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“I will give you the papers,” Avra quavered piteously, just to camouflage the fact that he recognized the signpost and was cooperating. “But only if you promise to remember that there’s a bit in my head that only I know about and that the secret will be worthless if you throw me overboard. 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?”
“Maybe. Maybe. You should, eeee, torture it out of me. In a sexy way. Like spies do.” That was the sort of thing that would get Teveri to scathe and make disgusted faces and throw Avra out of rooms and sometimes overboard, but Julian just said, “Oh, okay,” slid his hand up the back of Avra’s head, leisurely clenched his fist on Avra’s hair, and pulled—almost gently, but steady and inexorable and irresistible. Avra’s jaw dropped on a gasp and he went limp. “Tell me everything you know about the serpent juice or the technique of using it,” Julian breathed in his ear.
“This was interrogation tactics? You would pull my hair and call me a good boy and pump me for information and now you won’t even let me suck your dick?” “Yes,” said Julian, unrepentant. “That’s so sexy of you.”
lol it IS. but also, MEAN. it would have been very sexy!!!
“And, ah, is the oral sex a serious part of that offer, or…?” “Well, that makes it sound transactional,” said Avra. “And while I have nothing but fondness and respect for the profession, I feel like in this situation I’m coming more from a place of expressing my genuine respect and gratitude for their assistance. I am offering my mouth as a gesture of friendship and affection.” Teveri raised their eyes to the ceiling with a hearty sigh. “Lovemaking is about all kinds of different beautiful connections that two or more people can share,” Avra went on. Teveri sighed again. “You can tell them
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“I feel like this is the fundamental difference between the Ministries of Diplomacy and Intelligence,” Avra said pensively. “You eggheads in Diplomacy always think you know what people are like and that you can predict how they’ll behave. On the other hand, Intelligence has seen some shit and knows that it only takes one absolute madman to fuck up your whole day.”
“Intelligence knows,” Avra said airily, “that ‘sane’ doesn’t exist. Nobody is sane. Nobody has ever been sane. Sane is fake. Sane is…” He waved to his own face. “One of those things you wear to a masked ball.” “… A mask?” “Yes, thank you, one of those. Behind everybody’s sanity mask is someone who is unalloyed batshit in one way or another. This is the truth of human nature, Baltakan.” He polished off the last dregs of beer. “When I say ‘one absolute madman,’ that’s not somebody less sane, because nobody’s sane. That’s just somebody who’s decided that leaving his mask off gets him where he
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“Having no money brings a whole host of problems,” Julian said. Avra could just see that he was stroking Teveri’s knuckles with his thumbs as he squeezed their hands. “But having too much money does too. It sucks your soul dry, eventually. Even a sweet-natured and well-intentioned person starts making decisions based on protecting the money rather than helping other people. It becomes a burden—a god that you’re shackled to, one that’s even more difficult to abandon than the others you’ve already turned away from.”
“People will sing of this,” Avra whispered. He felt—he felt—gripped by something. Like his tongue was not quite his own in this moment, like it moved to the bidding of whatever bullshit higher powers usually sassed him through his deck of Heralds. “Our descendants for a hundred generations will sing of this.” “I don’t fucking care,” Teveri said, tense with emotion. “I’m going to eat him alive. I am going to wreck him. I am going to make him beg.”
