lose his dinner if he must. In the lower deck, forging through the fray, his hyperventilating is much more easily excused as a consequence of running. 

Leo exits the room in a sudden burst of clumsy haste, leaving in his wake a small drove of shipmen with ailing ears. Diego’s feet propel him forward, and before his good sense (what little of it he has) can beg his reason and appeal to his sound mind, he’s giving chase, hot on the heels of a ghost resurrected from lifetimes past.

Leo’s quick, but Diego’s clever, and it he doesn’t need Snow’s tea leaves to divine the chaplain’s destination. The chaplain. The chaplain. Leo the chaplain. Father Laurents. The words curdle on his tongue, acrid and bitter, never rending air. A maestro of shortcuts and shadows, he cuts through one of the ship’s lesser-known passageways and arrives at the door of the makeshift chapel just as Leo’s closing it behind him. He never does close the damned thing, because Diego wedges the toe of his boot between the door and its frame, sweeping into the chapel like a hurricane given flesh. 

Heretic though he may be, the sanctity of the ship’s provisional house of God strikes him bone-deep, and for the sake of superstition alone, he makes the sign of the cross and touches his hand to his forehead, chest, left shoulder, and right shoulder. And then, for the sake of heresy alone, he deadpans, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” His voice, usually a rich, dulcet-toned purr draped in original sin, cuts sharp and dry, as unforgiving as the sea’s tide.