sentimental.

The arch of Grace's eyebrow is undeniable as Finch meets her with that frown she could have seen coming from a mile off. Of course he doesn't want to go further out, to break the rules, to cause a little stir in the way things are. Grace is practically desperate to change the norm, she has hardly been quiet about her disagreements with the way things are run even if they haven't had any 'incidents' for a while now. She doesn't know if it's boredom or an inherent dislike for any sort of system, but the decision has already been made whether Finch realises it or not.

Finch wants to argue, to point out that risking the safety of their lone medic for the sake of an emergency that has yet to occur is, at the very least, equally as stupid as waiting for said-emergency to hit the camp before attempting to safeguard themselves against it. The mulish look on Grace’s face tells him not to waste his breath - she’ll do as she pleases, whether he likes it or not.

“Grace…” He says anyway, but he doesn’t know what he hopes to accomplish with the quiet call of her name - perhaps to somehow, miraculously change her mind, to force her to acknowledge the difficult position she’s putting him in, or to make her see that the grief they will certainly face when if they return to the motel simply isn’t worth it.

Grace knows that while nobody is explicitly pushing on her shoulders, the pressure on her is building. The expectation that she can find something, to make it work with next to nothing at her disposal and all without a qualification for treating humans. She is completely out of her depth, and truthfully she doesn't know if she even wants to help or just make a break for it on her own. Either way, this is where she finds herself, on her knees in a dusty abandoned pharmacy scouring empty shelves.

Giving no indication that he has heard Grace's muttering, it is the rattle of pills against plastic that finally draws Finch's gaze from his inspection of their surroundings, glancing her way just in time to catch the bottle of antihistamines against his chest. He takes a moment to look over the label, noting that it's the night time version of the product, and wonders if it might not serve another purpose. After all, sleep doesn't come easy to anyone, these days. "Everything has its place," he comments, tucking the bottle inside the pocket of his weathered coat alongside the unopened toothbrush and half-empty bic lighter he'd picked up earlier. The bag on his back is similarly filled with hoarded detritus.

By luck more than sense, he had never truly crossed the captain’s path before. Never sailed beneath his banner, never taken coin from his coffers, never stood opposite him in battle. A crooked mercy from fate. Could be tonight, though, fortune narrowed its gaze.

He downed the last of his rum in a single swallow, felt the burn trail down his throat, and ordered another before the captain could make his grand toast. His fool of a current employer owed the jubilant man money, or blood... or both. The Irishman had no intention of being mistaken for collateral, and preferred the night to continue as he had intended the moment he set foot in here. Filled with drink, laughter and ending with a warm bed later.

With his toast delivered and his presence in the tavern asserted, Joaquin quickly turns his attention to what really matters: the night of revelry ahead of him. Summoning the barmaid back to replenish his empty cup, he launches into a colourful account of the events that had led to the Revenge's latest victory over the armadas of the civilised world, effortlessly holding court with the people that surround him.

But, as they say, there is no rest for the wicked. A keen-eyed Raider picks her way over to her captain's side, leaning in close to speak with him, and Joaquin cocks his good ear towards her, his frown of concentration quickly giving way to a smile. His lips form only two words in response: ¿eres segura?

it was rare for dovie to have her feet planted on firm ground. the call of the sea had gripped her heart from a young age and had never let her go. she would spend as much time aboard her ship as possible. if she wasn't there, then one would be likely to find her in a tavern with a mug of ale - or the closest whore house she could find. she had little interest in anything else in the towns she docked in had to offer.

weirdly, there was a sense of calm for dovie within a tavern. she had been born into chaos, into a world that had always been too loud and she thrived in it. though there was a certain aura that came from the woman sat at the table closest to the bar - 'do not engage'. and if someone did disturb her trust, well, then they'd have something to say about it.

Draining his drink as the tavern around him erupts in approval of the only sentiment that everyone on this island seems to share, Joaquin does not even look up as he seizes the offending sailor by the back of his collar, hauling him bodily away from the woman and her knocked table like a wolf scruffing its pup. The gesture is aggressive, but there is nothing to suggest that he is troubled by his man's behaviour, or that he intends to reprimand him for it. He sets his glass down on the bar, beckoning with his newly-empty hand for the tavern girl to come back with another pour.

As his head is tilted backwards, Tom's eyes momentarily roll back into his head as a strangled gasp escapes him before he can think any better of it. The graze of Joaquin's lips against his throat as his teeth make their threat over his soft flesh, the way his hand presses over the galloping thud of his heart, and his knee making its God forsaken way to press into his groin... Tom is powerless, even in his own church, even as the cross above his altar watches over him. Each waning moment leads him closer to an oblivion he is choosing to walk into, just as Joaquin intended no doubt.

"Do not..." He tries to speak but his mouth is dry, his voice barely more than the mouse's squeak. But he forces himself to look at Joaquin, blue eyes finding black, the hairs on his arms standing on end just at that look on his face, and he tries again. "Do not mock me and my prayer. I pray for you." He's breathless but he continues. "I pray for safe waters when you sail. I pray that you will show mercy to others, or that they meet a painless end should you not. I pray that one day you will feel what it is that beats within your chest, that you have a heart, and you will realise that your veins run not with blackened tar but blood the same as mine. And that you will come back to where it came from... to here, to Christ."

But praying can only delay the inevitable for so long. The filthy words that pour out of Joaquin like poison make Thomas moan, a helpless pathetic sound falling out of him as a pitiful ache burns in his belly. His cock is hard, obviously so under the thin fabric of his nightshirt which is creating an almost painful friction. He shakes his head, sweat beading on his forehead as his hand grips desperately at Joaquin's sleeve. "I can endure much..." He swallows hard, shaking his head. "But not this. Not you." They both know its the truth, in the dark wee hours of the night when no one is watching. Even God would turn away at such tasteless sin.

The expected protestations against his blasphemy draw his attention, but he does not deviate from his task, meeting the deep blue of Thomas's gaze without flinching. He is a beautiful creature, his eyes glossy and his pale skin stained pink by his need, breathless and lovelier for it. Joaquin thinks at once that Thomas is wasted in this place, restrained by the vows he made to a being that is only air and vapour, and that it is better this way - better that his holy orders delivered him right into the jaws of the beast that would happily devour him.

“What would you know of my heart, priest?” He asks, a scornful laugh on his lips. Thomas could not understand its depths if he tried, does not see its beating translated in the fervour, the passion that encompasses his entire being. Is fury not born of the pounding of blood? Is it not that vital pulse that has propelled him forwards all these years, demanding his survival? Whatever his legacy, whatever Thomas thinks, his insides are not black and bile at all - he might be a monster, but he is a human one. "You should have a care with what you pray for. Otherwise I might think that you have come to care for me." And that simply cannot be true.

That helpless moan appeals to the ravenous creature inside him, and Joaquin fairly snarls in response. He has to have more of him, and he has to have it now. Taking hold of Thomas's coat, he strips it roughly from his shoulders and casts it aside, leaving him only in the white, shapeless nightshirt beneath. It holds its own attraction, different from that of the sombre, stiff black of his cassock - it's like seeing Thomas without his armour, merely a man, though he hesitates to dismiss him as being like any other. He is vulnerable like this, every facet of him made obvious, and his desire most of all.

A strangled gasp escapes him as Joaquin's fingers trap his jaw, the sound bordering on a whimper as he freezes in place. He is not going to fight him off. Not because he knows he wouldn't win, that much is a given and there is no fire in him that deems it necessary to prove himself, but because he wants to believe he doesn't have it in him. He will swear blind that he is good, that he is a man of peace, but history has proven that all it takes is for him to reach his breaking point before he will commit acts he would otherwise deem unspeakable.

"You are arrogant." He states plainly, facing Joaquin with every bit of boldness he possesses. "I do not answer to you." He can't stop the way the heat climbs up his neck and flushes his cheeks, the way the lie makes his skin burn. His heart and soul belong to God, but when Joaquin comes to claim it, Tom gives his body to him as if he owns it. Still, he will deny it. He has to, he must repeat it until it sticks, until he believes it himself.

Joaquin's hand moving to the back of his neck to tug at his hair has him swallow hard, failing to hold back the pathetic, tiny groan that falls from him helplessly. "I do not preach hate. You know this, or I would spurn you every time you come here. But I would have you pray with me. Perhaps your fate is twinned with mine, perhaps if I could save your soul then you would not insist on carving mine out and taking it to Hell with you."

Then, after a moment, Tom whispers to the creature before him. "What are you going to do?" It is not to plead, or to argue with what he decides. Tom knows the scales are tipping in Joaquin's favour, and he hates the way it makes his pulse quicken with anticipation.

Hearing his own foul language from Thomas’s lips is almost enough to make Joaquin forget his anger, jockeying, as it so often is, with his other fits of passion. He likes to hear him curse. In Thomas’s case, it always seems like an indicator of a loss of control, a glimpse of the person he is behind his saintly affectations. “Do you think I fear judgement? From the Lord, from you?” Joaquin sneers, the recited verses all too familiar to him, even in English, “Continue if you wish, but know you will not move me. I do not regret a single drop of the blood I have spilled - my own, or anyone else’s.”

The condemnation of his arrogance only makes Joaquin laugh, his fingernails biting into Thomas’s skin as he moves in closer still, meaning to catch the next pretty little sound that escapes from him inside his own mouth. “If you seek to wound me with your assessment, you have missed your target,” he says, “Try again. Tell me the worst things you think of me, name me the Devil, name me a creature of vice and sin, and then denounce yourself as a hypocrite.” That is what lives at the heart of Christianity, he thinks - it is pride, but of a different kind.

“No?” He asks, disbelieving, as his eyes roam hungrily over the planes of Thomas’s face, taking in the sweet sight of the blood blossoming beneath his pale skin, “But you are answering to me now. Here” — He uses his grip on Thomas’s hair to tilt his head back, so he might get at the flush that stains his throat and scrape his teeth along the fine column of it — “And here” — His free hand rises to meet Thomas’s chest, feeling for the pounding of his heartbeat, the drum of his pulse — “And…” — He pushes his knee between Thomas’s thighs, bunching the cotton of his nightshirt as he presses insistently upwards to meet him. He does not finish his sentence, his smirk speaking for itself.

“Then why are you the way you are? If hate is not part of your ministry, if you do not hate me…” It speaks again to that foolish faith that anyone can be redeemed, even the one he believes capable of sundering his soul from his body. Joaquin would gladly keep the tattered pieces of it for himself, guard them as jealously as the vessel that contains them, and he would not feel sorry for denying him heaven. “Shall we pray then? Together, just like this? Dios, el padre de misericordias, a través de el muerte y el vida de su hijo…” The hand that is not still rooted in Thomas’s hair travels the length of his spine, cinching them tightly together as Joaquin leans to murmur the prayer for atonement in his ear, profaning the words as he profanes his priest. He has not forgotten them, not even after forty years lived free from the confines of his religious upbringing.

"This is no insult to me." He insists, gesturing to his bruised face, his eye all the more swollen than it had been that afternoon. "It is a demonstration of why I am here. Of the lost souls that wander this island without God to guide them. If God has chosen that I lead as an example of what people are capable of when they are left to their own devices, then I accept it." He does not possess the pride that Joaquin does, the constant need to prove one's worth or defend one's honour. Only to follow the path that God lays out for him.

"I am no coward!" He snaps, cementing his point all the more by practically sealing the gap between them. He can smell the blood on him now, with no amount of rainwater able to wash it from him when he wears it like a second skin. "I have committed sin and I ask for God's forgiveness every day. I expose myself to him, not to the people on this island who might see it as weakness. He allows me to live, not you or anyone else here, because I am here to deliver his message. But I cannot do that if you kill everyone on this island to satisfy your rage!"

A moment passes over him, one where he feels possessed to grab Joaquin by the collar and shake him to make him listen, but instead he just stares into his eyes with a pained expression. "I do not want you to be condemned." He says truthfully, voice a little softer but shakier than before. "I want to help you, Joaquin. Why will you not let me?"

To prove his bravery, Thomas moves towards him, and the fire in Joaquin's blood roars in response, his eyes a pair of smouldering, black coals as he regards him. He is a miserable creature, debasing himself over and over, but it is these displays of defiance - of resilience - that bring Joaquin back to his door. He likes his spirit, the fragile bird of it in his hand, miraculously unbroken. Yet.

At this new proximity, Joaquin takes Thomas roughly by the chin, his fingers digging into the edge of the bruise he so reviles, as if he might somehow replace it with an impression of himself. His bloody sleeve brushes against the collar of Thomas's coat, threatening to stain him too. "It is cowardly to refuse to see things as they are," he hisses, "You pluck out your own eyes so you may live in your delusions, because you fear who you would be without them to temper you." He is as much a slave to his urges as Joaquin, they govern his life as completely, but with so few moments of satiety to relieve him. "Believe what you wish, corderito, but it is my will you live by. God Himself could not take you from me."

"You only seek my salvation because you believe it is twinned with your own," Joaquin says, his hand travelling to cradle the base of Thomas's skull, the gesture nearly tender as he continues, "You would have me do as you do? Sit in this church and wring my hands for daring to want something? Pray for deliverance from that which makes me feel alive? Hate myself for simply being the way I was made?" He tightens his fingers in the dark strands of Thomas's hair, a short, sharp tug, as a smile pulls at the corner of his mouth, revealing the keen edges of his teeth, "I will not. Because there is nothing wrong with the way I was made."

As he speaks, though, Tom makes no effort to hide his feelings. He grimaces, his whole face contorting with the anguish of it, shaking his head as Joaquin describes the horror of what he has done as casually as if he were discussing the weather. "No. No, no." Thomas contests, tears filling his eyes. He had taken the beating earlier with grace and with strength, but he is always quick to cry like this, when his emotions rise up inside of him like a flood threatening to spill over. Exactly how Joaquin wants him to be.

Though he argues, but he knows that Joaquin is telling the truth. He knows exactly what he is capable of. "For this?" He looks horrified that he has played some part in this murder, despite the blood that will forever stain his hands. At least he tries to repent, endlessly so, to which no punishment will ever feel enough. "You are not the one who casts judgement. It is not your place to take his life like this. For nothing!" He knows he shouldn't rise to anger, but he is nauseous with the bitter taste of this truth.

"You have taken my forgiveness and shoved it into my throat for me to choke on. You have stolen what could have been the path to redemption. And you come here in the dead of night to tell me? To gloat to me, boastful as you are? And you expect me to..." His hands were shaking, his voice cracking around the lump in his throat. "To thank you, is that it? I will not. I will never."

Thomas cries more than any man Joaquin has ever known. He has tasted his salt-streaked tears in a moment of passion, and they return now in the face of his frustration. This is the pitiful fate of one who denies what they truly feel, who cannot allow themselves the freedom of experiencing what is both natural and base. Without the burning catharsis that comes from displays of violence and ecstasy, there is only impotent, toothless sorrow. He wonders who Thomas would be without his tears.

The disgust written plainly across Thomas's delicate features is exactly what Joaquin had expected, and he is not cowed by it in the slightest. He had known already that the priest would not approve of his actions, that, if left to his own devices, he would've chosen passivity and called it kindness. What he takes umbrage with is the very last thing Thomas says.

"For nothing?" He repeats, his voice rising to the rafters as surges forward once more, readily claiming another measure of the space between them, "For the insult! For the offence committed! For what was done to you!" For what was done to that which he considers to be his. If God existed, and if he had claimed Thomas as he knows the other man longs for, would he not have done the same thing? Would he not have visited his wrath on any that would harm his priest? Would Joaquin not be standing in a smoking crater himself?

"I spit on your forgiveness because I see it for what it truly is: cowardice. You are only angry with me because I dare to do the things that you will not, and all the while you sit here and do nothing at all, and call it righteousness. Do you think that if I had not killed him then he would not have come again? And others besides? Do you think for a moment that they would see your soft, unguarded belly and let you live?"

At Joaquin's question, Tom finds that his mouth just simply opens and he can form no sound. Who would he be, to deny such request? But then again, who is this devil before him that mocks his religion? He takes a step back as Joaquin lurks forwards, though it isn't from fear. It is as though Joaquin carries so much weight that the air moves around him, the atmosphere itself feels heavier when he is near, and if Thomas stands too close he knows he'll be drawn directly into his orbit.

"What have you done?" It's barely a whisper, sounding almost like a plea for Joaquin to tell him this is some grand misconception. He does not speak with judgement, his place is only to listen and offer counsel, but still he hopes that Joaquin will surprise him.

That soft gasp that escapes from Thomas seems to surround them, reverberating across the ancient stone and returning to them ten-fold. It's enough to inspire the slight uptick of Joaquin's mouth, that involuntary sound seeming to him as a distant, lesser cousin of another that he so favours when elicited from the lips of the man before him. Thomas is disappointed in him, shocked by him, but there is something else too - a glimpse of the dark creature that makes its home inside him, not so terribly different from Joaquin's own.

Thomas moves away from him, but Joaquin does not falter, continuing his steady advance, each deliberate step resounding in the space between them that grows narrower by the moment. A cleverer man might turn tail and run, but the fact that Thomas hasn't - the fact that he never has - endears him to Joaquin in a way that he cannot express in any way other than this: the language of violence, which is always first on his tongue.

Smoothing his rain-soaked hair away from his face, he finally stops, though his body remains taut, coiled like a spring, never more than a heartbeat away from further action. "Perdóname padre porque he pecado," he begins, the refrain sounding like mockery in his mouth, as it always does, "I killed a man tonight. I found him pissing in the alley behind the brothel, and I split his skull against the cobblestones before he even had the chance to put his cock away. I beat him until he no longer resembled a man at all, until all that was left was meat and broken bones, until his own mother would not recognise his face, and then I left him there, so others would see."

The thud of the large wooden doors and clang of its heavy iron handles has him immediately at attention, brows furrowing deeply as he clambers out of bed, hurries to cover himself with a coat, and rushes to see what kind of urgent counsel someone could possibly need at this time of night, wincing through the ache it takes to move. Then he sees Joaquin, and he knows this is no counsel at all. Just another one of his nightmares, plaguing him in his waking hours as well as in his dreams.

"What happened?" He asks, tentative as he notices the blood on his sleeve. His jaw tightens, his mouth drying. "Are you hurt?" This is hardly the place to come for the tending of wounds but if there is ever help to be given, Thomas will be the one to offer it. Even in the state that he's in. Even if it's for him.

Usually such directness from the young priest would inspire a wry twist of Joaquin's mouth, a laughing, contrary response for skipping over the pleasantries he has become accustomed to from a man who is trying so very hard to be good. He is not smiling now. His dark eyes are riveted to the flourishing bruise that stains Thomas's fair cheek, the shallow cut left by another man's ring, and he tastes the bitter bile that accompanies his anger in the back of his throat.

The news of Thomas's assault had reached his ears only a matter of hours after it happened, and he had not hesitated to act, rising from his seat in the tavern like a revenant from the grave. Had he not made himself clear about what would happen to any that dared raise their hand against the occupant of this church? Has he ever been known to make an empty threat? Has he ever delivered anything less than what was promised? "If I was hurt, I would have gone to sawbones," Joaquin tells him, even though it isn't true. His knuckles are raw, split open like ripe figs, but the wounds are of little consequence. He has always preferred to work with his hands.