The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (boyxboy)

CHAPTER 1

The Merry | Present Day

"Oi."

Azaziah Azar disregards the nasal voice that interrupts his focus. Instead he stares down at the book in front of him, struggling even to this day to read the words on the pages. He now gets the gist of what he's reading, even if he still sometimes has to sound things out first, which is a far cry from simply recognising something familiar.

"I'm talking to you, brat!"

He considers a sardonic response, thinks better of it, then opens his mouth anyway. "I know." He doesn't lift his eyes from the paper. "I'm ignoring you."

Bony fingers with yellow nails come into his line of vision to yank the book down, then it's sailing through the air and landing in the corner with a thud. With a roll of his eyes, Az concedes and lifts his gaze to meet a sour glare. Louis is a scrawny man with an unfortunate hairline and a missing tooth, and he seems somewhat crestfallen at Az's lack of upset over his mistreated property, but Az learned a long time ago not to bother giving them the satisfaction.

"I'd watch my tone if I were you," Louis warns.

"Would you?" Az tries and fails to sound genuinely interested. "Good thing you're not me, then."

That earns him a scoff. "You know, I miss the good old days. What happened to the little crybaby from two years ago?"

"Sorry to disappoint you," he replies with a shrug, feeling around in the corner with his foot for the tossed book. He tries not to look stricken. Two years. He's been on this nightmare ship for two years.

The pirate narrows his eyes, glaring down at Az with the kind of contempt one can only expect from someone who's sick and tired of smarmy quips and sly comments. "Maybe I should ask Paver to come down here and teach you a lesson."

"Oh, please," Az says. "Paver got bored of me long before you did."

A bare-faced lie, although Paver has been leaving him alone these past few weeks. In no way does this mean he is bored of him, though; another lesson Az learned a long time ago.

Az's early days on board the ship — affectionately dubbed "the Merry" by her mercurial captain — had been like a single long night in a flood. If the ship's crew had been the water, Az had been the cat hiding up a tree and praying to somehow survive 'til morning. He'd mostly been left to wallow by The Merry's captain, and he'd have been content to live out the rest of his days curled up behind storage boxes were it not for Paver.

Az he really had tried to steer clear. But he's learned many lessons during his time at sea, one of which being that people like Ivan Paver will seek out their prey and take pleasure in the torment they can inflict. Paver carries his desire to hurt over his shoulder like a freshly-caught game bird. Built and deeply scarred across the right side of his face, his crass comments, his slimy warnings, and his itching hands had forced Az out of his secret corner and into life as part of the crew.

More often than not, the rest of them turn a blind eye to whatever is going on between Az and Paver — something that hadn't surprised him then, and doesn't surprise him now. So it's not a shock that they'll still pull the Paver card whenever they feel Az is stepping out of line. Paver won't always intervene, but the threat is enough, so he keeps his head down and gets on with his work. Despite everything, he still holds his own life in pretty high regard and has no plans to lose it any time soon.

"Did you actually want anything, or did you just come in to bother me?" Az asks, finally finding the book and flipping through it to the page he'd been looking at.

Louis offers him one final, dripping scowl. "Noah wants you." Without waiting for an answer, the man turns and stalks out.

Az smiles as he tucks his book under a sack of flour and follows Louis through the dim hallway and up to the main deck. The sun glares down from overhead, already so hot despite the early hour, and the breeze is thick with moisture. Men file out from the other door, shirts and hair already sticking to their skin.