You know I can’t sleep when there’s something that needs to be done.

Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Bird Harem
Current Date: March 13, 4024

Character: Dmitry Utkin
Race: Demon – Sex
Age: 40, physically about 22
Current residence: Red Belt Asteroid
 

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Usually, as far as sleep is concerned, I never have any issues settling down and falling asleep. I’m comfortable enough in my own skin and with my own pettiness that nothing has ever managed to keep me awake for any real reason. If given a chance, I’m sure that there are certain clients that I’d be more than fine falling asleep on while they’re doing whatever it is they think they’re the best at.

Not that I’ve done it, I’ve been here long enough to know better than to piss off a paying client. At least, the ones that still follow the rules and don’t cause any issues. Again, I have no issues of my own being a petty bitch to a client that deserves it more than just a little. There isn’t a whole lot of them, surprisingly, but there has been a handful or two over the years. I was happy to be more than a little petty with them once I was cleared for that much.

I’m even more of a petty bitch when it’s my time to be out and about and people who recognize us from the Bird House try to sweet talk us into a little something off the books. No, sweetheart, even if you pay me while you don’t have an appointment with me, the most you’re going to get is a rusty pole or one of those citrus fruits that some gross folks just seem to love to use as a replacement for women. I don’t do shit while I’m off the clock and your version of sweet-talking has nothing sweet going for it. So sure, if you tell me to meet up with you behind that corner, I’ll tell you to go on right ahead and then snag the nearest bulky guy around and tell them a sweet lil’ thing is waiting for them where you are.

Have fun with that.

On the frustrating topic of sleep, however, that thing’s been a little elusive lately. I don’t know if it’s because they’ve triggered the change in seasons earlier than usual, or if it’s hay fever or something else—that thing is bullcrap, let me tell you, it never was an issue until they decided that the belt needed seasons other than comfortably warm all the time—but now, I can’t fall asleep without making sure that half a dozen things are done and completed. Then and only then will my mind sort of mostly let go.

Anyone out there stating that karma’s a petty one and that I deserve what I’m getting, I’ll just shrug away at you and point out that karma is for the people that believe in it and it’s not my cup of tea. Which, I used to be able to drink a cup before settling to sleep every night and now, if I do that, it’s like there’s more caffeine in there than anything else and I can’t even manage that. It’ll keep me awake longer than anything else ever has.

I’ve looked at the ingredients and nothing in there has changed, not since the last time we’ve bought them and I’m one of the few ones who do drink the stuff and I would have known if they’d switched it to something else. I’m getting to the point where I’m about to ask for a bit more free time so I can make the trip out of the red district to see about getting some tea put together just for me. I haven’t gone to him in years, a couple of decades really, and I don’t even know if he’s still around. He’s not that far off, just out beyond the district.

It’s not like I can get someone to wear me out but good in ways that are usually fairly pleasurable; I get more than my share of that during my shifts and that doesn’t wear me out, it wakes me up because that’s just part of the deal with my make and that of the others. I don’t need it to survive but I certainly do appreciate every second of it, even when it’s slightly mediocre. Having more sex is not going to help me fall asleep any easier and I don’t know of any other thing I could turn to that would help me as far as that subject goes.

If nothing else, I suppose that I’ll ask the others to see if they have anything they might be tempted to share with me to help me get some sleep. At this point, it hasn’t become a nuisance yet, but it’s not all that far off. I can do my job just fine even if I don’t have enough sleep, but I’d still rather not be struggling with the idea that I’m turning into one of these soulless man-eaters that I don’t know ever existed beyond comic books that came from that old planet that I don’t know is even inhabited anymore. Earth, I think it was.

Final Word Count: 834

So many sides of the story to keep up with and I’m the only person everyone’s talking to. It’s overwhelming.

 
Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Bird Harem
Characters: Dmitry Utkin
Race: Demon – Sex
Age: 38, physically about 22
Current residence: Red Belt Asteroid
Final Word Count: 795 words
 

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We don’t always get along. Usually, we do. But I’m not going to lie and claim that we live a perfect little life where everything is rosy and pink.

For one thing, we’re prostitutes.

For another, we’re of a breed of demon that loves and craves sex, though we don’t need it to survive like those books of old that speak of things like incubus and succubus. I’ve read those books. I was read those books to when I was younger because my parents thought that they would be useful to me as I grew up. Good job there, parents. I’m sure you wanted nothing more than to ensure I had a good life, and I knew what to expect in the long run and I’m fairly certain that it’s not because of that, that I landed here but that’s something else entirely.

Now, I’ve been called a few different things while I was here. The others are all my friends, I won’t deny that fact but when you spend your whole life, so to speak, stuck inside the same big house with all the same people, and you share your two weekend days always with the same two people—no one says you can’t switch with someone else now and again but it’s one of those things, we’ve been talking about being just completely closed possible two nights of the week—there are times when some tension will arise and, I’m not going to lie, I can get petty at times.

It’s in my nature. You could say it’s in all of our nature but it’s very much so in mine. I’m a petty bitch and I know it. You’ll just have to deal with it.

So, you can consider me rather surprised when there was a bit of an issue between our two sweetest boys. Normally, they’d have talked to anyone but me; I’m not good at advice, I did just mention I was petty and that’s what I tend to turn to if you give me even just a small chance to do things my way.

Instead, I sat down, I listened to the sides of the story and, beyond their own two, eventually almost everyone else added their sides to things and, I’m not going to lie, at one point I was pretty damned confused about things. There were so many sides to this story, and they all had decided to somehow only talk to me. Why confide in me? I still don’t know at this point.

It was overwhelming and I don’t do overwhelming, not very much. I did, eventually, manage to just get everyone the hell together one early afternoon before we were all due to work and everything got straightened out. It was a very, very strange moment in my life, I’m not going to lie. I was happy that everything had worked out, even if the end solution didn’t involve pettiness.

Can’t always win that one, I know. I also happen to think that it wouldn’t really have worked in anyone’s favour if we’d opted for petty, even if it had been the simpler solution. At least, as far as I’m concerned it would have been the simpler solution.

In the end, it did turn out that it was all just one big misunderstanding. I can’t stay I blame either of them for it. The details that got lost in the middle of it all were the one reason why everything did make sense in the end and those details were scattered between all parties.

Even now, when I think about it, I’m not even sure I understand how it all happened or why everyone ended up wanting to talk to me about it all in the end.

Not that it matters, does it? Things were fixed, things got better, everyone was happy to get it all back under some sort of understanding but that one thing that did amuse me, in the end, was that none of them really could explain why they’d come to me to talk about it all. That’s the one thing that still makes me shake my head. I assume that it’s because I share a weekend with both of them. One on my first day off, the other on my second. I don’t know how else to really look at this situation other than this way.

We’re strange people. We’re friends, we get along, but there will be days when we just don’t, and I think that this is all there really is to it. I think our lives would be very, very boring if we all were to get along perfectly well but I think I could do without being that go-to person for issues like these, too.

I don’t think I can encourage this kind of reckless behaviour, but at least it’s you and not me.

 
Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Bird Harem
Characters: Dmitry Utkin
Race: Demon – Sex
Age: 36, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 658 words
 

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Clients often have all kinds of odd stories to tell you if you’re willing to listen. At least, the clients who seem to be willing to think that we are more than simply warm bodies that they can possess for the half-hour to hour they have paid for. You would be surprised to know how many people actually treat us like real people and not simply like things. There are more ‘good’ people than there are ‘bad’, but I suppose that the definition of either is up to the person, in the end. I’m not going to deny that.

To me, a good person might just be using me for my body, but they’ll not be in a relationship, I won’t be that little extra on the side. Since that discussion with Peacock last time about leaving married couples out of our little ‘break up’ game, things have calmed down a little. Yes, we still do both keep track, but only of those who have been in a relationship for less than six months. I know he’s targeted couples that have been together longer than that but we’ve both left married couples alone and, though it’s odd to admit, we’ve had clients whose significant others had sent them to us once or twice, those were strange times.

I’m not going to lie, though; Sal wasn’t very happy with neither me nor Peacock when he first learned about this little game-slash-bet we have going on. We don’t go out of our way to hurt these people, but we both feel that if you are in a relationship with someone, you certainly shouldn’t be sleeping around with a prostitute, even if your current significant other isn’t open to having sex yet.

He said that he couldn’t encourage the kind of reckless behaviour—I don’t blame him, it had backfired terribly years ago but that had also been a married couple that had been split up—but that so long as we played by the basic rules of human decency, he would let it slide. He made it clear that if he were in our shoes, he wouldn’t be doing any of it but since he wasn’t, he couldn’t really force us to stop.

I came to appreciate him a little more on that particular day. He made it clear that he understood why we were doing what we were. While we’re partially doing it because couples shouldn’t stray from one another, we’re essentially doing it because there’s nothing else much for us to do. We can’t go outside unless we’re on shopping duty and, lately, with the fights going on everywhere on the belt, our groceries have been getting delivered, and there’s only so much we can do inside, so we have to find means to entertain ourselves.

If you were permanently locked in your own home, I think you’d try to find means to keep your mind intact. There are only so many books to be read—though there are always new ones, I know—there are only so many games you can play, so many things you can knit, or make, and so many hours you can spend sleeping. The mind and body need distractions and they are not always easy to find.

So sure, I might be a slightly nosy bird but it’s for a good cause. Of course, not every single client is willing to open up about their personal lives and it’s only the repeat clients we really focus on but we do what we must and so far, it hasn’t really created any issues, beyond the single one from years ago that took a year to resolve. That was the biggest and only issue we’ve had and we changed our rules after that, it’s for the best.

As long as I can pleasure my clients, who cares if I’m extracting information from them as I do it?

Ha! I’ve split up two more couples than you have. I’m in the lead.

 
Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Bird Harem
Characters: Dmitry Utkins
Race: Demon – Sex
Age: 35, physically about 22
Final Word Count: 588 words
 

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“You’re keeping track?” His words are low, demure but Swan knows better. He smirks a little at his companion. Peacock chuckles softly but shakes his head, offering a small shrug in answer. The demure look still remains on his face but it is fading little by little as he looks off into the distance.

“It’s just one of those things, Swan. We both knew that you weren’t going to stay in the lead very long at this game. I do better at sliding right in between them than you do.” His words are honey-sweet and he smirks softly as Swan rolls his eyes and leans back in his chair.

He knows it’s just a game, one he doesn’t even take all that seriously. Peacock had brought it up some years ago and most had stated they didn’t want to participate in such an ugly game. Swan couldn’t blame them. When you looked at it from that angle, the idea of splitting up couples was bad but they were whores. These people came to sleep with them and not all of them were sweet little angels, not all of them weren’t seeing someone else while they came to have a little bed fun with the sex workers, so what harm was there to being honest to those significant others that were being cheated on?

Of course, as it were, Peacock took the game a little more seriously than he should have and Swan wished they’d set up some ground rules. It was true that the other had split up more couples but there was also the fact that a lot of the couples he’d split up had been married for a long time and their visitors had only sought a little excitement.

When it came to young couples, Swan had no qualms about letting the partner be aware of what their significant other was doing behind their back but married couples were something else entirely. The first and last time he’d witnessed one such couple be drug through the mud, they’d divorced but the man had tried to sue their little prostitution house because he blamed them for the divorce. His ex-wife had kept everything left him with very little. It had required extra security for almost a full year until the man had given up and a few people paid to get him to shut up.

It hadn’t been pretty.

Swan shook off the memory and looked back to Peacock a moment, his head shaken with a low sigh. “I can understand why you seem to want to keep playing this little game of ours but I think we should stop. At least…” he paused, “with the married couples we should stop. Remember what happened with Lady Penelope’s husband… well ex-husband.”

The way Peacock’s face twists into a mask of unhappiness, Swan knows he’s made a valid point. That had been an ugly time in their lives and they’d lost a lot of good customers because of the one man. They’d both been partially shunned from their peers because the others had not wanted to know which of the two had gotten the ball going. Swan had been more than a little frustrated by the whole ordeal and Peacock had been less than pleased as well. They’d both had been nearly sent off to another colony and he knows that this would have been a very bitter end.

“All right. I suppose we can keep it to the fresh-pair cheaters. It’ll be as interesting.”

But why would you have them?

Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Bird Harem
Characters: Dmitry Utkin
Race: Demon – Sex
Age: 34, physically about 22
Final Word Count: # words

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There usually is that sort of little look in his eyes when I know he’s going to start asking questions. Normally, I wouldn’t mind. Right this very moment though, I seriously don’t feel like answering any of them. He asked them when he came last week, he asked when he came three days ago and I just know he’s going to ask now and the answer I have for him is the same as it’s been every time he asks and I’m about to turn to Sal for a way to get this situation resolved because it’s starting to seriously annoy me.

It’s not even that he asks why I have them. That’s not the problem. He asks me why I would have them at all, why would I need them, why would they be in my possession, why do I deserve, in a way, to have them. Some of the other Birds have tried to tell me that I’m reading too deeply into the whole situation but I know I’m not. This particular client has always been that way. It’s frustrating in a way, really. I feel like I somehow don’t deserve to have these things and yet, I bought them with my own money, they’re mine, whether or not anyone believes I deserve them or not is not my problem.

So why does he keep on asking? Why do his words make me feel like I’m somehow so much below him? I know I’m a whore. I’m paid to have sex with people but I’m not undignified about it and it doesn’t make me any worse off an individual than any other. At least I work in a proper establishment, we have rules and regulations, we are on the higher end of the pay grade, and we’re good and clean. I know that some of the whores who do the streets of the Red Belt don’t have a choice, they just don’t have a place to call him so they offer sex to manage some bare food and essentials, I’m not saying they’re any less integral individuals than I am, but that’s the point.

I want to think that everyone is equal, even the idiots who have to come to us to pay for sex—I don’t mind them much. Or at least, I don’t mind the ones who come to us who are unattached, but so many of our clients are married, some are just engaged, some are in bad relationships and these aren’t quite so unsavoury but the married men who come to us just make me sad. I don’t care if you married for money, that was your own choice, don’t cheat on your spouse, it’s disgraceful.

I think that might also be one of the reasons why I have issues with this particular client currently doing his best to alienate me and his right to visit me by asking me that one question lately. He’s married; this is his second marriage, actually. He’s been visiting for about six years at this point. His wife is pretty, I’ve seen her photos in his wallet, he’s shown them to me, he talks about her a lot. Like he’s proud to show her off but he doesn’t somehow feel like the sex is enough? Though the things he likes would require her to wear a harness, for one thing. I don’t know if he’s brought it up to her or not and if she refused, if he has, but I can’t care anymore, it’s just too frustrating, I hate cheaters.

Heartfelt Apology

Timeline/World: Darkness of Space – Bird Harem
Characters: Dmitry Utkin aka Swan
Race: Demon – sex
Age: 33
Final Word Count: 711 words

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It hadn’t happened since Sal had come to take care of them and Dmitry was more than glad for it. Though thinking of it as Sal coming to take care of them wasn’t quite the truth. Their establishment had been used as a due payment on some sort of exchange, not a single one of them had had a say on it. The sad part of it all was that it had done them good.

A new keeper could have meant so many different things, their old one hadn’t cared much for them and they’d ran the establishment more or less on their own but with Sal there with them, they had someone who now looked up for them, who had set better rules for clients and who took care of their aches and pains when some of these clients were a little too rough with them, despite the rules.

One such client had come to him recently, having been told, wrongly so, that theirs was an establishment mostly filled with androids, they were built to better handle the rougher clients, could take the abuse, even if they looked like anyone else and it was near impossible to tell they were androids to begin with. The new synthetic skins were almost more perfect than the real deal.

This one client however, Swan cringed somewhat just thinking back about the demands that had been made, about the roughness of the treatment, the begged words that had spilled out of his lips to please stop as the man had slapped him around.

It was when Macaw barged into the room and pulled the man off by his neck, that things changed. Though they perhaps did not change instantly but Swan was able to scramble away, huddle and hide in his bathroom until the man was brought to their keeper to explain himself and apologize.

Of course, that apology was meant for the pale whore he had beaten up but it had been decided it was for the best that he not be allowed anywhere near Swan any time soon, if ever again.

With bruises but no broken bone, Swan allowed himself a few days, more or less ordered to by Sal, without clients, so he could heal and no worry his regulars who were somewhat dismayed to learn that their appointment had been changed on the schedule.

It was two weeks later, while Swan, accompanied by Macaw for companionship more than anything else, that the young man who had beaten him crossed their paths. The man’s gaze was kept low, his voice soft and Swan let Macaw know that he felt he could at least give the man a few moment to explain himself, he held no ill will.

“It was a dare.” The young man’s words were low, a little rough and he rubbed a hand over his throat, as though he had been mishandled himself and Swan quirked a brow to his much taller companion, earning a shrug from dark shoulders.

“Go on.” Swan offered no comforting words, no comforting gestures, he only wanted to hear what the man had to say before they went on their way to finish their food shopping.

“It was a dare, they told me the place had nothing but androids and that I would have to prove myself, that I’d just have to rough you up and then just take what I wanted, take a photo and show myself out. I didn’t know, I swear. I am just so absolutely sorry. I have learned my lesson and I will not bother you again but I wanted to tell you this myself and not let this be unresolved.”

A half-smile found Swan’s lips and he shook his head, shrugging somewhat. “Accepting dares of the sort, when it comes to the harm of others, isn’t right, even if the one you had been with had been an android, they deserve the same respect.”

Ducking his head, the man nodded somewhat and waited just a moment more before he was on his way, gone back to wherever he had first come from and Swan merely breathed a soft sigh, watching him a moment more before he turned back to the market.

He just wanted to go back home.