The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (boyxboy)

CHAPTER 1

He doesn't sleep with the rest of the crew, though this isn't for lack of space. It would be easy to make a little nest somewhere in the room where no one would trip over him, or even hitch up a hammock between a wall and a post. For some reason, the idea has never appealed to him, and Captain Slade doesn't seem to mind that he makes his bed in a small dry food store. Better to sleep in there than be surrounded by people who don't like him all that much.

Az has only ever been on two boats in his entire life, but The Merry boasts the accolade of being the largest. She hosts just over twenty men — a few more than is necessary to sail her comfortably, which makes the deck feel crowded when everyone is up here like this. He peeks at the horizon and can see land in the distance.

The galley is on the other side of the ship, a small room squashed under the captain's quarters since the drunken incident of three months ago which has yet to be repaired. Noah, the cook with skin just a shade darker than Az's own and a short beard, pleaded his case to Slade not long ago regarding keeping the kitchen here. Apparently, there have been fewer "drunken incidents" since then.

Said cook glances up and grins when Az pushes the swinging door open. His dark eyes crinkle at the corners.

"Hey, stringbean," he greets, gesturing over to a pot of something on the table. "Got some leftovers here I need getting rid of. Let's get you doing some work around here for once, hm?"

"Yes, sir."

With that, Az plants himself on the table and begins wolfing down whatever is left in the pot.

It's not that they don't feed him, but he's almost always hungry. Not in the same way he was hungry in Albahri, the port town where he'd spent a year of his life sleeping in alleyways and stealing for sustenance. Noah says it's normal for a boy his age to need more food.

Az isn't sure exactly how old he is. Maybe seventeen or eighteen, if Louis' earlier comment is anything to go by. He has a smattering of dark, coarse hairs on his chin and upper lip now to match the ones all over his legs, not to mention his tattered trousers are much closer to his knees than his ankles compared to his first days here. Noah likes to remark often about how tall Az is getting, though he still isn't very tall compared to most of the others.

Besides his height, Noah never comments on his appearance. Az finds it hard to believe the cook notices nothing odd about him. Though they'd never met until two years ago, they'd both been born in the same country: but where Noah's eyes are black and only brown in the sunlight, Az's are a bright, almost unnatural blue. With Az's skin a noticeably lighter brown, one could put it down to his mixed parentage.

Then there are his ears. He does his best to hide them under his tousled mop of dark hair, but the wind that's inevitable at sea means everyone must have seen them at some point. The tips of his ears are short and blunt, bumpy and pinkish with scar tissue. Where once they tapered into soft but notable points, what remains is someone's attempt to hide the truth of his identity.

And even if Noah could claim to have never noticed his ears, there are still his arms. Long bandages wrapped from wrist to elbow hide terrible, ugly scars, inflicted by the same people for the same reasons. On his left, the scar is shallow but jagged and messy, the result of a shaky hand and an unwillingness to do the deed. On the right, a single straight line, but one that had cut so deep, Az sometimes wonders how he's still alive with only mild difficulty bending his wrist and fingers when it's cold.

It's a secret he doesn't talk about. Not to anyone. Azaziah Azar is only half-human.

His mother: a soft-hearted woman trapped in a loveless marriage in a small desert village where magic is evil and forbidden. His father: a passing traveller with golden-blonde hair, jewel-blue eyes, and a bloodborne affinity for that magic. A man she should never have even spoken to, and if anyone ever found out what she'd done was preceded by enthusiastic consent, she'd have been ostracised forever.