Blood, Sweat, and Bitter Vengeance

There were many traits Faine found heroic in his friend, Saeger. For one, the man was near fearless, often jumping into dark depths before anyone else had even finished talking themselves out of their nerves. He was also quite good with people, helping without hesitation, especially the young and the elderly. It was no secret that everyone in the neighborhood wanted Sae as their own son. He once spent an entire day lifting heavy furniture just to see a widow living across the street smile from a change in her home's interior.

Sae was fair as he was courageous. He stood up for himself just as well as his younger siblings did. He saw everyone as genuine equals, not really caring for anyone's social status as he demanded respect where respect was due.

Still, for all of Sae's admirable traits, his lack of impulse control certainly had Faine wanting to beat him to a state of near unconsciousness. Not that he could do that beyond his imagination because as fate had decided, it wasn't enough that Sae had the resolve of a rhinoceros. He also had the strength of one.

The older he grew, the more people he drew in with his nobility. It was a charm, how honest and kind the boy was, almost as if he was clueless to the world's inhumanity. He was a magnet, a lamplight to a landslide of moths, the moths being their city's simple civilizans. However, that was back on land. Now that he was on waters and on Captain Calixto's ship, nonetheless, things were different—things were definitely different.

Strength certainly wasn't enough to impress anyone anymore.

Saeger thought otherwise. He still had trouble picking his fights, jumping into any conflict as long as his unshakable principles demanded him to, something he got from Evelina, which is how he, well, got into this situation in the first place.

"Hey, Sae, I know it hurts, but moving will make things harder, okay? Stay still. I'll be gentle, I promise."

The younger only grunted, moving his head back in place on Faine's lap. Rolling his eyes at the other's brattiness, the courtesan went back to wiping Sae's wounds with a wet cloth.

He was tempted to make it hurt, so that his friend would learn a lesson about mindfulness and self-preservation, but alas, Faine had a soft spot for the Helewys and hurting him had never been on his "lines I'm willing to cross" list.

Teasing him, however? That was a different story. Not that Faine had to think much about it, the sheer idiocy of the man laid before him had his mouth opening in a matter of miliseconds.

"I still can't believe you..." He did his best to stiffle a laugh, recalling how Sae had been tricked by a few sleazy crewmates into stumbling into glass dishes. They had taunted him while he was washing up in the kitchen. The floor was much too slippery for running and fighting, however, because that immediately caused the newbie to crash into rather fragile utensils, and now here he was, on the courtesan's lap, his wounds tended to by a pair of gentle and wondrously soft hands.

"Yeah, yeah, say what you want."

"I won't. I don't want to hurt your feelings, sweets."

Sae's face flushed red at the term of endearment, breaking his eye contact with the subject of his affections to look somewhere else, anywhere else. His eyes landed on the other's exposed collarbone, then to his neck, littered with bruises that hurt more than the ones he had gotten when he fell.

"You don't even know..." The blue haired male grumbled.

"What was that?"

From the way Faine's smile remained wide, Sae could tell he was just trying to fluster him, like he always was, and the thought that he did it with other people too had Saeger wanting to go overboard and live with sharks.

"I thought you weren't here to.. work.. like that."

That had the courtesan's eyebrows perking up, confused as to how his friend had gotten there in the first place. And then his eyes followed where Sae had been looking, and his face flushed, realizing that the captain may or may not have indulged in his... requests a bit too roughly, hands leaving more than just fingerprints.

"Not primarily, no, but duty calls even when I'm miles away from home, I guess."

"Gross."

"Hey! That's not a very kind word. Where'd my kind and adorable Sae go?"

Sae stood from his seat, although silently grieving the loss of the Faine's smooth hands and the comfort of his lap and the perfect view he was given as he rested his head.

"Ughh, I'm not adorable. I'm anything but adorable!"

"You certainly aren't adorable when you jump just about anyone who looks at you slightly wrong."

"I don't.. I'm not that easy. They weren't.." Saeger paused as if trying to sort out his thoughts. Something rarer than rain in the middle of a barren desert.

Faine was quick to respond, with the jolt of a hand and the widening of his eyes, wholly concerned for his friend's hesitance. Sae never hesitated.

He took a deep breath. "Hey, take your time."

"They weren't looking at me slightly wrong. They said some... bullshit." He said after a silence that left the other suffocated.

Faine blinked once. Twice.

"Bullshit? I know that isn't your first time being the subject of mockery. What made it so different that it led to..."

The courtesan waved his hands around, gesturing to the other's bruised elbows, to the plethora of small cuts on his face and the ocassional deep ones that Faine paid careful attention, to his bare chest that Faine insisted on checking just in case.

"...This?"

Saeger gave him a look. A look he had never seen so up close, a look he had never seen directed at him. Serious. His eyes were serious, incessant and burning light no longer shining through those two bright emerald irises.

"They weren't just disrespecting me. They were disrespecting you."

Faine's mouth was left agape. "Me?"

Sae wasn't new to bastards being bastards, but neither was Faine. In his head, there was no reason to be so overprotective, so defensive. Considering the nature of his work, the Helewys should've known that he was immune to ridicule and unwarranted degradation.

"..What did they... what did they say?"

Saeger looked away once more, fists clenched, nails digging into his skin oh so painfully.

"I don't want to say it."

The courtesan stared at the other's back, sympathetic. Something must've struck a nerve with the former fisherman, something worse than a measly call of "whore." They must've said something so bad that it had reduced Saeger to this state. They had shaken him up from the inside. And for some reason, that had Faine's blood boiling more than any words could.

"I wanted to hurt them." Saeger admitted.

"I'm pretty sure I was going to, but then, I slipped. I still want to. I just figured out now that it'd be harder than I thought, considering who they are in the ship."

Faine hummed. "You want revenge."

"I want revenge." He echoed.

"Revenge doesn't have to be bloody. It can be entirely something else."

Faine moved to fix up his station, washing the damp cloth dirtied by Sae's blood—an empty bottle picked up by his right hand.

Saeger's eyebrow raised.

"You have an idea?"

"How has your water intake been, sweets?"

--

There were many traits Saeger found quite lovable in his friend (although he wished it were more than that), Faine.

For one, the courtesan was a beautiful performer. Many claimed that he wasn't as good as the other blond entertainer, Alaska or something, he wasn't as angelic of a singer or as experienced of a dancer, he wasn't well-spoken in many languages and presented himself as easy in front of his clients.

Sae found himself disagreeing each and every time he heard such talk.

Many haven't heard Faine's hearty laughter from one of Llyris' impossibly awful jokes—he laughed until tears started forming in his eyes, probably to compensate for the fact that no one else found whatever the inventor said funny. Many haven't heard the smile in his voice whenever he recounted mythical stories to the young Helewys twins, he described each event with such passion, with such love, and never failed to immerse the two in quite whimsical tales filled with strange creatues and melodrama before they dozed off. Many haven't heard him go on and on for hours about how his fellow courtesans had taught him how to braid his hair, praising them with such generosity that all the Helewys family members were convinced he was working with angels.

All the sounds that left his lips seemed to surpass divinity.

He understood, though, why many let their eyes skip over Faine's figure to admire more... outwardly desirable beauties.

After all, it was only Sae who was able to witness him cry excessively over the fact that his mother didn't celebrate her birthdays, it was only Sae who was able to witness him place two thin sticks inside his nose jokingly to make the twins laugh and struggle to remove them afterwards, or hold his younger brother oh so gently as he was sobbing, or harshly criticize an erotic novel like it had been a criminal offense, or write his neighbor, a widow, a love letter once he heard that her and her husband used to do it frequently when he was still alive.

Many were able to see the male when he was consumed by passion, even his own captain, Sae realized that the hard way, but he liked to think that only he was there when Faine consumed his surroundings with his humanity, like his flawlessness was the source of life itself.

He was charismatic and approachable, worked his bum off to provide for the Helewys family, and, at times, spontaneous. Still, for all of Faine's admirable traits, there was one Saeger couldn't quite bring himself to fully accept.

His mischief.

His smile, his wit, his sarcasm.. his schemes.

Sae watched as Faine laughed along with the crew members who had caused the tiny cuts on his face in the first place. He seemed so natural, scarily so, as he flirted, as he clung to their arms and urged them to drink more, more, until their drunken slurs were barely coherent.

"Come on, darling. Don't tell me that's all you can handle. You guys are pirates, aren't you?"

"We be runnin' dry on the *hiccup* booze!"

"That so?" The courtesan mused as he circled around the table, pulling out a lone bottle seemingly out of nowhere. Before anyone could question it, he popped off the lid, and everyone cheered.

"Seems like you all are lucky tonight, I just so happen to have brought my special concoction with me." He winked in Sae's direction, the pirates surrounding him too busy trying to get another sip to notice.

He poured the fluids down into their wooden mugs, the suspiciosly yellow liquid well-hidden by the darkness of the night.

"Pfft— what in my grandma's casket is this? Tastes like bilge water and shit!"

"Oh, darling, it's unique to my city. Don't be ignorant now. Thought you could handle some spice." He purred seductively, tracing his fingers across the complaining man's arm.

He feared he might've gotten caught for a moment, everyone else silently waiting for the pirate's reaction. He stared at Faine so hard, he was convinced it would be his last day in the living world.

But after a long moment, the bulky man perked up and resumed his rambunctious cheering, singing, whatever bullshit his dizzying head could come up with—so inherently different from the disgusting, shameless, and unjustifiably vile things he had spouted about the courtesan much earlier when Sae was still washing dishes. The others followed after, praising Faine's "local specialty." Oh, had they known where it really sourced from, they wouldn't have forced the strange drink down their throats until it was too familiar to stop consuming, until they were too drunk to really tell between the lines between exotic alcohol and plain old... piss.

Sae could barely believe what was unfolding in front of his very eyes, and there it was again, that hearty laugh, that heavenly laughter that left him breathless. Before he knew it, he was laughing too, immersed in the way Faine danced with the other pirates, still somehow fully sober, as they partook in the liquid that was just as repulsive as they were.