New blog, still building

Faro tries to make this about sexual favors along the way and Tev really does not want people he helps/works with feel the need to give back like that (been there themselves), so they turn her down and after Faro has gotten over the annoyance of losing her touch, they actually have a good time chatting and playing pazaak. Tev is telling increasingly convoluted but actually funny stories. Faro tries to be the encouraging listener that laughs at the right times (not that that's hard in this case), but Tev is persistent with asking about her own stories, so she eventually switches tactics and cobbles together her own tall tales and finds herself enjoying Tev’s reaction to them. She realizes that Tev is an attentive and shrewd listener, and that she has to watch herself to not blow her cover story, and the heightened difficulty just makes this more fun for her. There’s also some mix of admiration and envy on Faro’s part about Tev’s lifestyle. She can’t really name it at that point, but their apparent independence makes her feel like she’s outside a shopping window with her hand on the glass. And Tev, oh they know not to trust her, but she's fun, and not to mention gorgeous, and they will keep playing with fire. (yes, confident women who are smarter than them and who could kill them are their weakness).

Of course their mission ends in chaos and a fight where Tev shoots first and Faro dramatically absconds with the thing they both wanted and Tev lies in the dust and curses her (fake) name. Then they blow a kiss to the stars for her and sigh longingly. What a wamon…

Faro doesn’t forget Tev either, she admits having had enjoyed her time with them. So she starts to make them one of her little side-projects she does in her ‘free-time’ (as you do), infiltrating Port Nowhere and observing them in their natural habitat, making such a more detailed profile in her head than whatever Intelligence has on them (she never writes it down). Faro eventually gets found out by them, because she dared to play pazaak at the same table as them and Tev recognizes her lovely hands, because they always pay attention to everyone’s hands, where they are, what they are doing, and he has stared at her hands way too much to not recognize them now, even though Faro knows how to control her tics, but what tipped them off was the oh-so-slight tremors that they had noticed before and that overcame her at times.

So Tev confronts her in private, and Faro has a knife to their throat, angry at herself for being this sloppy, and there’s the question thrown in between them of “Why did you come?”. And they know they don’t really want to fight the other, and they notice that in the other. But they do want to do something else.

Faro and Tev become acquaintances who have casual sex with each other. Their relationship pre-timeskip is very much about the sex they have together. Faro comes to appreciate how Tev is really chill about what they consider good and proper sex to be about. Like he showed her his three drawers full of fancily arrayed dildos of all shapes and sizes (he shows this to all of his prospective sexual partners, a regular hit) but mostly, they end up having sex with clothes on, or one watching the other masturbate, and just don’t do a lot of (for the lack of a better word) ‘traditional’ sexual practices. Faro is in her ‘I can have sex the way I like it’ era and really it kinda starts with Tev. And Tev just has a lot of love to give, and they really like seeing their partner have fun, so they are usually really down with her ideas, in addition to having a few of their own that they present to her like precious shells collected for her pleasure. At the end of the day, Tev is just happy with her body on top of theirs, crushing them into the mattress (Faro is both taller and heavier than them). Faro is like Ok and positions herself so Tev’s face is completely smothered by her boobs and she just hears a muffled happy sigh beneath them, and she’s chilling there, checking her mails (“I once killed a man like that.” – “mmffhgh? Really??” – “No. …But I could have.”)

They don’t do this often, because they lead different lives with different responsibilities. Tev doesn’t even have a means to contact Faro, it’s always her who pops up, Tev just accepted that this is how they roll. And it’s not like they’re exclusive, especially Tev has their short-time lovers and his on-off thing with Risha (which is a whole other thing in itself. I need to map it out, but those two have a long while to find out how they want to work, Risha changes her mind a few times on whether she is okay with the non-monogamy, and Tev, as much as they love Risha, does not want to do the exclusivity, they tried for a while but they weren’t happy. The thing about both of them is that they love the business they both built up and always find common ground with that).

SoR times even has Faro and Tev working together, and Tev is finally seeing what he suspected for all these years (that she is indeed an active agent of the Empire), and it’s not that he’s completely offended but it brings a bit of a different drive into their relationship, and they are among others and have a job to do, so their past thing is put on ice. Faro is very different there, much more on guard, less outgoing and open (it’s bc of the Sith and the SIS guy). And eventually Faro has her unwise thing with Lana (she’s not two-timing that), and then she disappears completely from all radars, and Tev doesn’t hear from her for three to four years.

Faro comes knocking again eventually, this time with Theron in tow, both of them trying to recruit Tev to an alliance against the current hegemony. Tev isn’t eager, they don’t want to become the target of Zakuul, so they make the two spies jump through several hoops (professional favors). Still, they are really glad to see her, and even though they affect to turn down their alliance, Faro sees right through them, and thinks that they are sufficiently tempted to risk it, which is true. (one day, I'll need to fic this, it's a fun scene, with Tev in his kingpin element and the two spies coordinating their efforts in trying to turn his deliberately difficult ass)

I’m also still in the process of mapping their relationship’s progression in the Alliance. Tev isn’t officially part of it, but they are a big anonymous investor, and help out occasionally for the clandestine stuff. Faro definitely knows about all of this. Their relationship is not about sex during kotfe/te (only what's some innuendos among friends I guess), but they work together and hang out together and enjoy building up their friendship and help each other navigate all the other relationships they are having or attempting to have during this time (or attempting NOT to have, re Faro with Qyrhu and Lana). They really are the two friends who bitch about others together, it’s really good for them, especially for Faro who tends to just bottle it up, and Tev never really talked about the at times difficult balance with Risha (except with Bowie, but it’s different with him) (he can talk about anything with Risha but. sometimes things pertaining them is harder). They just share a lot more about themselves than years before, where their private lives strictly stayed at the door. And eventually they start to have sex again, too. Why? They just felt like it again. Sex is a nice joint activity for them, in Faro’s case especially with Tev. They wouldn’t really see themselves as a couple doing conventional “couple things” like living together and prioritizing the other above the rest of their relationships (well, seeing as they are also in some loose poly with Theron and partly Qyrhu and partly Risha, that would not work anyway). But they wouldn’t want to miss out on each other for the world. I really need to think on how they would call what they are to each other, probably just very dependent on the situation whether they call each other friend or partner or just some asshole (affectionate).