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“It was supposed to be a nice song! I told everyone in that bar that your ship definitely isn’t haunted or anything, and that you’re great at both pirating and fucking! And that the only marginally spooky thing about you, since your ship is incredibly non-haunted, is that you’ve got a box full of terrifying spooky dildos!” He gave Teveri a limpid glance up through his eyelashes. “I thought you’d like it. I thought it would help your reputation. Should I have not mentioned your box of spooky dildos? Won’t do it again. Honest, Tev.”
“I shan’t,” Avra cried. “You can’t treat me like a silly little slut, Tev, I’m a person! A person who has been through so much—” “You’re certainly a silly little slut as well.” “A silly little slut who has been through so much,” Avra amended, because at least he knew how to compromise,
“I did not! These troubles have befallen me through no fault of my own! It was an accident.” Teveri blinked at him again, unimpressed. “You stole from the Shipbuilder’s Guild by accident.” “Yes!” Avra said vehemently. “Would a silly little slut be able to do it on purpose?
“I ask for so little,” Avra said. “Yet when you deign to kick a stale, moldy heel of bread to me, you simply walk away and leave me to fight off all the alley possums before I can eat even one crumb of a nibble. You don’t even care that I have developed mange. You don’t even care that the possums are exploiting me! You could just hand me the moldy crust of bread instead of wrapping it around a rock and kicking it at me—”
“Here are the things I need right now, as a silly little slut, damp and bedraggled in an alley, scrabbling in the dirt with the possums,” he said with an injured little sniffle. “I need you to be interested in the terrible accident that befell me, and I need you to vaguely consider the idea of rescuing the shit out of me so that the maximum amount of Araşti badness does not happen to me. Think of the possums, think of how traumatized they will be. I will be arrested right in front of them, and tortured, and killed, and dismembered, and fed to tigers, and—”
He had denied all three questions. On the last one, she’d said he was lying, so he’d been forced to confess to his little fantasy about a conspiracy to commit sexy crimes. “What sort of sexy crimes?” the truthwitch had said. Avra had answered, “I don’t know, the fantasy doesn’t really get that far, usually I am done jerking off well before we get around to committing any crimes,” and proceeded to babble about all the various pretexts the sexy conspirators might have for why they all needed to get naked and prove with their bodies that everyone was really committed to the crime they were so
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“That’s governments for you,” Teveri said flatly. “Ask anyone on this ship about the infamously thin line between people and meat.”
If you decide to throw me overboard anyway, I would prefer if you do so in one of the sea serpent breeding swarms, so that you can tell people I died in a massive fuckpile like I have always dreamed of. Promise?”
“I’m adjusting to my circumstances,” he called back. “It’s very difficult and I would appreciate it if everyone could feel sorry for me.” “Aww,” chorused several of the nearby pirates in a strange harmony of either sarcasm, playing along with the joke, or both.
“I have a sparkling personality,” Avra said. “I have bags of charisma.” “Bags of it,” Markefa said, because she was arguably Avra’s best friend on the whole crew. “Bags and bags of charisma you scrounged out of a rubbish heap and carry around with you in damp burlap bags.”
“If I were a pet, I would certainly have mange, yes.” Avra grinned winsomely at her.
“I prefer it when people feel sorry for me. Some may ask if it is better to be loved or feared, and I say: Neither. It is better to be pitied. Then people don’t expect anything of you.”
Really a bad attitude on that man, there always had been. Sarcastic. Poor sense of humor. Selfish. The kind of build that meant he could have crushed Avra between finger and thumb if he’d felt like it—so basically he was exactly Avra’s type, inasmuch as Avra had a type beyond “just so incredibly mean to him all the time.”
“Thanks, ma’am. Sorry for tattling to Captain.” He batted his eyes at her. “Can I let you know next time I’m in the mood to be sexually harassed?”
“You’re popular,” Viyan commented. “I hadn’t realized, somehow.” “I pay my bills on time and I tip generously,” Avra said seriously. “And I’m a very easy customer. Sometimes I just ask for a cuddle and have my hair petted. Sometimes I read them my poetry. Sometimes I get a hand job and then cry.”
“Ah, you’re naked, that’s very nice. Hello, naked Tev. One of my favorite kinds of Tev. All Tevs are my favorite Tev but naked Tev is a special treat to encounter. Hello. Hello very much.” Tev was in a very large bath up to their nose, the water steaming
“So important. Did you still feel like, um, charitably donating some sex to my fund which I will be using to maybe one day move out of the alley where I am being mobbed by possums on a daily basis and digging in the rubbish pile for scraps of edible shoe leather? You don’t have to, haha. You did promise, but I’m not going to hold you to that if you’ve decided that I haven’t earned it. Or if you want to, um, have your bath all by yourself without. Without me keeping you company. Or guarding the door from swarms of bloodthirsty aquatic vampire possums. Or polishing your boots.”
SIGH. Circumstances beyond my control have once again forced me to sleep with Avra. Had the absolute gall to be typically falling-all-over-himself ready to please, which he knows I like—incredibly annoying. Refuses to do me the basic courtesy of being outright shit in bed; insists on intentionally, maliciously continuing behavior that gets me hot, like “helpfulness” and “saying please” and “following directions.” UGHHHHHHH.
They don’t make ’em like Black Garda anymore, mostly because she killed a lot of the competition back in the good old days. Retired ten years ago to get married to a lady she consensually kidnapped off one of the ships she raided.
Avra was in the middle of bothering Tev over their breakfast the next day—mostly by threatening to put coconut jam on his nipples—when Red and his companion knocked on the door. “Ah,” said Red apologetically when Teveri yanked the door open. “We’re interrupting.” Avra was laid out nearly naked across the breakfast table with a fistful of silk scarves in his hands, which he had been shaking insistently at Teveri. He sighed. “Well, yes, a bit, but you weren’t to know.”
“It’s different because those biceps are on a group of people who have never met you before,” they snapped. “And thus they have no natural defenses against your fucking bullshit.”
“Tell him that if his biceps happen to get more salty than he prefers them to be, I will lick them for him.”
“Right! Right, uh, uh—hello, Usmim, Lord of Trials, it’s me, Avra. You know what would be nice? Not having any trials sent to me or my friends that involve teeth. This includes but is not limited to: toothaches, cavities, being bitten by blue dogs later today, or being, uh, torn to shreds and devoured by horny sea serpents. Uh, I know this is a little unconventional, especially because we don’t talk that much, but I’ve always thought statues of you looked kind of hot, so as long as you make sure that I die not at sea so my body gets buried and my soul can, um um um,
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Idea number one! We use the straw in the hold to weave a dog costume. I will volunteer to dress in it and attempt to keep Black Garda from discovering the truth as long as possible while Tev walks around the last day of the cake competition in their best coat to show off how absolutely fine we are doing and, um, Julian invents a secret worth millions in any currency. Just comes up with one out of thin air with his giant brain and the backup brains he keeps in his enormous biceps.
“You’re being very spooky right now, and I would like to ask you, as a friend, if you’ve been possessed by any ghosts, bitten by any rabid glowing dogs, or experimenting with any new drugs.” “I have not been bitten by any rabid glowing dogs. I don’t know what being possessed feels like, but it sounds like it might be kind of sexy, so I’d be interested in trying it out. If I had experimented with any new drugs, I would have offered to share with the crew.”
“I was meant to not have that money,” Avra declared. “It’s going to be a good thing in the end, you’ll see. Builds character. Maybe my destiny is to build a community of cooperation and mutual support amongst the possums of the alley where I live in a small rotting crate. Maybe I need to ally myself with the possums and rise up against the systems of oppression that are keeping us impoverished in alleys and fighting for every scrap of stale bread that Teveri wraps around a rock and kicks at me.”
“I am a poet, Julian, of course I am crying!” Avra wailed. “A poet’s whole job is to celebrate sluts and cry about beautiful things coming to tragic, untimely ends!”
“Tev!” Avra wailed as they rolled their eyes and descended the steps into the hold. “You don’t understand! He used to be an artist. He used to be a maestro! He fucked fifty-two people in one evening!”
“I just think everyone should see that you’re a suave and dashing lunatic,” Avra mumbled. “Even more of a batshit sonofabitch than Xing Fe Hua. And just a dash of total fucking maniac for flavor. I tried to explain these terms to Julian. He doesn’t get it. He thinks I’m making it up.”
“He basically suggested out loud that you might like to put the extra one on me. Out loud, he said this. Essentially. That was the implication. He implied it right over his coffee cup with a normal expression like that was a normal sort of thing that two good pals might say to each other. Teveri. This is why I have woken you up. This is an emergency.”
“It was a very horny moment, but he took an oath and he has laughed at me every time I attempted to seduce or beguile him. So what other motive could he possibly have? My brain is not big enough to come up with whatever other answers it could be. Please do my thinking for me.”
“He does not flirt with you, he toys with you. Like a cat with a little dead mouse. Half of a mouse. A partial vole.” Avra tipped over on his back and groaned at the ceiling. “Don’t get me horny right now, Tev.” “Discussion of eviscerated vermin gets you horny now?” “The idea of Julian toying with me like a cat with a small helpless creature.”
“What are yours? What does he do in yours?” “We make extremely charged eye contact during a tense public moment, but say nothing. Later, he comes to my cabin and takes all his clothes off while I drink a glass of rum and look at him. We still say nothing.”
Avra, who only owned one and a half pairs of pants and three kaftans at the moment),
