Everything?  Malachi meant everything?  Arthur wanted to laugh.

Were workhouses and prisons the worst thing Malachi could imagine?  Was his vision of hell just a stone room, alone, no one to cut him open and not even a knife so he cut cut open himself?  What happened to fire and brimstone?

"And if it is?"  Arthur frowned, one finger rubbing along the tape on Malachi's chest as if to pull it up.  Every time he got close, the finger smoothed it back down and moved on.

Malachi meant everything he said.  Of course he did.  Because he was the most honest man in Whitby, he had to be, he was a fucking priest.  Except when he wasn't, except when he was a whore in a brothel named Solomon, except when he was drunk and high and bloody, except when he loved Arthur.

Those were the only reasonable times it was to lie, of course.

"Would you deny me?"