Family Business

“No.”

“Aw, come on!” said Alse’s cousin Kel. Kel wasn’t old enough to be one of the family members Alse hated, but he was old enough to look fuckable in his sailor suit, which he’d extremely explicably worn to the job interview that he’d shown up for on a holiday without telling Alse he was applying for a job. “Why?”

“Lots of reasons,” Alse said, looking at the resume Kel had given him. “First of all, the only job experience you’ve listed on here is feeding your neighbour’s cat while she was away.”

“Yeah?” Kel asked, shrugging as he looked around the aquarium, which was closed. “And you know what, Mango is still alive, Alse. I have a one hundred percent success rate with taking care of animals, and you have lots of animals to take care of. Clearly my skills are valuable.”

Knighthood, 102

Rich people really did get all the perks in life, Edwin thought. Aside from all the obvious shit, they even got to have weddings on perfect spring days.

It was the first day of Remin and it wasn’t actually spring for another week, but it was warm and sunny and the sky was a brilliant shade of blue and everything looked very picturesque. Even though Edwin knew the streets had been cleaned and the dirty snow moved in preparation for the wedding, it still felt like the kind of thing that had just happened naturally rather than being bought.

The streets looked much nicer now that a lot of the people lined up to get into the First Church had been checked and let in. “Okay, thank you for your cooperation, your Majesty,” Edwin said.

Stowaway, 100

“I think we can safely assume at this point that the navy isn’t going to be catching up with us,” Natalie said, looking at the map weighted down to the table in Alse’s meeting room.

“I think we can rather unsafely assume that, given how unsafe we’ll be,” Pax countered. “But it’s fine. This is why Denver helped us acquire all this additional backup from Ran Errevir. We’ll be okay.” He gestured around at Ran Errevir generally to indicate how okay they were.

“Indeed,” promised Alse, gills frilling as he looked at Denver. “There is no need to worry. Our bargain is unassailable.”

Shark Boy

Alse woke up to the phone ringing, and blearily reached for his. He ended up just touching Louis’s chest, which was also okay.

“Who the fuck is calling this early in the morning?” Denver muttered, also waking up. It was seven o’clock, which wouldn’t have been that early if they hadn’t been up all night.

“Whoever it is is about to get my cock shoved down their throat,” Louis growled, still half asleep and already making Alse jealous. He sat up, displacing both of them and looking around the room. “Are they calling the landline? Jesus fucking Christ.”

Stowaway, 98

A warm, steady rain was falling on the Coral Witch, which was good because many people had been starting to smell bad and this was a great opportunity for them to stop smelling bad.

That did, of course, involve using the rain as the naturally occurring shower that it was, which was perfectly fine with Pax. He had several very nice soaps he’d traded some boots for in Nilmeain Kasar, and after careful consideration he’d decided that today was a good day for teofon anemone scented soap. Teofon anemone apparently smelled a bit like cats, which was excellent in the way that all things that encouraged birds to stay away from Pax were excellent.

Typically when it rained, Pax gave himself lookout duty so he could shower away from everyone else, but today Tulip had lookout duty and Pax had decided that it was okay not to take it away from her, and was instead on the aft deck, showering with everyone else.

Knighthood, 89

Edwin had been anointed all over again, though this time when he’d knelt it hadn’t been holy oil squirted all over him. And offering his sword to Gavin had taken a whole lot longer and been a lot more fun than offering it to the king.

Edwin and Erik had agreed before the orgy that for everyone who Erik got to cum inside him, Edwin would give him a full day of complete obedience whenever he asked for it. Edwin had thought about making it specific to Erik’s ass, but he’d decided in the end that the image of Erik just sucking cock all night would be too funny to pass up, and others were likely to find his ass enticing enough without the need for incentives.

He definitely had some cum in his ass already, and he’d soon have more courtesy of Louis, who was hammering Erik at dragon speed, tail wrapped around his leg. He kept leaning over Erik and kissing Edwin as he was doing it.

Stowaway, 93

Denver’s goodbye hug with Pax had turned into a goodbye kiss, which had turned into some goodbye making out, which Pax tolerated bravely for a good amount of time before gently making Denver disengage from him. “Goodbye, Denver. I’ll see you in roughly three weeks.”

Denver smiled, floating back. “Maybe sooner. I might come visit. Or you could come visit.”

“I’m sure I will,” Pax agreed.

We’ll definitely drop in, said Nate. See how you’re doing.

“Great,” said Denver, as Louis also hugged Pax.

Pax did not kiss Louis, but he did hug back. “You keep Denver and Alse out of trouble,” Pax ordered him.

“I was going to do that anyway.”

Knighthood, 83

“Listen, I get that you’re excited,” said Sir Stan, not far off from Edwin. “But this is the palace. You can’t go making an ass of yourself.”

“Right,” said Twig, nodding in a way that reminded Edwin of someone. “I promise not to make an ass of myself, sir.”

“Right. Which means that you will…”

Hearing Stan’s pause, Twig appeared to cast around for an answer. “Hunt for murderers discreetly, and with dignity.”

“No,” Stan said with a sigh. “You will hunt for murderers not at all, Twig.”

“But if I do that…” Twig said, looking at his fingers, “then the murderers will stay hidden and they’ll be able to murder someone.”

“There are no murderers.” Stan was clearly trying to sound patient. It was working about as well as Edwin’s attempts not to laugh. “Repeat after me. There are no murderers.”

“There are no murderers,” Twig repeated.