Augustine catches his hand, and John lets him keep it. He doesn't fight that gentle, hesitant touch. It's the dusting of pink across pale cheekbones that does something to him: he's struck with an ugly thrill of memory, Augustine with his hair mussed and his lips swollen, Augustine looking at him with stripped-open reverence. His wrist in the man's grip flexes, miserable at the contact but unwilling to shake him away.

It feels wrong, here, viscerally out of place among the wreckage. This is a vigil, somehow— corpses should be laid to rest—

"It isn't worth it," he says, in desperation. "The whole thing was a mess— a nightmare— what's the point in letting it drag on? This is our clean slate."

That's what the flood is for. If it isn't that, the old sins wiped away, then there's nothing to be salvaged from the end.