The Passive Shark

Winter, 400 Anno Astrum

12

The first image the archivist had captured was of the vermilion crystalline pulse and platinum inlays that were the hallmark of a radiant symbiote. Next appeared the sun in a bright blue sky dotted with drifting clouds. Soon, the world below blurred into sight. At the thinning outskirts of a vibrant forest, a lone Sabwa smiled upwards, his left arm gleaming with the vermilion sigils of his symbiote. He wore only an intricate gold necklace studded with turquoise that draped over both his collarbones and the pleated linen shendyt common among the men of Aegyptus. He had also painted the short fur around his eyes in the typical Aegyptian style, dark black lines that feathered out past the corners. A warm summer breeze swirled around him, ruffling both the dark fur on his tail and back and the golden fur on his bare belly. At his waist was belted a ceremonial gladius with the mark of the Sanguine Song emblazoned on its scabbard. He was not tall by Sabwan standards, but he kept the build and bearing of every ex-legionary who had never abandoned his craft.

It was not long before the golden-bellied jackal's tall ears flicked to listen behind him. The archivist continued to record as a massive Sior stomped out of the forest and into the picture. The shark's gray and white skin was slick with sweat, staining the undyed tunic beneath his legionary's lorica and pteruges. The knitted red scarf wrapped around his neck fluttered in the breeze. "I have found you at last, knave!" the shark boomed far too loudly, his words stilted and overly enunciated. He drew his own ceremonial gladius, his bearing the seal of a medic of the Argent Flask, and leveled it at his quarry. The azure radiance of the sigils in the crystals on his symbiotic right arm bled into his sword. "Now you will pay for the murder of my dear daughter!"

The Sabwa drew his own sword and spun to face the shark bearing down on him. The air around him shimmered with phantasmal radiant sigils. "You would speak of my crime but not your own?" he said. He too spoke as if the words were unfamiliar in his mouth. "How many have you killed or stolen, Butcher?"

"I will cut your tongue from your… mongrel head before I let you slander my deeds further," the Butcher shouted. "I did all to save— all that to save my village."

The jackal drew himself up to his full height. "And you, Butcher, I will plant in mud to save any more villages from your blood-soaked hands," he spat back. "Your crimes are paid in blood!"

"Enough!" cried the shark, cutting the air with his free hand. "There is only one way this will be settled."

"Indeed!" agreed the jackal.

They took up matching combat stances at opposite ends of the archivist's vision. For a tense moment, they glared at each other, the wind dancing through the grass between them. Then, with a shared battle cry, they charged headlong at each other, their swords gleaming. There was a clash of steel and a flash of radiance where they met, and each let their charge carry them past the other. They stood—chests heaving, weapons flourished—until the shark's armor and tunic fell to the ground, slashed to pieces, leaving him naked but for his scarf and sandals at the edge of the recording. His opponent glanced back over his shoulder and tried unsuccessfully to suppress a giggle and a brisk wag of his fluffy tail as he took in every inch of the shark's muscular backside, obscured only by his broad, piscine tail.

The naked Sior took a deep breath, sighed, stood up straight, and looked down at himself. His lightcrafted blade shattered into a thousand motes of silvery light that quickly faded to nothingness. He groaned and turned to look sideways at the jackal, his entire front now visible to the archivist. He was very big, both across and up and down, and the muscles of his chest, arms, and legs were all partially concealed beneath a layer of comfortable padding and thick sharkskin. "You're a rat bastard," he said, all pretense gone from his voice.

"I—" the jackal tried to say but could not stop himself from doubling over in laughter.

"You were supposed to phase out your sword and I'd lightcraft the blood, you bloody Sanguine pervert," the shark growled.

"Oh, come on, Ed," said the Sanguine pervert. "Why would we do a combat performance and not use our actual combat training?"

Ed pointed at his augmented arm. "Because we're trying to show off the luminary arts we learned while we were away," he said.

The jackal groaned. "That's boring, though," he said. "Besides, I did use my luminary arts. I wouldn't have been able to slice through all of your armor and underwear at once like that without using my phantom blades."

Ed bowed his head and clapped his hands on either side of the fin at the back of his neck. "Simend," he said, "this is a surprise for Binta. She already knows how good we are with our martial arts."

"I'm doing this for Binta," Simend insisted. He gestured at the entirety of Ed's bulky frame and chuckled. "She's going to love seeing this."

"But we agreed to do the Ballad of the Butcher," said Ed.

"I know," said Simend, "but she'll like this more than seeing us prance around trying to be people we're not. We're mercenaries, Ed, not orators."

Ed frowned at the jackal and put a hand to his chest. "I thought I made an excellent Butcher," he said. Simend stared back at him and then began to snicker. Soon, both were laughing together. "Okay, you're right," granted Ed. "We're terrible actors. But we only have so many archives, so we can't waste them on rubbish like this."

Simend pointed at the archivist. "Then let's just give this one to Binta," he said.

"No!" Ed said. He glanced at the archivist and, suddenly remembering it was recording, put both his hands over his bare crotch. "Just no!"

"Why not?" Simend asked. "You know she likes a bit of spice in her stories."

At that, the shark stood up straight and let his hands fall to his sides, fists clenched. "Oh, I see," he said, voice low. "You're just trying to spice this up for her. Is that it?"

Simend took a step backwards, but his tail continued to wag. "I mean," he said. "Yeah."

Ed grinned, several rows of serrated teeth glinting in the brilliant sunlight. "Well then let's turn up the heat," he said. He raised his augmented arm, fingers prepared to snap.

Simend gasped. "Don't you dare!" he shouted. But it was too late. The shark snapped, and the jackal's shendyt became invisible, leaving him naked as well. His erection pointed uncomfortably to the side, and his tail drooped. "Edric! You said you wouldn't turn my clothes invisible anymore!"

Edric pointed at him. "And you said you'd stick to the script," he said. "So that makes two of us going back on our word today."

"That was for the show," Simend insisted, looking down at his invisible clothing with his ears folded back. "This just feels spiteful."

"Well forgive me if I fail to see the difference," Edric said. Then he glanced down at Simend's crotch. "Okay, I guess I see one difference, because that looks really uncomfortable. Do you need to adjust yourself?"

Simend laughed, and his tail began again to wag. "Oh, fuck you," he said.

Edric began to advance on the naked jackal. "I mean," he said, "given the state of my armor, I assumed that fucking was your end goal anyway." He stood close to Simend, towering over the smaller man. His own penis began to grow. "Wasn't it?"

Simend glared up at the shark for a moment before he broke into a toothy smirk. "Maybe," he said.

Edric smirked back. "Need some help with that, little guy?" he asked. He reached out and lowered Simend's invisible skirt, letting his erection spring loose.

"Turn off the archivist," Simend said.

"Oh," Edric said. "So you're fine with spicy when I'm the one who's naked but not you?"

"Please," Simend said. "You know I'm not the shy one here. But you also know that Binta prefers her spice with beef." He patted Edric's broad chest. The shark was now fully erect. "No, the problem is that what we're about to do might be hot enough to knock her straight out."

Edric's smirk widened. "Might it now?" he asked.

"Oh yes," said Simend.

"Well I certainly wouldn't want to miss that," Edric said, stepping even closer to Simend. "Why should we make Binta miss it?"

Simend grabbed the loose end of Edric's scarf and tugged, pulling the shark's face down close to his own. "Because," he whispered, "some things are just for us. Now turn off the archivist."

"Yes, sir," the shark whispered back.

Simend stepped away from Edric, and the shark turned to face the archivist, his metal-laced arm again in the air as he prepared to snap. As soon as he turned, though, a trickster's grin split Simend's muzzle. Just before Edric snapped his fingers, the jackal lunged forward and grabbed the shark by the balls. Edric squeaked as he snapped, and the recording terminated in an immediate blackout.

Binta's laughter in the now-dark room calmed Edric's nerves. Somewhat. "Did you like it?" he asked the lioness, rubbing at the scarf that covered his gills. They sat together on the low sofa in the common room of the home he'd once shared with Simend, an old Astral husk the two of them had helped transport out of the crater deep in the jungles of Daras. The jackal was in the adjoining galley preparing a snack for the three of them, leaving Edric and Binta alone in the main room.

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"Like it?" Binta asked as the Astral lights set into the burnished platinum walls of the room slowly came back to life. "It was great! You know that Simend was right, don't you? I do so enjoy some spice in my stories, and you are deliciously hot." She climbed onto his lap, straddling him with her knees planted on the sofa. She put a hand on his muscled chest and plucked at his plain, Italian tunic. "Why do you still have clothes on?"

The shark smirked down at his mate. Her green eyes gleamed in the dim light, and her tight breastwrap and skirt highlighted each of her soft, furred curves. He put a hand on her backside and slid it up under her skirt, quickly realizing that she was wearing nothing underneath it. Deep in the tip of his broad snout, his Sioric heart-sense detected the increasing pace of the lioness's pulse. "Sim could be back any minute," he said.

"So?" she asked. "He's obviously seen you without your clothes before."

"You know I can hear you, right?" Simend interjected, leaning his head out from the door to the galley. His eyes darted to where Edric's hand had lifted the back of Binta's skirt, and he froze.

Binta leaned backwards to look at Simend over her shoulder. "And you wouldn't mind if Ed lost some of these clothes, right?" she asked in return.

The jackal ducked back out of sight. "I would prefer you not make a mess of my sofa right before we watch a full-length archive," he said.

"We're not going to have sex on your sofa, Sim," Binta said, rolling her eyes.

"You talk like you haven't before," Simend called from the galley.

Binta glared at the galley door, and Edric's cheeks began to burn. Apparently they hadn't cleaned up as well as they'd thought. "Fine," Binta said. She got off Edric's lap and cuddled against his side instead.

"What are you even doing in there, Sim?" Edric called, pulling Binta closer. He draped an arm over her shoulder and spread his legs slightly when she started massaging his inner thigh. "We just ate."

"I'm getting dessert," he said. "Or I'm trying, anyway. Everything's in a different place than I remember."

"You were gone for quite a while this time," Binta said. Her hand massaged slow circles higher and higher along Edric's leg and up under the hem of his tunic, pressing harder on strokes that moved the direction of the fine scales of his skin. Edric in turn lowered the hand resting on her shoulder to squeeze her breast.

"Not long enough to forget how I organize my own kitchen," Simend called back. "Yeah! Here! This is not where I keep my sweet wine."

"You have sweet wine?" Edric asked.

"That's still sweet after four months?" Binta added.

"Let's find out," Simend said. There was the sound of a popping cork and the clink of glass on glass. "Nope. Definitely more alcoholic than sweet now. Still good though, and we can afford to be tipsy for the show."

"I don't know," Edric said. "You picked a pretty heavy show."

"Do you really have the archive of the Meleko Players doing Troianus?" Binta asked. "I thought it was lost."

Simend returned with a platter of palm wine, bread, and figs, wearing only the same shendyt and necklace he'd worn in the archive. Binta and Edric pulled their hands away from each other. A quick flick of his ears let Edric know the jackal had noticed. "It wasn't lost," Simend said. "It was gifted."

"A very Italian selection to match our show," Binta noted, swirling one of the glasses of palm wine. "I approve."

"Gifted?" Edric asked. He sipped his own glass of wine. "Or stolen?"

"Gifted," Simend insisted. "In payment for the projector they use for special effects these days."

The jackal removed an Astral ball from the projector then headed for the shelf holding his sizable collection of archives. Most of the platinum and crystal spheres were on prominent display, each nestled in a well-cushioned and carefully-labeled receptacle. Below were several locked containers that held yet more. It was good that Simend kept his archives meticulously sorted and secured, because Edric knew full well that there were more than a few archives locked away in those containers that should not be shared in polite company. Archives far spicier than the one he'd watched with Binta just now.

"Do they know they gifted it?" Edric asked, and Binta giggled.

"You ask a lot of questions. Ah, here it is," Simend said, pulling a polished metal sphere from its labeled bed. "Here is the gifted Troianus in question." The crystalline lights in the room dimmed again when Simend slotted the archive into the projector and activated the playback. The jackal hopped over the back of the sofa to take his seat just as the show began.

Edric was smiling down at Binta as it started, taking in every inch of her. Her mouth, her breasts, her hips. The skirt with nothing underneath it. As such, he noticed immediately when her lips parted and her eyes widened in horror, coming just an instant before he heard the sounds of Simend grunting and the slapping of flesh on flesh and his own voice crying "Deeper, Sim!" when Simend threw himself backwards over the sofa and slapped the archive back out of the projector.

None of them moved as the lights came back up, Edric and Binta frozen on the sofa and Simend silent on the floor behind it. There was not even the sound of a breath in the room. Edric kept his eyes locked on the side of Binta's face, willing her to laugh, willing her to brush it off, willing her to not have seen what he knew she had seen. He knew exactly which archive it was that Simend had played. He could clearly remember the night he and Simend had recorded it, remember the thrusting, the stroking, the tugging until there was no space left in him for memory.

But Binta refused to look at him. Refused to tell him it was okay. Refused to say so much as a word to him. Just as his former partners had done when they'd discovered he was not the dominant partner they thought he was. When they discovered he preferred being the passive partner. That he was weak. Unmanly. He had lost two already, two women too many, and now he was going to lose a third. It didn't matter that he and Binta had agreed that they could sleep with others while they were apart. It only mattered that Simend had been on top.

Edric's stomach lurched, and he clasped his hands to his belly. "I'm going to throw up," he groaned. He raced for the door and barely got the Astral portal open before he spewed breakfast and palm wine all over the dirt beside the entrance to Simend's home. He groaned between ragged breaths. He needed to get back into the water. He hadn't been swimming since he and Simend had boarded the ship back at the Isle of Dogs, and his stomach couldn't handle stress like this when he was so dried out. He'd been so excited to get back to Binta that he'd skipped his normal homecoming dip in the ocean.

Binta! She'd seen! He fought against the second round his stomach was threatening to send upwards, but it was a losing battle. He fell to his knees and moaned once the retching subsided again, bracing himself against the doorframe. She was going to leave him. He couldn't stand to lose her, but how could he contest what she'd seen? It was real, faithfully and accurately archived for any to see. What could he do in the face of such incontrovertible proof that he was not the dominant partner in his relationship with Simend? That he loved the feeling of having that jackal's—

"Edric?" Binta asked from the door. "Are you alright?"

"It was just the once. As a present for Sim. That's why we recorded it. So he could remember since it's something we never do. Because I'm always on top." The lies poured effortlessly from him, without thought or hesitation. "But we'd just finished a job, and he'd killed the target and recovered the symbiote almost entirely by himself, and that's what he wanted to make up for how little I'd done. And you know how Sim can be, so I said yes. Just the once. But it was awful. I hated it."

Binta was silent for several seconds. He trembled against the doorframe. He couldn't look at her. "I do know how Sim can be," she said at last. "But it looked like you were enjoying yourself."

"No," he lied again. "You didn't see enough of it. Sim got off, sure, but not me. I was trying. I really tried for Sim, you know? Since it was for him. But I couldn't. Being on the bottom isn't for me. I can't even stand to see myself like that." Somehow, knowing that last part, at least, to be entirely true made the lies that preceded it finally feel awful. He couldn't stand to be upright any longer. He slipped from the doorframe and collapsed to his side in the doorway. He hugged one of Binta's legs, pressing his face against her shin. He couldn't look her in the eye. "Please," he whispered. He didn't know what more he could say, so he said it again. "Please…"

"You know I love you, right, Ed?" she asked.

"I love you too, Bea," he whimpered. He didn't want to cry too. Crying would do nothing to help the manly image he was trying to project.

She sighed and crouched down beside him. Her change in position let Edric see straight up her skirt. His stomach turned a loop with the view. He really couldn't handle excitement like this right now, good or bad. She held out a hand towards him, palm facing forward. He let go of her leg and joined his hand with hers. Their fingers interlocked. It was a familiar gesture, one they used to remind each other of their bond. Their connection. Their love.

"I'm going to head home," she said. She pulled her hand loose and stood back up, and Edric, not for the first time, cursed the fin on the back of his head that prevented him from lying flat on his back. He really wanted to keep looking up her skirt. "Simend said he needed your help with something, so I'll see you there once you're done. And make sure you take a swim first. You're obviously not well."

"Yes, Bea," he said. "I'll see you later tonight." He watched her legs as she walked away. He liked her legs, both the parts he could see and the important section that was hidden beneath her short skirt. He liked the sway of her hips and the swishing of her tufted tail as she moved. She was leaving, but she hadn't left him, and he loved her all the more for it.

Once she was out of sight and past what he judged to be her earshot, he rolled around enough to glare at Simend from where he lay. The jackal was staring at his shelf of archives, his ears back and his tail tucked. "I trusted you," Edric growled.

Simend flinched, and his hands balled into fists at his side. "I know," he said. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry! You know I wouldn't have shown her that on purpose, right? I know how important it is to you to keep that secret from everybody. Even your lover."

"Especially Binta," Edric clarified. He rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled back through the door, letting it slide shut behind him. He sat down on the floor and leaned against the portal, his head turned to the side to not crush his fin. "She can't find out, Sim. She'd leave me in a heartbeat."

"Would she though?" Simend asked, glancing at Edric over his shoulder. "You two seem to love each other quite a lot."

"Of course she would!" Edric said. "Just like the others. What woman would want to be a man who likes getting fucked?"

"I never had much of a problem."

"And how long have any of your relationships lasted?" Edric asked. "Two nights?"

Simend's ears flicked. "You mean other than with you?" he asked.

Edric groaned. "You know what I mean. We're not in a relationship. We just have fun together sometimes."

"Right," said Simend. "Then three nights, thank you. I don't see the point of serious relationships with people I hardly ever see. We're gone more often than we're here."

"I can't live like that, Sim," Edric told him. "I need somebody special."

"And you have that, and I'm happy for you," Simend said.

"But I won't have that if Binta thinks I'm some passive cock sleeve!" Edric yelled. He pushed himself to his feet and stomped towards Simend and the archives. "How many of the others of us do you still have?"

"All of them," Simend said. "I like them, Ed."

"Get rid of them."

"No." Simend snarled at him, fangs bared. "I'll make sure they're locked up again, but I'm not getting rid of them."

Edric bared his teeth right back, but he sighed and shook his head. They were good archives, after all. Simend wasn't wrong. "Fine. What did you need help with?"

"This," Simend said. He tapped an empty receptacle.

Edric's stomach dropped again. "One's missing?" he asked.

Simend nodded. "And they're out of order, so I have no idea what's on it."

"Oceanlord have mercy," Edric groaned, pressing his hands against his belly. "How did you lose it? Nobody else can even get in here."

"Somebody can," Simend growled.

Edric's stomach churned again, and he let himself slip to the floor, lying on his belly and clutching his fin. Their boss could get in, and the Sage of Meleko was not above blackmail. "We have to go report the theft," Edric mumbled. "Now."

Simend growled again and shook his head. "I don't like it," he said. "There are a lot of things in here I'd rather people not see, and I'd like to not go into a meeting with Kamissa not knowing what she took. But you're right. We have to go now."

"I am, yes," Edric said, not getting up off the floor. "But what do you think she took? I can't imagine anything in here shows anything you're ashamed of."

Simend glanced down at Edric for barely a second, his ears low and tail tucked again. But then the dancer shook himself and put his brave face back on. "Let's hope it's just the Troianus," he said.