Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” Roach assures—which doesn’t mean shit, considering it looks like someone had taken a machete to the side of Stede’s head. Izzy’s taken enough wounds to the head to know just how much one can bleed, to know that such a wound isn’t necessarily a death sentence… but there’s something about watching all of that blood come pouring out of someone he loves that makes him feel ill.

That, and the fact that it’s almost entirely his fault that Stede is here in the first place.

He says ‘almost’ only because he will maintain, until his dying breath, that none of this would’ve happened if the crew had just listened to him.

There was nothing fun about storms—and the next time the crew decided that they would rather sit around eating bloody scones and marmalade than do their actual fucking jobs, he was liable to anchor the entire lot of them. He could do a better job manning the ship by himself than the lot of them could combined, and that was horrifying—truly, truly horrifying.

Not nearly as horrifying as a barrel—which should have been secured (but Izzy had seen it, and the improperly tied rope that should have been securing it, far too late to stop it from sailing through the air with such terrific force it sent Stede clean through the rail and down, down, down into the tumultuous, inky depths below)—trying to kill his lover, but it’s up there. The fact that the blow had rendered Stede unconscious was an admittedly small consolation. It meant that he couldn’t feel the pain as Roach poked and prodded at his face with a pair of tweezers, attempting to remove all of the tiny, blood-soaked shards of wood from his wound. It also meant that, on top of everything else, he’d very nearly drowned—

Izzy sits at the foot of the bed, watching. His hair is starting to curl… just the tiniest bit, the occasional drop of water dripping down onto his nose or cheek and charting a course down the length of his face. Ed had had to wrestle him out of his clothes, and had left the sopping wet leather on the floor in a heap before disappearing to retrieve… something. Izzy’s certain that Ed told him, but… his brain feels fuzzy, like his entire head has been filled with cotton. It’s difficult to focus on anything other than the movement of Roach’s bloodstained fingers, on the soft plink as yet another sliver of bloodied wood is dropped into the little silver bowl that rests on their bedside table.

When Ed returns, it’s with something soft and fluffy in his hands. Some distant part of Izzy’s brain registers that it’s a robe—not one of Bonnet’s… or, at least, not one that Izzy had ever seen him wear. It’s softer than he deserves and somehow still manages to feel like sandpaper against his skin as Ed manhandles him into it. Ed’s talking again—Izzy feels the soft puffs of air against his cheek as he exhales, registers a slight ringing in his ears from words that that jumble themselves into pretty little knots inside of his head. And then there’s… pain, sharp and bright, as Ed’s fingers press into the sharp line of his jaw and force him to look away from Stede’s battered, broken body to—

“This isn’t your fault, Iz.” There’s an unmistakable finality in his tone, like he genuinely believes what it is that he’s saying and any attempts Izzy makes to argue with him will be dismissed with extreme prejudice. “It was an accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident.” Izzy croaks, “It was negligence. And had this been any other crew, weathering any other storm, you would’ve had the whole lot of them tied to the mast and flogged for it.” His throat hurts, like someone is taking a rake to his vocal cords. He supposes that that’s what happens when you inhale sea water attempting to prevent your unconscious lover from drowning—

Ed falters a little, “You can’t solve everything with violence, mate.” He doesn’t think that Izzy is actually advocating for him to flog the crew. On most days, he thinks that Izzy actually might come to tolerate them… On others, it feels like they’re never more than a handful of seconds away from Izzy screaming himself right into an aneurysm. “I’ll have a talk with them tomorrow, once we’ve all had a chance to cool off.”

Izzy sinks a bit further into the soft down of his robe, “If I get any cooler, I’m liable to freeze to death.”

A moment passes, and then Ed’s arms slowly wind around Izzy’s shoulders to draw him back into Ed’s chest. “Roach said that the… the shock might do that.” Roach hums in confirmation, while Izzy tries to figure out what in the hell he’d be going into shock over.

“I’m not the one that you should be worrying about right now.” Izzy says, his eyes flickering back to Stede’s bloodied face.

“Iz… You broke your fucking wrist.”

“And Stede’s head cracked open like a bloody egg. Between the two of us, it’s no fucking contest as to who’s worse off—”

“It’s not a contest. It shouldn’t be a contest.” Ed confirms, his voice rising in pitch ever so slightly before quieting at a look from Roach. “Look, between the two of you, you’re the only one I can do fuck-all for right now—”

“I don’t need—or want—your fucking help.” Izzy’s dismissal is immediate, biting. Ed just rolls his eyes.

“Men can die from broken bones, you know.” Izzy seems rather ambivalent toward the idea, which only makes Ed more upset. “Do I have to order you to let me look at your bloody wrist, Iz? For fucks’ sake, man, what would Stede think if he saw you moping about like this?”

Izzy doesn’t even hesitate, “Fuck, does my head hurt. That Izzy should’ve done a better job of making sure the ungrateful, utterly worthless imbeciles that I call a crew secured the deck—maybe then I wouldn’t have wood in my bloody head!”

Ed wrinkles his nose, “You know… you got the voice down, but I can’t help but feel like the anger is a bit… extreme.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Ed slides onto the bed behind Izzy, and Izzy’s head hits his chest with a dull thwap. He doesn’t reach for Izzy’s injured wrist (not just because he has a feeling that Izzy will yank it clean out of his hand the second his fingers curl around it, even if it means injuring himself further in the process—but also because Izzy is cuddling up against him, soft and sweet, and he’d come too close to losing him—to losing them both—that day to take that little sliver of comfort for granted), just presses feather-light kisses to the sopping wet crown of Izzy’s head as they watch Roach finish pulling all of the little slivers of wood out of Stede’s skin.

He wonders, briefly, if Roach will stitch him up… but he’s not surprised when the man opts not to. Most of Stede’s wounds are actually quite shallow—they’re not so much wounds as they are… particularly deep splinters, caused by particularly large slivers of wood. The main wound, however, is deep. Roach mentions a potential skull fracture, and Izzy tenses, stiff as a board, in his arms.

Stede makes a small sound of discomfort as fresh gauze is stretched out over the nastiest of his wounds, and a moment later—

Stede tries to speak, but abandons the efforts relatively soon thereafter when his throat rebels something fierce.

“Easy there, captain.” Roach abandons the half-placed bandages in favor of retrieving a cup of water from the bedside table. Sliding a hand behind Stede’s back to prop him up just far enough to prevent choking, he helps him to take a few small sips, “You can have more in a bit. Drink too much at once and you’re liable to upchuck all over your expensive linens.”

“T-Thank you, Roach.” His voice is scarce above a whisper, and even sustaining that seems to be causing him immense pain. “What… What happened to me? I feel like death.” Roach lowers him back down onto the bed to continue fussing with his bandages.

“There was a storm.” He says, matter-of-fact. “You took a nasty blow to the head and fell overboard.” He casts a sidelong glance in Izzy’s direction. Now that Stede is awake, Izzy seems determined to look anywhere and everywhere else—“Izzy saved you.”

Silence. Then, “Iggy saved me.” He repeats, like the idea is so ludicrous he doesn’t even need to make it a question. “You’re joking.”

Roach frowns, “I’m not. Izzy fucked himself up pretty bad pulling you up out of the water, and has been hovering at your bedside ever since.”

Ed’s fingers press into Izzy’s skin hard enough to bruise… and while ordinarily he’d find the pain to be deliciously grounding, right now it feels more like Ed is holding his head underwater and laughing, merrily, as he drowns. It feels like an eternity has passed since the last time that Stede had purposefully fucked up his name—Ed tries his damndest to hold back the anxiety that rises in him like the tide, filling every little nook and cranny until… he can’t breathe. He can’t fucking breathe. Because of course—of course—Stede will remember Roach and the rest of his little rag-tag crew; he’ll remember Blackbeard (because who could possibly forget him?), and Ivan, and Fang, and… Izzy.

He'll remember Izzy alright… but he’ll look at him like he’s looking at him now. Like he’s the same man who’d sold them out to the navy… the same man who’d awakened the kraken and… His foot throbs, the space where his pinky toe had been red and angry, the entire foot swollen to the point of constant discomfort. Because of course—of course—it’s not enough that he’s changed, that he’s better now. Life will just keep finding ways to epically fuck him over… so what’s the point in even trying? And he knows… he knows that that’s not fair. That Stede could’ve forgotten any number of things—the fact that he’d seemed to have forgotten that he liked… perhaps even loved… Izzy wasn’t some kind of personal slight.

But fuck… it certainly feels like one. And Izzy hates the fact that all that it takes is that purposeful mispronunciation of his fucking name to start the waterworks. He hadn’t cried when he’d broken his wrist so badly his hand was bent the wrong way, hadn’t cried when Roach had slipped a strip of leather between his teeth and told him to bite while he snapped the bones back into place—

But he’s crying now, like a motherfucking baby. And it’s all Ed can do to hold him just that little bit tighter as he whispers soft assurances into his hair—

Stede is up again—Roach has propped him up against the headboard now, so that he can get a better assessment of the man’s faculties. But as Roach continues to poke and prod him, it becomes ever more clear that Stede only has eyes for Ed and—“Ed, darling… what is Iggy doing in our room?”

Chapter Text

Ed is about to answer when he feels Izzy shift in his arms. Thanks to all of the excitement, it takes a moment for his brain to register the fact that Izzy is trying to leave—“Where the hell d’you think you’re going, Iz? Roach still needs to take another look at your wrist—”

“I’m leaving.” Izzy says, as if this should be obvious. And really, it should be. It’s clear that he’s not welcome in their room, not anymore. He’d only ever intended to stay until he could see with his own eyes that Stede was alive and well anyhow—and while his brain might be a little jumbled, he’s awake and semi-coherent, and really… that’s the bulk of the battle. “There’s work to be done on deck—”

Ed frowns, “And that work will still be there when your wrist isn’t the size of a bloody balloon.” His eyes flit to Izzy’s heavily bruised skin, “You can barely move your fingers without flinching. There’s nothing you can do on the deck that won’t risk further injury—”

It feels like there’re dozens of little insects crawling about underneath the surface of Izzy’s skin, “I-I… I need… I need to not be here right now.”

“Ed?” There’s Stede again, sounding even more confused than before. Izzy redoubles his efforts to get the hell out of dodge. “What’s going on?”

But Ed isn’t listening to him—all of his attention is focused on the squirming man that’s currently attempting to flee the space in-between his legs, “For fucks’ sake, Iz—it won’t kill you to sit still for two bloody minutes while…” He trails off, whatever else he’d been about to say catching in his throat the second he realizes that Izzy… is crying. “Iz… Fucking hell—”

“Is Iggy… crying?” Stede sounds horribly scandalized, and that just seems to make Izzy cry even harder. Ed looks on in horror, anger and concern coming together and causing his brain to short-circuit just long enough for Izzy to wrench himself out of his arms and—

“That’s not my fucking name!”

It’s not until the door to the captain’s quarters slams closed with enough force to send the tiny dish filled with blood-soaked wooden shards tumbling to the ground that Ed even registers the fact that Izzy had yelled. It’s clear from Stede’s expression that he hadn’t been expecting anything else, which is actually kind of devastating. Ed actually has to think—hard—in order to recall the last time that Izzy had yelled at Stede like that. Izzy’s distress is a dark, twisted thing—and Ed finds himself stuck between a rock and a hard place, forced to choose between a man who clearly expects him to stay by his side, as any dedicated lover should, and a man who most definitely shouldn’t be left alone right now.

It shouldn’t be a difficult choice, but it is—because while Ed will be the first to admit that he doesn’t know much about how the head works, he understands that injuries to the head that result in memory loss can be… tricky. He’s not exactly sure what it is that Stede remembers—he seems able to recognize everyone just fine, but that whole ‘Iggy’ bit is… concerning. Not just because it means there’s a not-insignificant chance that Stede has forgotten their entire relationship with Izzy, but also… Izzy’s changed, significantly, since the first time he and Stede had met—and Ed knows just how important it is to him that Stede saw his efforts to be… softer… for what they were.

Izzy cherished any and all scraps of validation he received, like a man in the desert did water. If he was being good, doing good, then he wanted to know. And Stede… ordinarily, Stede never had a problem waxing poetic about all of the progress that Izzy had made since they’d first gotten together. Stede liked to remind him that they were all works-in-progress—and any progress was good progress, no matter how small.

The shift back to ‘Iggy,’ even if it wasn’t intentional… it felt like they’d taken one step forward and ten steps back.

…If Ed leaves to chase after Izzy, that’s liable to cause Stede no small amount of distress—because, if he’s right about the current state of Stede’s memories, then Ed is supposed to be proper mad at Izzy right now. Izzy’s obvious state of distress aside, there’d be no reason for him to go chasing after Izzy when he could just as easily crawl into bed alongside his lover and hold him while his head throbs and his body aches from his uncomfortably close brush with death. But if he doesn’t chase after Izzy, well… he doesn’t want to say, doesn’t want to worry something into existence that he doesn’t actually need to be concerned about. After all, it’s been… he wants to say that it’s been over a year since Izzy had last taken a blade to his skin, but that’s not actually true. He’d been trying so very hard to curb his self-destructive urges—to the point where he’d even tried to use some of the self-help techniques that Stede had shown him, to varying degrees of success.

And when all else fails, Ed is there to piece Izzy’s broken pieces back together… to talk to him until life comes back into Izzy’s dull blue eyes.

Izzy would do the same for him. Hell, Izzy has done the same for him.

Before Stede came along, Izzy was always the one putting Ed back together… even if it meant letting himself fall apart in the process.

When it becomes clear that Ed has no intention of responding to Stede’s question (or, rather, has no idea how he’s meant to answer), Roach turns to Ed and says, “Captain, if I could have a word… in the hall?” He none-too-subtly jerks his head in the direction of the door that Izzy had slammed what felt like a lifetime ago. Ed swallows hard, his throat and mouth suddenly horrifically dry.

“Of course, mate.” He tries for a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. The longer he spends talking with Roach, the longer he delays his decision about whether to stay with Stede or to follow Izzy. And while Ed will be the first to admit that the thought of confronting either one of them fills him with unspeakable dread, the idea of further prolonging the inevitable just makes him incredibly nervous—

Ed heads out of the room first, allowing Roach a few seconds to finish securing the bandages to the side of Stede’s face and to wash the blood off of his hands before joining him. He paces while he waits, attempting to keep his footfalls as quiet as possible so as to see whether or not he can hear Izzy barking orders all the way on deck. It’s a bit of a long-shot, he knows—even Izzy isn’t that loud—but he cannot help but feel like it would be comforting to have just that little bit of reassurance. …The ship is unbearably silent, the only noise coming from the waves lapping lightly against the hull. Silence is never good, whenever Izzy’s involved—

The door to the captain’s quarters opens and closes near silently, and Ed stops pacing (when had he started pacing?) to look Roach in the eye.

“Well?” He asks. There’s no malice in his tone, no heat—just the sort of bone-deep exhaustion that stems from having the two loves of your life sustain serious, potentially life-threatening injuries right before your eyes and not being able to do a damned thing about it.

Roach frowns, “It’s like I told Izzy—the wound isn’t nearly as bad as all of the blood would make it seem.” Ed can only imagine how deeply reassured Izzy must’ve been to hear it. “He’ll need someone to stay with him for the next twelve hours or so, to wake him every two hours and to check on his bandages. They shouldn’t need to be changed before tomorrow morning, but it never hurts to be safe—”

“What about Izzy?” Ed interjects, as if Roach is capable of reading his mind and understanding what in the hell A has to do with Z.

“What about Izzy?” It’s immediately apparent that they’re on two very different wavelengths here.

His first instinct is to tell him that he needs someone with him—but he knows that that will incur any number of awkward, uncomfortable follow-up questions. Questions that Izzy most definitely wouldn’t want him to answer. He’d gone to great lengths to hide the truth from everyone, including Stede, “He, uh… He’ll need someone to follow-up with him about his wrist. And to… to make sure there’s no more water in his lungs.”

“I’ll check in on him.” Roach says, as if he’d been under the impression that Ed understood that this was the plan all along. “But, uh… speaking of Izzy. It might be best if the two of you… cool it around Stede for a while. He doesn’t remember that the three of you are together, so he’s liable to interpret any romantic overtures between the two of you as, well… cheating.”

“That… hardly seems fair to Izzy.” It’s not fair, not at all. It means that Izzy has the great misfortune of being stuck on the outside looking in while Stede and Ed enjoy one another’s company, which had been exactly what’d caused Izzy to lash out in the first place.

“Look,” Roach glances back toward the door, his voice dropping to a whisper, “I’m not saying the two of you can’t still… be together. Just… not in front of Stede. Or anywhere that Stede has a chance of finding you.”

Which sounds an awful lot like Roach is advocating for—“You mean Iz and I should sneak around behind Stede’s back.”

Roach blanches a little, “That’s not what I said.” But it is—it definitely is—and that’s the problem. It’s a problem because, much as he hates to admit it, Roach is right. If Stede doesn’t know—doesn’t remember—the relationship they share with Izzy, then he can’t very well flaunt it in the other man’s face. But the emotional devastation he’ll unleash on Izzy by just pretending like that relationship doesn’t exist…

“I just…” Ed sighs, carefully thinking over what it is that he wants to say in order to avoid making an already bad situation infinitely worse. “How the fuck am I supposed to do this—to manage to keep from hurting either one of them?”

Roach is silent for a long while, before conceding, “Best case scenario, Stede’ll get his memories back within the week—the sooner they come back, the better the chances that they’ll all come back.” Roach says, “You just… have to keep them from killing each other in the meantime.”

“…No promises.” He means it as a kind of joke, but he’s far too nervous for it to land properly.

“I’ll check in with Izzy.” A pause, then, “I’ll let you know how he’s doing, okay? But I suspect he’ll be just fine. The man’s too stubborn to die.”

“Right.”

They stand there for a moment longer, the silence stretching out between them quickly turning awkward. And then Roach wanders off to track down Izzy, leaving Ed with the understanding that he’s to remain here and look after Stede. He turns back toward the door, reaching for the knob with a trembling hand—he hesitates just before his fingers come into contact with the brass, suddenly certain that the metal is going to burn him. He swallows hard, willing his heart, mind, and body to cooperate with him for one bloody minute—when that doesn’t work, he just decides to hell with it, grabs the knob and swings the door open in one smooth—hopefully—motion.

Stede raises his head, and Ed’s heart leaps into his throat. For a brief, fleeting moment, he’d thought that it would be better to not have to look at the mess of wounds on the side of Stede’s face, to not have to see the bits of broken bone visible underneath blood and ruined skin. But the bandages make it infinitely worse, because they hide so much of his beloved’s face from his sight, it’s almost like he’s looking at a stranger.

A stranger who knows his name, his true name, and calls it like it’s some kind of prayer.

Even Izzy, at the pinnacle of his hero worship, had never said his name quite like that before.

He can hear the question in Stede’s voice—it’s not polite to inquire about other people’s private conversations, true, but there’re times when even a proper gentleman like Stede can hardly resist the urge to be a little impolite. He doesn’t know what to tell him. The fact that Roach seems to be optimistic about his recovery seems to be as good a place as any to start—although he’s not sure whether Roach is genuinely optimistic about his odds, or was just saying as much to make Ed feel better about the situation. Izzy’s taken enough blows to the head over the years that he knows he’s supposed to keep him calm, to steer clear of topics that run the risk of upsetting or exciting him… which means no talking about Izzy. And yet… something tells him that Izzy is the one subject he genuinely wants to talk about. It makes sense, he supposes, considering that the Izzy he’d known before wound sooner fall on his own sword than risk life and limb to rescue him after falling overboard—

Eventually, he takes a seat on the bed, shifting so that he can run his fingers through the bits of Stede’s hair that aren’t matted down underneath layers and layers of bandages. “How’re you feeling?” That seems like a safe enough question to ask, given the circumstances.

“Like I very nearly drowned.” Stede says. His voice is scratchy, like he’d asphyxiated on salt water… which, technically, he had. Ed isn’t entirely confident that all of it is out of his lungs. “Roach said that this…” He raises a shaky hand to gesture to the bandages on the side of his face, “Was caused by the… the rail.” A pause, then, “That must’ve been one hell of a storm.”

“It was.” Ed agrees easily enough, even though the storm itself hadn’t really been anything special. If the deck had been secured properly, then… “It, uh… It wasn’t the storm that caused you to go overboard, though. At least, not entirely.” Stede furrows his brows as much as he’s able in his current state, and Ed supplies, “The… The crew didn’t properly secure the deck.”

Stede hums, “I’m sure it wasn’t their fault. Iggy—”

“Izzy.” Ed interjects. There’s a bit more of a bite to the word than he intends, but… if Stede were in proper form, he’d want to be corrected, because he knows how much that upsets Izzy. “His name is Izzy.”

“Feeling a tad bit protective over him today, are we?” Ed’s not sure what to make of the tone Stede takes when he asks him that. He’s always been protective of Izzy… but perhaps, if the tone Stede’s taken with him is anything to go by, he hasn’t been as clear about that as he’d thought.

Still, he says, “I’m always protective over him—especially when he’s hurt. Someone has to keep the dumbass alive, after all.”

“Yes, well… perhaps if he were less disagreeable, keeping him alive wouldn’t be such a difficult task.”

There’re not words to describe how thankful Ed is that Izzy is no longer in the room, because he doesn’t think that his heart is strong enough to handle the way that Izzy would absolutely crumple beneath the weight of those words. The first time Stede had told Izzy that he was disagreeable had also been the first time that the Gentleman Pirate had offered their first mate a genuine apology—and that was only after Izzy had avoided him like the plague and had very nearly drowned (now that he thinks about it, both of his lovers seem to have developed a nasty little habit of almost-drowning… they really need to do something about that) trying to scrape barnacles off the hull…

And now that he thinks about it, the crew hasn’t been doing their fair share of chores for a while now. Izzy’s been trying to tell him, been begging him to open his damned eyes and see the forest for the trees—to understand that, while everything might be sunshine and roses for him, life’s been a living fucking hell for Izzy. A captain that was actually worth their salt would’ve noticed how he was struggling and done something—

Gods, he really hasn’t been protecting Izzy at all, has he? Izzy does everything for him, and he… he…

He inhales slowly, trying to keep his body from shaking with the force of his realization, “…Are you tired? I’m sure that you have to be tired.” Stede frowns, looking for all the world like a child that’s just been sent to bed without dinner. The sad thing is, in another life, the look might’ve been justified. It’s not like Stede had said anything wrong, or even particularly cruel. There’re definitely times when Izzy is a disagreeable ass—

He’s also the first one to lay down his life for you in a fight… and Ed recognizes just how difficult it is to reconcile those two truths.

“I feel like you’re just trying to avoid talking to me.” And that’s… truer than Ed wants to admit, but… likely not for the reasons that Stede is thinking. He doesn’t want to talk about this anymore, doesn’t want to talk about Izzy, because he can maybe—maybe—pretend like he’s not head over heels for his first mate while in Stede’s presence, but he can’t lie about it outright. If Stede keeps pushing, he’s going to shatter like china—

“We’ll take a nap together, yeah?” That ought to make it a little bit better, he thinks. At least, it’ll make it seem less like he’s just anxiously waiting for Stede to sack out so that he can do literally anything else, “And I’ll wake you in a couple of hours to check on your head.”

Stede’s skepticism lasts a moment longer, before he yawns, “I am tired.” He eventually concedes. Ed breathes a little sigh of relief.

“We’ll sleep, then.” Ed says, “And we can talk a little bit more when you wake again.”

“…Okay.” They shift a little so that Stede isn’t cuddling into Ed’s chest with the injured side of his face, and that’s good. The last thing that he wants to do is cause Stede additional pain, even if he hopes that Stede would tell him if he were uncomfortable or move to make himself comfortable before things reached that point.

Stede is out like a light, but it takes Ed nearly half an hour to fall asleep… he dreams of the look on Izzy’s face when Stede had first awoken.

Izzy will swear up, down, left, right, and center that he’s not hiding.

How can he be hiding when he’s in his own room? That should, theoretically, be the first place that people look for him.

There’s a quill on the floor, with a tiny puddle of ink just underneath it. A little to his left is an overturned pot of ink that’s absolutely decimated the floorboards… that would be just his luck, wouldn’t it? He tries to do something… calming isn’t the right word for it, not exactly, but he can’t think of anything else… and it all goes to hell. The drawings he’d made on the inside of his arm are all muddled, his hand shaking too badly to make the lines nice and neat and clean, like they’re supposed to be. He supposes that he’s lucky that the ink will wear off in a couple of days—had he been tattooing himself, the mess of ink on his skin would be far more problematic.

As far as he knows, Stede doesn’t actually know that he… he… he presses his thumb nail into the skin just beside one of the long, thin scars that line the insides of his wrists. He just… thinks that Izzy is generally self-destructive—like he’s liable to place himself in front of the barrel of a loaded gun, risking life and limb on the chance that Ed and/or Stede will be able to get to safety before the shooter has a chance to reload, or… or he’ll throw himself over the broken rail of the ship, not even pausing long enough to allow Ed a chance to properly secure him to the deck, just for the chance to save Stede from the tumultuous waters below. Izzy sees his own life as secondary—he always has.

So, once upon a time, Stede had told him that, if he didn’t see himself as something beautiful and worthy of protection and consideration and all of the other things he lavished freely on Stede and Ed… he should draw on himself. Draw something beautiful, which he cannot bring himself to destroy. And look at it and know that that is what Stede and Ed see every time they look at him.

Izzy looks at the horrendous blob of ink on his skin and wants to cry—but his eyes and head both ache, an indication that he’s cried himself out.

His eyes flit between his ink-splattered wrist, the quill, and the little pot of ink… With an unsteady hand, he slides his fingers into the side of his boot and pulls out a switchblade. The blade is older than he cares to remember, with ornate kraken tentacles etched into the handle. It’d been a gift from Ed—and no, the irony isn’t lost on him—from back when the kraken wasn’t quite so frightening. In those days, the kraken was more of a… defense mechanism than anything else. It was like… an added layer of mental fortification, which gave Ed the courage to do what he needed to do—to protect who he needed to protect. Once upon a time, Izzy had foolishly believed that the kraken would never hurt him—would never have reason to hurt him. And yet, here he was… down a toe, and occasionally still able to feel the imprint of Ed’s hand around his neck when he breathed. It feels… oddly fitting that a small piece of the kraken is here with him now.

He flips the blade open, his dark eyes following the arch it makes as it locks into position. The blade is duller than it’d been when Izzy’d first received it, but Izzy keeps all of his weapons in the best condition possible—and this blade is no exception, no matter how rarely Izzy uses it. He turns the handle once… twice… thrice… and then lowers the blade to the giant ink-splotch on the inside of his wrist.

The skin is riddled with purple and black bruises where he’d broken the bone… The pain dulls to an ache as he presses just hard enough with the blade to break the skin. Blood bubbles to the surface, filling the small cut with alarming speed. It burns, like someone’s set his veins alight… and yet the pain seems to clear his mind and helps him to think, to focus.

It’s good. It’s not enough.

Slowly, he draws the blade across his skin, his eyes locked on the thin line of blood that appears in the blade’s wake—there’s a knock on the door, and it startles him so badly that the blade falls clean out of his hand and hits the ground with a resounding thump, ruining any chance he might’ve had of pretending he wasn’t in. “Izzy? It’s Roach. I want to take another look at your wrist—”

Izzy flinches at the memory of Roach snapping the little bones back into their proper place. That pain… it’d been too much, even for him. “It doesn’t need it.” In truth, it definitely needed it. It also probably needed a splint, or even a sling. But Izzy doesn’t have the patience, or energy, to deal with all of that. And if Ed or Stede isn’t here to order him to, he doesn’t see why he should have to.

“Look… fuck if I know why, but the Captain is legitimately worried about you.” Izzy grits his teeth, his eyes dropping down to the bloody wound on his arm. He should’ve cut the other arm… but then, he’s not sure he’d be able to grip the blade with his wrist like this.

…After a moment, he decides that the wound is far enough down on his arm that, if he can just manage to shove himself into a clean blouse, Roach will be none the wiser. “Fucking… fine. Just give me a minute.”

He doesn’t think he’s ever been more thankful for the lack of color in his wardrobe than he is in that moment. Nothing hides bloodstains quite as well as black, but that doesn’t stop him from wrapping a couple of layers of gauze around the fresh cut, just in case. The sleeve of his blouse is just tight enough to make both the cut and his wrist ache as it presses into the skin directly between the two, causing both injuries to throb in time with the frantic beating of his heart. Unsurprisingly, it’s the button that gives him the most difficulty. The sleeve is already on the cusp of cutting off his circulation without closing the button, and trying to do so causes hundreds of little black dots to creep into the corners of his vision.

Roach knocks on the door again, and Izzy knows that he’s out of time.

He bites down on the inside of his mouth hard enough to draw blood as he snaps the button into place, before hurrying to the door as fast as his foot will allow. He unlocks it and opens it in one swift motion, catching Roach mid-knock, “Let’s get this over with, then. I’m certain we both have far better things to be doing.” He starts toward his bed, where he deposits himself onto the mattress with a soft oomph—

Roach follows him in, dropping his medical supplies onto the bed on Izzy’s right side, “How’s the pain, on a scale of one to ten?”

Izzy doesn’t even blink, “A three.” Roach arches an eyebrow, his eyes zeroing in on Izzy’s swollen, purpling flesh. He’s clearly skeptical, which is fine. He can take his skepticism and shove it clear up his ass—“I’ve been shot. This is child’s play.”

“…Right.” Roach retrieves what appears to be a splint—“Could you roll up your sleeve?”

Izzy’s response is an immediate, biting, “No.”

If possible, Roach looks infinitely more confused, “It’s better for the splint to be against bare skin.” He says, like explaining the reason he wants Izzy to bare his wrist is going to increase the odds of the first mate complying with his request. “The fabric of your blouse could cause the splint to slip, and then… well, it’s not exactly doing its job if it’s moving around, is it?”

“The damn thing’ll do just fine over my clothes, thank you.”

A moment passes… once it becomes clear that Izzy has no intention of backing down, Roach sighs, “Fine. Suit yourself. Don’t come bitching to me when the bones heal wrong.” Izzy frowns. He’s well-aware of the risk that he’s taking. He also knows that that hand is already fucked anyhow. It’s still functional, but… far weaker than it should be. It would be just his luck that his wrist would end up jacked as well—

The splint hurts, in no small part because one of the metal pieces that secures it sits right up against his fresh cut. Once it’s secure, Roach walks him through the process of taking it off and putting it back on—Izzy is only half-listening, confident in the fact that he’s assisted Ed with his own brace so many times, he should be able to figure out what goes where and how to properly secure it on his own. Instead, he allows his mind to drift to Stede, and the events leading up to his going overboard. He wants to ask Roach if he’s alright—he hadn’t exactly stuck around to hear the official diagnosis, after all—but every time he tries, the words get caught in his throat.

It feels like he’s trying to speak around a mouthful of molasses… and each time that he remembers the hateful way that Stede had spat the name Iggy, it gets thicker and thicker. There’s a part of his brain that’s been conditioned by soft touches and even softer words, that genuinely believes that a man like Stede Bonnet could somehow learn to love the husk that is Israel Hands. There’s another, larger part that screams that a man who couldn’t even be bothered to ask if Izzy was okay after being told that he’d been injured saving his fucking life couldn’t possibly love him. Or, worse, he could love him—but he loved him like Ed loved him, in the days before Stede-fucking-Bonnet had come into their lives.

You’re mine, but I’m not yours.

…He comes back to around the time that Roach says, “This arm can’t bear any weight for at least six weeks… likely longer, considering the extent of the break.” Izzy’s frown deepens—that… that just won’t do. There’s far too much to be done to keep the Revenge afloat for him to take a six-week long vacation from any heavy-lifting. If things remain as they are now, they’re all liable to end up in a watery grave—

“I’ll take that into consideration.” He says. From the look on Roach’s face, it’s clear he knows that that means ‘I’ll do whatever the fuck I want, thank you kindly’—and he’s far from pleased.

“That wasn’t a suggestion, Izzy. You need to give that arm a rest. Doctor’s orders.”

Izzy hates the way his heart lurches a little at that—how Stede’s godforsaken crew has started to rub off on him, make him soft, to the point where even Roach telling him that something is ‘doctor’s orders’ has him wagging his fucking tail and jumping to obey. “…I’ll see what I can do.” He says, which must be a step in the right direction, because Roach backs off, just a little.

“…He’s going to get better, you know.” Roach says. His boundless optimism grates on Izzy’s nerves.

“He’s alive. That’s all that matters.” He almost manages to sound like he believes it. “And you have a job to be doing. I entertained your need to see to my arm—now get back to work before I muster the energy to become a truly abominable patient.”

Roach doesn’t need to be told twice. He gathers his things and leaves without another word, shutting the door far too gently behind him—

It’s only after the lock clicks into place that Izzy allows himself to start crying in earnest.

Chapter Text

The following morning—the sun is shining obnoxiously bright through the opulent window in the captain’s quarters, which seems to be a fairly strong indicator that it is, in fact, morning; Ed thinks that he might’ve slept for an hour, maybe an hour and a half, and would very much like to roll over, smother himself in one of the ridiculously soft pillows, and go right back to sleep—Roach is back to check Stede’s bandages.

He also comes bearing food, which is the one and only reason that Ed hauls himself out of the bed when the chef comes around—

Stede is awake and far more coherent than Ed can claim to be—within seconds of Roach’s arrival, he’s ‘ooo-ing’ and ‘ahh-ing’ over the assortment of delicacies that he’s prepared for them today. When his eyes land on the coffee, however, his face falls a bit. Izzy didn’t seem to share his captains’ love of tea ‘with seven sugars and a dollop of milk.’ He drank coffee—black, like his soul, no sugar. Ed isn’t entirely sure how it hasn’t given him an ulcer yet… or maybe it has, and that’s what has Izzy in such a sour mood all the time. Either way, Stede is staring at the small pitcher of steaming hot, fresh-brewed coffee like it might spontaneously combust, and it takes Ed entirely too long to realize why.

Neither he nor Stede drink coffee—it’s something that Stede had specifically requested Roach prepare for Izzy, once the three of them had become official. And since neither he nor Stede drink coffee, there was no reason for it to be on the breakfast cart that Roach had wheeled in from the kitchen. Before he can ask about it, however, Roach is laying out his medical supplies on the foot of their bed. He’s careful as he starts to unravel the mess of bandages on Stede’s face—it’s incredibly rare for gauze not to stick to wounds, even when that is literally its entire purpose; what was the point in covering the wound to facilitate healing when you just ripped it back open every time you changed the bandages?—and yet, Stede’s discomfort is plain. He denies laudanum, which is probably for the best—he’s already a bit floaty from the concussion, after all, and the idea of doping him up while he’s not in the right headspace to be able to consent to it makes Ed feel sick to his stomach.

“I… forgive me, Roach, but I don’t remember asking for you to bring us coffee—” Roach’s fingers still, the bit of blood-soaked gauze that he’d been trying to peel off of the side of Stede’s head finally coming loose as he turns to look at the pitcher of coffee sitting innocently on the corner of the tray. Ed can practically hear the gears turning inside of his head.

“Oh.” He says, “Oh, that’s not… that’s not for you. I, um… I was making breakfast for Izzy, and I must’ve just… set the pitcher down, without thinking.” That has to be the least convincing story he could’ve come up with. That being said, Ed is half-certain he could convince Stede that the sky is red right now, so… “He usually likes to brew his own coffee in the mornings, but… with his broken wrist, I figured…”

Ed sees his opening and lunges for it, “H-How is he doing? That break… it was—is—pretty bad, yeah?”

Roach sighs, “He’s stubborn as a fucking ox, is what he is.” He returns to tending to Stede’s bandages, “I haven’t seen him since I fitted him with a splint. Or, well… I tried to fit him with a splint. He wouldn’t let me fit it properly, so God only knows how much it’s helping him—”

And, well… there’s a lot that Ed needs to dissect in that. For instance, the fuck did he mean that he hadn’t seen Izzy since he’d fitted him for a splint the day before? Izzy rose with the motherfucking dawn—the fact that he hadn’t shown his face on deck before Roach came down with their breakfast was legitimately concerning. But also—“He wouldn’t let you fit the splint?”

“I told him that there was a significant chance that his blouse could cause his splint to shift… and if the splint moves, then it’s not really immobilizing anything, now is it?” He says.

Stede shoots him a look out of the corner of his eye, “…Why don’t you take the coffee to him, darling?”

Ed blinks, “…What?”

“It’s clear that you’re worried about him.” Stede says. “So… why don’t you take the coffee that Roach made and use it as an excuse to pay him a little visit?” Stede flinches when Roach’s fingers press just a bit too hard into his tender flesh—there’s quite a bit of fresh blood on his face; not nearly as much as there’d been when he’d first gotten hurt, but still. “I… well, I don’t know that he’ll appreciate it, exactly…”

The corner of Ed’s mouth twitches, “Now I feel like you’re the one that’s trying to get rid of me.”

“Nonsense.” Stede denies, taking one of the decadent little omelet bites between his thumb and forefinger and popping it into his mouth. “I just… This behavior is quite unusual for him, no? It makes sense for you to be worried.”

“It… It’s just… He’s worried about you, mate.” Ed says at last. “And… it really hurt him, that you acted like he was incapable of it.”

Stede frowns, “Yes, well… forgive me if I have a bit of a hard time believing that the man who has tried to kill me—several times over—is genuinely upset to see me like this.” And, well… he has a point. It just… stings to know that he doesn’t realize that all of that is behind them.

“People change.” Perhaps there’d been a time where he’d genuinely thought Izzy incapable of it… where he’d genuinely thought that Izzy was just too stubborn to let himself be anything even approaching soft with Stede, or the crew… or even him. And there’d been a part of him that’d been okay with that… because that roughness, that acidity… that was what made Izzy Izzy. He just wouldn’t be the same without it—

“You sound half in love with him.” Stede says, mostly joking.

“I am.” Ed’s response is immediate—the little voice in the back of his head that tells him that he should quit while he’s ahead is drowned out by the sudden need for Stede to know everything, damn the consequences, “Not… Not half in love with him. Wholly. Madly. Deeply. So much it’s actually kind of embarrassing. I love him, desperately… and so do you.”

After all of that, Ed supposes he shouldn’t be surprised that Stede can only manage to muster a soft “Oh” in response. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt like a rusty butter knife through the sternum all the same.

“Yeah. Oh.”

He’s not sure what exactly it was that he’d been expecting, but a complete and utter lack of response was certainly not it. It’s almost like… like Stede doesn’t believe it—like he doesn’t want to believe it. It’s difficult to believe that the man sitting next to him is the very same man who’d pushed him to accept and act on his feelings for Izzy in the first place. He’s looking at Ed as if the other man had struck him, and Ed cannot help but be reminded of Roach’s suggestion the day before—that he shouldn’t flaunt his—their—relationship with Izzy in front of Stede, because Stede clearly doesn’t remember and is unlikely to just… magically understand.

But, well… he wouldn’t exactly consider acknowledging the fact that he is very much in love with Izzy to be rubbing their relationship in Stede’s face. The alternative would mean lying… and even if Izzy weren’t there to hear it, the very idea conjures images in Ed’s mind of the absolutely broken look on his face when Stede’d referred to him as ‘Iggy.’ He can’t… Gods, the absolute last thing he wants to do is hurt either one of them, but there doesn’t seem to be a way out of this mess that doesn’t result in someone getting the short end of the stick. Maybe, if he were better with words, he’d be able to find a way to spin this so that that wasn’t the case—but he’s not.

He's just a tongue-tied, love-sick mess, who wishes that he’d paid a bit more attention when Izzy’d tried to tell him about the crew. Maybe, if he’d been a bit more like Blackbeard with the crew (not the kraken, but… maybe something in-between?), they’d understand that Izzy’s directions were to be taken seriously. Maybe, if he’d done that… Izzy wouldn’t be so bloody high-strung all the time.

…He could breathe a little easier, knowing that he had the support of his captain—just like he used to have aboard the Queen Anne.

Ed frowns, shaking his head in an attempt to clear his mind of dark, intrusive thoughts. It doesn’t exactly work.

Stede speaks again… and Ed finds himself wishing, desperately, that he’d remained silent. “I, um…” He clears his throat delicately, “I’m not sure where you got the idea that I had… romantic inclinations toward Mr. Hands, but I assure you that that is not the case—”

Ed blinks, “Come again, mate?”

It’s not really an invitation to repeat himself, but Stede takes it as one anyhow. “I…” A breath, “I find the man to be wholly disagreeable and most unpleasant. If you say that he rescued me, then I will believe you—not because I actually think that he would, but because I don’t think that you would lie to me about… anything. But love? I don’t know that he’s capable of anything more than a perverted sort of obsession—”

“That’s… a bit harsh, don’t you think?” Stede’s is a cruel sort of honesty—the kind that leaves a bitter taste in your mouth once everything is said and done. Ed wants it to stop… but then, it occurs to him that the two of them had never had a proper conversation regarding Stede’s feelings for Izzy prior to Stede realizing that he was in love with their first mate.

“He's a bit like a cockroach, that one.” He says. And that's... while that may be true, there are certainly far kinder comparisons that he could make. Not to mention... ye gods, but his skin is crawling at the image Stede's words conjure in his mind. An Izzy cockroach isn't a pleasant image at all. "Impossible to get rid of, no matter how many times you try." Stede snaps. Ed feels like he stabbed him with that rusty butter knife with such force, he managed to crack bone—

He's reminded of banishing Izzy following the duel... of returning to the Revenge after Barbados to find the crew in the midst of mutinying Izzy... Stede is right—Izzy is quite a bit like a cockroach: impossible to get rid of, impossible to kill. Unlike Stede, however, Ed had always thought of that as a good thing. Izzy is a fighter—has been fighting his entire life, to prove himself, to protect himself, to protect Ed. There weren't many pirate captains who could claim to have had the same first mate for decades... who could trust (mostly) that their first mate wouldn't betray them while their back was turned.

(He does trust Izzy not to betray him... or, at least, not to betray him again. They'd talked about the events leading up to his original... outburst (as much as he could ever get Izzy to talk about anything) and he was fairly confident that they could avoid a repeat performance. If he didn't, he never would've taken him back... would've allowed the crew to mutiny him (he probably wouldn't have let them anchor him, because even at his angriest, he still loved Izzy, and drowning was an absolutely shit way to die). But now doesn't seem like the best time to try and argue that to Stede).

“You don’t understand.” He expects Stede to deny, deny, deny—but he actually concedes rather easily.

“No, I don’t.” He says, “I don’t understand at all.”

And Ed… doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say to that. Thankfully, Roach chooses that moment to clean out Stede’s wound (perhaps he thinks that it won’t hurt as bad if Stede isn’t paying attention), and a series of expletives that would’ve made Izzy blush fall from Stede’s lips as the alcohol sets the bloody, gnarled skin alight. The Gentleman Pirate reaches, blindly, for Ed’s hand—he squeezes so hard that Stede can feel the bones shifting underneath Ed’s skin… the shock of the pain is enough to make Ed forget that they’re in the middle of an… argument? That’s what’s happening right now, right? They’re arguing… about Izzy.

A not insignificant part of him wishes that he’d taken the easy out that Stede had presented him with and left to check on Izzy.

Another part of him actually, legitimately wants to fight with Stede on this—because what the actual hell?

He understands that Stede doesn’t remember that he—they—are in a relationship with Izzy. That’s an unfortunate truth that cannot be changed; all he can do is wait it out until Stede’s memories come back (if they come back). It wouldn’t be fair to blame him for this, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt. He’s upset that they never had this conversation, that he never thought to have this conversation before—

The worst part of all of this is that Stede isn’t even being cruel… he’s honestly relaying his feelings to Ed, and if there’s anything that he’s taught Ed over the months that they’ve shared together, it’s that how you feel can’t be wrong. You don’t have the authority to dictate how other people feel. You can try, sure… but in the end, it just makes you seem like a massive asshole.

Stede is entitled to his feelings for Izzy. Izzy is entitled to his feelings for Stede.

…Ed just wishes that those feelings were the same as what they’d been just forty-eight hours ago.

That doesn’t feel like a whole hell of a lot to ask for, right? …Right.

“Sorry, sorry.” Roach says. He doesn’t sound very ‘sorry’ at all, but Ed thinks that he can forgive him just the once, seeing as he’d brought that trainwreck of a conversation to an abrupt end—and while the thought of Stede experiencing any kind of discomfort makes his stomach churn, he recognizes that Roach would’ve had to clean the wound out eventually, and that catching him off-guard was probably the best way to do so.

“I, uh… I think I’ll just be going then—to check on Iz.” Honestly, he’s a little uneasy about seeing Izzy now… Izzy’s always been able to read his moods—sometimes, he can do so better than Ed himself—and he’s more than a little worried that Izzy will know that something happened—

“…Right.” Stede swallows hard, looking for all the world like he’s sending Ed off to the gallows, “You do that.”

Ed stares at him for a long moment, his expression blank, before positing, “You’re mad. You’re mad that I love Izzy.”

“Mad? No.” Stede brushes him off a little too easily. Tears prickle in the corners of his eyes, and Ed cannot tell whether they’re from the topic of their conversation, Roach’s fingers pressing against his all-too-sensitive flesh, or some horrible combination of the two. “A little emotionally devastated, perhaps—but not mad. I don’t know that I have it in me to be proper mad at you.”

Ed opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again… He wants to say a great many things, but all of his words are stuck in his throat, and he suddenly finds himself unable to breathe around them. Once again, it’s Roach to the rescue, “Go ahead and see to Izzy, captain. It looks like there’s some bad blood in Captain Bonnet’s wound… I’ll have to drain it, so unless you’re interested in watching a stream of blood and pus—”

Ed is not ashamed to admit that that sounds… incredibly unpleasant. Not just to witness, but to experience. And while part of him wants to hold Stede’s hand through it, on the off-chance that having another person there will make it all just that little bit easier to bear, he’s honestly not sure whether or not his stomach is up to the task. Stede doesn’t seem to be too terribly broken-up about his decision to leave, which stings in an entirely new way… He can’t decide whether it’s because of their disagreement, because Stede doesn’t want him to have to endure the sight of the wound draining, or some combination of the two—regardless, he cannot deny the way that it makes him want to flee. He didn’t realize how much he'd come to rely on Stede as a sort of safe haven until he was forced to confront the fact that there was a great deal about Stede that he didn’t know… and suddenly that safe haven didn’t feel quite so safe anymore.

He… He’s probably just overthinking things. These last several hours have been trying for everyone—at times like these, it’s dreadfully easy for him to let his mind just… run away on him. It’ll be good to get out of the room for a while, to see Izzy and see for himself that his first mate is okay. Maybe, if he’s feeling at least somewhat agreeable, he’ll let Ed fix his splint without having to be ordered to do so. And if he’s not, well… Ed’s just keyed up enough to have that bite in his tone—that little hint of Blackbeard that Izzy clings to, desperately, because even though he’s accepted that Blackbeard was never the real Ed… sometimes he needs to pretend. And sometimes… sometimes Ed needs to pretend, too.

And so he leaves without another word. As soon as the lock clicks behind him, Stede releases a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and slowly, awkwardly, turns to address Roach. “So…” the corner of his mouth twitches, “my wound needs to be drained?”

“Nope.” Roach responds, with a dramatic pop of the ‘p.’ “I just said that to get him moving. That was… well, that wasn’t pretty, and I had a feeling that it was liable to get uglier the longer I let it go on. It won’t hurt anything for the two of you to have a chance to cool off.” He unravels a bit of gauze, preparing to re-dress Stede’s wounds. “Besides, I think this will be good for the both of them.”

Stede looks to be physically pained by the assertion, “…Why is that?”

Roach hesitates for just a moment, before seemingly deciding that they’re already up the metaphorical creek without a paddle—why not drill a hole in the bottom of the boat just to see how long it takes for it to capsize? “Because Ed’s been trying to go to him ever since he ran out of your quarters yesterday… and Izzy seemed genuinely upset at the fact that Ed hadn’t followed him.”

Ed already knows where to look for Izzy—finding his first mate has never been a problem, not when Izzy prides himself on practically being able to read Ed’s mind (when Ed needs him, he’s there, sometimes before Ed even realizes he’s in need of something)… and on those rare occasions when he can’t predict Ed’s need for him, Ed can usually find him in one of three locations: the deck, the stowage, or his quarters. Since no-one’s seen him yet today, crossing the deck and stowage off of that list seems like a fairly safe bet—which means that, odds are, Izzy’s in his room. It’s once he arrives at Izzy’s door that things get… complicated.

The door is unlocked, but Ed feels… odd about just letting himself in. Izzy values his privacy—he always has. Part of it’s to do with the scars, but also… privacy is a precious commodity out at sea, a luxury awarded to very few individuals aboard a ship. A private room came with the rank of first mate, and he guarded it as jealously as he did his title. He has no doubt that Izzy would just roll over and take it if he were to just let himself in, because try as he might, he cannot seem to completely eradicate Izzy’s belief that he is infallible—that no matter what he does, be it to him, another member of the crew, or just in general—he can do no wrong.

He knocks on the door, announces himself. There’s the soft, unmistakable sound of movement coming from within, but it doesn’t sound like Izzy is moving any closer to the door. It might’ve been the creak of him shifting in his hammock, or even the groan of his weight on the little wooden chair he’d set up at the desk that Stede had had installed for him. Ed sighs, leaning forward to press his forehead into the cool wood of the door.

Izzy’s mad, then. Proper mad. There’s something about the way his brain is hardwired, something that makes all roads lead to an all-encompassing anger. Sometimes, Ed wonders whether or not Izzy is capable of feeling anything else, anything in-between. Or maybe he does feel it, but years and years of conditioning—of being made to think that the only right way to be is hard, because the world is cruel and life isn’t fair… of being made to think that this was the best that people like them could hope for, that wanting more made them soft, and softness was the equivalent of death—have caused all of his emotions to manifest this way. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, like the kraken. Maybe… Maybe…

“Izzy, please—” He’s not begging, not really. He knows that that would just make Izzy more upset with him. He just… He needs Izzy to be the one to open the door, needs him to look up and see the hand that Ed is extending toward him… and want to reach out and take it.

The door swings open with alarming speed… and there he is. Strangely enough, the first thing Ed notices is that Izzy had taken the time to adjust the splint so that it’s fitted correctly to his wrist. The next thing he notices is the thin line of blood trickling down the inside of Izzy’s arm. “Edward,” Izzy says, his voice tight, “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“You’re bleeding.” Ed says—

“Very astute observation.” Izzy’s hand tightens around the doorhandle as several different expressions play out on his face. It takes Ed far too long to realize that he’s contemplating whether or not to slam the door in his face—he steps forward; Izzy clenches his jaw and steps back.

“Izzy…” His first mate’s name hangs heavily in the air as the realization that he doesn’t know what to do, what to say, hits him like a ton of bricks. He’d been so desperate to come here, to see him… and now that he’s here, watching the blood drip, drip, drip down the length of his arm, he’s frozen like a statue. He licks his lips, “Roach said that no-one’s seen you on deck since yesterday.”

Izzy blinks, “What’s the fucking point? It’s not like any of them listen to me anyhow.”

“Don’t be a dick, Iz. I’m trying to tell you that I was worried about you. I still am.”

“Ah, yes. You’re so worried. That’s why it took Roach telling you that I hadn’t made an appearance on deck for you to come down and check to make sure that I was even still alive.” He snaps. The words sting like saltwater in an open wound, but Izzy isn’t done, “Well, as you can see, I’m just fine. Better than ever, really. So why don’t you head back to your ponce and leave me the fuck alone?”

Ed’s mouth is suddenly impossibly dry, “I wanted to come and check on you. Fuck, the minute you left, I was half off the bed, ready to chase you down.” He says, “Roach told me to stay with Stede—he has a concussion, and he needed to be woken every two hours. He told me that he was going to take care of you, and I… I honestly believed it was the best course of action at the time.”

Izzy flips him off with his uninjured hand, “Oh, fuck off.”

“Izzy,” Izzy doesn’t slam the door in his face, but he does turn his back on him, and somehow, that’s even worse, “C’mon, man.”

He follows Izzy into the room, because this conversation isn’t over, even if that means he has to have the rest of it staring at the broad expanse of his first mate’s back. He needs to know why Izzy is bleeding—but a bleeding Izzy can be more dangerous than a wild animal. It’s clear that he’s keyed up and looking for a fight, and he’s been with Ed long enough to know all the right buttons to press, and in what order, to get slammed up against the nearest wall with such force, his head spins. In fact… his eyes flit to the wall just above Izzy’s brand-new desk, where there’s a sizeable dent where the back of Izzy’s head had collided with the wood. He’s not proud of the marks… although he’d asked Stede if he would keep them when they had the interior of the ship remodeled shortly after their reunion, to serve as a reminder that, while the kraken was dangerous… he was capable of great violence, of great cruelty, even as Ed.

That dent, and others like it, were a reminder that, while Izzy most definitely had his moments of being a toxic, abusive asshole… Ed had beaten, bloodied, and maimed him, and Izzy’d genuinely thought he deserved it. The dent twisted up his stomach every time that he saw it—and that was a good thing. It forced him to think, forced him to confront the fact that he’d hurt Izzy, he’d been hurting him for years, and if Stede hadn’t come along, he’d probably still be hurting him. …It made him realize just how much he was like his father, and inspired him to do better—because there was no-one around to save Izzy, or Stede, for that matter, if he…

He's torn from his thoughts by a glint of silver and crimson on Izzy’s bedside table.

He approaches slowly, all thoughts of assuring Izzy that he’d meant to come sooner—and discovering why his wrist is bleeding—temporarily suspended. The glint of silver turns out to be the switchblade that Ed had given him… the blade is open, crimson marring glistening silver. Izzy prides himself on keeping all of his knives in pristine condition—he’d clean them mid-battle if he could. That means that the blood is fresh. Incredibly fresh. He recalls the way Izzy’d looked when he’d first opened the door, the way the blood had been trickling down the inside of his arm. He recalls Roach’s comment about Izzy not letting him fit the brace properly—

…It would seem that his concern that Izzy might cut hadn’t been unwarranted after all.

Dark eyes flit back toward Izzy, who’s standing there, cradling his injured wrist against his chest like one might a newborn baby.

Izzy deflates a little, “I knew… I always knew that it was coming.” He says, “That one day, the truth would come out… that I was disposable. You know,” he chuckles blandly, “I would’ve bet decent coin on you being the one to lose interest first. I’m easy… I’ve been at your side since the beginning, and clearly, after all this time, I’m not going anywhere—but Stede? He’s special. He makes you work for it.”

“…What in the bloody hell are you on about, mate?” Ed quips, “You’re not… You’re not easy. You’re about as easy as fucking yourself with a cactus.” And, well… that was certainly a mental image, wasn’t it? “I just got done telling Stede how embarrassingly in love I am with you.” A breath, “If I didn’t want you around, Izzy, you’d be gone.”

“…Maybe it would be better if I was.” Izzy says, his voice so quiet that Ed can scarcely hear him above the sudden roaring in his ears.

“Izzy.” Ed’s expression hardens, “You’re not allowed to kill yourself.” This isn’t the first time he’s told Izzy as much—the most recent had been after he and Stede had reunited, and it’d come out that Izzy had been the one to release the kraken. The thought of Ed sending him away had been too much… leading to the first, and only, time that Izzy had attempted to take his own life. “You’re not allowed to kill yourself.”

“I know.” Izzy says, “…I don’t want to.” Ed isn’t sure whether or not he actually believes him.

“If you know, then what—”

“I’m tendering my formal resignation as your first mate, effective immediately.”

Chapter Text

Ed doesn’t even blink, “No.”

“The fuck do you mean, ‘no?’” Clearly, that wasn’t the answer that Izzy had been expecting. The knife that Stede had imbedded in Ed’s chest cuts just a little deeper at the realization that Izzy genuinely believed he would accept his resignation without fuss, “It… It’s better this way. I-I can leave with some sliver of my dignity intact, and you can find a first mate that’s better suited to—”

“I’m not in the market for a new first mate, Iz.” He says, “And you’re not leaving.” He’s just not. There’s no way that he’d be able to row himself to the nearest landmass with his wrist in that condition, for one. But also… Ed’s not strong enough to just let Izzy leave. He doubts he’ll ever be.

Izzy grits his teeth, the corners of his mouth twisting into a sneer, “I won’t stay where I’m not wanted, Edward.”

“Yes, well… forgive me for trying to make sense of the fact that you’ve just… decided for yourself that you’re no longer wanted.”

“You act like it’s some kind of recent development.”

Ed knows that it’s not—not exactly. Despite Ed’s continued efforts to prove to him otherwise, Izzy had always seen himself as disposable—a placeholder that could be cast aside the moment someone better came along. But, as far as he knew, he hadn’t done anything to make Izzy think that the time had finally come for him to get gone. “It kinda is, though, mate. Because you weren’t trying to resign until—”

Izzy makes a frustrated sound in the back of his throat. Ed doesn’t have time to register the fact that he’s moving until the distance between them all but vanishes, and for a moment, they stand so very close to one another that it’s like they’ve merged into one being. And then Izzy’s uninjured hand is on him, fingers calloused from years spent toiling aboard ships, from the hilts of swords and the handles of pistols, tangling in his hair. He’s not that much taller than Izzy, but the difference in their heights feels incredible as Izzy’s hand tightens to near the point of pain and yanks him down so that they’re at eye level. And then he kisses him, more teeth and tongue than lips, and Ed’s brain short-circuits—

His mouth aches, white-hot fire igniting in his jaw and setting every last one of his teeth ablaze. He wouldn’t exactly describe the kiss as pleasant—in fact, he’s absolutely certain that the only reason Izzy’s kissing him right now is to distract him from this absolute trainwreck of a conversation that they’d just been having—but he’ll be damned if he’s the first one to pull away. Abrupt as that kiss was, there was clearly some part of Izzy that needed it—that needed both the pain and the connection, that needed to know that, even if Stede couldn’t remember, Ed did. Ed remembered everything, and because of that—or, perhaps, in spite of it—he still wanted Izzy.

But Ed… Ed’s eyes narrow on the dent in the wall, like he’s beholding an old enemy, and he’s once again reminded of the fact that he doesn’t want to be rough with Izzy, doesn’t want to be hard. He can still do it sometimes, when his mood and headspace are both right, when he trusts that he won’t take things too far and seriously hurt the other man—and even then, he prefers to have Stede there, just in case.

It never hurts to have another set of eyes watching over things, you know?

But this morning… Ed had come to Izzy because he was genuinely worried about him, because he sincerely regretted not having followed him after the whole ‘Iggy’ fiasco. It was clear that he was already hurting, and Ed had no intention of hurting him further. So when Izzy finally breaks their kiss, licking away the smear of blood on his lower lip (Ed wonders, idly, whether it’s his or Izzy’s—or maybe it’s both; he runs his tongue along the back of his teeth, trying to see if he can find where it’d come from), he just kind of… stands there, a little dazed, a little breathless, and waits to see what Izzy will do next. Izzy’s face is carefully blank for one long moment, before he leans in to kiss Ed again—

This kiss is considerably softer than the first. Izzy’s lips taste of blood and tears, and he realizes then, with a shock, that Izzy’s crying.

He doesn’t have a chance to comment on it, though—because when Izzy breaks the kiss, he suddenly realizes that they’ve been moving.

While Ed had been… distracted, Izzy had led them all the way over to his desk. He’s sitting on it now, black leather amidst a sea of vaguely yellowing parchment. Except… for the first time, Ed realizes that Izzy isn’t wearing his usual blouse and waistcoat. Instead, he’s wearing one of Ed’s purple shirts (which were actually, technically, Izzy’s). “You’re wearing my shirt.”

Izzy blinks, “Yeah.” He’s looking at Ed like he’s not quite sure what that has to do with… well, anything, really. “The buttons on the… the sleeve of the blouse hurt my wrist, and there’s a chance that the splint will slip if it’s not right up against bare skin—”

“And here, Roach was all worried that you were just going to blatantly disregard all of his medical advice.”

Izzy makes a face, “Can we not talk about Roach right now?”

And that’s… yeah. Ed would be the first to admit that he’s a little lost about what’s happening right now, but it feels… wrong to bring someone else’s name into it. “Alright,” he concedes easily enough, “But, uh… care to enlighten me as to what, exactly, it is that we’re doing here?”

Izzy doesn’t have an answer ready for him… perhaps because he hadn’t truly thought about it himself, beyond the fact that he wanted them to stop talking about Stede, and the resignation that Ed apparently had no intention of accepting, and… “We’re going to fuck. Obviously.”

“Obviously.” Ed repeats. He’s not adverse to the idea of fucking Izzy—not at all—but he’d be hard-pressed to say that it was the obvious conclusion to all of this. It just serves to reinforce the notion that Izzy is trying to distract him from the matter at hand—and is doing a damned good job of it, too, because Ed’s libido has always been like a toddler who’s just been told it can have all the sweets that it can stomach.

“…And maybe then all of this won’t hurt quite so badly.” Izzy mumbles, mostly to himself. But Ed hears, and his heart breaks just a little bit more. He wishes that there was something more he could do or say that would make Izzy feel… maybe not better, but decidedly less shitty about this whole situation.

He wishes that he could say that Izzy’s reaction was just the first mate being melodramatic… that all he needed to do to fix the situation was sit down and explain to him that Stede had hit his head and the resulting injury had scrambled his memories, that he hadn’t forgotten his love for Izzy on purpose and that, hopefully, he would be able to remember it in due time. But that’s not the problem here. Izzy has had enough experience with head trauma in his lifetime to understand how all of this works. His problem stems from a genuine belief that Stede has just been… humoring him all this time—that his feelings would never evolve beyond the irritation he’d displayed back in the captain’s quarters.

Ed wants to tell him that even Stede isn’t kind enough to be able to keep up a farce for that long, but the words are sucked right out of him as one of Izzy’s long, leanly muscular legs hooks around his waist and drags him near. Between the two of them, well… there’s no denying that Ed is stronger. If he didn’t want to go—didn’t want to do this—he could resist, could stay rooted in the spot… or perhaps even slip out of Izzy’s hold on him entirely. He doesn’t. He falls into Izzy, tattooed fingers sliding beneath the hem of his shirt to slide along rough, battle-worn skin. There’s the scar from when Izzy’d been stabbed… and another, longer one, which stretches the entire width of his abdomen, from when he’d been gutted by a British naval officer… and yet another still, hard and ovular and a little bit raised, from when he’d been shot. His body is a cacophony of scars, of stories of battles survived… before the toe incident, it’d been a small source of comfort that none of the scars were from him.  

Now, well… perhaps it’s best if he doesn’t dwell on it.

“I love you.” Ed says, with a sincerity that makes Izzy pause. Ed can practically see the gears turning inside of his head—how he’s conditioned himself to blindly accept whatever it is his captain says as law is battling it out against his own latent insecurities. “Stede… Stede may not remember what we have, but I do… I love you, and I’ll never stop loving you, and I need you to know that.”

Izzy is silent for a long while, before he pulls a face, “Fucking sap.”

The corner of Ed’s mouth twitches—even if Izzy still can’t quite bring himself to say the words, he’s been with Izzy long enough to understand what he means and to tease him about it, ever so gently. “I know you love me too, Iz.”

Color creeps along the length of Izzy’s neck—which is, for once, delightfully bare. “…Shut up.”

“Make me.”

Izzy seems to take his words for the challenge that they are, because he leans forward to kiss Ed again. This kiss lands somewhere in the middle, not exactly soft, but not painful, either. Ed’s hands continue to travel up and up, his lungs burning fiercely as Izzy’s tongue drags, slow and sure, along the swell of his bottom lip. Muscles, toned from years of manual labor, flutter beneath his gentle caresses. He keeps his touch gentle and light, knowing full-well that Izzy’s scar tissue is hypersensitive. Applying anything beyond the slightest bit of pressure was liable to cause Izzy to burst into tears from the pain—and then vehemently deny that he’s crying while he attempts to scoot away from the promise of continued contact.

Ed never wants to be the reason that Izzy has tears in his eyes again.

The side of his thumb brushes over Izzy’s nipple, his touch so soft it can hardly be considered a touch at all. But the contact has Izzy keening, breaking their kiss just long enough for Ed to suck in a few frantic gulps of air, before diving right back in. This time, Izzy’s teeth are on him, sinking deep into his lower lip as Ed catches Izzy’s nipple between his thumb and forefinger and tugs—

Izzy is already hard—a proper row will do that to him, regardless of the cause. Ed can feel him straining against his leathers. It doesn’t escape his notice that the laces are already undone—he’d probably figured that lacing them would be too much of a hassle with only one functioning hand, and Ed can’t blame him. Honestly, he’s a little impressed that Izzy’s as well put together as he is right now—

His eyes flit back to Izzy’s injured wrist… to the blood that’s smeared along his tattoos…

The wound needs to be tended to, there’s no question about that. It’s not so deep that wound care is emergent—and, to be honest, Izzy is much more likely to let him see to it after he’s made soft and pliant from an orgasm or two—but he can’t let Izzy just… suck the knowledge of its existence right out of his dick. He’ll certainly try, but… he can’t let it happen. He’s the only one that’s ever been allowed to tend to Izzy’s self-inflicted wounds… Actually, for a long time there, he’d been the only one allowed to tend to any of Izzy’s wounds. That’s… probably the reason that so many of them had scarred so horribly. He frowns, once again doing his damndest not to dwell on that thought—

Instead, he asks, “Shirt on?” It’s not really a question, even though he phrases it like one. The t-shirt makes it a little easier for him to wear the splint, but the splint makes it considerably more difficult to get the t-shirt off. And he doesn’t want to hurt Izzy—not now, and not like that.

“Shirt on.” Izzy confirms with a bob of the head. And then, “There’s oil in the top drawer, right side.”

The corner of Ed’s mouth twitches, “You feeling a little excited there, mate?” He can’t resist the urge to tease, “I haven’t even gotten your pants off, yet.” The blush lingering on Izzy’s cheeks grows just a bit darker at that… a moment later, his foot collides with Ed’s uninjured leg—not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to convey a message. “Ow, ow… okay, okay. I’m sorry, Iz. You’re just too cute when you’re flustered—”

Izzy’s eye twitches, “…Do you want to get your dick wet, Edward?”

“I’m pretty sure you should already know the answer to that, mate.” Comes Ed’s reply.

“See, I thought that I did.” Izzy says easily, “But then you started running your mouth about how ‘cute’ I am, and I started thinking that maybe you wanted me to run you through with my rapier instead.” It’s not a real threat, Ed knows. He’s not even sure where Izzy’s rapier is (although he’s certain Izzy knows exactly where it is, and can have it in his hand in the blink of an eye if need be—).

Ed’s eyes glitter mischievously as he traces bejeweled fingers over Izzy’s bulge, “I dunno, Iz… something tells me you liked it.”

“I will shank you—”

That only serves to amuse Ed further, “Now there’s an idea. When was the last time that you topped?”

It’d been a while. Izzy had to be in the mood for it, and even then, Ed was usually topping from the bottom. He’ll worry about that another time, though, when Izzy isn’t wrapping his good hand around Ed’s wrist and guiding his hand to his hip. Nimble fingers hook in the waistband of his breeches, guiding them down over the swell of his hips. Izzy isn’t really being helpful, but that’s okay… He’s not wearing smalls, which makes this even easier. He’s able to peel the leather right down Izzy’s legs and slide it over his bare feet, and then lets it fall in a heap on the floor. He takes a second to appreciate the fact that Izzy is now bare for him, before twisting him around to bend him over the desk—

The oil is exactly where Izzy said it would be… he grabs it with his right hand, removes the cork with his teeth, and drizzles it along the length of Izzy’s crack. He doesn’t miss the way that Izzy startles a little as the cool liquid comes into contact with his skin… and he knows him well enough to know that he’ll bitch six ways to Sunday if Ed makes any effort to warm it now.

He works a finger inside of him, then two… The sword-calloused pads of his fingers brush up against that tender little bundle of nerves inside of him, softly at first and then harder, harder still, until black dots begin creep into the corners of his vision. He scratches at the desk, nails digging deep into the wood and causing tiny slivers to prick at his skin. The pain is bright, but fleeting… The pleasure envelops him like a warm blanket.

“Izzy… Izzy…” Ed watches for a moment, mesmerized by the way Izzy presses back into his hand, always trying to take him deeper. And then, with his free hand, he gently shifts Izzy so that his chest is flat against the surface of the desk, “It’ll be more comfortable like this, yeah? You can balance a little better, at least.” He says. “Try to keep your weight off of your injured wrist—”

“Fuck me…” Izzy presses his face into the wood, fighting the urge to look at Ed—Ed, seemingly reading his mind, nuzzles into the tattooed side of his neck, forcing himself into Izzy’s periphery. It grounds him in a way that’s borderline embarrassing.

“That would be the plan, darling.” He confirms.

“Don’t.” Izzy says suddenly. His voice is tight, but not in the same way that it gets when he’s proper mad about something. He almost sounds… hurt? And they can’t have that, not when the whole purpose of this is to distract from… is Izzy still trying to distract him from his anger at Izzy’s resignation? Or is he trying to distract Izzy from the pain of Stede having forgotten their relationship. “I… T-That’s what he…”

That’s what Stede calls him. Darling, dearest, love… they’re all terms of endearment that Stede uses for Izzy. And Ed’s using it here… “Okay.” Ed turns his head just far enough to brush his lips over the swallow tattoo on Izzy’s neck, “Okay. You don’t need to say anything more, Iz.”

His fingers tease at that tender little bundle of nerves inside of him one final time before withdrawing… He takes a moment to admire Izzy’s slightly gaped hole, his most intimate skin glistening ever so slightly in the candlelight. When it becomes clear that Izzy is starting to grow impatient, he opens his leathers and slides them down just far enough to free his cock. It only takes a handful of quick, efficient strokes to slick his cock with oil, and then he’s lining himself with Izzy’s hole. Izzy draws in a deep, shuddering breath as Ed thrusts, slowly, and—ye gods, the burn of being just this side of underprepped, combined with the delicious heaviness of Ed’s cock filling him so perfectly, has him dizzy. He presses his cheek into the cool wood, reaching blindly behind him until he’s able to hook his fingers around Ed’s forearm. His nails press hard into Ed’s tattooed skin, just shy of breaking the skin—

The desk creaks beneath their combined weight and the force of Ed’s thrusts, and Ed can’t decide whether Izzy would take a sort of sadistic glee in seeing the ridiculously expensive piece of furniture (which he took every opportunity to remind Stede was an absolute waste of coin… even though he used it every day, and only ever let Ed use it when he bent Izzy over it) break, or whether having it actually break would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. He’s pulled from his thoughts by Izzy frantically attempting to reach for his cock—mewls of half-pain, half-pleasure fall from his lips as he tries to clench his injured hand into a fist.

“Shh…” The arm that Izzy’s holding shifts slightly, Ed’s fingers digging into the curve of Izzy’s hip hard enough to bruise. Ed’s other arm coaxes Izzy up ever so slightly—just enough, really, for his fingers to get purchase on Izzy’s cock. He can’t get a proper grip on him like this, but he doesn’t think that he needs to in order for Izzy to—“That’s it, Iz. Be good and cum for me, yeah?”

“E-Edward…” He tells him again—tells him that he wants him to be good and spill for him—and Izzy does. He paints the desk, and his stomach, with his seed, the sweetest sounds leaving his throat as Edward continues fucking him through it. “Oh, fuck…” Ed follows a moment later, burying himself as deep inside of Izzy as the other man’s body will allow to fill him to the brink of bursting—

It takes a moment for him to catch his breath… to unscramble the mess that Izzy’s body has made of his brain. When he finally thinks himself capable of coherent speech, he asks—“So, what first: your resignation or your wrist?”

Izzy licks his lips, doing everything in his power to avoid Ed’s eyes, “…Is neither an option?”

“Your wrist it is, then.”

Ed had been right (he usually was, when it came to Izzy). One orgasm later, and his first mate was putty in his hands.

The cut isn’t bad. It’s a little deeper on the one side, where it looked like he’d gotten himself with the very tip of the blade, but otherwise… he doesn’t think that it’ll need stitches. He soaks a bandage with alcohol to clean it, though, because one can never be too careful when it comes to treating for infection. Izzy’s face remains carefully blank throughout, although Ed’s spent enough time with him to know that this isn’t because he doesn’t feel the pain… or even because he likes the pain. Izzy’s never liked being taken care of… especially not by Ed. The problem is that Ed also happens to be the only person he trusts to take care of him like this. It’s one of those situations where he just can’t win.

Ed does his best to keep the torture to a minimum—after he cleans the wound, he covers it in soft, cotton bandages, before situating the splint back on top. The splint is a bit more complicated than his brace, if only because he has no idea why it needs to have so many parts to keep a small cluster of bones from moving, but it’s also fairly intuitive.

It’s also a whole hell of a lot easier to have someone else put it on for him, apparently, because it appears to be sitting properly now.

Or… well, Ed thinks it’d been sitting properly before, too. It’s just… a bit more snug now? Yeah, that sounded right.

As he sets the supplies aside, he realizes that it’s now time for the more difficult part of their… ‘conversation.’ He could hardly call what they’d just done a ‘conversation,’ seeing as Izzy hadn’t said a bloody word since he’d tried to avoid all of this back when Ed had had him bent over the table. In the beginning, he’d tried to coax Izzy into talking about it… about why he’d taken a blade to his skin, or hadn’t attempted to dodge what should’ve been an easily avoidable blow, or… and Izzy would tell him. Sometimes, it was a means of regaining control. He’d always found pain to be grounding, especially when he’s the one holding the knife that’s slicing into his skin. Sometimes, it’s a means of artificially creating a feeling… an emotion. It can be so exhausting, swinging between emotional extremes… this… this at least offered him some predictability. He knew what he would feel—the pain, the shame, the self-loathing—and it wasn’t good, but… it was better than the alternative.

And then, sometimes… sometimes he didn’t know why he did it, just that he did—and those were the times that scared Ed the most.

“You’re not resigning.” Ed says at last, his tone brokering no room for argument. “If you really think that all of this is going to interfere with your ability to perform your duties as first mate, then you can… I don’t know… take a vacation? Except you’ll still be on board the Revenge, so I suppose it would be rather more like a ‘staycation.’”

Izzy looks at him like he’s suddenly sprouted a second head, “A… ‘staycation?’ What in the bloody hell is a ‘staycation?’”

Ed appears to be obscenely proud of himself for having come up with that one, “It’s all the fun of a vacation without going anywhere.” He says. Izzy still doesn’t seem entirely sold on the idea, “You would be relieved of your duties indefinitely, but you’d still retain your rank.”

Izzy narrows his eyes, “I suppose I’m having a bit of trouble wrapping my head around how any of this is different than me just resigning?”

“Didn’t you hear me? You’ll keep your title. That’s the key difference.”

“Why is it so important to you that I keep the blasted title?” Izzy snaps. And Ed… didn’t Izzy realize that the two of them were kind of a package deal? The feared pirate captain (formerly known as) Blackbeard and his steadfast first mate, Israel Hands. Izzy had been at his side ever since he’d had a ship of his own… and even before that, they’d been… “Stede has his own first mate. And it’s idiotic to have two ‘first’ mates any—”

“Because you’re mine.” Ed says, a little frantic. That causes Izzy to pause, a curious expression settling on his face. “You’re my first mate. You’re my lover. …You’re my Izzy.” He continues, “Stede is Stede and I’m me. I love you, and I’m not going to lose you because Stede can’t fucking see how special you are right now.” Is he yelling? He feels like he’s yelling—and Izzy is looking at him like he’s yelling.

“I can’t…” Izzy breathes, and suddenly his lashes are wet, a mess of tears blurring his vision, “I’m not Iggy.”

“I know you’re not.” Ed reaches out slowly to take Izzy’s face in the palm of his hand. He sweeps his thumb up and over the ‘x’ that he inked onto the smaller man’s cheek all those years ago, “And… if it’ll help, until things are sorted with Stede… we’re still co-captains, but I am your captain. Unless he specifically seeks you out, you don’t have to talk to him, don’t have to address him…”

A small furrow forms in-between Izzy’s eyes, “So… you’re giving me permission to be an ass?”

“…I’m giving you permission to not get your heart trampled on.” Ed counters. Izzy thinks the two statements mean rather the same thing.

Ed relocates them to the hammock, where he settles in beside Izzy and just… looks at him for a while. He hadn’t had a chance to offer him more than a perfunctory once-over after he and Stede had nearly drowned, seeing as Izzy had been far too concerned with Stede’s head wound to allow Ed to tend to him properly. Aside from his broken wrist, he doesn’t seem to have sustained any other serious injuries—he has a couple of bruises here and there, some worse than others but none as severe as the one on his wrist, and there’d been water in his lungs when he’d hauled Stede back aboard the Revenge… but other than that, he’d been lucky. It certainly could’ve been a whole hell of a lot worse.

Izzy normally doesn’t enjoy being watched, and that morning is no exception. He allows Ed to stare at him for a couple of minutes before he starts squirming, the hammock creaking dangerously underneath their combined weight. Ed thinks that the whole thing could come crashing down… and he and Izzy could plummet through the bottom of the ship and all the way down into the depths of the sea… and he wouldn’t mind.

Stede is the comfort he seeks after a nightmare… and Izzy is the one to chase those nightmares away.

The silence stretches on and on between them, with Ed just taking a moment to appreciate being allowed to hold Izzy and Izzy reluctantly admitting, in the sanctity of his own mind, that he quite enjoys being held like this. Finally, “…What exactly would a ‘staycation’ entail?”

Ed’s beard tickles the side of his face, “Nothing too fancy.” He says, recalling the first time that Stede had tried to get Izzy to use a bar of sandalwood soap. Izzy had stared at the bar until he’d gone cross-eyed and the water that Lucius had prepared for the bath had gone cold, “You could sleep in a little… Or maybe I could ask Roach to make you something special to eat.”

“Like what?” At first, he’d thought that the delicacies that Stede enjoyed every day for breakfast, brunch, lunch, and dinner were ‘special.’ But when you eat them every day, they start to lose their allure. Now, he’d probably look at hardtack like it was the feast of kings—

“I dunno, mate. What do you like to eat?” It’s a simple enough question, but the answer is decidedly complex. Before Stede’d come along, nobody had cared whether or not he liked the food that was put before him—rations were rations, and you ate what was put in front of you if you didn’t want to starve. The idea that food could actually taste good was an incredibly foreign concept to him—

It was also one that he associated heavily with Stede, and therefore didn’t want to pursue any further. “I… I-I don’t know.” He says.

Ed, bless him, seems to understand. “It’s not just about food.” He says, never missing a beat. “You could read. I know that you have Shakespeare’s plays hidden around here somewhere.” Izzy blushes and turns away in agitation. The corner of Ed’s mouth twitches as he continues, “You could also try moonbathing with Mr. Buttons.”

“…I don’t think I’ve ever been more horrified by a suggestion of yours in my entire life.”

Ed has the nerve to cackle, “I’m just saying… vacations… staycations… their all about experiences, Iz. I’m giving you leave to do whatever the hell you want for the next week, so long as it doesn’t involve any of your usual duties or leaving the ship.”

“The entire ship is liable to spontaneously combust in my absence.”

“Then let it.” Ed’s response shocks him into silence, “The crew needs to learn to listen to you… and some lessons can only be learned the hard way.” He says, “I won’t let them kill themselves, but… if the ship happens to spontaneously combust because no-one knows how to use a bloody barnacle scraper, then I have no problems sitting back and letting it burn.”

“You’re mad.” Izzy says, but he sounds vaguely impressed. “What would your precious Stede think?”

Ed’s heart sinks a little bit when he realizes that Izzy had referred to Stede as his, not theirs… but he brushes the thought aside and forces a smile onto his face, offering a quick, “Love you too, Iz,” as he gently brushes his lips over Izzy’s. Then, “And if he has a problem with my captaining style, he’s welcome to take his own advice and come talk to me about it.”

“Mmm…” Izzy looks like he wants to say more, but he’s tired and sore and hurting… and ends up falling asleep curled into Ed’s chest instead.

Roach would like to state for the record that he’d had every intention of telling Stede that he’d lost time—he’d just wanted to make sure he knew roughly how much time he’d lost before opening his mouth. He hadn’t expected Ed to just… come right out and tell him about their relationship with Izzy, and the way Stede had responded—defensive, panicked—made Roach more than a little apprehensive about how this conversation was to proceed. Nobody ever took discovering that they’d lost time well… responses ranged anywhere from disbelief to outright violence (which also had to do with the severity of the injury that caused the memory loss in the first place).

Stede was most certainly not the violent sort, but his speech about never loving Izzy was more than a bit… concerning.

“Your wound looks good.” Roach says, “Or, as good as it can, given the circumstances.” Stede hums, clearly not paying him his full attention. Perhaps that’s for the best, “You, um… Look, there’s something I need to tell you.” A breath, “You seem to have lost about six, maybe seven months’ worth of memories as a result of that blow you took to the head. Memories… about Izzy, specifically.”

That seems to catch Stede’s attention, “Memories… about Izzy?”

Chapter Text

~*~*~*~
Seven Months Earlier
~*~*~*~

There aren’t words to describe how much Izzy doesn’t want to be here—and he wouldn’t need to be, if Stede and his merry band of buffoons didn’t need a babysitter.

Izzy doesn’t ordinarily take shore leave. It’s one of the rare opportunities he has to spend some one-on-one time with Ed, and now that things are… marginally less awkward between them, he’s once again content to relish in the rare scraps of affection that Ed sends his way. Ed seems to have reached a sort of… internal equilibrium. He’s no longer Blackbeard, but he’s not wholly Ed, either. Blackbeard was a persona that he’d created, cobbled together from bits and bobs of his own personality. He was other, but he was also Ed—most of the unhealthy bits of Ed, but Ed all the same. Much as the idea of just… locking him in a box and throwing away the key might appeal to him, that wasn’t how it worked. Once he’d realized and accepted this, he’d become… mellower, like the Ed Izzy used to know—

He'd apologized for the toe incident so many times, Izzy had lost count—and when Izzy had tried to tell him that there was nothing for him to apologize for, that he’d invited punishment unto himself by pushing him the way that he had (he should’ve known better… nothing good ever came from pushing Ed; the wounds his efforts had earned him may’ve healed, but every time he thought that the memories had faded, something—or someone—brought them crashing back to the forefront), he’d just looked horribly, unfathomably sad. There was nothing that he could say—no threats that he could make to Ed’s person—that could justify what he’d done. Izzy would beg to differ, but his protests only seemed to make Ed more upset, so he’d let the matter drop—

Once he’d stopped insisting that he’d deserved the toe—that he’d have suffered more, if Ed had seen fit to dole out additional punishment—the outpouring of apologies had slowed… and eventually, it’d stopped altogether. After that, Ed’d seemed almost… shy around him, like a kid with a crush—which was ridiculous, seeing as he and Ed had been together in some capacity since Ed was sixteen (and doesn’t that make him feel horribly old?).

There was nothing they didn’t know about each other, nothing that they hadn’t seen, touched, explored…

There was really no point in acting coy when you’ve had your entire hand inside of your partner’s ass, after all.

He didn’t understand the sudden shyness, and Ed didn’t seem to be of a mind to explain it to him… and so they reached a sort of stand-still, where things were better than they’d been in quite some time, but still not quite back to normal—whatever that meant, now. Izzy was content to disregard his unusual behavior, however, if it meant that Ed would continue to look at and see him. Recently, it seemed as though Ed was making a real effort to listen to and appreciate Izzy for the first time in… in years. The sheer amount of attention he was receiving was downright intoxicating, and Izzy was eager to drown himself in it for however long it lasted—because as soon as Ed realized that he was still Izzy—the same old, boring Izzy he’d always been—his affection would run dry as the desert and Izzy would be left alone again.

But no… Instead of being allowed to bask in the rare and wonderful thing that is Ed’s affection, he’s here, in the middle of an open-air market, zoning out as Stede tries and fails to haggle with a book merchant. Izzy has just enough time to think that he’d probably be having an easier time of it if he weren’t dressed like he had money coming out the ass before he sees it: the barest glint of silver hidden away inside of the merchant’s waistcoat.

“Why, I…” Stede, blissfully unaware of the danger lurking just underneath a thin layer of ridiculously frilled fabric, prattles on, “I’ll have you know that that is a perfectly reasonable price for damaged merchandise! The cover is half-rotted. The entire book will need to be rebound.”

The merchant is fast, but Izzy is faster. The sun reflects off of the silver of the blade, momentarily blinding, a half-second before fresh blood splatters across the bulk of the merchant’s wares. He chokes wetly, a trembling hand reaching for his ruined skin seconds too late to do him any good. “I don’t know about you, Bonnet, but I believe free is a much more agreeable price.” Silence. Izzy’s eye twitches, “Not even a ‘thank you’ for saving your worthless hide? Twat.”

When Stede finally speaks, his voice is shaking, each word thin and reedy, like he’d just gotten done running a particularly long distance… or had just seen something that’d given him a terrible fright. Izzy frowns—after all this time playing pirate, one would think that he’d have grown comfortable with the sight of blood. Then, “I-Izzy, my dear—” His frown deepens at the term on endearment, “You… You’re bleeding.”

He’s fully prepared to tell Stede that the blood is not his own—the merchant had made quite the splash when he’d slit his throat; he wouldn’t be surprised if he’d gotten some of his blood on him. When he looks down, however, he sees what it is that Stede is referring to, “Oh.”

“You… Y-You should probably sit down.” Stede begins, only to realize a moment later that there isn’t anywhere for him to sit… aside from on the table, where all of the dead merchant’s bloody wares are still laid out. After a little less than thirty seconds of deliberation, he clears the table with one dramatic sweep of his arm and hoists Izzy up—and, oh fuck, that’s actually kind of hot. “W-We need to get you back to the Revenge.”

Izzy rolls his eyes, “Why don’t you quit yammering and take a couple of deep breaths? You’re looking a little green, and if you throw up anywhere near me right now I’m liable to yank this knife out of my stomach and gut you with it.”

“D-Don’t!” Stede reaches for the handle of the blade, half-panicked, like he legitimately believes that Izzy is going to yank it out of his belly just to prove a point.

Israel Hands is a great many things—idiotic is not one of them. It goes without saying that the only thing keeping him from bleeding out is the length of silver that’s piercing his skin. He blames the genuine belief that he’d rather it be inside of him than Stede on the blood that he’s already lost, and the very real chance that the blade had managed to pierce something important. It is lodged fairly deep on the side with all of his squishy bits, after all. The part of him that’s convinced that none of this would’ve happened if Ed had just let him stay on the thrice-damned ship is battling it out with the niggling little voice that reminds him that that would damn-near guarantee that Stede would’ve returned to the ship with a brand-spanking-new hole in his body and decidedly less blood than when he’d left.

Edward would never forgive him if he let Stede die on his watch. Izzy… Izzy was replaceable. Stede was a fucking one-of-a-kind treasure.

…The realization that his death won’t matter to Ed at all in the grand scheme of things cuts far worse than any blade ever could.

“Izzy? Izzy?!” The back of Stede’s hand collides with his cheek with such force he tastes blood on his tongue. His teeth ache—the pain is nothing compared to the burning in his belly, a constant, low flame that burns bright and hot every time the blade shifts even slightly inside of him—and it’s enough to bring him back to the present, to focus bleary eyes on Stede’s concerned face. “You need to stay with me, alright? Stay awake.”

“I was awake.” Izzy insists, but he can hear the way that his words are slurring, feel the way that his body is beginning to list ever so slightly to the right. It makes the ache in his abdomen infinitely worse, but he’s willing to suffer the additional pain to be allowed to lay down for a moment or two…

“Izzy, please…” Izzy thinks that he sees a tear streak down the Gentleman Pirate’s cheek, but he must be mistaken—there’s no reason that Stede would cry over him. If anything, he should be happy. Izzy was never his first mate, after all—“…How… How could you ever believe that?”

Izzy frowns, “B-Believe… what?” If Stede actually intends to bring him back to the ship, he might want to get on that soon. His consciousness is fleeing, like water trickling in-between his fingers. He didn’t think that he’d lost that much blood, but then, he hadn’t really been paying attention—hadn’t even realized he’d been stabbed until Stede had started blabbering about it.

“That I… Izzy, while we may not always see eye-to-eye, I would never… to wish such grievous bodily harm upon someone else is the epitome of cruelty.”

A blink, “’snot so bad. I’ve had worse.”

“That’s not the point!”

And then… Izzy vaguely registers the fact that Stede is moving. He’s a mess of flailing limbs in expensive fabric, and if Izzy were in better form, he probably would’ve laughed at the image he cut… but then he’s bundling that expensive fabric in his hands, wrinkling it between trembling fingers, and pressing it taut against Izzy’s bleeding wound. The pain is immediate, sharp and cutting and all-encompassing. In a matter of seconds, the fabric is ruined, and yet Stede doesn’t seem to notice—and if he does notice, he certainly doesn’t care. He’s mumbling underneath his breath, attempting to decide whether hunting down Roach or picking up Izzy and carrying him, bodily, back to the ship would be the better course of action.

Izzy finds he’s quite partial to Option C, where Stede lays him out on the table and lets him stare up at his stupidly handsome face as the darkness takes him.

…Ye gods, he must be dying.

There’s a part of Izzy that cannot believe he let the merchant land a blow like this—but that part is buried in the deep, dark recesses of his mind, beneath layers and layers of what can only be described as molasses. It’s the same part of him that’s begrudgingly impressed that Stede would ruin such an expensive waistcoat with his blood. He still doesn’t understand what it is that makes Stede Bonnet tick—if there’s anything at all in that head of his besides air—but he thinks that maybe, just maybe, that’s okay. The sun illuminates his golden curls, making it seem as if he has a sort of halo. The irony of an angel coming to shepherd him away to the next life is not lost on him—there’s no heavenly choir waiting for him, that’s for certain. But then, everything else in his life has gone tits up since Bonnet came around—

Maybe saving one dumb bastard’s life was enough to absolve him of his multitude of sins.

“Izzy?” That’s his name, but it sounds so very far away now. The pain in his abdomen dulls significantly as the black dots that’d been creeping in at the corners of his vision suddenly become all he can see. “Izzy? Izzy, open your eyes for me—” The voice is growing softer now, more distant. Izzy clings to it as the last of his consciousness fades… and then, at last, there’s nothing.

~*~*~*~

“Izzy?” There’s his name again, but a different voice is calling out to him this time. “Iz? C’mon, mate… open those eyes for me.”

And fuck if Izzy wouldn’t try to find a way to defy death itself if it meant obeying an order from Ed. It’s… a bit harder than he cares to admit, to force his eyes open and to breathe around the starbursts of pain that seem to be emanating from his abdomen, but he does it, and his efforts are rewarded with a bright, slightly manic smile. “E-Edward?” He wheezes, “W-What’re… What’re you doing? Where… Where am I?”

“You’re back on the Revenge.” He says, like this should be obvious—like Izzy hadn’t been damn-near certain that he’d died in that open-air market. “And I’m holding you, because Stede said that you lost a shit-ton of blood and y-you… you weren’t conscious when they brought you aboard and…” Ed’s voice breaks a little. Izzy doesn’t have to look at him to know that he’s crying. “There was a whole minute there where your heart stopped beating.”

Izzy swallows hard, “That would explain why I feel like death, then.”

“Guess the chariot didn’t swing lo enough.” Ed tries for a joke, and if Izzy were feeling a bit better, he thinks he might’ve laughed. As it currently stands, the idea of doing anything more strenuous than breathing has him on the brink of tears.

He shifts a little in Ed’s arms, immediately regrets it, and croaks out, “W-Water?”

At which point, Stede-fucking-Bonnet materializes from the ether with a glass filled with water and an assortment of various other odds and ends overflowing from his arms. A casual glance reveals medical supplies, a change of clothes for both Izzy and Ed, a change of linens for the bed… there’s undoubtedly more, but the sheer amount of coin he’d wasted on the bed linens alone has Izzy’s head aching something fierce. He allows his eyes to slip closed for a brief moment, only acknowledging that he’s the only one in the room—or the bed—when Ed takes the glass of water from Bonnet and presses it to his lips. It’s cool, which feels good for about half a second before it begins to exacerbate the ache in his jaw from where Stede had slapped him—

Speaking of Stede, the man is rambling on about… something. It takes Izzy’s frazzled brain a moment to figure out that he’s talking about what’d transpired after he’d sacked out. Apparently, Stede had carried him back to the Revenge, which was nothing short of humiliating—and Izzy would be sure to get good and angry about it once he had the energy to hold his eyes open for more than a couple of seconds at a time. Izzy had the devil’s luck, it seemed, because Roach had already returned to the ship, and had been able to cauterize the wound to prevent Izzy from losing anymore blood. There was significant risk involved with cauterizing a wound that deep, but Izzy had already lost too much blood to warrant additional caution.

He'd been out for something like three days—which Roach had assured them was perfectly normal, but had stressed Stede to no end all the same. During that time, Ed had only ever left his side long enough to relieve himself… while Stede used the skills he’d learned since taking up with Blackbeard to prevent the ship from spontaneously combusting. And every night, Stede had read to him from… was that the bloody book that’d caused this whole mess?

There’s an odd sort of poetic justice in that, he supposes. At least he hadn’t been conscious while Stede read to him like he was some sort of bloody child—

Oh… no, he’s depositing all of his supplies on the foot of the bed and making a beeline for the gods-forsaken book. Fuck his life.

He manages to drink about half of the cup of water before he’s had his fill. Ed twists enough to set the glass on the bedside table, and rolls right back over to brush sweat-slicked hair from Izzy’s face and tell him how good he is… how good he’s doing… and, as if Izzy’s insides weren’t already fucked, that causes them to twist into tight little knots until Izzy suddenly finds himself wanting for air, for space, for… “Why?”

Edward looks confused… and more than a little hurt. “Why what, Iz?”

“Why… Why am I here? Why didn’t you just leave me to bleed in my own bed?” It certainly would’ve been less awkward… and also decidedly more uncomfortable. It wouldn’t be the first time that he’d been left to mend his wounds on his own… and apparently, thanks to Stede carrying him all the way back to the Revenge, it wouldn’t be the last. “I-I’m not… This isn’t…” The words elude him, but Ed knows what it is that he’s trying to say—he always does.

He answers Izzy’s question with a question of his own, “Why did you take that knife for Stede?”

“Because it’s what you would’ve wanted me to do.” Izzy’s response is immediate. It had everything to do with the fact that Ed would be absolutely devastated at the loss of his ponce, and nothing to do with a genuine fear that Stede had been lucky so far, but there was only so far that that luck could carry him. It was Izzy’s job to protect the crew… and if he were to let one of them die just because of a vendetta, he’d never forgive himself.

Stede makes a small, wounded sound in the back of his throat, and the knot inside of Izzy’s stomach coils just a little bit tighter. “Izzy… Izzy, no. Absolutely not. I… I don’t presume to speak for Edward, of course, but… Izzy, you cannot honestly believe that neither of us would feel a thing if you were to just… just bleed out right in front of us.” Okay, sure… when you phrase it like that, perhaps. But even then, he’s confident that neither man would mourn him for long.

“Izzy. Izzy.” Words are difficult for Ed, sometimes—especially in moments like these, where he wants to take extra care to make sure that he doesn’t say the wrong thing and set Izzy off like a powder-keg. His name, however, seems safe enough, and so he repeats it over and over again, like a prayer.

“It’s my job to protect you—to protect the entire crew.” Izzy says. His throat feels scratchy, like he needs to clear it… but the thought of doing so makes him feel like he’s being stabbed all over again. And so he croaks “Water” once again, and Ed hurriedly obliges him.

Stede takes a breath, “Alright, new rule. You may continue to protect the crew as you see fit, but no more throwing yourself in the pathway of sharp, potentially deadly objects.” Izzy somehow manages to look confused around the rim of his glass, and Stede continues, “You’re a smart man, Israel Hands. I have every confidence that you’ll be able to find a way to disarm and/or dispatch an enemy without putting yourself in harm’s way.”

And, well… of course he could. Izzy wouldn’t have lasted this long if he were a one-trick pony. But that still doesn’t answer his question of “Why?”

A small furrow forms in-between Stede’s brows, “Why what, darling?” It’s almost a perfect mirror of Ed’s question earlier, but the addition of the term of endearment has warmth blooming in Izzy’s chest and spreading like wildfire along the length of his neck. He can only hope that, if he doesn’t call additional attention to it, Stede will assume that it’s from fever or blood loss or something else entirely and let the matter drop—

The question that’s been plaguing his mind ever since Stede started fussing over his wound seems like a safe enough place to start, “Why do you care whether I live or die?” It doesn’t make sense, really. Stede’s life would be so much easier if Izzy were just… gone.

Izzy’s tried—for over a year now—to turn Stede’s crew into proper pirates. With each passing day, it becomes clearer that all of his efforts are for naught. The crew will be whatever they want to be, and do whatever they want to do, and Izzy… Izzy will be left to pick up the pieces. And it’s not… it’s not like he doesn’t understand why the crew doesn’t like him. He’s not fun like Stede… or even Ed, when he’s in the right mood. He has ideas about what pirates should be like—and maybe they’re a little outdated, but they’ve kept him alive for this long, and he doesn’t see that changing in the foreseeable future. When you obeyed the chain of command and completed your daily chores, the ship ran more efficiently and was safer overall. Nobody wants to do chores, but when everyone carries their own damned weight, things actually get done and no-one walks away feeling like they’d gotten stuck holding the short end of the stick. Perhaps he’d be more amenable to the idea of letting them have their fun if they at least tried to do their work first, but no.

He'd be willing to meet them at least part of the way if they actually made an effort to listen to him every once in a while. Even pretending to listen to him would be an improvement. But no. Izzy was just… screaming into the void, hoping and praying that one day, the void would scream back. And he was done. Stede had Mr. Buttons, who was perhaps the only semi-competent person on his entire crew, and Izzy had… his dignity, or whatever scraps were left of it. As soon as he was capable of leaving the bed under his own power, he’d be gone. Or, perhaps, if Ed were feeling particularly antsy to be rid of him, Ed could carry him back to his room so that he might be able to start collecting those few personal possessions he had that were within easy reach of the bed.

The horrible truth of it all is that Izzy has always needed Ed more than Ed has needed Izzy. And Stede… well, Stede doesn’t need Izzy at all.

And if they don’t need him, then it’s pointless for him to remain where he’s just taking up space—

Speaking of, Stede is crowding his—his torso bent double over Izzy’s side of the bed (which, he presumes, is actually Stede’s side of the bed), his face so close to Izzy’s that his ridiculously soft blond hair is causing terribly embarrassing things to happen to Izzy’s heart. And then, before he even has a chance to register what’s happening, Stede’s lips are on his. There’s a brief flash where his body tenses and everything hurts, and then he’s kissing back… He cannot say that he’d ever given any thought to kissing Stede before, but now that they’re here, with Ed’s fingers trailing lightly over his bare skin, sweet reassurances that he can have this—that he deserves this—falling from his lips, he realizes with a start that it doesn’t feel wrong.

Stede doesn’t pull back when he expects him to—in fact, he doesn’t break the kiss until two brief knocks herald the arrival of a visitor, and then he just kind of… primps Izzy, gently, fawning over him like a mother might a young child… Ed is the one to invite their guest in, but even as he does so, his eyes never leave Izzy. As such, Izzy is the first one to see Roach—he would expect to be embarrassed at being coddled like this, but instead he finds that he feels… warm.

Not… literally warm (although there’s no denying that—Ed is a fucking human furnace, and his body is pressed so tightly against Izzy’s it feels like they’re bleeding into one another. Their skin is definitely fused together at this point, which should make tending to his bandages a real bitch), but rather, the kind of warm that comes from your heart growing three sizes inside of your chest. He’d be worried that there was something seriously wrong with him if Ed weren’t so amazingly calm—

Roach clears his throat awkwardly, “I, uh… need to sneak in there for a second to tend to his bandages.” He says, his tone suggesting he’s expecting trouble from Ed. Izzy cannot help but wonder whether or not Ed had given him trouble before. “Just for a second, and then you can get right back to your regularly scheduled cuddling.” Izzy somehow manages to muster the energy to flip him the bird, right before burying his face directly in-between Ed’s pecs.

“Fuck off. We’re not cuddling.” He says… and, surprisingly enough, finds that he doesn’t really matter to him whether or not Roach believes him.

~*~*~*~
Present Day
~*~*~*~

Stede’s expression is a bit of a cross between disbelief and horror—which means that, even before he says anything, Roach is preparing for the worst case scenario. He’s… honestly not even sure what that would look like at this point, considering he’s already (unintentionally) emotionally devastated Izzy and sent Ed into a proper tizzy. Roach would love to believe that the only place for them to go from here is up, but… Stede’s eyes flit from Roach down to the bed linens, and he looks at them as if they were the very same blood-stained ones that’d been on the bed when he’d brought Izzy back that fateful afternoon. (Roach had disposed of the linens immediately after Izzy was well-enough to stand on his own two feet long enough for Ed and Stede to strip and redress the bed, but if Stede doesn’t remember the stab wound that’d started it all, then he certainly wouldn’t remember that). He opens and closes his mouth several times in quick succession, and Roach bites down on his tongue hard enough to taste blood as he waits with baited breath to see what it is that his captain has to say about all of this—

It's after several more tense moments of silence that he comes out with a rather anticlimactic, “Iggy… no, Izzy seems to have an incredibly unfortunate habit of getting hurt on my behalf.” It feels like there’s more coming, and sure enough, he adds, “Is it… bad… that I still don’t feel anything? Perhaps… Perhaps seeing him almost die awakened something inside of me, something buried deep, deep down inside… but after that story, I just… I just feel sad.”

“Sad?” Roach presses, just a little.

“That he would think so little of himself as to honestly believe that Ed wouldn’t miss him if he were to die.” Roach frowns—he’d certainly worded that carefully, hadn’t he? “And I… I would miss him, too.” He adds, almost like an afterthought—like he feels obligated to say more, but doesn’t know how to fill the silence. “He’s a… well, he’s a member of the crew, and I would hate to see any harm befall him.”

“…Right.” Roach clears his throat delicately, “It’s… Well, it’s normal for it to take some time for your memories to return. I can tell you more stories about your relationship with Izzy—the parts that I know about, at least. He’s pretty secretive about what goes on behind closed doors.” He says, “But I’m not going to push anything on you. You’re free to turn down my offer, or listen to it all and still not believe me.”

“I just… with Izzy? Really?” The more he says it, the harder a time he has believing it.

Roach shrugs, “He changed a lot, after the toe incident. But, uh… auto-cannibalism has a way of doing that to a man.”

A blink… then a frown, “What toe incident? What happened to Izzy’s toe?”

Chapter Text

It takes another hour and a half for Izzy to grow tired of Ed’s coddling (much like a cat, he has no trouble letting his lovers know when he’s done tolerating their affections—he can only handle so much petting before he bites (literally), and the last time that he’d bitten Ed had scarred. He’d tried to tell Stede that he’d gotten into a rather fantastical bar fight, which had culminated in some bloke putting the blade of a dagger through the side of his palm, but Ed, painfully observant fellow that he was, noticed that the left end of the scar looked rather like it’d been caused by an incisor). His first hint that Izzy is done comes when the smaller man nearly shoves him clean out of the hammock. His second is when he tells him, rather unceremoniously, that he may leave now.

And while he will concede that there’s quite a bit for him to do—Izzy will be out of commission for the foreseeable future, after all, and while no-one on the Revenge is liable to admit it, his absence will absolutely be noticed (and if he wants Izzy to at least pretend like he’s enjoying his staycation, then he needs to make sure that the Revenge doesn’t combust in his absence)—he doesn’t actually want to do any of it. He wants to stay here, at Izzy’s side… even if that means risking another bite.

Although he would definitely prefer it if Izzy didn’t try to take another chunk out of his hand. Wounds to the extremities take forever to heal.

Leaving also means that he’s going to need to confront the crew… and he’s not ready for that just yet. It feels ridiculous to admit as much—he’s had how many chances to confront the crew, to reinforce the chain of command… it shouldn’t have taken Stede going overboard and forgetting months’ worth of memories for him to finally decide to have a conversation with them about their insubordination. Izzy has always supported him—always. Even when Ed hurt him… he’d remained steadfast in his determination to support him in whatever way he could. He’d never expected anything in return, and yet… the least Ed could do was say a couple of words to the crew to… encourage them to listen to their first mate’s instructions.

The problem is that he’d let the behavior continue for far too long without any sort of repercussions. He likes to think that his silence can’t be taken as a ringing endorsement for the crew’s actions, but… if he’s being perfectly honest with himself, sometimes those that sit on the sidelines, watching silently and doing nothing, are just as guilty as the ones who take affirmative action. He knew what was happening. He knew that Izzy was struggling. And he had a chance to intervene before things got this bad. And yet… Ed’s eyes flicker to the splint securing Izzy’s broken wrist. A couple of words could’ve prevented that injury… could’ve prevented the hole that’d opened in Izzy’s chest when Stede had come to, all of the memories of the relationship they’d built together gone—

Izzy scowls at him, grabbing the edge of his blanket with his uninjured hand and petulantly tugging it over his head. “The fuck are you staring at?”

“You.” Ed responds, just to tease. He’s not even looking at him, technically. He’s looking at a spot on the wall, just above his ear. Izzy burrows deeper underneath his blanket, “Do you want something from the kitchens? If Roach had so much trouble getting you into the sling, I doubt he was able to convince you to eat anything… if he even tried.” Izzy doesn’t answer—at least, not until his stomach rumbles obscenely loud, confirming Ed’s suspicions—

Then, “…Some coffee, maybe?” It’s then that Ed remembers that Stede had suggested he bring the coffee that Roach had already brewed to Izzy… that’s how he’d ended up here, in Izzy’s room, in the first place. It would seem that he’d conveniently forgot the coffee on the way out the door, however. Whoops.

“Are you sure that you don’t want anything more… substantial?” He asks, unable to fully hide his concern. “It doesn’t have to be any of the…” Here, he trails off, uncertain of how to bring up the delicacies that they usually partake in with Stede without aggravating an uncomfortably fresh wound. “It could even be an… an orange, if you like. It’s… admittedly not all that substantial, but I’d rather have something in your stomach than nothing at all—”

“Coffee is something.” Izzy insists, his voice slightly muffled by the fabric that’s draped across his face. Ed rolls his eyes.

“Coffee is something, yes… and if you continue drinking it black as night, it’s going to give you an ulcer.”

He can almost envision the look on Izzy’s face as he bites back, “Do you even know what an ulcer is?”

He scoffs, “I know it’s not good.”

Izzy huffs a dramatic sigh… before yanking the blanket out from underneath Ed’s legs and sending him tumbling all the way down to the ground. Pain flares in his hips and climbs along the length of his spine, setting each and every one of his nerves ablaze. There is no dignified way to fall out of bed—especially not for a man his age—and Izzy had done absolutely nothing to try and soften his landing. In fact, when he peaks his head out from underneath the blanket, he seems almost smug at the image Ed cuts, lying on his floor in a tangled heap of limbs. Ed allows him a moment to bask in the glory of it before hauling himself upright (and if he just so happens to yank the blanket clean off of Izzy in the process, well…

The blanket falls to the ground at Ed’s feet… and this time, Ed is actually looking at Izzy.

His first mate looks… tired. He wonders, absently, how much sleep he’d gotten last night… it goes without saying that he won’t answer him if he asks (or he’ll lie to his face, without batting an eye—which is, understandably, infinitely worse), but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to. He just… He feels so horrifically useless. The best that he can do essentially amounts to damage control, and even that…

He just… feels like he’s making everything infinitely worse instead of better. And there’s no-one left to tell him that he’s… he’s on the right track, you know?

He has to be everyone else’s shoulder to lean on—and he’s fine with that… he’s certain he can do that—but there’s no-one for him to lean on in turn.

“…Iz?” Izzy blinks up at him with tired, swollen eyes, “I’m gonna ask you something, and I want you to answer me straight. It’s just the two of us in here… there’s no need to pretend.” Except… he’s half-certain that the fact that it’s only the two of them in the room will make Izzy more likely to try to lie to him. If there were ever a person that Izzy was deathly afraid of appearing weak in front of, it was Ed—“Are you going to be okay if I leave you on your own for a while?”

Silence. Then, softly, “…What do you mean?”

“I mean…” He weighs his words carefully, well-aware that one wrong move is liable to cause Izzy to spook like a wild animal. And then he decides ‘to hell with it,’ and blurts, “Are you going to be alright if I leave the switchblade here? Or do you want me to take it with me?”

“Oh…” Izzy trails off, as if it never even occurred to him that keeping the blade in the room with him was an option. He feels… tired, now… the pain that’d driven him to take the knife to his own skin having faded into something… other. It’s not gone. It’s never truly gone. But right now, he doesn’t feel it with quite the same intensity as he did before. Nevertheless, he says, “You should probably take it. Just to be safe.”

“Just to be safe,” Ed echoes, taking the blade and sliding it across the bottom of his shirt. The blood is stubborn—it’d been allowed to set, which meant that he’d need to go after it with soap and water when he had the time—but he’s able to clean the blade semi-decently before sliding it into the pocket of his leathers. “I’ll be back before you can miss me.” He assures, only for Izzy to immediately come back with—

“I won’t.”

Ed blinks… before summoning a dramatic sniffle, feigning hurt, “You don’t have to be such a jackass about it, Iz. Jeez.”

“Not being a jackass, cap’n.” Izzy’s words are beginning to slur, his eyes beginning to grow heavy. The corner of Ed’s mouth twitches, and it takes every ounce of willpower he didn’t know he had not to break out into the world’s largest shit-eating grin at the sight of Israel Hands fighting sleep like a toddler insisting that they aren’t tired each time they almost drift off. “Just bein’ honest.”

“Alright…” Ed concedes, “Then I’ll be honest with you, too.” A small furrow forms in-between Izzy’s brows as confusion rouses him from the pleasant haze of slumber, “You need your rest, and all coffee is going to do is keep you up indefinitely. So why don’t I make you some tea—no milk, no sugar, I know—and bring it in for you to drink when you wake up?” He hopes that that’s a decent enough offer to make Izzy bite—

And sure enough, “Fine.” He makes a grabby motion for his blanket, “But… make sure it’s that mint tea, yeah? I’m allergic to—”

“You’re allergic to lavender. Yes, I remember. I’m a good boyfriend, who isn’t actively trying to kill you.” That… may’ve been debatable at other points in their relationship, but now? Now, he’s going to make Izzy the best damn mint tea he can—without milk or sugar, because he’s got a fucking cast-iron stomach and can apparently handle that swill—and sit by his side while he makes sure that he drinks all of it, and it’s going to be grand.

Izzy doesn’t even try to hide his yawn, “A cup of mint tea… and I’ll take a nap. A little nap.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, mate.”

When he comes back with the tea, Izzy is dead to the world—he’s tempted to crawl back into the hammock alongside him, but he knows that that’s liable to end with him getting stabbed (not necessarily with a knife—but he’s spent enough time with Izzy to know that the older man can make anything into a weapon if he sets his mind to it, and being stabbed with a broken piece of bedside table sounds decidedly less appealing than being stabbed with a switchblade… if there is such a thing as a hierarchy of weapons ranked on which would be most appealing to be stabbed with). So he sets the tea cup down on the table beside his hammock, and allows himself the small indulgence of a kiss to Izzy’s sweat-slicked forehead.

It takes all of thirty seconds for him to realize that Izzy sacking out like this means that he now has no choice but to go and talk to the crew… or return to Stede. It feels like, between the two of them, the choice should be a no-brainer and yet… All he wants to do is stay here, with Izzy. It’s impossible, he knows… Izzy will throw a royal shit-fit if he discovers that Ed is still there when he wakes, and has been there the entire time he was sleeping.

But a man can dream, right? A man can dream…

“Is Izzy alright?” Ed has to admit, out of everyone on the Revenge, Lucius had to be the absolute last person aboard the Revenge that he expected to ask about Izzy’s condition. Given their history, he would’ve expected the scribe to be overjoyed at the thought of having his own little vacation from Izzy. Apparently, he’d been wrong. Or maybe… maybe it was just a bit more complicated than he’d originally thought.

“He’s… fine.” Ed says, in a tone which implies that Izzy is not at all fine, but to say more would require the disclosure of information that he’s not privileged to share. “He’s just… going to be taking a bit of time off—y’know, to make sure that his wrist heals properly. So, uh… if you or any of the other members of the crew have any… err… questions or concerns… you can direct them my way.”

Lucius is clearly skeptical. “So, what… you’re finally taking an active interest in the management of the ship, now?” And, okay… that stung. Ed takes a deep breath—in through the nose, out through the mouth—and reminds himself that, for all that Lucius doesn’t like Izzy, it’s very likely that Izzy ranks considerably higher on the metaphorical totem pole than he himself.

Izzy is about 98-percent bark, 2-percent bite. Ed was the one who’d thrown Lucius overboard.

He’s well-aware of the fact that he has an unfortunate tendency to let himself get so wrapped up in Stede that other things start to fall by the wayside. That’s precisely why it'd taken him so long to realize that Izzy was having so much trouble managing the crew (which, understandably, had not been something that he’d been particularly eager to try and explain to Izzy—because once upon a time, Izzy would be furious with him for shirking his duties as captain, but now? Now, he just becomes horribly resigned, because Ed had never hyper-fixated on him like that before that he knows of. It somehow never occurred to him that Ed was able to hide his fixation with Izzy better, because he knows that Izzy doesn’t tolerate being fussed over—).

The point is, he knows that he’s been shirking his duties as captain. Or, rather, as co-captain. Co-captain with slightly more responsibilities, because Stede is still learning the ins and outs of commanding his own vessel (something that Ed is supposed to be teaching him, but Ed had gotten distracted by soft robes and sweet-smelling soaps and… and that was okay, it was okay to indulge in those things, but it wasn’t okay to become so lost in them that he forgot to do his job. There needs to be balance… and he’s going to work on establishing and maintaining that balance from here on out) and Ed is supposed to be teaching him. But when was the last time he’d actually taught Stede anything? That responsibility always seemed to fall to Izzy… and Izzy was far from the world’s most patient teacher.

He has a lot to make up for—to Stede, to the crew… to Izzy. He’ll start with the crew mostly because he still hasn’t worked up the nerve to face Stede, after their disaster of a conversation earlier… and Izzy will want to be on his own for a while. Maybe, if he can work his way back into their good graces—earn their trust, their respect—than the inevitable talk about them listening to and respecting Izzy will go better.

…Maybe. One shouldn’t go around counting their chickens before they hatch, after all.

“I am.” He says, standing up a little straighter. “We’ll be needing to take the ship in for repairs. That hole in the railing is a hazard—we don’t need anyone else falling overboard.” Not to mention the fact that all of their improperly secured supplies could just tumble right off of the deck and into the sea. “Until then,” he cocks his head to the side, “when was the last time one of you lot scraped barnacles?”

Lucius blinks, “Scraped… barnacles?” Oh… now that was an incredibly promising answer. That meant either Izzy was the last person to do it, or he’d delegated the task to one of the crew had it’d just never gotten done. He produces a barnacle scraper out of thin air and presses it into Lucius’ unprepared hand.

“Thank you kindly for volunteering, Mr. Spriggs. I’m sure that you’ll do a fantastic job.”

“I… I don’t even know what—” Ed tamps down on the anger that wells inside of him upon realizing what it is that Lucius is saying… because Izzy may not be the world’s best teacher, but Ed has no doubt that he’d at least attempted to show the crew how to perform basic maintenance tasks around the ship. The fact that Lucius doesn’t know how to scrape barnacles is just another reminder of how much they don’t listen…

Ed forces his mouth into a smile, “You’re a smart lad… I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” Or somehow punch a hole into the hull with the scraper… “Oh, one more thing. If you haven’t made satisfactory progress by nightfall… I’m halving your rations for the week.”

“Y-You can’t…” Lucius looks appropriately cowed, but also deeply concerned about the rather nebulous standard that he has to meet—“What in the bloody hell constitutes satisfactory progress?!”

“I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”

Lucius grumbles something about how Stede would never threaten them with such a punishment… and he’s right, he wouldn’t. But sometimes, being gentlemanly can only get you so far. That headwound will keep Stede bed-bound for the foreseeable future, which means that, while they’re still technically co-captains, it’s Ed’s responsibility to keep the ship afloat in his absence. He’s been a captain long enough to know how to get shit done—now it’s just a matter of coming up with… less severe punishments. His conscience won’t allow him to starve and flog their crew, but there are less extreme ways of getting the same point across. It makes him feel a little bit better that he’s starting with Lucius, as well… since he knows he avoids chores like the plague.

“Well, Mr. Spriggs?” He pushes, when the man continues to stand there, wielding the scraper like it’s some kind of weapon. Ed supposes that it could be, in the right context. Izzy could probably find a way to decapitate a man with one. “You’re losing daylight.”

“F-Fine.” Lucius leaves, presumably to try and delegate the task to Black Pete… which is not ideal, but it’s better than nothing. So long as the chores are getting done, he won’t pretend like he actually cares how it happens.

…He’ll be checking in in about three hours or so to make sure someone is scraping barnacles, however. Because, if they’re not, heads are absolutely going to roll.

“Edward Teach!” Ed flinches—the compass he’d been holding sails through the air, hitting the broken rail with a dull thud and tumbling down into the inky black water below. He feels very much like a child that’d just been caught with their hand in the cookie jar, and the worst part is that he doesn’t even know what he did to incur Stede’s ire. “How could you?!”

…Ed has absolutely no idea what he’s done, but he’ll apologize for it one-thousand times over if it means that Stede never looks at him quite like that again. “I’m… sorry?” Unfortunately for him, it comes across as more of a question than a statement, and it immediately has Stede’s hackles raised.

“Do you even know what it is that you’re apologizing for?” The answer to that would be a hard ‘no,’ but Ed narrowly avoids admitting as much by countering—

“Shouldn’t you still be in bed?” Seriously… last time he checked, serious head wounds didn’t just disappear in under forty-eight hours. Apparently, buried deep down underneath those prim-and-proper manners and that aristocratic charm, Stede Bonnet was every bit as bull-headed as Izzy… with an even worse self-preservation instinct. Thankfully, the small sliver of his brain that wasn’t short-circuiting knew better than to point out the similarities.

“I was.” Stede acquiesces, “And I would be, still… had Roach not told me the most morbidly fascinating story.” Ed is almost certain he doesn’t want to hear how it goes. “I’m sure you know the one—you feature quite prominently in it, after all. You, and a rusty pair of shears.” His hands ache, the memory of the weight of the shears in his hands causing bile to rise in the back of his throat.

It terrifies him—how easy it’d been to hurt Izzy. At the time, it’d seemed like such a natural escalation… he was Izzy’s captain before he was Izzy’s lover, and he couldn’t allow the crew to get any ideas about threatening him—or worse, actually attempting to mutiny. It was a scare tactic—which meant that Izzy’s perception of events was far more important than what Ed actually had planned. Whether or not Ed could actually bring himself to cut off Izzy’s remaining toes didn’t matter so long as Izzy genuinely believed that that would be the punishment he would suffer if he were to step out of line again. That being said… looking back on how he’d felt in that moment, how angry and hurt and emotionally devastated he’d been… he’s honestly surprised that he didn’t turn around and cut all of his toes off, just for the hell of it. If he could bring himself to maim his love once, who’s to say he couldn’t do it a second time, or a third? Who’s to say that he would’ve stopped at toes? With the right amount of leverage, even those dull, rusted shears could cut through anything—

…He thinks that he’s going to be sick.

He shuffles over to the broken rail, his body swaying like he’s had a bit too much to drink. If he can just… get ahold of something sturdy, he thinks that he’ll be alright. This is hardly the first time that he and Stede have talked about what’s been dubbed ‘the toe incident,’ although this is the first time that Stede’s opened the conversation with quite so much yelling. And somehow, that makes all of this hit so much harder. Because Stede, who hasn’t had a single nice thing to say about Izzy since he’d woken, is standing here delivering a verbal dressing down on his behalf… If Ed didn’t already feel like absolute shit, that would most definitely be the straw that broke the camel’s back. As things currently stand, it just increases his near-overwhelming desire to curl up in a ball and die.

Stede is still talking, but Ed isn’t listening. He’s too focused on the ache in his hands, the very same ache he’d felt when he’d abandoned the shears to… all of a sudden he’s not gagging, he’s retching. There must be a god, because he’d just barely made it to the rail… he doesn’t think that he could handle the embarrassment of vomiting all over his leathers on top of everything else. That seems to silence Stede, and Ed finds himself infinitely grateful for the momentary reprieve. He needs a moment to collect himself… because there’s no hiding from this, no matter how much he might wish he could. He needs to find the words… not to explain what he’d done, because even the longest, fanciest words that Stede knows couldn’t explain that away, but…

This injury has caused Ed to learn quite a bit about his lover… and he would wager decent coin that it’s also allowed for Stede to learn quite a bit about himself. If he needs to be reminded of the cruelty that Ed is capable of—under the right circumstances—then Ed will tell him. What he did to Izzy fills him with a shame that he will carry to his grave, and he’d more than understand if it was something that Stede just couldn’t abide.

He’d… well, he hadn’t accepted it before, but he’d made it clear that it wasn’t something that he intended to leave Ed over.

Now? Now, Ed isn’t so sure…

“I… wasn’t aware that you’d forgotten.” He says, at last. He supposes his not knowing makes sense, though, seeing as that’s not the sort of thing that comes up in casual conversation. “We…” He swallows hard, wincing a bit at the foul taste in his mouth. Where’s the rum when you need it? “We talked about it… after you returned to the Revenge. N-Not in great detail, but… you knew. I wasn’t trying to… I couldn’t hide it from you.”

Stede fixes him with a look, which is somehow infinitely more intimidating with miles of bloody gauze secured to the side of his head. “Why?” He asks, and Ed flinches again. “You were just telling me how hopelessly, madly in love you are with him. How can you look me in the eyes and tell me that, and yet…”

“Does it really matter?” Ed counters. There’s no such thing as a good answer to Stede’s question. ‘I hurt him because he hurt me’ just sounds petulant, like something a child might say after being caught hitting a playmate who’d stolen one of their toys. “I did it, and I can’t take it back—no matter how much I might wish to.” And Ed… Ed had a great many regrets—but hurting Izzy was like a stain on his soul, a spot that just wouldn’t wash out.

Stede’s next question is so far out of left field, it makes Ed dizzy all over again. “Do you ever think about hurting me like that?”

“What?!” Ed chokes, horror plain on his face. “S-Stede, I… bloody hell, man, I didn’t even want to hurt Izzy like that!” He swings around to look Stede in the eye, his expression just this side of manic as the broken bits of rail cut into his back. “How could you ever think that I..?”

“I don’t know what to think.” Stede says, far too easily. “I love you, but…” And there it is again—that rusty knife slowly, steadily carving away at his sternum, his overactive mind all to happy to fill in the blank in Stede’s sentence while Stede himself fishes around for the right words. And Ed… Stede can hate him all he wants, but Ed doesn’t think that he’s strong enough to handle Stede being properly frightened of him—

When it becomes clear that Stede has no intention of continuing his sentence without further prompting, Ed presses, “But…”

Stede’s train of thought derails rather violently, and he makes no attempt to maneuver it back on track. “Have you apologized to him?”

Ed’s brain is a bit too preoccupied trying to figure out what Stede had intended to come after the ‘but’ to realize that Stede had spoken. It’s only after Stede repeats himself, a bit more firmly this time (not yelling, thank fuck—but adopting a tone that’s bordering on condescending, like ‘I’m going to be a whole other level of disappointed in you if the answer to my question is ‘no’’). “Of course I have!” Now Ed’s hackles are raised—

There weren’t enough years left in his life… nor were there enough words in his admittedly limited vocabulary… for him to be able to apologize to Izzy in the way that Izzy deserved. If he could just… wave a magic wand and make it as though none of this ever happened, he’d do it. He’d do it in a heartbeat. Hell, if half the crew weren’t liable to throw a fit, he’d hunt down a sea witch just to see if such a thing were even feasible. No price would be too great to fix what he’d broken. He hates that he and Izzy have been… better since the toe incident. Not perfect—he’s not sure that he and Izzy could ever be that—but better. It makes him feel like Izzy’s been waiting all of this time for the other shoe to drop… like he’s always expected, always knew, that one day in the dark, distant future, Ed was going to hurt him. Maybe not like this, but in some horrible, irreparable way that would leave them both broken, shattered… and utterly incapable of putting all of their pieces back into place. The idea that Izzy had been waiting for this has him bent double over the broken rail again, sick as a dog.

He'd lost count of the number of times that he’d tried to apologize to Izzy… not just for the toe incident, but… for what happened to them, in general. It went without saying that a significant portion of their problems could’ve been resolved with relative ease if they’d ever learned to properly communicate with one another. If he’d just been blunt with Izzy and told him exactly what Stede meant to him… and had made it clear that that didn’t change what he and Izzy had—however… strange it might seem at first blush, they were pirates… they could have whatever the hell they bloody wanted. There was ample room in his heart for both men, if they were amenable. Unsurprisingly, Stede had been sold on the idea well before Izzy—

Now, in a strange turn of events, it appears as though their opinions on the matter have… swapped.

…Regardless, talking has never really been his and Izzy’s strong suit. Every time he tried to apologize for what’d happened, Izzy had shut down. His go-to line was that Ed had nothing to apologize for, because he hadn’t done anything to Izzy that Izzy didn’t deserve… which was wrong on so many levels, Ed didn’t even know where to begin. It seemed like the only way to get him to stop acting like he deserved to be hurt was to stop apologizing for it, which didn’t sit right with him at all. But eventually… he’d just kind of accepted the fact that… maybe he just didn’t get to make amends. Maybe the moral of the story was that what he’d done was so unforgiveable that he didn’t get to have closure, didn’t get to have a happily ever after…

And so he’d stopped trying to apologize, and Izzy had stopped insisting he deserved it, and everything had gone back to a strained version of normal.

…Whatever that meant, now.

And then, at long last, Stede breaks the awkward silence that’s grown between them, “Did it ever occur to you that… perhaps you and Iggy are actually quite toxic for one another? That… That instead of running toward one another, you should be running away—far, far away… before there’s nothing of either of you left?”

Chapter Text

It takes a moment for Stede’s words to register in Ed’s brain.

Even after the words register, there’s a moment where Ed can’t believe—where he doesn’t want to believe—what Stede Bonnet had just said to him.

What right did he have to cast aspersions on his and Izzy’s relationship, when he couldn’t even be bothered to call Izzy by the correct fucking name? It might’ve been funny, once upon a time, to see the colors that Izzy’s face would turn when Stede called him by the wrong name—but the thing was, back then, the animosity was mutual. For every time that Stede called Izzy ‘Iggy,’ Izzy was right there, cursing ‘Steve’ to high heaven. It didn’t feel malicious… not that he’d say that Stede is being malicious now, exactly. Or, at least, he doesn’t think that he’s trying to be. Finding out that the man that you hated, and whom you thought hated you, has actually been in love with you all this time, and you with him, is a lot to take in at once. But that doesn’t mean that it’d kill him to be a bit nicer about it.

His first instinct is to yell, and it takes every ounce of self-control that he didn’t know he had to refrain from doing so. While fighting with Stede may provide a momentary respite from the pain he feels each time he remembers the toe incident, it won’t change what Stede said… or the fact that he is, technically, right. He and Izzy are toxic, and they always have been. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not good—so very good—for one another in just the right circumstances. He’s held Izzy in the dark of the night, when nightmares have him sobbing so hard he can scarcely breathe. He’s put the broken pieces of his first mate back together so many times he’s lost count—and when Izzy isn’t strong enough to keep from crumbling again, he’s held him together through sheer force of will alone, because Izzy would do—and has done—the same for him. Izzy has looked into the kraken’s soulless eyes and stood his ground… and is there every time the dark clouds recede to remind him that he is not his worst self. Izzy’s the one who showed him that, when you weather the dark times together, the dawn is so much sweeter—

It'd never once occurred to him that either one of them would be better off without the other. If he’s being perfectly honest, he’s not sure that they’re capable of surviving without each other. They’re unhealthily codependent, that much is for certain… but he feels like that’s the sort of thing that’ll only be made exponentially worse by a forced separation. Even if he’s managed to help Izzy dial it back from ‘everything that my captain says is gospel’ to ‘I will take everything that my captain says as a very strong suggestion that I’m allowed to have—and voice—my own opinions about,’ Izzy’s served as his first mate for so long, one could argue (rather convincingly) that he doesn’t know how to do anything else. Even if he were to go and serve aboard another ship as first mate, Ed would bet decent coin he wouldn’t be able to stomach his new captain for longer than a week. Izzy’s loyalty ran deep… sometimes disturbingly so. And Ed would be hard-pressed not to track him down to the ends of the earth just to run the random captain that’d stolen him through for daring to think he could have what was his.

So, to answer Stede’s question: no. No, they wouldn’t be better off without each other. No, they’re not just… just chipping away at one another until nothing remains. There’s a great deal of history between them… more than Ed cares to try and explain here and now, to a Stede that’s jumping to all the wrong conclusions. There’s a great deal of love, too… and if that’s not obvious to Stede, then Ed has failed Izzy somewhere along the line.

He licks his lips, mulling over how to answer Stede… there’s no denying that Stede had come at him with fighting words, and he wants to try to deescalate, if he can.

“It’s never occurred to me, no.” Ed says, “But then, I do try to avoid thinking about the possibility of Izzy leaving me. It’s a bit of a buzzkill, you see.” It’s also wholly inaccurate—Izzy would never leave him of his own volition… Ed would have to send him away, and Izzy would probably… You know, perhaps it’s best to not follow that particular train of thought right now. “And you, mate, are talking out your ass while only knowing half the facts.”

But Stede isn’t about to back down. Ed isn’t sure whether he ought to be impressed by the man’s tenacity or pissed off that he can’t take a bloody hint and just drop the goddamned subject, “Enlighten me, then. Tell me… what are these all-important facts, which will suddenly make you having maimed a man be okay?”

Ed narrows his eyes, “I don’t want to talk about it.” It seems a bit like a cop-out, but it’s true—even if he tells Stede exactly what happened, he won’t understand why Ed did what he did. He hadn’t understood the first time he’d learned of the toe incident… he certainly wouldn’t understand now.

“Right…” A pause, then, “I can’t believe that I even have to ask this—”

“Then don’t.” Ed interjects, only to be largely ignored. It’s not surprising, but it still stings.

“Is Iggy safe with you?” For a brief moment, Ed sees red. He thinks he might’ve yelled, because Stede is looking at him like a deer in the headlights—he hadn’t lost any memories of Ed (aside from his connection to the toe incident), and yet he’s looking at him like he’s seeing him for the first time… like he’s just realized that he’s been playing house with a lunatic. All of a sudden, Ed wishes that he’d never left Izzy’s room.

“His name is Izzy. Izzy.” He’d spell it out for him, if he knew how. “If you’re not going to say it right, then don’t say it at all.”

“You’re avoiding the question—”

“No, I’m addressing a problem that needs to be fixed right the fuck now.” Ed’s tone leaves no room for argument. “His fucking name is Israel Hands, and he fucking adores you—to the point where he’d throw himself overboard in the middle of a storm, risking life and limb to save your sorry ass from a watery grave. Right now, I don’t give a shit whether or not you remember any of that. I just want you to acknowledge and respect it.”

“It was a slip of the tongue.” Except it wasn’t—and they both know it wasn’t, “I’ll do better.”

“…That’s all I can really ask for.” He cannot rightly ask for more… Stede wouldn’t lie about trying to do better—not to him. Not surprisingly, that doesn’t make him feel any better about the fact that this is apparently still a problem. It should’ve ended the moment that Izzy rushed out of the room, practically in tears over the mispronunciation of his name. But if he can end it here, well, then… it’ll have to do.

Stede adjusts his waistcoat, looking incredibly awkward for a moment before clearing his throat none-too-delicately and repeating, “Now… regarding my earlier inquiry… is Mr. Hands safe with you?” There’s that thrice-damned question again.

“Of course he’s safe with me.” Ed barks. Where Izzy is approximately 98-percent bark, 2-percent bite, Ed is about fifty-fifty… and teetering towards bite at the moment. “Why wouldn’t he be?” Immediately after the words leave his mouth, he follows them with, “Don’t answer that.”

“You’re getting quite defensive.” Stede says, “I’m just trying to help.”

“You don’t know enough about anything to help anyone.” Ed counters, “The only person you can help right now is yourself—by heading back downstairs to the captain’s quarters and putting yourself to bed before you exacerbate your injuries.”

The corner of Stede’s mouth twitches, “Fine. Fine. I can see when I’m not wanted.” He turns to leave, but not before adding, “I’m sure that Mr. Hands will be much more forthcoming with the information I seek—” And no, no, no—absolutely not. He’s not going to bother Izzy with this. He doesn’t think that Izzy will actually tell him anything useful… but the conversation will trigger Izzy, and suddenly, the switchblade is burning a literal hole in his pocket—

He reminds himself that Stede doesn’t know—that Izzy had gone to great lengths to make sure that Stede never found out that he self-harmed. And even if he did know, the memory would likely be lost to the ether, just like all of Stede’s other memories about his relationship with Izzy. (He also doesn’t know that Izzy is liable to tell him to shove his questions where the sun don’t shine, right before slamming the door shut in his face, because Ed had given him permission to protect his heart from further abuse… which, in Izzy’s mind, apparently translated to granting him permission to act like an absolute asshole). Not surprisingly, reminding himself over and over that Stede doesn’t know doesn’t actually make him feel better about any of this… in no small part because, if he stops Stede from seeking out Izzy, that means that he’s going to have to talk about the toe incident, and he would literally rather anchor himself in the middle of a hurricane. Why is it that, while Stede is so hell-bent on everyone ‘talking it through, like a crew,’ he doesn’t seem to know how to take a hint when people genuinely don’t want to talk about things?

He's not… stuffing it down and pretending like nothing happened. He’s very much aware of what’d happened, and couldn’t ignore the consequences of his actions if he tried. Izzy may’ve been the one who bore the physical and mental brunt of the damage, but that didn’t mean that Ed wasn’t suffering as well. He had to live with the fact that he’d hurt Izzy like that for the rest of his life. And he deserves it… he knows that he deserves it. He deserves to suffer for what he did. That doesn’t mean that he wants to go out of his way to rehash the incident over and over and over again. This… This was between him and Izzy, and if Izzy no longer wanted to talk about it—wanted to act as if nothing had happened between them, despite the incredibly obvious evidence to the contrary—he would honor his wishes.

Stede… Stede hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen the way that Stede’s disappearance had caused Ed to fall apart. He hadn’t seen how Izzy had pressed him, hadn’t witnessed that critical moment when something had snapped inside of Ed. Retelling the story of the toe incident forces him to relive more than just the actual act of cutting off Izzy’s toe. It dredges up all sorts of unfortunate emotions that he’s not sure he’s ready to handle right now. Helping Izzy… is exhausting. He’s more than happy to do it, of course, because he loves Izzy, and it’s important for him to know that he’s done everything he can for his lover in his time of need. But it takes a lot out of him, and doesn’t leave him with a lot of emotional strength to work through his own emotional struggles.

If Izzy were in a better state of mind… then maybe. Right now? There’s just no way.

But he doesn’t know how to explain all of that, doesn’t know how to convey it in a way that will make Stede understand that it’s not just that he doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s tired—even just the thought of talking about it has made him incredibly tired—and he just doesn’t have the strength to deal with it right now. But, even if he did… Izzy is in an even worse position to do so. And when you look at it like that… there’s not really much of a choice, is there?

“…I was hurting.” He croaks. Somehow, his voice seems so quiet, there’s no way that Stede can hear it, even if he’s only standing a few feet away… and, at the same time, it seems far too loud, like he’s screaming himself hoarse. “You… You had… I don’t handle abandonment well. But I… I was trying to work through it with the crew. It was working… or, at least, I think it was… until Izzy, he…”

Stede turns back around to face him. His face is ashen… and suddenly, Ed is reminded of the fact that he’d taken a fairly serious blow to the head and really shouldn’t be standing out here on deck with him. They shouldn’t even be having this conversation right now—rather, he should be walking Stede back below-deck and putting him to bed. And speaking of… where the hell was Roach? Surely, Stede dragging himself out of bed had to have been against medical advice—

“I… remember us having a conversation about that, yes.” Stede looks uncomfortable. Ed assumes that this is because he only remembers the parts of the conversation that pertain to Ed... any revelations that were made about Izzy, and Ed and Izzy’s relationship, are lost to him.

A breath, “Izzy… told me that it would’ve been b-better if he’d let the English kill me.” And there it is again… the anger and hurt that he feels toward Stede for forcing him to relive his nightmare, compounded with the damn-near overwhelming anger and hurt that he’d felt the moment those words had left Izzy’s mouth… “And I… I took him by the neck and slammed him into the wall a-and…”

Stede looks downright disappointed in him, and that just makes the maelstrom of emotions brewing inside of him infinitely worse. “Ed…” He clicks his tongue, like a parent that’s just about to chastise an unruly child, and Ed grits his teeth so hard his jaw aches. “Violence is never the answer.” Except… it actually is, quite a bit of the time, when you’re a pirate. “Mr. Hands is quite a bit smaller than you. You could’ve seriously injured him.”

Ed swallows hard—he can taste bile in his throat, and is infinitely grateful that they’re still relatively close to the edge of the ship in case he—”I did.”

“Why?” And there it is… that one word immediately gets underneath Ed’s skin. “What made it okay for you to hurt him like that?”

Nothing. Nothing made it okay, didn’t Stede understand that? That was the point that Ed’d been trying to make from the beginning. There wasn’t an answer that he could give that would satisfy Stede… so what was the point in having this conversation in the first place? But if he absolutely must have an answer, Ed will provide him with one, “Because he threatened me… and he needed to be reminded of his place.” Because he hurt me, and I wanted to hurt him back.

“…And you truly cannot see how unhealthy that is? For the both of you?”

“Of course I bloody can! What do you think I am, some kind of monster?” Perhaps… he saw Ed like everyone else—like the person who’d written that horrible book. What kind of man needed nine guns, anyhow? Where the hell would he even store them all?

“You hurt him in anger.” Stede says, as if Ed hadn’t admitted as much already… as if that knowledge hadn’t plagued him ever since the incident occurred, and would not continue to plague him for the rest of his days. “I know… I know better than most that words can cut just as deep as knives. They leave scars that no-one can see, which you carry with you for the rest of your days. But… words are just that: words. They’re not… n-not fists, or… o-or shears—!”

“I know that!” And now he’s definitely yelling. And he knows that he needs to stop, because his outburst is going to attract the exact wrong kind of attention, and yet… the words keep spilling from his lips, unbidden. He can’t stop himself. He’s not sure that he even wants to.

“Do you, though?” Why is Stede having such a hard time believing him? Does it honestly sound like he’d enjoyed hurting Izzy? Does it seem like something he would do again? Ye gods, but he hopes that the answer to both of those questions is ‘no.’

“I do!” He snaps… and then, a little softer, “…I do.”

A breath, “If you’re so adverse to the idea of breaking up entirely, perhaps the two of you could benefit from a… a break.” Stede offers, “Relationships… they take work…” Once upon a time, Mary had tried to tell him the same thing—that they only have one life, and that, while they may never have chosen one another otherwise… they’re here with each other now, and they ought to at least try to make the most of it. “And part of that… is working on yourself.”

“I’m not breaking up with Izzy, or taking a break, or… or…”

Izzy… has always had the great misfortune of having the worst timing in the entire world. Ed hadn’t noticed that he’d emerged from his quarters, looking slightly better rested but still horrifically tired, and had stopped about five or so feet away to just… listen to his and Stede’s trainwreck of a conversation. Ed has no idea how long he’s been standing there, but it’s certainly been long enough for him to look like Ed had picked up the shears and cut off another of his toes. The rest of Ed’s sentence catches in his throat, his eyes locking with Izzy’s… He hadn’t been saying anything bad—fuck, he’d been defending their relationship!—but it certainly felt like he’d been caught agreeing with Stede that it would be better if he and Izzy… broke up.

Stede hasn’t noticed Izzy’s presence—must think that Ed is just staring blankly off into the horizon—until Ed finally manages to force something out and Stede takes that as his cue to turn around and finally sees… Izzy. For a second, time seems to stand absolutely still. Somewhere along the line, Ed thinks that he might’ve forgotten how to breathe. The part of him that craved spontaneity, unpredictability… has been drowned by the part of him that just wants everything to be normal—

Izzy moves first, and Ed actually flinches—Izzy stops in his tracks, looking for all the world like Ed had just backhanded him across the face.

Ed is immediately overcome by the need to apologize, but he can’t put his finger on what exactly it is that he’s apologizing for.

And so they all just kind of… stand there—Izzy looking like he’s about to break out into a run any second now, Stede looking like this was somehow exactly what he’d been trying to warn Ed about and he couldn’t understand how Ed had never seen it before, and Ed looking like his brain is short-circuiting… because it very much is. Ed can feel the wound, feel the blood hemorrhaging out of it… and he’s at a complete and utter loss for what to do to stop it. He needs to reassure Izzy before Izzy can jump to his own conclusions about what’d happened and start to self-flagellate… or worse, circle back to wanting to leave again and try to take off while Ed’s back is turned. He doesn’t think that he’s capable of rowing a dinghy with a broken wrist, but Izzy is a horrifically stubborn bastard… and, honestly, he wouldn’t put it past him to find a way, even if it meant causing permanent, irreparable damage to his wrist in the process. He also needs to make sure Stede knows that he and Izzy… they’re not perfect, but they’re better now, and they’re continuing to get better every day that they’re together.

“He…” Izzy croaks. His voice is reedier than usual, a sign that he’d literally just woken up. What an absolutely terrific mess to wake up to… “He wants to break us up?” He sounds… incredulous, like he can’t quite believe what’s happening. To be fair, Ed’s reaction had been much the same. The man had swung from disbelief that Ed could be in love with Izzy to absolute certainty that he and Izzy were just… horribly toxic for one another and needed to break-up.

“We were just having a… a talk.” Ed tries… but that just seems to make it worse. “Roach and… and Stede here… had a little talk about… about things.” He clicks his tongue, doing his best to not seem like he’s talking out of his ass. “And Stede and I… were clearing things up.”

Izzy blinks, “Things.” He says. Ed can’t decide what to make of his tone, and that frightens him even more.

“Yes. Things.” He doesn’t want to tell him that they were talking about the toe incident because he knows that that’s just going to set him off. Izzy isn’t… okay right now, that much is obvious, but he’s also not trying to run back to his room to start packing his stuff, so… “He’s just… a bit concerned about us, because we—I have hurt you in the past.” Please, don’t take that as leave to—

“And I deserved it.” Izzy says, as if this were obvious. Ed makes a small, wounded sound in the back of his throat, while Stede’s eyes flit between them, his expression seeming to scream ‘this! this is exactly what I was talking about!’

“Izzy, please…” At this point, he’s not even sure what he’s asking for…

“Is he trying to…” Izzy trails off, swallowing hard as he tries, and fails, to find his words. Then, “If you wish to punish me for failing to rescue Bonnet before he…” Again, he trails off… but he’s said enough for Ed to realize that he’s gotten the absolute wrong idea about everything that’s happening here. Somehow, someway… it seems as though Izzy has gotten the impression that Stede is trying to punish him for not rescuing him properly by… ruining his and Ed’s relationship?

 It… makes about as much sense as anything involving Izzy ever does. And it’s so amazingly wrong, it takes Ed’s brain a couple of seconds to comprehend it.

He’s… not at all surprised that Izzy is self-flagellating over not being able to rescue Stede properly. It hadn’t been his fault—the series of unfortunate events that’d led to that barrel coming loose and knocking Stede through the railing likely couldn’t be repeated, even if they tried—but it was his job to protect the crew, and he’d been particularly sensitive about that ever since Ed had led the bulk of the Queen Anne’s crew to slaughter in order to rescue Stede and his crew from the Spanish. He’s only one man, and he already does infinitely more than one man should ever be able to do alone… and yet he’s always punishing himself for it not being enough. There was nothing more that he could do to protect Stede—just as there was nothing more he could do to protect their men from the Spanish… each and every one of their deaths were on Ed’s hands—but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t torture himself thinking of all of the possible ‘what-ifs’ that might’ve minimized the damage he’d suffered. Even if Ed assured him that he’d done the very best he could and that no-one was angry with him…

Izzy would still find a way to be angry with himself… and one’s personal demons are often the hardest to overcome.

Ed’s brain seems to no longer be in the mood to cooperate with him, because he cannot think of a single thing to say to ease the horrible tension developing between them before Izzy blurts, “I… maybe it would be better if we did take a little… break… from each other.”

Ed’s heart pulls a hard stop inside of his chest. No. No, no, no, no, no. That… That’s not how this conversation is supposed to end. Izzy isn’t supposed to agree with Stede, isn’t supposed to think that this ‘taking a break’ business is actually a good idea. Because if they’re on break, that’s just one more reason for Izzy to try and leave the ship. Ed’s running out of reasons to keep Izzy at his side and that’s absolutely terrifying. “No. No, it would absolutely not be better if we took a break, Iz.”

“You and S—Captain Bonnet would be much more comfortable without me here.” Izzy counters.

A small furrow forms in-between Stede’s brows—and the action causes a dark crimson bloom to appear in the middle of the bandages wound around his head, “That’s a new one. I don’t believe that you’ve ever referred to me as ‘captain’ before, Ig—Mr. Hands.”

The corner of Izzy’s mouth twitches, “Don’t pretend like you’re impressed, Bonnet. You think that I’m an unpleasant, angry little man… that that’s all I’ll ever be. It’s written plain on your face.” Fully sneering now, he continues, “I should pin you to the mast again, so that you’ll actually listen to the doctor’s orders and stay in bed when you have a massive head wound that could result in blood pouring into that empty skull of yours.”

And that seems to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back—where Stede had at least been willing to pretend to play nice with Izzy for Ed’s sake, now that Izzy was actually standing before him, angry and hurt, it would seem that all bets are off. “…I’ll never understand what Ed sees in you.”

“Lucky for you, you don’t have to.” Something tells Ed that he needs to intervene now, to stop Izzy from saying something that he’s most definitely going to regret once clearer heads prevail. Unfortunately, his instinct kicks in just a second too late, because, “I should’ve let you drown.” 

“Izzy!” He supposed that he should’ve expected Izzy to be so vitriolic when he apparently gave him clearance to be an ass, but damn. 

“No, no Edward. Let him say his piece. If that’s how he really feels, then I want to… t-to…”

Whatever else Stede has been about to say is lost as he sways, the blood soaking his bandage somehow becoming even more pronounced. Izzy doesn’t even seem to really notice that he’s moving, his body sliding into position to catch the Gentleman Pirate as he pitches forward, consciousness finally leaving him. Pain ricochets through his broken wrist as Stede’s body hits him in exactly the wrong way, but he manages to maintain his balance… somehow. He knew that Stede shouldn’t have been up and about… He’d had ample opportunity to escort him back to the captain’s quarters, and yet… he’d continued to allow him to engage him in this pointless argument. In the end, all they’d done was talk in circles and upset Izzy. 

He moves to take Stede from Izzy, to alleviate some of the pressure on Izzy’s injured wrist, but Izzy won’t let him. And that’s… okay, that’s a little unexpected. He would’ve thought, after that not-so-little outburst, he’d want to be as far away from Stede as he could. Instead, he seems determined to carry him. And that’s great. Really. He knows that Izzy is strong enough to do it (Izzy is stronger than he looks, capable of lifting his dead weight and maneuvering him into bed when he’s drunk off his ass), but now really isn’t the time to be showing off. That being said, he’s not sure that he can carry Stede right now. He’s been pushing himself all day to make sure that everything is getting done in Izzy’s absence, and now that he’s stopped to fight with Stede, he finally has a chance to appreciate just how much pain he’s in. But that doesn’t mean he can’t appreciate a bad idea when it backhands him across the face. And right now, all he can see is Izzy making it four, maybe five steps before his wrist gives out and Stede’s weight causes the both of them to go tumbling down to the floor.

Before he can check-in to see whether or not Izzy can actually carry him back down to the captain’s quarters, however, Izzy starts moving, shifting his weight none-too-gently to alleviate some of the pressure on his injured wrist. Suddenly less concerned about the chance of Izzy dropping him and infinitely more concerned about the chance of Izzy accidentally—or not-so-accidentally—exacerbating Stede’s injuries, he reaches out for him—

Izzy side-steps at the last moment, studiously avoiding any and all contact with Ed’s hand. Ed tries to ignore the way that realization makes his heart drop. “Get Roach.” He says… and before Ed can think of a smart-assed comeback for Izzy suddenly turning the tables and ordering his boss about, he continues, “And maybe some rope as well, to tie this imbecile to the fucking bed.”

…And then he’s gone. Ed’s hand falls uselessly to his side, his stomach lurching. “R-Right. I’ll just… I’ll just find Roach then.”

Chapter Text

Izzy doesn’t want to be alone with Stede.

It feels… odd to say, considering Stede is still unconscious and nothing is forcing Izzy to remain in the captain’s quarters other than his own stubborn desire to make sure that Stede doesn’t somehow manage to make his condition worse in the time it takes for Ed to find Roach. He’s hurting, but he’s not hurting so badly that he’s going to leave his lover… former lover?... to bleed all by his lonesome in his ridiculously opulent bed. Besides… now that he’s tucked Stede into the bed, the adrenaline that’d allowed him to carry Stede down here in the first place has started to die away, leaving him feeling tired and lethargic. If he were still welcome in Stede’s bed, this would be the time he’d begrudgingly settle down beside his lover and sack out.

As it stands, he just kind of… sits on the edge of the bed, taking care to make sure that no part of his body comes into contact with any part of Stede’s. He fiddles with his splint, painfully aware of the way that his wrist throbs beneath the lukewarm metal. The break will never heal if he keeps abusing it like this, but right now, that’s the least of his concerns—he’s already bled through the thin layer of bandages that Ed had wrapped around his cut; he doesn’t know when the wound reopened, but now that he knows it has, it burns like a motherfucker. He runs his finger over the damp gauze, wincing when even that little bit of pressure proves to be too much. The pink smear turns a dark, angry red, and grows darker by the second…

It takes him far too long to remember that he’d let Ed take his switchblade… but there’re lit candles over by the sitting area that, considering all of the metal on his splint, could likely do some real damage. He rises off of the bed, painfully conscious of the way the floorboards creak beneath him as he wanders, unsteadily, toward one of the flickering candelabras—

Impossible though it may be, he swears that he can feel the swell of the heat from several paces away, his skin already throbbing with the pain of the searing hot metal pressing into it. He wonders, absently, how long it’ll take Ed to find Roach… how much time had already passed? Would he even have time to..? And then the candelabra stands in front of him, flames flickering upon the tips of beautiful ivory candles, fat pearls of wax beading down the sides… He glances back to Stede, just to confirm that he’s still unconscious (although something tells him he would know by now if the man was awake—while it’s unlikely, it’s decidedly not impossible that, as soon as he sees Izzy, he’ll launch right back into the fight from earlier).

Stede is still dead to the world… and so he reaches out, hesitant, and lets his hand hover about an inch or so above the flame. Even with that little bit of distance, it doesn’t take much for the metal to start to heat. The warmth is almost… pleasant… at first, but it doesn’t stay that way for long. Within about thirty seconds, the sickeningly-sweet scent of burning flesh permeates the room. If it weren’t for the gauze, he’s certain he would be able to see the skin bubbling. He can only stand it for about a minute before he’s yanking his arm back, clutching the hot metal to his chest as his heart hammers like mad against his ribs and his breath comes in stunted little spurts.

It's not the same as taking a knife to his skin. It’s better and worse all at once, the pain so intense it actually makes him feel a little dizzy.

Dizzy Izzy. Dizzy Izzy. Dizzy Izzy.

He’s reminded of when they’d first boarded the Revenge, and Lucius had discovered his nickname… ‘Izzy the Spewer.’ Fang and Ivan and the others had just assumed that his sickness was the result of choppy seas, and enjoyed poking ‘innocent’ fun at him for having the stomach of an infant scarcely weaned. But really… he’d been septic. One of the wounds that Ed had given him had gotten infected—his entire back was inflamed, the skin red-hot and painful to the touch. The ship’s doctor had said it was oozing green pus, which was… just the mental image he needed to settle his rebellious stomach. After he’d… spewed… one of the crewman had brought him back to the doctor, who’d cut out a decent chunk of infected tissue (his back still wasn’t quite right where he’d operated—when Ed used to get proper mad at him, he’d dig his fingers into the gnarled indent and press until Izzy was seeing stars, tears and snot dripping down his face as he desperately flailed beneath Ed’s weight).

…But nobody wanted to hear that part of the story. It certainly wasn’t as funny as the image of a full-grown man getting sick all over himself—

“…He needs to know.” Roach’s voice carries from the hall just outside of the captain’s quarters… a second later, the door opens, and he and Ed rush inside. Roach stops about a foot or so inside of the door, his nose scrunching as the scent of burned flesh wafts over to his nose. “What happened in here?” His eyes flit between Izzy and Stede, as if worried Izzy had decided to light the bed on fire while he waited.

Ed seems to catch a whiff of it, too… but is far less concerned about Stede’s bed catching flame. Instead, he seems particularly interested in Izzy’s proximity to the candles in the candelabra. “…Is everything alright, Iz? You, uh… You didn’t have any problems getting Stede settled?”

“Not a one.” He smiles… The muscles in his face are unused to being moved that way, and so the smile is more of a grimace with quite a few disconcerting twitches. “You, on the other hand… What the hell took you so long? The ship’s only so big—”

Ed’s expression turns vaguely apologetic, “Roach had to gather… supplies. It took a bit longer than anticipated.” In response, Roach brandishes the largest butcher knife that Izzy has ever seen in his life. He’s not entirely certain what he expects to do with it, seeing as Stede doesn’t really need any bits and bobs cut off of or out of him at the moment… but then, Roach seems like the sort that’s never fully content without a blade in his hand.

Roach shoots a pointed glance in Stede’s direction, “I take it he didn’t give you much trouble?”

Izzy scowls, “That doesn’t mean that I want to be stuck babysitting him any longer than strictly necessary.”

Ed flinches, “You know that I would’ve brought him down here myself, right, mate?” It doesn’t really mean much after the fact, but… He wants to make sure that they’re clear that Ed had never really been on-board with the idea of Izzy manhandling Stede below deck all by himself—especially not with a broken wrist. “You didn’t have to come down here… although I’m glad that you chose to stick around.”

“Oh?” Izzy arches a brow, already seriously regretting his need to stick close to make sure Stede didn’t hurt himself further.

“Yeah.” Ed confirms, “I… I’d really like to talk about what happened on deck and what you… what you think you walked in on.”

“I really don’t need you to explain to me what it is that I walked in on.” He says, “I have a working set of eyes and ears, you know.” Anytime Jack expressed an interest in Izzy (which happened with frightening regularity back in the day, when Ed was too drunk to remember his own name), Ed would always shoot down the idea by reminding Jack that Izzy didn’t have two brain cells to rub together—

Why else would he still follow him blindly, knowing full-well that all he’d ever be to Ed was a bloody chew toy?

Izzy’s definitely wondered why he hasn’t just… taken the first dinghy and sailed off into the night before. Before Stede came along, Izzy was fairly certain that Ed would be the one to kill him—most likely accidentally, but there was that niggling little voice in the back of his head that said that once Ed was in one of his moods, there was no guaranteeing he wouldn’t do it on purpose. Like… the toe. Gods, Izzy had been so sure that the toe was what was going to finally do him in. Try as he might—and by the gods, did he try—he couldn’t get the stupid thing to stop bleeding. Wounds to the extremities were finicky like that. Once the blood starts flowing, it’s almost impossible to stop. He’d hobbled to the galley, his ruined bedsheets acting as a piss-poor replacement for a bandage, to have Roach cauterize the wound… with the very same butcher knife he’s wielding now, if he remembers correctly. And that’s a pretty big if, considering he’d been half-delirious from blood loss and pain.

…Ed thinks that Izzy’s only ever tried to kill himself the once—after Stede returned, and discovered that Izzy had been the one to release the kraken—but that’s not true. There’d been another time… In the dark of the night, after Stede’s books and other belongings had been tossed into the ocean, but before they’d marooned the crew on that almost comically small island, he’d tossed himself overboard. (It… probably bears mentioning that Roach had given him enough laudanum that he couldn’t remember his own name). He’d sunk like a stone the second that he’d hit the water, and had woken something like… ten minutes later to Fang pounding on his chest, very much still alive.

He'd told them that he’d just kind of… lost his balance and tumbled overboard. He’d been sans toe for less than a week… that sort of thing takes time to adjust to. Now he knew better than to wander so close to the rail when the waters were choppy. He’s not sure whether or not they actually believed him, but no-one mentioned the incident to Ed, and really, at the end of the day, that was all that he cared about.

It… probably wouldn’t have registered for him anyway, all things considered… which, honestly? Probably would’ve made things infinitely worse.

He hadn’t done it for attention. He’d done it because he was so, so tired of being used as Ed’s punching bag… and even if there was a tiny, niggling voice in the back of his mind that told him that he deserved it—if he hadn’t pushed so hard, Ed never would’ve snapped like that… all of this, everything that he was complaining about, he’d brought upon himself—there was a much larger part that recognized that he really didn’t. Ed had fucking maimed him. The same man who had the balls to look him in the eyes and tell him that he loved him had fucking maimed him. No amount of justification would ever make that okay. None. And he’d just… he’d wanted to take back a tiny sliver of control, before Ed got it in his head to do something worse.

It hadn’t worked. …But also, he’d been lucky after that. Apparently, cutting his lover apart with a pair of rusty shears had frightened Ed, and he kept his hands and his tools to himself after that. And slowly… so very, very slowly… things had gotten better. They had gotten better. When Stede had come back, they’d told him what he needed to know and resolved to never talk about the matter again.

…But the gods just couldn’t resist the urge to screw Izzy over one final time, could they? Fucking fuckers.

“…Izzy?” Ed is looking on him with open concern, and Izzy realizes, belatedly, that he must’ve been talking to him all that time. He frowns, flexing his fingers inside of the splint, relishing in the way the action causes the half-melted skin to tug against his still-warm bandages, “Are you alright?”

“Fine.” He says. While he was distracted, Roach had made his way over to Stede and had started tending to his wounds. How long had he been out? “I’m… fine.” He says again, a little less confidently this time. “I just… need some air.” The idea of heading back to his room fills him with a sort of unspeakable dread, as does the idea of heading back up on deck… but he needs to not be here just as urgently, if not more so.

“I’ll come with you.” Ed tries to offer, but Izzy hurriedly shakes his head.

“No!” He shoots him down a little too hard, if the way Ed’s face crumples is any indication. Rising on unsteady legs, he tries that again, “No, I… I’m fine, really. You stay with Stede. It’ll be good for him to see your face when he wakes—”

Ed looks… tired, then. Tired of being told what to do. Tired of being told he can’t just be with Izzy, like he so desperately wants. “…If you insist.” He concedes, if only because he knows that it’ll devolve into a full-on fight if he tries to force the matter… and the last thing he wants is to be fighting with Izzy right now. If he needs space, then Ed can give him that. But, “I will be checking in on you later, alright?”

Izzy swallows hard, “Yeah. That’s… Yeah.” He nods, willing himself to calm… if he looks too anxious, Ed is just going to follow him whether he wants him to or not—and he really doesn’t want him to.

Ed looks like he wants to say something more, but before he can, Izzy is out the door. Ed deflates a little, shooting Roach a hopeless glance on the off-chance that the ship’s doctor isn’t just well-versed in mending broken bodies… but broken relationships as well. Unfortunately, that sort of thing is more Lucius’ domain, and he’d ordered him to scrub barnacles all day… “He just needs time, captain.” Roach says, “You can give him that.”

Ed swallows hard, “Time… Yeah, sure. He can have all the time he needs…”

“…What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Izzy scowls. Of course, he can never truly be alone aboard the Revenge, now can he? One of Stede’s crew are always lingering about, ready to send his blood pressure rocketing through the roof.

This time, the culprit is Jim. Izzy doesn’t usually mind Jim… they’re one of the few members of the crew who know what the fuck they’re doing, and while they’re mouth can run away from them sometimes, their particular brand of insubordination is about one-thousand times better than Lucius’, so… “What does it look like I’m doing? You’re a smart one, I’m sure you can figure it out.”

“Ed said that you’re supposed to be on some kind of… staycation.” They wrinkle their nose, and from their facial expression alone it’s clear that they find the idea every bit as ridiculous as Izzy himself does… they, however, don’t have a highly emotional lover to keep happy by playing along and catering to their whims. “The whole concept is a bit… strange, but I believe that the stay part means you’re supposed to stay aboard the ship.”

“Yes, well… there’s been a change in plans.” He tosses the rations he’d packed into the dinghy, “I’ll be leaving posthaste.”

“…Does Ed know about this?” Izzy shoots them a look—since when are they on Ed’s side? They still haven’t forgiven him for marooning their husband and holding them hostage aboard the Revenge for months.

“Does Ed need to know about this?” Really, Izzy thinks it’ll only wind up making things more difficult.

“Realmente eres una idiota, ¿verdad?”

Izzy blinks, his expression carefully blank, “Sabes que puedo hablar español, ¿verdad?”

“Oh, I know.” Jim says, unbearably smug. “I just enjoy fucking with you. You make it far too easy.” If Izzy were to roll his eyes any harder, they would pop clean out of his skull. He doesn’t have time for this bullshit. The more time he spends talking with Jim, the better the chances that he’s going to get caught… and while he doesn’t think that Ed will be able to stop him though that certainly won’t stop him from trying, he doesn’t want to…

He doesn’t want to see the look of devastation and heartbreak on Ed’s face when he discovers Izzy leaving, okay?

He may be an asshole… but he’s not a monster.

He just needs to… not be here for a while. There’s an island not too far from here… he believes that it was colonized by the French, which… admittedly isn’t ideal, but is decidedly better than the Spanish or the English. He should be able to row there… or, he might’ve been able to, before he’d burned his wrist. (Speaking of, he really ought to take a look at that, just so he has an idea of the full extent of the damage. It wouldn’t pay for him to get out in the middle of the open water, all by his lonesome, and wind-up septic again). He thinks back to the look on Ed’s face when he’d walked into Stede’s room and smelled what Izzy had done, and a hot rush of liquid shame begins to pool low in his stomach—

It's not all that different to how he’d felt the first time that Stede had called him Iggy—when the knowledge that Stede was hurt and didn’t know what he was saying, couldn’t appreciate how much it was hurting Izzy, warred with the fear that that was all he’d ever been to Stede—just another lowborn nameless nobody, who wasn’t even worth the dignity of a proper name.

…He wonders, idly, what Stede—not this Stede, but his Stede—would do if he knew that Izzy wasn’t even his actual name. Well, it was, technically. Ed’d been calling him that long enough that it might as well have been, at least. But it wasn’t his birth name… Ed was probably the last person alive who knew that Izzy had ever answered to another name, and the ultimate irony was that he probably didn’t even remember what it was. The whole reason that Ed’d started calling him ‘Israel,’ after all, was because Basilica (the horribly clunky nickname that Hornigold had given him, when the bastard realized that his real name was too difficult to pronounce when drunk off his ass) never sounded quite right coming from Ed’s mouth. He spoke too fast, caused all the letters to crash together in one colossal clusterfuck of sound. But then again… that describes most of the words that come out of Ed’s mouth, doesn’t it? Most every word, at least… aside from Izzy…

Another voice cuts through the fog of his thoughts, and he realizes, with ever-growing dismay, that he and Jim are no longer alone.

And, to his ever-increasing dismay, their new guest is none other than Lucius.

“Did you need something, Mr. Spriggs?” It’s hard to appear intimidating with a wrist as battered and bloody as his, but he thinks he manages alright. “Jim and I were just in the middle of a private conversation—” A conversation that he absolutely did not intend to continue, but was keen to pretend if it meant avoiding talking about… his escape with the biggest fucking blabbermouth he’d ever had the misfortune of meeting—

“A private conversation, huh?” Lucius cocks an eyebrow, holding his journal taut against his chest as he looks between the two of them with open suspicion, “I have to say, this looks a lot less like a ‘conversation’ and a lot more like a piss-poor attempt at thwarting your escape plot.”

“…What was that?” A second later, there’s a knife pressed against the hollow of Lucius’ throat. Lucius looks like he can’t decide whether to be scared or horny… he swallows, and the knife digs into his skin just far enough for a pearl of blood to start trickling down the column of his neck. That seems to make his mind up for him—

“I… Nothing. I didn’t say a thing.” Lucius takes a nervous step back. Jim follows, never once lowering their blade. “If you could just, um… lower your blade? Just a teensy bit? I do like a close shave, but this is a little too close… and I would almost prefer it if you just bound and gagged me and locked me in a trunk again—” He’s rambling now, his mounting panic clear in his eyes. Something about what he said, however, catches Izzy’s attention.

He turns to Jim, “…You locked him in a trunk?” He realizes that he might sound upset, but really… he’s actually kind of impressed and a little disappointed he didn’t think of it himself, seeing as it seems to be an excellent motivational device.

“It’s a… long story.”

Jim doesn’t seem to be particularly eager to recount it… until they notice how the very idea of Izzy Hands finding out that Lucius had been perving (“I wasn’t perving—it was an accident! How was I supposed to know that you were… were…” and “Maybe because all of my clothes were laying on that rock, you absolute moron.”) has him sweating like a sinner in church. And then they tell the story, taking care to recount every last second with utterly excruciating detail. By the end of it, Izzy kind of wants to shank him… which isn’t exactly a novel development—although the idea of doing it on behalf of someone else most definitely is. Jim was absolutely right—even if he hadn’t intended to be creepy, he most definitely had been—

…If only Stede hadn’t walked in and ruined everything…

Perhaps Jim would still have Lucius locked up in that trunk? Or perhaps they could be persuaded to do it again, under the right circumstances?

“I’ll, uh…” This time, when Lucius takes a step back, Jim doesn’t follow them. “You know what? I’ve completely forgotten what I came here for. So why don’t I just… check and see what Black Pete is doing, hmm? I’m sure that, whatever it is, he’s definitely needing my help right now… and that’s most definitely not a thinly veiled excuse to get the fuck out of dodge because—” He doesn’t even finish the sentence before he takes off running.

Jim watches him run for a moment, before sheathing their knife with a soft huff. For a moment, Izzy dares to think that maybe, just maybe, that little distraction had been enough to make Jim forget about their self-appointed quest to keep him from leaving. Unfortunately, that’s not the case—“So… are you going to be good and quit it with this escape nonsense, or am I going to have to fuck up your other hand?”

…Izzy is more than a little embarrassed to admit that Jim had single-handedly been able to bully him back into his room.

The knife to the hollow of the throat had been fairly convincing—if he hadn’t heard (and seen) just what Jim was capable of doing with it, then he absolutely would’ve considered temporarily taking it off of their hands… for reasons. As it stands, while he may wish to hurt, he doesn’t actively wish to die… at least, not right now… and it doesn’t take a genius to parse out that stealing from Jim, of all people, would land him six-feet-under.

He’s alone in his room when Lucius decides to show his face again. He’s like a rodent infestation, that one—always showing his face where he’s not wanted and impossible to get rid of once he’s there. If he’d somehow survived being hunted by Jim and Ed tossing him overboard, Izzy would go so far as to say that the bastard was patently unkillable… and that was a darn shame, because seeing his dead carcass might actually bring him some modicum of pleasure right now. Is that twisted? Probably. Is he taking out his massive aggression on the wrong person? Most definitely. Is he going to go and pick a fight with the real source of his anger, who also happens to have a major head injury? Unlikely. So, Lucius will have to do—

Lucius has scarcely knocked once before he’s yanking the door open with such ferocity he nearly pulls it clean off its hinges—

“What do you want, Mr. Spriggs?” If Lucius seems to think that it’s safe now, just because Jim isn’t around so impale him with the nearest sharp object, then he’s got another thing coming. One step closer and Izzy is liable to slam the door in his face so hard he breaks that pretty little nose of his… and maybe knocks a couple of teeth loose, while he’s at it. “Why don’t you go crawl back into whatever hole you’ve been hiding in and leave me be.”

Lucius licks his lips, a tiny wrinkle forming in-between his brows. He looks like he’s contemplating what to say—or if he should say anything at all—which is wonderful, really. If more of Stede’s buffoons started thinking before speaking, the ship would run much more smoothly. However, all that thinking was definitely something that he could’ve done before darkening Izzy’s doorstep. “I… I know.” He says, cryptic as the day is long.

“You know… what, exactly?” He’s holding the doorknob so tight he swears he can feel the metal contorting beneath his palm.

“I’m not… Please don’t misunderstand what it is that I’m saying here.” Lucius looks like he would very much like to turn tail and run, but he holds his ground—“I know about the… the…” When the words fail to come to him, he simply taps the inside of his wrist, where Izzy is able to make out faint, pinkish-gray lines… old scars, he realizes belatedly. Old… self-inflicted scars. Faded, but not completely gone.

He swallows hard, suddenly incredibly self-conscious about the current state of his own wrist, “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Spriggs.”

“That’s fine.” Lucius says, “That’s… more than fine. I didn’t…” He swallows hard, steeling himself again, “I don’t expect you to want to talk about it. I just… sometimes it helps to know that you’re not alone.”

This… isn’t the sort of thing that Izzy would ever want to ‘talk through as a crew’… as if the crew needed more ammunition against him. Lucius, specifically, didn’t need anymore perceived weaknesses to exploit. Dizzy Izzy. Dizzy Izzy. Dizzy Izzy. Not for the first time, he wonders… if he told the truth about what happened, would anyone actually care? Ed… Ed would probably have a full-on breakdown—which was probably the only thing that’d kept Izzy from blurting out that he’d gone septic after Ed had beaten him within an inch of his life for… fuck if he remembered. Back then, Ed hadn’t really needed a reason to hurt him… he’d just done it for shits and giggles, and told Izzy over and over that he’d done it because he deserved it.

…He’d told him that so many times, he’d actually started to believe it.

There’s an odd sort of warmth that fills him at the thought of what it is that Lucius is trying to do… even though he knows he’s done nothing to deserve it. And perhaps… perhaps it’s the knowledge that he really hasn’t done anything to deserve it that makes it so hard to just accept what it is that’s being offered to him. “Why do you care? Don’t pretend like your life wouldn’t be infinitely better without me in it.”

Lucius makes a small, wounded noise… and then looks terribly pained to have been caught making it. “We may not… always see eye to eye, true, but… Izzy, there’s not a single person aboard this ship who genuinely thinks that we’d be better off if you were dead.”

Izzy is far from convinced, “You lot tried to anchor me. You would have, to, if Ed hadn’t come back—”

“Oh, Izzy…” He just… lets himself into Izzy’s room, which sets off all sorts of alarm bells inside of Izzy’s head. But Izzy is tired… too tired to deal with the homicidal urges that come rushing to the surface the moment that Lucius just invades his space without asking. “Clearly, there’s quite a bit that we need to talk about…”

Izzy’s scowl could freeze over the entirety of Hell, “…Clearly.”

Ed doesn’t want to be alone with Stede.

It feels… odd to say, considering Stede is still unconscious and nothing is forcing Ed to remain in the captain’s quarters other than a fear that something will happen to Stede the minute that he turns his back… Well, that, and the fear that Izzy will be angry with him for not staying longer, for not… for not listening to him and giving him space when he needed it. But… what if Ed wants to be selfish, and be the center of attention for a while? What if Ed wants someone to comfort him after that whole debacle on the deck? He knows that… that he doesn’t exactly deserve comfort, considering… He flinches as images flash through his mind—the tears streaking down Izzy’s pretty face (“Why’re you crying? It’s just the pinky.”), dark, crimson blood smeared across his chin and through the graying hairs in his beard. There’d been so much blood… It hadn’t really registered at the time, considering how far gone he’d been… but looking back on it, how Izzy had managed to survive that was nothing short of a miracle.

It wasn’t a memory that he liked to relive… It was a memory Stede had promised he wouldn’t have to relive, not after…

But then, he supposes it’s not exactly fair to blame Stede for forgetting. It’s just… easier… to shift the blame onto someone else.

“Fuck. Fuck.” None of this would’ve happened if he’d just listened to Izzy and double-checked to make sure that everything was secured. He looks to where Stede is sleeping peacefully, the subtle rise and fall of his chest the only indication that he’s even still alive. He watches him for a moment, expecting that the sight will bring him some measure of peace. It doesn’t. “I… fucking hell, I need some air.”

He storms out of the room, hoping against hope that Mr. Buttons is the only one out on deck… maybe he’ll take him up on that offer to moon bathe, and see if it can wash away some of the toxic energy that’s churning about inside of him. And if not… well, it’s always nice to have a chance to see Olivia. He does still feel bad about the whole Karl thing, even if she doesn’t seem to hold a grudge…

Chapter Text

“Well,” Izzy fixes Lucius with a look. “You said that there was something that we needed to talk about—so talk.”

“…You do realize that we weren’t actually trying to kill you during that whole mutiny bit, right?” Izzy arches a brow—in his world, binding someone’s wrists and ankles to an anchor and threatening to toss them overboard is a fairly strong indicator that people want you dead… but he supposes it shouldn’t be surprising that Bonnet’s merry band of misfits see it differently. They certainly see everything else differently.

“Could’ve fooled me.” He says. He circles around Lucius, coming to stand over by his desk… the little bit of extra distance between them makes him feel a bit better about it all. He’s feeling horribly raw right now, like Lucius has suddenly developed x-ray vision and can see, with horrific clarity, the wounds that crisscross his bandaged skin. “What on earth made you think that I’d be able to survive that?”

Lucius looks at him as if he’s missing something earth-shatteringly important, “Nobody on this ship listens to a bloody word you say, mate.” Izzy blinks—he could’ve done without the reminder of their daily insubordination right now. “Do you really think we would’ve been able to tie a knot that would’ve held you if you’d really started struggling?” And, well… he might have a point there, except—

“You realize that, no matter how loose you made those knots, the full weight of an anchor pulling down on them would make them next to impossible to escape?” Lucius’ face falls—no, apparently that hadn’t occurred to him… or anyone else on the crew, for that matter. Izzy rolls his eyes—it’s nice to know that, if they actually had managed to kill him, it would’ve been a complete and total accident. That makes him feel so much better.

“It’s the principal of the matter.” He tries, “You were just supposed to… get a bit of a fright is all. Like one of the captain’s fuckeries.” Yes… except Ed’s fuckeries were usually kind of funny. His near brush with death, not so much.

“…How many of you lot actually know how to swim?” He asks. Lucius, clearly a bit taken back by the question, actually has to think about it—

“I… don’t actually know.” Izzy isn’t surprised. Odds are, the only crew member he actually knows can swim is Jim, and that’s because—“But someone would’ve jumped in after you if you didn’t resurface within… a minute, I’m sure.”

“A minute, huh?” Izzy doesn’t look convinced. It’s far more likely that they all would’ve stood there staring, passing the blame down the line until they finally stumbled upon someone willing to jump in after Izzy… and by then, Izzy would’ve drowned several times over.

“Exactly.” Lucius nods… a second later, realization hits, “You don’t believe me.”

Izzy offers him a crooked approximation of a smile, “I always knew that you had a semi-functioning brain, Mr. Spriggs.”

“Yes, well… there’s no need to be such a terrific ass when I’m trying to help you, you know.” Help him? How exactly did Lucius think that any of this was helping him? It was just making him realize that the crew, as a whole, was even dumber than he’d realized.

“Yes. And you’re doing a rather fantastic job of helping me to raise my blood pressure.” Would it be rude to just… pick Lucius up by the collar and toss him back out into the hall? Probably. Did he care? Not really. He’s about to do just that when he tweaks his wrist in the exact wrong way and—“Fuck.”

Fuck this… He turns his back on Lucius, and the strange mixture of disrespect and trust in that single act causes Lucius’ head to spin. He needs the splint off now—the pain of it pressing into his new burns is intense, and that pain is just feeding into his anger. He usually finds yelling at Lucius to be rather cathartic… but something that Lucius said must be registering with him, somewhere in the deep, dark recesses of his brain, because… because he actually feels kind of bad for continuing to snap at him like this when he’s just trying to help. He may be doing a piss-poor job of actually helping, but it’s certainly not for lack of trying—it’s more… well, they’ve never really had an actual conversation before, and this is…

This is like taking a swan dive into the depths of the ocean without knowing how to swim. He shouldn’t be surprised that he’s barely treading water.

It’s more difficult than he’d expected to get the splint off… and once the metal prison has been removed, he realizes, with a sinking in his gut, that his wrist doesn’t exactly feel better. The burn is worse than the cut, at least right now… he doesn’t have anything to clean it with, let alone to ease the sting, and he’s not about to ask Roach for any supplies (because that means he’s going to have to admit that he burned himself, and that… no).

And then… Lucius had said that he wanted to help, hadn’t he? For a brief moment, he entertains the idea of sending Lucius off to hunt down some aloe. He thinks that he’d do it… and he already knows about Izzy’s injuries (even if he doesn’t know the full extent of them—not yet, at least), which makes the idea a little less horrifying. Just a little, because… Dizzy Izzy. Dizzy Izzy. Dizzy Izzy.

…Why did he let Lucius into his room again? Ah, yes, that’s right—he didn’t. Lucius just invited himself inside.

Izzy breathes… in through the nose, out through the mouth… and slowly begins to unwind the bandages from around his arm. The gauze is stuck to the wound, and the force that he needs to apply to unstick it is enough to cause the wounds to start bleeding afresh. Even the burn is bleeding a bit, which isn’t good. On the bright side, the burn isn’t as severe as the pain would’ve led him to believe. There’re a couple of bubbles on the surface of his skin where the burns are most severe, but otherwise… the skin is just hot and tender to the touch, like he’s come down with sun poisoning. He taps at the wound with the pads of his fingers, like a child that just cannot keep their fingers off of a wound freshly scabbed over—

A hand curls around his uninjured wrist, pulling his fingers away from the wounds before he can exacerbate them—

It takes far too long for Izzy to realize that Lucius is the one holding his wrist—once that realization kicks in, he yanks his arm back a little too hard.

“What the fuck do you think that you’re doing?” Lucius jumps, looking half-certain that Izzy is going to produce a weapon out of thin air and slice into whatever piece of Lucius can reach—“Touch me again and you’ll have two wooden fingers.”

“Right.” The longer Lucius spends in Izzy’s room, the less afraid he appears to be of Izzy, and that just cannot be allowed to stand. He doesn’t move to reach for Izzy again, which is good—instead, he wanders further into the room, looking at and touching everything within reach. In his defense, there’s not much for him to touch… but there’s enough for Izzy to feel his blood pressure slowly start climbing again.

He sighs, regretting his decision before the words have even left his mouth—“You want to be helpful?” Lucius perks up a little at the suggestion, “Go find me some aloe.” He’s… fairly certain that they have some on-board. It’s exactly the sort of extravagant nonsense that Bonnet would seek out during a raid. Unfortunately, his mentioning needing aloe is all the invitation Lucius needs to come and inspect his wounded arm.

He sucks in a sharp breath at the sight of it, “That… looks like it hurts.”

“Really? And here I was, thinking about how much fun I was having with all that metal pressed right up against it.”

Once again, Lucius is entirely unphased by his rapidly darkening mood. “Aloe would be good for that.” He confirms, “Cold water, too. You’re supposed to run burns under cold water, you know.” He’s rambling now, just a bit, and Izzy cannot help but wonder if maybe he’s a bit more nervous than he’d been letting on. “…You’ll also need something to disinfect the cuts.”

Lucius speaks about the wounds on his arms in the same way that Ed does—he acknowledges that they’re there, but not in a way that draws unnecessary amounts of attention to them or makes Izzy feel… self-conscious (or, more self-conscious, he supposes, since he’s always self-conscious about his self-inflicted wounds and the scars that they’ve left behind) about their existence. They just… are… And once again, Izzy finds himself at a proverbial impasse, because… Lucius isn’t nice to him. (To be fair, he’s not exactly nice to Lucius either—the distaste is most definitely mutual—but still). He doesn’t think that Lucius would be so cruel as to make fun of him for this, but he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know because Dizzy Izzy, Dizzy Izzy, Dizzy Izzy was never fucking funny, and yet the ‘joke’ is going to follow him to his grave. His life… is just one colossal fuckfest of horrors that’re only funny because he’s the butt of every ‘joke,’ and he doesn’t know how to make it stop—if he even can.

He wants Edward. He’s not sure why… not sure what semblance of comfort Ed could offer him right now…

…Maybe there’s some truth to that old saying, ‘better the devil you know’…

“It’s been about… twenty years, give or take, since I… since I stopped.” Lucius blurts. Izzy jumps like he’d forgotten that Lucius was there… and that he was standing right beside him. “I… I never really knew what would trigger an episode, but I know that they always got infinitely worse during periods of high stress. It… was nice—grounding, even—to have a little bit of control over something. But the feeling never lasted.”

Izzy grits his teeth hard enough to taste copper in the back of his throat, “Don’t presume that you know anything about me and what I need to feel… grounded… Mr. Spriggs.” He tries to sound threatening, but it’s hard when his voice is shaking so horribly. He doesn’t want to admit that Lucius had hit the nail on the head, because that would mean admitting to how out of control he’d felt as of late—

…How out of control he’d felt ever since they’d first boarded the Revenge, after saving Stede-fucking-Bonnet from the Spanish.

In the early days, when Stede was still delirious from fever and Ed was plastered to his side like a second skin, Izzy used to think… that maybe everything would’ve been better if Stede’s neck would’ve snapped before they’d boarded the ship. And he’d felt bad about it, once the three of them had entered into a relationship… even if there was no way for Stede to know what he’d been thinking, he’d still thought it… and not only had he thought it, he’d genuinely believed it. Stede was nothing more than a temporary fixation—a passing fancy. The sooner he was dealt with, the sooner things would go back to normal. And then Stede had shown them just how toxic ‘normal’ was, and he’d hated him for an entirely different reason.

Better the devil you know…

Their relationship may not have been healthy, but that didn’t mean that they didn’t love each other. It… It just meant that no-one had ever taught them how to love each other well. Nobody asked Stede to stick his nose where it didn’t belong and start changing things. Because if they started changing things, then maybe… maybe Ed would realize that he didn’t actually want to be with Izzy at all—that Izzy was just… just…

To his mounting horror, Izzy finds tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. The thought of Ed leaving him—of turning him in for something new, something different, something exciting—always seemed to do that to him. Usually, he didn’t have an audience… and Lucius’ continued presence is just making everything infinitely worse, because the thought of being emotionally vulnerable in front of any of Bonnet’s little crew fills him with…

Fear.

And Izzy… Izzy wants to say that he’s not afraid of anything, but that’s not exactly true. In actuality, he’s afraid of a great many things—most of which stemmed from the kraken. No-one seemed to understand that he hadn’t unleashed the kraken because he genuinely liked Ed behaving that way. No, it was—is—legitimately terrifying. Even without the threat of pieces of his body being cut off and fed to him, nothing about serving underneath the kraken could be considered a good time. But… for all Bonnet liked to claim that that wasn’t Ed… it was. You can’t… dress a cat in fine linens and suddenly call it a gentleman. Just because you no longer wish to be something doesn’t mean that that actually changes who you are. Izzy would love nothing more than for Ed to be the man that Bonnet seems to think he is, but… if it wasn’t Izzy, it would’ve been something else. Because there’s always something that comes along and rocks the boat just when it looks like the waters have finally started to calm…

Izzy might as well just… drill a hole in the bottom of the vessel and get on with the drowning—save everyone some time.

…Izzy has once again forgotten that Lucius is still hovering over him like some sort of sardonic mother hen, because, when he speaks again, he nearly backhands the scribe across the face in his shock. “I don’t presume…” Lucius swallows hard, taking a moment to collect his thoughts, “I don’t presume to know anything about you, Izzy.” He says, “I’m just… All I’m trying to say is, if you ever want to… talk… I won’t judge.”

“…You won’t judge.” Izzy thinks he could laugh, if he isn’t half-certain he’d burst into tears instead. “All you and your little gaggle of wannabe pirates have done since I boarded this fucking ship is judge me. And I’m supposed to believe that this will somehow be different?”

Lucius shrugs, “I mean… to be fair, you didn’t exactly make any kind of effort to treat us well, either.”

“I…” Izzy is about three seconds away from pulling his hair out—the only thing stopping him is the thought of the pain that’ll stem from moving his injured hand that way, “I wasn’t supposed to treat you well. You’d been fucking boarded!” You don’t just… act like you’re having a bloody sleepover when you’ve been boarded. Had it been any other crew, on any other day, Ed would’ve slit their throats for their insolence.

He expects Lucius to fight him—to argue that he was the only one who really believed that they’d been boarded, while Ed was too busy babysitting their injured captain to care. Instead, he says, “We could always… I don’t know, start over?”

Izzy finds himself at a complete and utter loss for what to say, and ends up just repeating dumbly, “Start… over?”

Another shrug, “I… Look, all I’m saying is, in another life, we probably could’ve learned a lot from you. You don’t make it as long as you have in this profession without knowing a thing or two about staying alive.” He’s pretty sure Lucius just called him old, and he doesn’t even have enough time to get mad about it because—“So maybe you could… teach us some things… like how to tie a proper knot—”

“I’ll never understand how you lot managed to survive this long with only Mr. Boodhari and Jim knowing how to tie a knot—”

“You don’t have to be so condescending about it.”

“It was a compliment. Sort of.” It was a compliment in the same way that saying ‘luck favors the stupid’ was a compliment. So… not really a compliment at all, but not so much of an insult as to warrant the look that Lucius is now fixing him with. “Get me that aloe, Mr. Spriggs… and maybe I’ll consider it.”

“Consider..?” The compliment-insult must’ve thrown their whole conversation off-kilter, because Lucius has already forgotten what he’d said just a second ago. Maybe that’s an indication that he hadn’t actually meant it… that he was just saying what he thought Izzy wanted to hear in order to make Izzy feel a bit more at ease around him… Honestly, Izzy is too exhausted to try and figure it out. “Ah, right! Pirating lessons.”

“Pirating lessons.” Izzy hums, with a small nod—he feels like he’s talking to a very small child, and it’s starting to grate on his last nerve—

“For the aloe.” …Is there a reason they’re rehashing their entire conversation in two- and three-word long sentences? Did Izzy miss something?

“Yes.” He confirms, and if Lucius doesn’t take the hint and leave now, he’s going to toss him overboard again—only this time, he’s going to make sure that the bastard doesn’t somehow manage to find his way back onto the ship. He’s killed enough men for Blackbeard in his time—a number of which would be sorely missed, if their disappearance were to be discovered by the wrong person, if you catch his meaning—to make it look like an accident.

“Right. I’ll be right back, then.” It takes every ounce of self-control that Izzy didn’t know he had to refrain from telling him to take his time.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa… what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Lucius looks on in horror as Izzy prepares to just… slather the aloe onto his burn. Izzy looks at him like he’s sprouted a second head—he’s preparing to tend to his wound, what did it look like he was doing? “You have to wash your hands before tending to your wounds—or else you’re just asking for an infection.”

Izzy blinks at him dumbly, “I swear, if you pull out one of Stede-fucking-Bonnet’s ridiculous bars of soap right now—”

“You’ll what?” There’s that damned cockiness again. “Kill me? You’re unarmed—and with your wrist in the state it is, I’m pretty confident that I’d be able to overpower you easily enough.” He’s awfully sure about that, isn’t he? Clearly, he’d never watched Izzy fight before. Once upon a time, he’d killed a man by tearing an entire chunk of flesh out of his neck with his teeth. He doesn’t need a weapon to fuck someone up—

“Mr. Spriggs…” The threat in his tone is clear—

Lucius relents, “So, I did bring one of the captain’s soaps. But it’s not lavender—I know you’re allergic to that.” He’s about to ask how Lucius came to be in possession of that information, when Lucius continues, “In fact, it’s not scented at all. The oils and perfumes they use to make those scented soaps can be really irritating to the skin, even when you aren’t allergic to them.”

Something about that… the idea that Lucius had been thinking about him and his comfort, even when he’d done nothing but treat him like shit ever since he’d offered his assistance… warms Izzy’s frigid heart. “You’ve… really thought this through.”

Lucius hums, “Like I said… this isn’t my first time dealing with injuries like this.” Izzy’s eyes flit down to the inside of Lucius’ wrist, before slowly moving back up to meet his gaze, “If you want, I can… I mean, I’m no doctor, but…”

Izzy mulls it over for a moment, before admitting, somewhat hesitantly, “I… I’ve never let anyone tend to my wounds, other than Ed.”

Lucius blinks, not quite able to stop himself from blurting, “Well, that would explain some of the scarring.” He’s not talking about the self-inflicted wounds. He’s talking about the dozens of scars that’re now on display because Izzy can no longer hide in the relative comfort of his blouse and waistcoat. “You’re a braver man than I, trusting him to stitch you back together.”

He swallows hard, “That’s not… He knows that, if he doesn’t do it for me, it won’t get done.”

For whatever reason, that seems to surprise Lucius, “You mean you just… leave them to bleed?”

Lucius moves to wash his hands with the unscented bar of soap… Izzy watches him, still a little confused as to why he’s saying anything at all. “In due time, the body will stitch itself back together. It always does.”

He shouldn’t say that he never tends to his own wounds. He always makes sure that he won’t bleed out in the night—usually, this entails drinking half a bottle of rum and stitching himself back together with cord thick enough to lace boots… or, sometimes, cauterizing his own wounds. (He’d only ever had to do that the once, after both he and Ed had been shot by British naval officers. Luckily for them, the officer had shit aim, and had caught Ed in the knee… a potentially crippling injury, to be sure, but certainly not a lethal one. Unluckily for them, once Ed had managed to disarm the officer, his gun had hit the ground and misfired. The bullet had lodged in Izzy’s stomach, and, well… he remembers being shot, and he remembers Ed digging the bullet out of his stomach… but he doesn’t remember cauterizing his own wound. Ed had been so kind as to tell him about it later—apparently, the whole thing had been pretty badass. He’d just… ripped the red-hot knife out of Ed’s hand and—).

He's pulled from his thoughts when Lucius brandishes a… wash cloth? He dips the wash cloth into a small basin of cool, clean water (he cannot help but bristle a little at the waste of such a precious, limited resource) and starts to gently dab at Izzy’s burn. It… stings, just a little… but he thinks that that’s more the pressure of Lucius’ fingers (and the fabric) pressing against his skin than anything else. He’s not scrubbing the skin, not really… but he manages to work up a bit of a lather all the same. It takes Izzy far too long to realize that he’s cleaning the burn… (how many times has he been burned before, literally and figuratively?...how many times had he actually thought to clean the burn before..?).

Lucius is surprisingly gentle with him. Far gentler than Izzy deserves, all things considered. As soon as the burn is clean, he dabs the irritated skin dry with a dry portion of the wash cloth and moves on to applying the aloe gel. He applies this in a thin, even layer… immediately, the burn feels infinitely better. Once he’s finished with the aloe gel, he cleans his hands once again and… hesitates.

For as much as Izzy doesn’t like talking things through, he’s not a mind-reader. If there’s something on Lucius’ mind, then he needs to come right out and say it before Izzy loses what little patience he’s managed to regain and blows his stack. “What?”

Lucius is silent for a beat… before asking, “Would it be alright if I… I bandaged your cuts for you?” Izzy tenses, his back going ramrod straight as all of the air is punched out of his lungs. He’s reminded of Lucius’ earlier assurances that he wouldn’t judge… He’s been in the same position that Izzy is now, and even if he doesn’t understand, he understands. “It’s absolutely your call. I won’t push you to do anything—”

Izzy grumbles. He doesn’t like having to make decisions on his own, much prefers to be told what to do and when to do it—although he doesn’t think that Lucius has it in him to make him submit like that. “Just… do whatever you want.” He shoves his arm in Lucius’ general direction, turning his head sharply so that he doesn’t have to look at Lucius’ face while he tends to him.

Lucius clears his throat, “I, uh… I don’t think you understand what it is that I’m saying.”

Izzy narrows his eyes, the corners of his mouth twisting down into the beginnings of a snarl, “I understood what you said just fine, Mr. Spriggs. I may not be learned, like you… but I’m perfectly capable of comprehending the idiocy that tumbles out of your mouth on a daily basis, thank you.”

“That’s not what I meant. I know that you… you heard the words, but I meant more…” He rolls his eyes heavenward, as if hoping for some kind of divine intervention. Not surprisingly, none comes, “Your body is your own. You have the right to control what happens to it. If you don’t want to be touched… or if you’re only okay with me touching you in a certain way… then all you have to do is communicate that to me, and I’ll obey.”

Izzy is silent for a beat too long, “…What the hell are you talking about, Mr. Spriggs?”

“I’m talking about bodily autonomy.” He replies, matter-of-fact.

Bodily… autonomy? What in the bloody hell was that? Izzy’s body had never been his own, not since he’d taken up with Hornigold all those years ago. His body was his captain’s, to do with as he saw fit—whether that meant that he was to act as a weapon, a shield, or… His eyes flicker to his boot-clad foot, to the place where his pinky toe had once been. The idea that he could’ve just… told Ed ‘no’… it doesn’t make any sense. And even if he had said ‘no’… the odds that it actually would’ve prevented Ed from hurting him were so miniscule it was like they didn’t even exist. The idea of saying ‘no’ to Lucius sits a little bit better, because he’s higher on the metaphorical totem pole than he is… although, as Lucius had said, in his current state he doesn’t pose much of a threat to the other man at all. It wouldn’t take much for Lucius to overpower him like this… and the thought of the one crew member who squeals at the sight of blood managing to best him in a fight is enough to make him feel… make him feel…

Gods, why does he have to feel so much?! Before Stede came along, it was easy enough for him to pretend like he didn’t feel anything…

Pretending wasn’t healthy… but then, he’d never cared about healthy before.

A sigh, “…You can…” He waves his injured arm at him, and Lucius correctly deduces that that’s the closest he’s going to get to an invitation to touch him. With that in mind, he takes up the soapy wash cloth once more—

“Tell me if I hurt you, alright?” He says. Izzy gives a curt nod, hissing sharply when the soapy water comes into contact with his open wounds. Lucius seems to take that as his cue to ease off… but doing so only seems to make Izzy more upset—

“I’m not made of fucking glass, Mr. Spriggs.” He snaps, “You can be rough with me—I can handle it.”

“I know you can.” The confidence with which he says this makes Izzy pause, “But did it ever occur to you that maybe I don’t want to hurt you?” That doesn’t make sense… he doesn’t want to hurt him right now because he pities him, and he knows that the psychological torment of being perceived in such a way is almost as good as ignoring his orders or calling him Dizzy Izzy, Dizzy Izzy, Dizzy Izzy.

He doesn’t respond… and Lucius returns his attention to his work, allowing an almost comfortable silence to settle between them.

~*~*~*~
Thirty Years Earlier
~*~*~*~

Ed likes to hold his hand. Izzy doesn’t understand it… his palm is calloused, uneven in places where the fire had twisted and gnarled his skin…

Jack is a motherfucking idiot. He has to be the only person in the world that doesn’t realize that alcohol and fire don’t mix—he’d resurrected their little bonfire with his final dregs of rum, laughing like a fucking maniac as the flames leapt up several feet into the air. Edward, in his brilliance, had been sitting too close to the fire, and Izzy had moved without thinking. He’d grabbed Ed by the sleeve of his shirt and yanked him away, ignorant to the fact that his hand had caught flame in the process. In fact, there was so much adrenaline coursing through his veins, he didn’t realize that his body was on fire until the fire spread to Ed’s shirt, and then his upper arm… and even then, his first thought was ensuring Ed’s safety.

Ed’s sleeve is done for, but his skin is just a little red, a little irritated. He’s too drunk to be properly upset with Jack… and Jack is just drunk enough to see the burned, bloody mess that is Izzy’s hand and think it’s the funniest thing in the entire world. He pokes fun at Edward, ridiculing his boyfriend—Ed drunkenly slurs that Izzy isn’t his boyfriend… he’s just a boy that he fucks when there’s nothing better to do.

Jack’s laughter is like needles through his heart. It takes an enormous amount of self-restraint for Izzy to not shove him headlong into the fire.

Later, Ed will assure him that what he said wasn’t true… that Izzy means everything to him… that, when Jack’s around, sometimes he just… speaks without thinking. He’ll tell him that he loves him… the first of a total of five times in the thirty years before Stede Bonnet came into their lives… and slip a ring around his cravat. He’ll promise that one day, it’ll just be the two of them… no more Hornigold, no more Jack…

They’ll make a name for themselves… and soon... they’ll be legends.

…He just has to deal with a couple of… inconveniences until then.

Izzy’ll smile—as much as he’s ever been able—and nod, and later that night he’ll drag a blade across his skin… tiny, shallow cuts just underneath where the heel of his palm meets his wrist. It’ll be easy enough to hide the cuts underneath the leather glove that Ed will find him to protect his injured hand from the elements and the harsh, unforgiving Caribbean sun. And Ed’ll be none-the-wiser.

Ed likes to hold hid hand. Izzy doesn’t understand it—there’s nothing particularly pleasant about it, especially not without the glove acting as a kind of barrier. But Ed likes it—so much that he insists on holding Izzy’s hand just like this—and Izzy has never been able to deny Ed anything. Because, when Ed holds onto him like this, he can almost believe that he’s someone important to Ed… can almost believe that Ed loves him.

And that… that makes everything okay. It always has.

Chapter Text

For the record, Ed had had every intention of returning abovedeck when he’d originally set out to get some air.

He cannot say, exactly, how he ended up here—here, being the hallway outside Izzy’s room, listening to the hushed conversation taking place therein like some kind of creeper (and yes, Ed knows that he’s being a proper ass right now—Izzy has the right to talk to whomever he wants, whenever he wants, about whatever he wants, without needing to worry about someone eavesdropping on him—but he cannot seem to force himself to move away from the door).

It’s almost impossible for him to tell who it is that Izzy is speaking to, but that doesn’t stop him from speculating. His first guess would be Fang or Ivan because, while they don’t always get along, Izzy knows them better than the members of Stede’s little motley crew… hell, Ed would even go so far as to say that he trusts them he trusts them to know how to tie a proper knot, if nothing else. The explanation makes sense… and yet, the topic of the conversation gives him pause. Izzy and his mysterious guest are talking about bodily autonomy, a subject that he sincerely doubts Fang and Ivan know much—if anything—about. For a brief moment, he entertains the idea that it might be Lucius in there with him… but that’s ridiculous, right? Izzy and Lucius get on like oil and water… there’s just no way.

Still… there are days when Ed thinks that Lucius is the only one on board the Revenge with a lick of emotional intelligence… and the odds that he’s the only one aboard the Revenge who has any idea what ‘bodily autonomy’ even means are uncomfortably high. Ed’s not ashamed to admit that he only knows what it means because he’s standing there eavesdropping (even if he is ashamed of the fact that he’s still standing there, eavesdropping). Just because he has a basic idea of what ‘bodily autonomy’ means, however, doesn’t mean that he knows why they’re talking about it. He knows that Izzy has some… concerning beliefs about his body—specifically his own rights concerning his body—but that’s a… sensitive subject, and not one that Izzy would start talking about with just anyone…

He's startled from his thoughts by the sound of Izzy’s door opening. He jumps, attempting to position himself so that it looks like he’d just been… casually strolling down the hall, and most definitely hadn’t been hovering outside the door for the last fifteen minutes or so. “Captain?”

Ah… so it was Lucius that Izzy had been talking to, then. Ed’s not sure why, but having his suspicions confirmed just makes him feel… uneasy. Perhaps it has something to do with the way that Lucius is looking at him—like he can see right through him, and knows each and every horrible thing he’s ever done in his life, including standing there and eavesdropping on their conversation. “Lucius. Fancy seeing you here… I would’ve thought you’d be getting your beauty sleep.”

Lucius offers him an incredibly thin smile, “Izzy and I were just… talking.” He says. There’s something about his tone that makes Ed’s skin crawl. It’s not unlike how he felt after the proper dressing down Lucius had given him on the island… just, the result of significantly less words, thrown at him with considerably less vitriol. "And what about you, captain? Here I was, thinking you’d be right there at Captain Bonnet’s side, nursing him back to health.”

Ed bristles a little, “Stede doesn’t need me to sit there and play nursemaid.” He counters—and it’s true, technically. Roach had indicated that he expected Stede to be out for a while… and while Ed was more than welcome to stick around and stress over his condition, it would be better for everyone if he found some other way to occupy his time. And, well… he’d been reluctant to leave at first… but then, the need to get out of the room had gotten so great, he’d just kind of… run.

Lucius hums, looking far from convinced but unsure whether or not it’s wise to push Ed on the matter right now. It doesn’t take long for him to make up his mind. “So, you decided to… what? Just hover outside of Izzy’s door?”

Ed can feel blood rushing to his cheeks, “I’m not… I wasn’t hovering!”

“Oh?” The scribe arches a brow, “Then, do tell me… what exactly were you doing? Because it certainly looks like you were hovering.”

Ed… doesn’t know what to say to that. He doesn’t even know why he’d come here, just that his feet had seemed to take on a mind of their own and bring him here of their own accord. Somehow, he doubts that Lucius will buy that, though, despite it being the absolute truth. And while he’s fairly certain that Lucius knows exactly what he’d been doing out here in the hall, like hell is he going to admit that he’d been eavesdropping on their conversation. And so he just kind of… stands there, his ears smoking as the metaphorical gears in his aching head come to a grinding halt. What does he say? What does he say? The longer he waits to say something, the worse the situation looks for him. But letting all this time pass just to blurt out some vaguely coherent nonsense won’t do him any favors, either.

“You know… for someone who takes such pride in his fuckeries, you’re actually quite a terrible liar.” Lucius says, matter-of-fact. “You could at least have the balls to admit that you were eavesdropping.” Unlike the time on the island, he’s not afraid that his little outburst will result in Ed hurting him. Or perhaps whatever he and Izzy had been talking about has him so angry, he no longer has the wherewithal to be scared of what Ed might do to him.

Ed scowls, “The fuck crawled up your ass and died, mate?” Yeah, he fucked up… but as far as he knew, he hadn’t done anything to warrant this kind of hostility from Lucius. “Did Izzy say something?” Maybe (for some reason Ed cannot quite fathom) Izzy spoke to Lucius about what’d happened on deck—

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Lucius counters. Ed cocks his head to the side, his eyes narrowing—

“Yeah, I kinda would. That would be why I asked.”

Lucius shakes his head, “I bet it wouldn’t make one lick of difference if I told you…” What the fuck is that supposed to mean? “But, see… funny thing is, I’m not loyal to you. That’s what happens when you try to drown someone by throwing them overboard.” A shrug, “So, even if I was inclined to tell you what’s bothering Izzy—which, I’m not—I wouldn’t. And you can take your frustration over that fact and shove it straight up your ass.”

Ed is too stunned by Lucius’ not-so-little outburst to be anything other than… well, speechless. “I… All I did was ask a bloody question, mate. If you were so opposed to answering, you could’ve just said ‘no.’”  

Lucius looks him up and down, before answering, “No.”

Ed isn’t going to snap. Ed isn’t going to snap. As soon as Lucius leaves, he’ll go and talk with Izzy and get all of this sorted out… and everything will be fine. Except… Lucius seems to have magically developed the ability to read minds, because he moves to stand in-between Ed and the door to Izzy’s room and plants his feet firmly. The last shreds of patience that he’d been desperately clinging to fly out the window as Lucius watches him expectantly… It’s clear that he’s expecting Ed to just leave, and honestly, it would probably be for the best if he did just that. He still can’t articulate why he’d come here, and if he did have the chance to talk to Izzy, he’d probably end up making even more of an ass out of himself. But leaving now means that Lucius wins—and while he doesn’t know what the hell it is that they’re fighting over other than Izzy, because that’s pretty much obvious at this point, he still feels some kind of way about letting Lucius win—

…But if he starts a proper fight out in the hallway, then Izzy will come out to investigate and… Ed bites his lip hard enough to draw blood, realizing that Lucius has backed him between a rock and a hard place. “Fine.” He sighs, shoulders slumping a little, “Will you tell him that I need to talk with him, at least?” Lucius stares at him blankly, “Right. Well… good talk.”

He can feel Lucius’ eyes boring into his back long after he arrives back on deck.

…Izzy is avoiding him. Well, technically Izzy isn’t “avoiding” him so much as the crew is preventing him from talking to—or interacting with—Izzy.

Honestly, Ed would probably prefer it if Izzy were actually the one avoiding him, because then at least he’d have an idea about where they stand.

Because, as of this exact moment, he’s had about thirty seconds alone with Izzy—in total—over the last five days, and he’s losing his mind.

This… This is Lucius’ fault. He knows that it is. Clearly, whatever he and Izzy had discussed the other night, which he “hadn’t been at liberty to share with Ed,” he’d gone ahead and shared with the rest of the crew—and now the crew had taken it upon themselves to make his life an absolute living hell. As if he wasn’t under enough stress, between trying to convince Stede that he wasn’t a danger to Izzy (which was a fucking nightmare in and of itself, since Stede had awoken remembering just enough about their fight to (1) conclude that he no longer wanted to talk about Izzy, and (2) look on Ed with a general distrust that made Ed’s chest ache) and, well…

He'd been trying, for the better part of five days now, to get thirty seconds alone with Izzy so that he could reassure him that he had no intention of leaving him—no matter what Stede said. And it was fucking exhausting. Every time he thinks he’s just about managed it, someone fucking materializes out of thin air to whisk Izzy off to do… Ed narrows his eyes, trying to see what it is that Izzy and Lucius are doing now. It looks like Izzy is trying to show Lucius how to tie a monkey’s fist. …Why in the world would Lucius suddenly be interested in learning how to tie knots? All that boy ever wants to do is sit and sketch and write… In fact, Ed’s half certain that that’s the only reason Stede keeps him around.

The longer Ed goes without being able to say anything to Izzy about all this, the more worried he becomes. The more worried Ed becomes, the more likely he is to bite the head off of the first crewmate to look at him weird that also sticks around long enough to get verbally eviscerated. It’s a bad situation all around, and the only thing that makes it somewhat tolerable is the fact that Izzy seems… happy.

Of course, then he remembers that Izzy has never looked at him quite that way before, and it makes him start to wonder if Stede had been right.

Maybe… Maybe he is bad for Izzy. Maybe the reason that their relationship had been in such a state of disarray when they’d first met Stede wasn’t because he’d fallen out of love with him… but because he’d never been able to see and appreciate Izzy for what he was, for what he did for him. Gods, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Izzy was the only reason that Ed was alive right now. He’d pulled Ed back from the brink more times than he could count, had pieced him back together into something resembling a functional human being time and time again… and how had he repaid him? By demanding that Izzy set up a meeting for him with the Gentleman Pirate, after… He wrinkles his nose, remembering how Izzy had fumed after they’d lost the hostages. Ed hadn’t been in the mood to admit it then, but he could admit now that that had been incredibly bad form… you don’t just ‘steal back a hostage’ that wasn’t even your hostage, anymore.

Possession is nine-tenths of the law and all that nonsense.

Ed heaves a dramatic sigh, resigning himself to watch as Izzy walks Lucius through the basics of knot-tying for what has to be the hundredth time that morning. He’s an excellent teacher when he wants to be, showing surprising levels of patience to a student that demonstrates a willingness to learn. Lucius’ wooden finger seems to be giving him a bit of trouble—it’s difficult to tie knots without being able to bend all of your fingers, after all, and that is his dominant hand—but Izzy shows him how to manipulate the rope with his non-dominant hand, how he can hold his pointer finger aloft to make it a little easier to get the rope to do exactly what it is that he wants. What’s worse is that Lucius actually appears to be listening to and taking Izzy’s lessons to heart… the more he practices, the better he gets at manipulating the rope, until finally, he’s able to create an almost passable monkey’s fist. Almost passable, but also infinitely more secure than any of the knots the crew had tied that night…

“Boss..?” Ed startles, turning in time to see Fang and Ivan flanking him on either side. The two men seem to be caught between a rock and a hard place, wanting to conform with the new, “unspoken” rule that acknowledging Ed’s existence in any way, shape, or form is a no-go while also wanting to remain loyal to their captain. Right now, it appears that ‘loyalty to their captain’ has won out.

“Yeah?” He tries to appear casual gods know why, seeing as his attempt to look ‘casual’ before had been what’d gotten him into this mess. Ivan looks on him with something approaching pity, and it makes the knot that formed in his belly the moment he realized that he was being kept from Izzy pull even tighter. “What is it?”

“You’ve been standing there, staring at Izzy for half an hour now.” Had he? Gods, that was actually kind of—

“It’s getting a little creepy.” Fang helpfully supplies. Ed heaves a dramatic sigh.

“I miss him.” He laments. Fang and Ivan share a look, like they hadn’t actually expected to be subjected to a full-on emotional deluge and don’t exactly know what to do now that it looks like one is incoming, “I mean… like really, really miss him. And I… I’d do something about it, you know? Except… this is the happiest I’ve seen him in a long time, and I’m not the one who made him happy, and I…”

Fang fidgets nervously, “We could… try to get him alone? So that you could talk to him?” Ed considers it a moment, before ultimately deciding against it. He doesn’t want to create additional trouble for the two of them. It’s bad enough that they’re over here talking to him—

“Nah, I just…” Ed’s eyes sweep across the deck. There’s really no point in his being here if nobody is even going to acknowledge his existence, “Do you think the two of you could bring some pillows and blankets down to the ball room? I think that I’ll… move my things in there for a while…”

“Wait…” Ivan looks at Ed a little more critically, “…Where have you been sleeping these past few days?”

Ed’s response is as immediate as it is heartbreaking, “…I haven’t.”

Well, that’s not exactly true. Even in his younger days, when he and Jack had done all sorts of crazy shit, there’s no way in hell he’d have been able to keep himself awake for five days straight and still be functioning as well as he is right now. The truth was, he’d been taking little, thirty to forty-five minute long micro-naps. He’d just… find a relatively peaceful corner to hide himself away in and sleep for as long as his body would allow him without the warmth of another body cradled next to his own. See, Ed had become so accustomed to sleeping with both Stede and Izzy that the idea of sleeping without either was practically unfathomable. His brain wouldn’t allow it for more than forty-five minutes (or so) at a time… He kept waking in a panic, thinking that something had happened to one or both men, and then, when he tried to check-in with them to make sure everything was alright… Stede would barely talk to him, and Izzy was being kept from him.

When he’d first built the pillow fort in the captain’s quarters… it’d helped. He thinks that it might’ve had something to do with surrounding himself with Stede’s scent, so that… even if he was no longer there, it still kind of felt like he was. He’s hopeful that a similar principle will apply here. If he can just… build another pillow fort in the ball room (because who would ever come looking for him there?), then he can hide himself away from the world, and try to make sense of the maelstrom of emotions that begin to brew inside of him each and every time that Lucius lays a hand on his Izzy and asks him for help learning how to do something else… and Izzy follows him blindly, like a lost little puppy.

…It’s absolutely not fair that he’s getting this upset over the crew finally taking an active interest in learning how to do their damned jobs, but he doesn’t care. Maybe, if he could believe that their sudden interest in their jobs was actually genuine, he could bring himself to be a bit more supportive of it. As it stands, he’s just… he’s just done with the whole fucking thing.

…Maybe he can find a jar of that orange marmalade that Stede insists they have on hand at all times…

Fang looks incredibly nervous as he asks, “You, uh… You been taking care of yourself, boss?” How the fuck is he supposed to answer that? No, he hasn’t been taking care of himself, because he’s been worried sick about Stede and Izzy and… and there just hasn’t been time, okay? And he can’t even say that anything’s wrong because… because everyone else is suffering so much more than he is right now, and…

“Of course.” He lies. It’s uncomfortably easy to lie to them… He has years of practice at reassuring others that he’s fine while, in reality, his entire world is imploding in upon itself. This is no different. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Neither man looks like he wants to say anything… Eventually, Ivan decides to bite the bullet and, “Because sometimes… you forget to eat if Izzy isn’t there to remind you.” And… okay, that was technically true. It was also totally unfair of Ivan to bring it up right now.

“…And Izzy is the one responsible for managing your laudanum intake.” Fang adds. Ed narrows his eyes—yes, Izzy is usually the one responsible for managing Ed’s laudanum, but Ed is a grown fucking man who is fully capable of making sure that he doesn’t overdose.

“…And you’re not sleeping.” Ed scowls—what the fuck, had they come prepared with a fucking list?! And besides, he’d literally just told them that he’d been sleeping just fine. He’d been lying, of course, but there was no way that they could’ve known that. “Boss… your bags are fucking packed. You look like you have two black eyes.” Unconsciously, Ed’s hands move to poke and prod at the skin just underneath his eyes—

As soon as he realizes what he’s doing, he stops, his nose wrinkling in consternation. Okay, so maybe he’d been a little lax in the self-care department over the last couple of days. Going a week without laying in Stede’s colossal bathtub until he turns into a fucking prune won’t kill him although, to be fair, going that long without taking a bath might very well kill everybody else. He’d survived forty-plus years without all of the luxuries that Stede made seem so commonplace… He could survive without them again. Besides… even if he were in the mood to take a bath and scrub himself down with that yummy lavender soap that he can only use when Izzy isn’t around, because Izzy is frightfully allergic to lavender and the last thing he wants is for Izzy to wind up a mess of hives because of him, it feels… wrong to indulge in such luxuries when everyone around him is suffering. Although… looking at Izzy now, he certainly doesn’t seem like he’s suffering anymore.

“I’m fine.” He says, uncertain whether he’s trying to convince them or himself. He’s fine. He is. And he’ll be even better once he’s inside of the blanket fort, because… because he’ll be alone. But it won’t be like this, where he’s being ostracized by the rest of the crew. He’ll be secluding himself on purpose, and that’s different. “Just… Can you bring me the supplies or not?”

Silence. Then, “…Are you sure that you want to sleep in the ball room?” Even with the addition of cushions and blankets, there’s still twenty… maybe even thirty balls just rolling around on the floor. All it’ll take is one particularly strong wave for one of those balls to go sailing through the air and hit something important. “There has to be a better alternative.”

“It’s what I want.” He assures, even if it’s not. Maybe, if he keeps telling himself that it’s a good idea, eventually he’ll actually manage to get himself to believe it. “Just think of it… a whole room all to myself. Haven’t had one of those since the Queen Anne.”

“With the added bonus of the potential for broken ribs every time the ship rocks.” Ivan snarks. Fang just nods along, complacent.

Ed rolls his eyes heavenward, “…I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’ then. Thanks for the help, boys.”

It’s at that moment that Lucius realizes that Fang and Ivan have defected to the dark side—the look he sends them could freeze over the entirety of the Atlantic, and Ed doesn’t envy them for having to deal with the fallout of Lucius’ ire. He’s been dealing with it ever since the whole ‘tossing him overboard’ mess… which was absolutely fair. Lucius has always been a bit afraid of him, but near the end there—after Izzy had betrayed them, but before he’d cut off Izzy’s toe—he’d thought that things between them were going pretty… okay. He doesn’t expect that they’ll ever reach that place again, which is more than a little sad. He’s never really been liked before. Admired, yes. But genuinely liked? Maybe by Izzy, and sometimes he really wondered whether or not Izzy actually liked him… or just the persona that he used to hide from the world. When was the last time that Izzy had wanted to… to hold hands or some shit? Ed can’t remember… and that makes him sad.

Izzy turns to him then, and for just a second, Ed thinks he hears him say, “Ed?” Like he’s genuinely surprised to see him. And then, it looks like he’s making to break with Lucius because, “…I need to talk to Ed for a second.”

But then Lucius’ hand is on his arm—his fucking hand is on Izzy’s arm, and for one horrible second, Ed’s entire world spins on its axis—and Izzy’s eyes, his attention, is no longer on Ed. “I snagged my finger with the knife.” He says, brandishing the bloody digit for Izzy to inspect. Even from where Ed’s standing, the wound looks bad. “Think you could help me clean it up?”

A small furrow forms in-between Izzy’s brows, “…What do I look like, you’re fucking mom?”

“First of all,” Lucius stands up a little straighter, “My mother was an absolutely lovely woman—very supportive. It wouldn’t kill you to be a bit more like her, you know.” He says. And then, “Also… you don’t not look like a mom. So, yeah…”

Izzy doesn’t do himself any favors by having an entire fucking apothecary on him at all times. Bandages, medicines… you name it, he has an abundance of it. Ed knows that this is because Ed is unfortunately prone to injury, and one can never be too prepared heading into a raid… or just walking up the stairs, some days, but still… “Call me mom again and I’ll fucking anchor you,” Izzy says, moving to tend to Lucius’ injured finger.

Ed takes his leave then, unable to bear watching this mess for even a moment longer.

And if the crew starts referring to Izzy as ‘mom’ after that, well… nobody gets anchored, so they’ll take their victories where they can.

In Ed’s defense, this had seemed like a much better idea out on deck. And, really, it’s not a bad idea… it’s just a bad idea in here, in what should have been his own personal haven (and would have been his own personal haven, if the damned balls which most definitely should be secured to something weren’t constantly tumbling through his fort and wrecking all of his hard work.

Fang and Ivan had warned him… but he hadn’t listened.

He’d thought that he knew better… and look where it’d gotten him.

He’d been trying to whittle a new toe for Izzy… only to discover halfway through his first attempt that he was absolutely horrible at whittling. The second attempt had gone a little better… until he’d sliced off just a bit too much wood and the “toe” looked decidedly less like a toe and more like a shiv. The third attempt—his current attempt—had been going relatively well… or, at least, it had been going well, before the ship had rocked, one of the balls had collided roughly with his injured knee (which was currently sans brace, because the brace was down in the captain’s quarters and Ed wasn’t quite ready to face Stede after everything that’d happened), and the resulting stab of pain had distracted him just long enough to cause his hand to slip—and the blade of the knife to dig deep into the meat of his thumb. He’d stared at the wound for a solid minute before the pain had kicked in, and then he might’ve definitely cried… a lot.

He's remarkably bad at this whole… ‘being on his own’ thing. He’d never really considered just how much he relied on Izzy until he couldn’t anymore… and now he’s floundering, like someone that’s been anchored desperately trying to swim. When was the last time that he had to tend to his own wounds? Did he even remember how to do so? That… That would really be embarrassing if he didn’t. But… the more he thinks about it, the less inclined he feels to leave his little cocoon of blankets and cushions and warmth. And the longer he takes to get to his feet to do something about the wound, the longer he spends staring at it, utterly mesmerized by the dark rivulets of blood that’re trickling down the side of his finger. And then he remembers… he still has Izzy’s switchblade. He’s been holding onto it with every intention of giving it back to him once he has more than five seconds alone with him… and trusts him not to use it again.

…He stares at the blood for a moment longer, before taking the knife in his hand and pricking the pad of one of his fingers. Within seconds, blood wells to the surface, trickling down the length of his finger to pool in the palm of his hand. The pain is nowhere near as bad as that in his butchered finger, but it’s still bright and hot and stinging…

Huh. Well, isn’t that interesting…

Chapter Text

Izzy is angry… angry in a way he hasn’t been since Ed allowed him to be banished from the Revenge on a technicality. (Those wounds are still tender, even if Ed had assured him several times thereafter that he’d never let him be banished again… if he’d known then what he knows now, he would’ve aimed for the side with all of the important bits).

The crew had been… unsettlingly nice to him over the last several days. Ever since Lucius tried to teach him about bodily autonomy, really. And he’d actually started to like it, a bit. It’d been nice to feel like he was actually appreciated… like the crew wasn’t anxiously awaiting the moment he was out of earshot to start talking about him behind his back. He hadn’t trusted it, at first, and now… now he knows that he never should’ve let his guard down. It would be just like Stede Bonnet’s merry band of idiots to lure him into a false sense of security just to take the only thing he had left that mattered—

It'd taken him an alarming amount of time to realize that he’d been so busy managing a small hoard of suddenly eager students, he hadn’t reported to Ed at all. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the other man for more than a few seconds in passing… and while he would be lying if he said that he wasn’t enjoying having the crew’s attention, he missed Ed terribly. The new distance between them reminded him of the final days aboard the Queen Anne’s Revenge, when Ed could scarcely bring himself to look at Izzy if he wasn’t barking orders. He felt… looked-over, forgotten—

It made him want to pitch himself overboard and fall headlong into the bottomless black depths of the sea.

Three days became four, then four days five… Izzy tried, occasionally, to place himself in Ed’s path, to force the other man to see him, to acknowledge him. Every time, he was pulled away by something or other that suddenly needed tending to immediately, lest the entire bloody ship erupt into flames. At five days, Izzy was ready to crawl out of his fucking skin… He’d never been so remiss in his duties before (well, technically just the one duty… but it was arguably the most important of them all). Had they still been aboard the Queen Anne’s Revenge, Izzy would’ve been flogged for such a transgression. Or, well… maybe not flogged. He’d like that too much, which would mean it wouldn’t really be a punishment. He’d probably be made to go without rations, or… or… something. Whatever it was, it would be bad.

There was an odd sort of comfort in knowing that he would be punished when he fucked up… in knowing that Ed wouldn’t hold back just because Izzy occupied a ‘special’ place in his black, twisted heart. When you made a mistake, you were punished. Once the punishment was over, the slate was wiped clean, and everything went back to normal.

Of course… nothing had been normal since coming aboard the Revenge.

He’s ashamed to admit that part of what keeps him from tracking Ed down is the knowledge that Ed is unlikely to punish him for his transgressions. Even if Izzy needs it, the most he’s liable to get out of Ed (without Stede there to ‘supervise’) are a couple of spanks… which are the exact wrong kind of humiliating. Sometimes, he truly needs Ed to be rough with him, in the way that he used to be back when he’d gone by the name ‘Blackbeard.’ And while he can appreciate Ed wanting to shed the mantle of ‘Blackbeard’… he also recognizes that ‘Blackbeard’ is a part of him, in the same way that a man’s heart is a part of their body. You can deny that it exists, but that doesn’t make it just… disappear. Izzy doesn’t like ‘Blackbeard,’ doesn’t love him. He fears him, as much as a man like Izzy can fear anything… and not just because he’d taken Izzy’s toe.

…But he needs him. Because as much as Ed loves Stede, Blackbeard loves Izzy.

It’s a dark, obsessive kind of love… but somewhere along the line, that became all he knew, all he expected, from Ed.

And sometimes, it’s really, really fucking hard to remember that he can have—and that he deserves—so much more.

“Izzy..?” Lucius looks more nervous than Izzy’s seen him in quite some time as he hovers just inside the door to Izzy’s cabin. “You, uh… You wanted to see me?” Izzy hadn’t wanted to see him, exactly. He hadn’t wanted to see him because he knew that, if he opened the door, he could only blame himself for the shit that came tumbling through it.

Ah, well… He supposes that there’s no point in beating around the bush. “You’ve been keeping Ed and I separated.” He says. Lucius blinks… and then his entire body slouches forward, like Izzy’d just lifted a tremendous weight off of his chest.

“Well, yeah.” He says, like this should be obvious, and Izzy had somehow managed to miss the memo.

When it becomes clear that he has no intention of supplying Izzy with anymore information on the matter, Izzy huffs, “Care to share with the class what exactly it was that instigated this particular bout of temporary insanity?”

Lucius frowns, “It wasn’t… Look, you can’t honestly tell me that you’ve never noticed the two of you are unhealthily codependent on one another.” He says, in that way which implies that he’s right, and he knows that he’s right, and anything Izzy has to say to the contrary will be summarily ignored. “This time apart… it was good for you. You haven’t been this happy—”

“Happy? Happy?” Izzy can’t decide whether he wants to hit something or scream… maybe all of the above? “In case you’ve forgotten, he’s my fucking boss. I can’t just… pretend that he doesn’t exist whenever I… what? Need a mental recalibration?” Gods, if this was what it felt like after a mental recalibration, he’d almost prefer the way things were before.

Lucius doesn’t back down, “Did you ever think that maybe that was part of the problem?” What? “Y’know, there’s a reason that you’re not supposed to date your boss. Business and pleasure are like oil and water—the two just don’t mix.”

Izzy wrinkles his nose, “I… I…” He growls, his already limited patience dwindling rapidly. “When was the last time that anyone saw Ed?” He decides that this is the safest course of questioning… until Lucius’ face pinches, and he averts his eyes. “Tell me that at least one of you buffoons has been keeping track of him all this time…”

A pause, then—“I… think Fang and Ivan have been keeping tabs on him, maybe?” Maybe is something, but it doesn’t quite eliminate the urge to shove Lucius overboard a second time, “I-I can check with them, see if they know anything.”

“Do that,” Izzy says. Then, immediately thinking better of it, redirects, “Actually… just tell them to come here. I don’t want to risk anything getting lost in translation.” He fixes Lucius with a look so intense, the scribe shrinks away a bit.

“We were just trying to help.” Lucius says, somewhere between offended and scared. Izzy feels a brief surge of pride at the fact that he’d finally managed to intimidate the other man… and then he just feels tired. Maybe, if he didn’t feel quite so frazzled over the Ed situation, he’d be able to appreciate the fact that Lucius and the others had actually been trying to help…

But right now, hearing him say as much just makes him see red. “I don’t need—nor do I want—your help.”

Lucius, who is perhaps one of the only members of Stede’s little motley crew that has two brain cells to rub together, wisely takes that as his cue to leave. The second the door to Izzy’s cabin closes behind him, Izzy’s mind starts to go fuzzy… not in the pleasant way that it does when Ed hurts him just right, and the pain causes the world to start to blur at the edges, no. It goes fuzzy in the way that it had when his sleep-hazy brain had struggled to make sense of the fact that Izzy’s severed toe was in Ed’s bare hand… and then it was in his mouth, Ed’s fingers pressing incessantly at his jaw. The haziness was a defense mechanism, a way for him to distance himself from what was happening, from what Ed was making him do. The haziness is still a defense mechanism, a way for him to distance himself from what he perceived to be an overwhelming failure—

There’s no acceptable reason for no-one, besides maybe Fang and Ivan, to have seen or spoken to Ed in over a week. He… He’s their captain, for crying out loud! Granted, he may not always act like it, but… When it counts, Ed always manages to come through. Nobody needs to mention that day where they’d come dangerously close to being obliterated by the Spanish.

He paces the length of his room, unaware that he’s begun scratching at the inside of his arm until—

Another knock on the door startles him from his thoughts, and he yanks his hand away from his injured wrist… only to realize that everything burns. He didn’t re-open his cut, but it looks like he’d caught the still-healing burn on the side of his arm with one of his uneven nails and… oh, that hurts. That really fucking hurts. There’s no time to dwell on it, though, because the door is opening and suddenly Fang and Ivan are there, looking like they know exactly why it is that they’re here and that they sincerely wish that they were anywhere else. Izzy clutches his injured wrist to his chest as his heart skips a full beat—

Ed is fine, because of course he is. There’s no reason for Izzy to go and rock the boat now…

He should just… send Fang and Ivan on their merry way with something like an apology for wasting their time.

“Spriggs said you wanted to see us, Boss?” Ivan sounds surprised, and Izzy can’t rightly blame him. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d talked to either Fang or Ivan that week. Unlike Stede’s crew, both men were actually competent, which meant they didn’t need him to walk them, step-by-step, through how to tie a knot—

Izzy draws in a slow, shaky breath… and decides that there’s no point in chickening out now. Stede may’ve made him soft, but he’s no coward, “Mr. Spriggs indicated that you two have talked to Ed recently.”

Fang frowns, “Um… not recently recently.” He says, like that’s supposed to make any kind of sense. Sadly, Izzy’s spent enough time with Fang that he knows exactly what he means, “It’s been a day or two. Or maybe three…”

Ivan nods, “He decided that he was going to hide out in the ball room—”

“And asked us to help him build a new pillow fort in there.” Fang continues. Izzy heaves a long-suffering sigh. Of course he would want to build another damned pillow fort…

“He… was really upset about the crew keeping you from him.” Ivan says, “And… apparently things with him and Captain Bonnet are on the rocks, too? Look, he’s just… generally having a bad time.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, “We’d been taking supplies to him to make sure that he didn’t starve, but these past few days, he hasn’t let us in.”

“We know that he’s still alive,” Fang is quick to reassure, “because he yells—a lot—every time someone knocks on the door.”

Izzy’s eye twitches, “He’s… yelling?”

“You remember how he was when he found out that Fang kept his dog even after—” He stops abruptly mid-sentence when he sees Fang’s face. Fang is staring at Ivan with wide, slightly dewy eyes, his lower lip warbling—“Sorry, sorry. I know that you don’t like reliving that… traumatic moment.”

This… is so much worse than he’d been expecting. But then, he hadn’t been expecting Stede to just… drop Ed like that. Between the two of them, there’s no question that Stede prefers Ed. (Is all of this because of the toe incident? Because he’d forgiven Ed for it once—with very little prompting from Ed, Izzy might add—he could do it again. …He’ll admit, it is nice to have Stede care about what happened to him… even if it took him taking a nasty blow to the head to get there… but that doesn’t change the fact that he just wants to wash his hands of the whole thing. Why had Stede thought that it would be a good idea to talk about their feelings? Talking about things had gotten them here, with Ed hiding in the fucking ball room, Izzy over a week behind on his duties, and Stede… Not to mention, Stede couldn’t even talk about his own feelings half the time!)

It goes without saying that he needs to go and talk to Ed… but his feet are rooted firmly to the ground. It’s strange for him to not want to be around Ed, but… gods, he doesn’t think that he can face him right now, and he hates himself for it, hates himself for a weakness that definitely shouldn’t exist. Putting off their inevitable reunion will only make everything worse—

Ed doesn’t take abandonment well. And while Izzy definitely hadn’t abandoned Ed willingly… now that he’s grown wise to the crew’s antics, his choice to continue keeping his distance from Ed absolutely constitutes abandonment. And that… that’s going to make Ed angry, and an angry Ed is liable to take another of Izzy’s toes, and…

Look, Izzy’s not scared of Ed. But he’s also not not scared of Ed.

He wants to—needs to—be punished, but… it won’t be the punishment he wants, and if he pushes—

The space where his toe had once been throbs dully, mocking him.

Ivan, seemingly able to read Izzy’s mind, offers, “It’s alright if you don’t wanna talk to him, Boss. This… This whole situation is a hot fucking mess, but it’s not your fault.” Except… it is. Because he’s the reason that Stede’d gotten hurt in the first place. If Stede had never lost his memory, then… “He’s been… keeping an eye on you, from a distance. He knows you’re doing your job.”

“As… upset as he is about the distance between you, he’s… as happy as he can be that you’re happy.” Fang says. Izzy feels like he’s been punched in the gut. Why is everyone assuming that he’s happy?

He must’ve said that last bit aloud, because Ivan cocks his head to the side, confusion clear on his face, and says, “Because… the crew is finally listening to you? You’re not just… screaming into the void and hoping that something starts screaming back?”

Izzy scowls, “Maybe… if they hadn’t just been fucking with me.”

Both Fang and Ivan’s expressions shift, then, “…Fucking with you, Boss?” Ivan asks.

“Apparently, Mr. Spriggs made the executive decision that Ed is bad for me, and decided that he would convince the crew to suddenly start listening to me in order to… keep us apart? I don’t even know.” Apparently, Lucius had kept his ill-contrived plan to himself, because Fang and Ivan are looking at him like he’s sprouted a second head.

“He… never mentioned why he was trying to keep the two of you apart.” Ivan says, in a tone which implies that that is the most bullshit reasoning he’s ever heard, “The two of you… may not always be great together, but you’re even worse apart.”

Izzy furrows his brows, “Thanks for the vote of confidence… I think.”

“I think what Ivan’s trying to say is, if Ed’s going to be mad at anyone, he’s going to be mad at Lucius. Which…” He cringes, “We’ll make sure that he doesn’t do anything rash, like… try to throw Lucius overboard again.” Izzy wants to say that they should be more worried about keeping him from throwing Lucius overboard, but bites his tongue—

Izzy inhales shakily, “I just… I need to talk to him.”

“Do you want one of us to come with you?” It’s an offer that he would be foolish to refuse, especially when he’s feeling so… out of sorts. But also, he isn’t exactly of a mind to let anyone besides Ed witness the way that he knows he’ll self-destruct as soon as he’s alone with him. …And, to be perfectly honest, he doesn’t even want Ed to see that.

“I…” Still, it’s not as easy to reject the offer as he thought it would be. “No, that’s… I can do this by myself.”

Neither man seems convinced… but neither seem willing to push Izzy on the matter, either. This seems like one of those situations where it’s best to just… rip the band-aid clean off, without giving yourself a chance to think too much about the pain the action will cause. At least he’s going in with the advantage, this time. Izzy knows that Ed is pretty badly off… and Izzy isn’t defenseless (or, at least, he thinks he isn’t defenseless… until he remembers that Ed is currently in possession of his switchblade, and his rapier… well, he’s not exactly going to draw down on his captain, now is he?

…Not that he would hurt Ed anyway, but…)

Ivan says, “You know where to find us, should you have need of us.” And that’s the end of it. As he and Fang walk away, Izzy cannot help but wish that he’d asked them to stay—

Stede wakes with the world’s most brutal headache…

He sits up slowly, drawing his dressing gown closed around his chilled torso… This is the first time in a long time that he’s woken in bed by himself, and it throws him off just the tiniest bit (well, that and the way the room distorts, like he’s looking at it through a fish bowl, as soon as he swings his feet around underneath him). A quick glance out the window confirms that it’s about midday, which explains Izzy’s absence, but Ed… Ed usually likes to lounge about in bed for as long as possible. On the rare occasion that he’s out of bed before Stede, the ship is usually on fire or there’s been some other disaster that requires his immediate attention. And yet… aside from the awful throbbing in his head, everything seems oddly… peaceful. Stede tries not to think too much of it as he slowly eases himself off of the mattress and—

Oh my… that’s a lot of blood.

There’re bloody bandages in the small bin beside the bed (which Stede had repurposed into a trashcan the first time that Izzy had come stumbling into the cabin, clutching desperately at his aching stomach as he tried—and failed—to battle his roiling nausea). The blood is dark, the sort of brownish-black that accompanies infection… or blood that’s long dried. It takes him far longer than he cares to admit to realize that it’s his own blood—that he must’ve somehow injured his head, and that’s why the world feels like it’s spinning out of control every time he so much as tilts his head in the wrong direction.

When had he hit his head? The last thing he remembered, he was standing on deck in the middle of a storm, attempting to remember all of the things that Izzy had taught him over the last several months while also attempting not to be thrown overboard by the violent pitching of the boat. And then… He raises a hand, dragging his fingers ever so gently along the bandaged side of his head. This was all so weird. Surely, if he’d sustained some kind of head injury, Ed and Izzy would be right there by his side, waiting with bated breath for the moment that he regained consciousness, right?

But… they’re not here. No-one is. And, try as he might, it’s hard to not feel some kind of way about that.

Just as he feels himself starting to get really upset, the door to the captain’s cabin opens, and Oluwande makes his way inside, his arms overflowing with supplies. He startles a little at the sight of Stede up and about. “Captain—” His tone is vaguely disapproving, “You know that you’re not supposed to be out of bed.”

He… vaguely remembers Roach telling him that he wasn’t supposed to be up and about. That’d come at the tail end of a long conversation about… “Please tell me that I didn’t actually lecture Ed about the… the toe,” he whispers the last bit, as if saying it any louder will bring the wrath of the heavens down on his shoulders—

Oluwande’s features soften a bit at that, “I’m afraid so, man.” He says, “I wasn’t there to witness it, but apparently you and Ed had a whole fight about it on the deck—”

“I… oh gods…” Stede doesn’t even know what to say to that.

“If it makes you feel any better, you were defending Izzy’s honor.” Oluwande offers. And, surprisingly, that does make him feel better, just a little, “More than you did the first time, at least.”

Stede furrows his brow, “More than I did..?”

Oluwande heaves a sigh, “I’m assuming that, since you looked like someone killed a small, fluffy animal in front of you when I told you that you did, indeed, fight with Ed over the toe incident, you’re starting to get your memories back?” Stede nods, even though he wasn’t aware that he’d forgotten anything.

But then… isn’t that how forgetting works? You wouldn’t remember that you’d forgotten, right?

Oh, his head is really starting to hurt.

Stede flops down onto one of the couches… only to immediately regret his decision when the sudden movement causes the room to start swimming again. Oluwande sets the supplies down on the table in front of Stede as he fills him in on all of the gruesome little details that he’d love to say he’d forgotten… but hadn’t. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, he goes on to tell him about all of the things that he had forgotten, including… wait, he’d forgotten that he was in love with Izzy? No. No. That… Realizing that he and Izzy could be so much more than bitter enemies who spat vitriol at one another from across the deck had been one of the greatest moments of his life, second only to the moment that Izzy had first told him that he loved him. The idea that a little bump to the head could’ve robbed him of that…

“So… Izzy risked his life to save me after I went overboard, and I…” Stede can hardly believe it, “I thanked him by ridiculing him and calling him Iggy?” That… That doesn’t sound like him, but at the same time, it kind of does and he hates that it does. When he’d first returned to the Revenge, he hadn’t exactly been… kind to Izzy.

Oluwande nods, “You… haven’t exactly been kind to Izzy, no.” Stede flinches, memories of the last several days all rushing to the forefront, unbidden. There’s one in particular that twists his stomach into tight little knots—where Izzy, tears in his eyes, had screamed that ‘Iggy’ wasn’t his fucking name.

“I… I need to apologize to him.” Even as he says this, he knows that it’s not the best idea. Izzy isn’t terribly fond of apologies—either giving or receiving.

“You need to sit down and drink your tea.” Oluwande inclines his head toward the pot that he’d been making, “After you finish your tea, I’m going to take a look at your wound and see if we need to get Roach in here—” Stede flinches, recalling the feel of Roach’s blood-soaked fingers pressing into his skin as a needle dipped in and out of his flesh.

“Can you…” He huffs as Oluwande stuffs the teacup into his hand, “Can you tell me about him, then?” Oluwande looks a little confused, and so Stede elaborates, “I… He’s been avoiding me like the plague. I just… I want to know that he’s alright.”

The other man shrugs, “Define ‘alright.’”

Stede’s brows pinch with worry as he says, “Well, he hasn’t pitched himself overboard—”

“Certainly not for lack of trying.”

“What?!”

“Look, I’m not a gossipmonger,” no, no, of course he wasn’t—but that didn’t mean that Stede wasn’t about to milk him for all of the information he may know. “All I know is that he and Lucius had a talk, and all of a sudden, Lucius was rallying everyone to be nicer to him. You know… to listen to him and his orders, try to learn from him, that sort of thing.”

The crease between Stede’s brows deepens considerably, “You mean… what you should’ve been doing this whole time?”

Oluwande narrows his eyes, “You’ve been calling him ‘Iggy,’ I don’t think you have room to talk.”

So, Lucius and Izzy had had a talk… Why is that one of the most frightening takeaways from this entire conversation? He can’t imagine either of them honestly wanting to talk to the other for more than a few minutes at a time, nor can he imagine them having a serious conversation that doesn’t end in one of them throwing the other overboard. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t make him feel better to know that Oluwande doesn’t know what in the hell they’d talked about that’d caused the sudden shift in Lucius’ behavior—not when the fact that they’d talked at all already has Stede feeling so uneasy.

His uneasiness is only worsened when Oluwande lets slip that Lucius has been keeping Izzy from Ed. Now… Now he’s not sure whether he wants to see Izzy or Ed first. He didn’t need anymore information to know that things… things were bad. And he was a major part of the reason that everything was bad—

The head injury wasn’t his fault, of course it wasn’t. But he should’ve been able to bite his tongue, to appreciate that what he was saying was hurting Izzy and reign it in before... And he’d fought with Ed over the toe incident. Gods, he knows how twisted-up Ed had been—and still was—about that. And Izzy—

There were days when Izzy could barely keep meat down because… because…

“Oh… Oh, no… Don’t start crying now.” Oluwande looks horribly uncomfortable as he stares, wide-eyed, at the tears streaking down Stede’s face, “You’re going to give yourself a headache. Well, more of a headache than you already have, considering…” He gestures, broadly, to the wound on the side of Stede’s head.

“I-I just… I need to talk to them, t-to both of them.” He wheezes, unable to stop the deluge of tears that’re pouring out of his eyes, “B-But… After all of that, why would they… why would they want to talk to me?”

Oluwande winces, “I’m… sure that Ed will want to talk to you, at least. Once we find him…”

Once again, Stede snaps to attention, “Once you… what?!”

Izzy falls to his knees amidst a sea of loose cannonballs, the sound of bone colliding with wood tearing through the small room like a crack of thunder. It has Ed’s skin crawling, his own knee throbbing in sympathy. There’s no way that that hadn’t hurt like a bitch… The fact that Izzy is content to continue kneeling, unflinching, unmoving, is immaterial.

It’s been ten days since he’s had a moment alone with Izzy. It feels like a lifetime.

Izzy is silent, offering no explanation for how he’d managed to steal away from the crew… or why he’s kneeling outside of Ed’s decomposing blanket fort, his entire body trembling like a wet leaf in the wind. Ed doesn’t know what to say… He knows that, from the brief glance that Izzy had stolen at his face, Izzy knows that he’s been crying. Knowing Izzy, he won’t comment on it—or, if he does, it certainly won’t be with anything comforting. He’ll admit, he’s a little irritated at the thought of Izzy not being able to be gentle with him, even now. How long has it been since Izzy’d last checked in with him? It wasn’t his fault that the crew had kept them separated, but Izzy… Izzy likely wouldn’t see it like that. Under ordinary circumstances, dereliction of duty was a punishable offense, but… honestly, Ed was so glad to see him, he doesn’t care.

And then there’s that part of him that does care, that wants to break Izzy into tiny, itty-bitty little pieces—

Izzy continues to kneel, focusing intently on a cannonball that’s come to rest in-between his knees.

“Izzy…” He breathes. Gods, his voice sounds horrifically wrecked from all the crying he’s been doing over the last day or so. “Izzy, c’mon baby… kneeling like that is bad for your knees.” He reaches for Izzy… it takes Izzy a minute to realize what he’s doing, and then he flinches, hard. Ed’s hand stills, his heart leaping up into his throat—

Izzy immediately starts shaking, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” He starts to move forward, looking like he wants nothing more than to climb into the small sliver of space in the remains of Ed’s pillow fort, cuddle up into his chest, and forget the world. But he also wants—needs—something more.

“Izzy…” Ed’s anger and concern battle it out for a moment, before the concern ultimately wins out, “Izzy, you need to breathe… You’re going to hyperventilate.” He says. Izzy shakes his head, unable to bring his breathing under control. Ed’s not even sure he’s actually trying.

“N-No, I…” He wheezes, “I was remiss in my duties. I-I need you to p-punish me. P-Please, Black—Ed.” Izzy forces himself to meet Ed’s eyes and hold his gaze, “P-Please, punish me.”  

Chapter Text

“I…” Ed’s breath hitches, “I-I can’t. Iz, I… I don’t know that I can do that for you right now without seriously hurting you.”

“If I didn’t want you to hurt me, I wouldn’t have asked you to… to…” Izzy cannot seem to find the necessary words. Each time he thinks he has it, he makes the mistake of making eye contact with Ed… the second that blue meets brown, the fragments of sentences that he’s begun to form in his mind crumble to dust—

Ed shakes his head. Apparently, he’s chosen to interpret Izzy’s inability to string a coherent sentence together as a reluctance to actually take the punishment he’s due, “I’m sorry, Iz… but the answer’s ‘no.’”

Izzy bites his tongue hard enough to taste blood, “No.” He repeats, like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. It’s rare for him to come right out and ask for what he wants—what he needs… and here Ed is, turning him down.

“You can come into the fort and cuddle with me a while, though.” Ed says, like this is a suitable alternative. Izzy, meanwhile, feels like he asked for a cup of water and received a cup of vinegar instead. “I… I think I’ll feel better if I have the chance to hold you for a while. A-And I think you’ll feel better, too.”

“I’d feel better if you’d flog me.” Izzy says, not exactly intending for Ed to hear—but he does, because of course he does.

Ed narrows his eyes, “I already told you that I’m not going to punish you.” He says, “You’re not going to change my mind by beating a dead horse.” Izzy’s eye twitches, “Now, c’mere.” He brandishes a small, glass bottle of marmalade and waves it in front of Izzy’s face in offering. “I have some of that tangy orange marmalade that you pretend to hate.”  

Izzy stands, his joins crackling ominously from the sudden change in position, “…I’m sorry, captain. I shouldn’t have bothered you.” Ed frowns. What the hell had he done to make Izzy think that he’d been bothering him? “If there’s nothing else, then I should be returning to my duties.” He says. Ed’s face falls.

“I… I literally just told you to come cuddle with me.” What the fuck did he mean, ‘if there’s nothing else?’

Izzy is silent for a long while, “…Is that an order, captain?” And now he won’t even call him ‘Ed?’ What the fuck?

“Does it need to be?” He asks, “Because, if I’m gonna be honest, mate… I’d rather you come over here of your own free will.”

Izzy doesn’t move, doesn’t blink. Honestly, Ed’s not even certain that he’s breathing. It’d be concerning—err, more concerning—if he couldn’t literally see the gears turning inside of Izzy’s head as he thought things over. He’s asking a lot. He knows that he’s asking a lot. And the fact that Izzy’s even considering it (instead of immediately launching into a full-blown tantrum over it) is a testament to how very far he’s come. Just a few months ago, Izzy wouldn’t have even bothered to ask if it was an order, nor would he have actually taken the time to think it over. If he thought that it was what Ed wanted, he would’ve done it.

They’ve come a long way since then… but there’s still a ways to go. Like… even after all this time, Izzy still isn’t used to—or comfortable with—the idea of Ed being gentle with him. They used to be able to cuddle, back in the early days when Izzy was still a scrawny little thing with a head of wild, black hair… back when Izzy was still comfortable holding his hand. But then, something had changed—Ed wasn’t sure whether it was him, or Izzy, or both, but… somewhere along the line, they stopped being two perfectly suited puzzle pieces and became… a square peg trying to fit into a round hole.

Izzy was always pushing… taking him bodily right up to the brink, where the line between Ed and Blackbeard slowly but surely began to blur. It’d taken him far too long (read: it’d taken Stede’s intervention) for him to realize that, somewhere along the line, Izzy had become desperate for attention—any attention. Even if it meant being beaten within an inch of his life.

Despite Ed’s best efforts, he’s still unsure of how to return to that time when all Izzy wanted was to hold his hand.

And it’s… it’s hard for him, sometimes. Because Izzy accepts love and comfort and softness from Stede so easily—or, as easily as Izzy accepts anything. But he never wants that from Ed. On the rare occasion he can actually bring himself to ask Ed for something, all he ever seems to want is pain. And being a one-trick pony… it gets old after a while, you know?

There are times when he just… just wants to be soft with his lover, and not have Izzy think that he has an ulterior motive. It doesn’t seem like it should be a whole hell of a lot to ask for, and yet… And he knows, deep down, that he has no-one to blame but himself for the current state of their relationship. If he’d never started to push Izzy away in the first place, then Izzy very likely would not have… This is Blackbeard! Not some namby-pamby in a nightgown, pining for his boyfriend! He hears the sharp crack of bone like he still has those rusty shears in his hands, and suddenly, he feels like he’s going to be sick—

The thought of ever doing that—or anything remotely close to that—to Izzy again makes him physically ill.

The fact that he can’t promise he wouldn’t, right now, if he punished Izzy in the way his lover wants him to…

The kraken… it never truly disappears. It ebbs and flows like the tide, sometimes weak and easy to manage, and other times… He can feel it now, hovering centimeters from the surface, churning about inside of him like snakes slithering in oil. He’s angry. Angry at Lucius for keeping Izzy from him all this time. Angry at Izzy for taking ten fucking days to realize that he’d been derelict in his duties. Angry at Stede for taking such a tender subject and wielding it against him like a sword. Angry at himself for not being able to give Izzy what he needs. Angry at himself for crossing that invisible line in the sand with Izzy, for hurting him in a way that he hasn’t quite figured out how to heal from, for hurting him in a way that destroyed the fragile trust between them… Angry at himself for not being able to stop himself the night he maimed his lover. Angry at himself for… for…

He doesn’t want to be angry anymore. He doesn’t want to have to fear the kraken anymore. He just… wants to be.

Izzy inhales shakily, “I…” His hands clench and unclench at his sides, “I’ll sit with you.” Izzy says. The emphasis on sit makes it clear to Ed that he’s not comfortable with being touched in the way that Ed wants to touch him, but isn’t in the right space to come right out and say as much. “For a couple of minutes.”

“Okay.” Ed breathes. It’s not exactly what he’d been hoping for, but it’s what Izzy’s comfortable with, and that’s what matters.
He scoots up a little so that there’s room for Izzy to climb into the fort along with him, with enough distance between their bodies so that Izzy doesn’t have to touch him if he doesn’t want. “You can have the softest pillow—it’s in the corner there.”

Izzy spares the pillow in question a sidelong glance, “That’s… That’s not a pillow, Ed.” He says, “That’s one of Stede’s ridiculous banyans that you’ve bunched into a vaguely pillow-shaped ball.”

“That’s how you know it’s comfortable.” Ed says, without an ounce of shame.

Izzy rolls his eyes… but he takes a seat, his knees drawn in tight to his chest. “…How long have you been in here?”

Ed actually has to think about it, which probably isn’t a good sign. “Um… five days, maybe?” He says, “It’s nice in here… quiet. Nobody bothers me.” Izzy recalls his conversation with Fang and Ivan, and finds himself wondering if that’s really a good thing. “It’s given me a lot of time to… to think about things.”

Izzy’s body is tense as an overstretched rubber band, “I agreed to come in this godsforsaken fort and sit with you. I didn’t agree to talk about things.” He says, “Why can’t we just… I don’t know, sit here and stare at each other in silence?”

“Because I…” Ed licks his lips, “I think we need to talk. We never really talked about the toe incident, you know? I’ve apologized for it, numerous times, and you’ve… you’ve tried to convince me you deserved it, which is just horribly distressing… but we’ve never had an actual, proper conversation about it.”

“…If I come over and cuddle with you, will you cut it out with all this talk of… talking?” Izzy wrinkles his nose.

“Tempting, but no.” Ed says. He pinches a stray bit of thread between his thumb and forefinger and begins to twirl it lazily, “Iz, I… I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t—couldn’t—forgive me for what I did to you.” Izzy stares at him blankly, “But I… I need you to understand that I’m never going to hurt you like that again. Never.”

“Well, I’m certainly glad that I don’t have to worry about being maimed again.” Izzy says, his voice eerily flat.

Ed deflates a little. This conversation isn’t going at all like he’d envisioned (admittedly, he hadn’t given the whole thing much thought, honestly believing that the words would come to him once he started the conversation… apparently, he was very wrong). “Iz… please. I… I’m trying to make this better.”

“It’s like you said,” Izzy briefly meets his eyes, before focusing in on the fabric of an unfamiliar blanket, “There’s a reason that we’ve never talked about the toe incident before, Ed. It’s not something that you can just… make better with a bunch of pretty, but ultimately meaningless words.”

“They’re not… They’re not meaningless.” Ed counters, hurt bleeding into his tone.

Izzy shrugs, wholly unconvinced. “How am I supposed to know that?”

Ed’s said a lot of pretty things to him over the years which’ve ultimately proven to be untrue—like that time on the deck, when he’d assured Izzy that Stede-fucking-Bonnet was nothing to worry about, that he loved Izzy—and only Izzy—and once they’d killed Bonnet and dolled up his body, they’d retire together. Bonnet was a noble ponce—he had land, resources… for once in their collective lives, everything they could ever want would be within their grasp. And Izzy, like a fool, had believed every last word of it. Had even gone out of his way to make the last days of Stede’s life somewhat pleasant, so that he could go out feeling like he’d accomplished something, while doing something he loved. And then Ed had reneged on his end of the deal, and Izzy had lost the duel on a fucking technicality… and Ed had proven, once and for all, where his loyalties truly lie.

Izzy… hadn’t expected much from Ed, after that. Ed never mentioned the plan to retire together again… but he did tell him that he had asked Stede to run away to China with him. It’d been one of those ‘I’m glad I didn’t do it, but I have to tell you about it so that you know that there was a very real chance I was never coming back to you… and you should be grateful things didn’t unfold that way.’ Izzy hadn’t been surprised. Hell, there was a part of him of him that hadn’t even been hurt. He’d just been… resigned, like he knew from the get that, between him and Stede, it was never a competition.

Ed loves Stede. Blackbeard loves Izzy.

Izzy wonders what Ed would do if he told him that.

“Would it help if I cut my own toe off?” Ed asks, so totally sincere that all of the air vacates Izzy’s lungs in one sour whoosh. What the actual fuck? “I don’t know that I could… eat it.” He says, turning a little green from just the thought, “But I could do it. Cut it off, I mean. If you wanted me to.”

“What the fuck would make you think that I wanted you to… to…” Izzy is starting to think that maybe he was the one who’d gotten hit on the head, and everything that’d happened since was just one long, nasty hallucination.

“Because I don’t know of any other way to make this… better.” Ed says, like his maiming himself in Izzy’s name is going to make anything better. Even if he somehow manages not to either bleed to death or contract an infection, he’d be permanently impeding his balance, his mobility…

“Why would maiming yourself make anything better?!” Why does Izzy even have to ask that question? Gods, why is he the only one aboard this godsforsaken ship that has two brain cells to rub together?

From the look on Ed’s face, it’s clear that he hadn’t thought that far ahead… if he’d thought about any of this at all, before just blurting out that he’d… he’d… “I… I don’t… So I’d be able to understand what you’re going through?”

“So you’d be able to…” Izzy has to be hallucinating. That’s the only answer that makes a lick of sense, “Why not just ask?!”

Now, it’s Ed’s turn to look at him like he’d lost his damned mind. “When have you ever just… answered a question I asked?”

Izzy’s eyes widen, “That’s my fucking job, Ed.” He says, “If you want to know something, and I don’t know the answer, then it’s my job to find the answer for you.” A pause, “But I-I’m not a fucking mind-reader, Ed. I can’t just… look at you and know that you give a damn about how I’m feeling. It certainly didn’t matter when you cut off my toe and shoved it down my throat—”

Ed looks like he’s been struck across the face, “I… of course I care, Iz. I love you.”

Izzy wrinkles his nose, “Funny… because loving me certainly didn’t stop you from saying I was just some boy that you liked to fuck after I ruined my hand rescuing you from a fire you and Jack started with your own stupidity. Loving me didn’t stop you from falling in love with Stede-fucking-Bonnet, and choosing him over me, time and again, until you couldn’t—”

“Izzy, that’s not…” Ed trails off, the words catching in his throat.

“The only reason you came to check on me that morning was because you were worried I was going to kill myself.” Izzy says, as sure of this as he is that the sky is blue, “And even then… it took you over twelve hours to come after me.” He continues, “And I don’t blame you. I don’t. Between the two of us, I’d pick Stede, too—”

“I… I didn’t pick Stede.” Ed says, fear and… anger swelling inside of him, pressing at the fragile barrier that he’s erected to hold the kraken at bay. “If I’d had my way, Iz, I would’ve been right there with you from the very beginning—”

Izzy shakes his head, “You’ll have to forgive me if I have a hard time believing that.” Ed just looks at him, completely and utterly heartbroken, “Can we… talk about something else? Anything else? I… This is making me upset, and I know you want me to sit with you, and I don’t know that I’ll be able to keep doing that if we keep…”

“Yeah… Yeah, sure. Of course.” But he doesn’t say anything more, and Izzy doesn’t push to continue the conversation.

Ed’s memory is a little bit fucked on the best of days, but he remembers the day that Izzy’s hand had… burned. Over the years, Ed’s learned that there’re times when Izzy’s adrenaline is pumping so hard, he can’t actually feel pain. It’s downright terrifying in the moment, when he’s sure that Izzy is going to push himself too far—he’s not sixteen anymore, his body can’t just snap back like a rubber band after taking a bullet to the shoulder or a sword to the gut. But in that moment, thirty-odd years ago… even when the adrenaline had died away, it was clear that the pain in his hand couldn’t hold a candle to the pain in his heart. And Ed… Ed had tried to fix it. He’d slipped a ring on Izzy’s cravat—a proposal, a promise—and told him he loved him, because he did. He still does. And that’s why…

Izzy wouldn’t have asked for a punishment if he didn’t want Ed to hurt him.

Izzy wouldn’t have asked for a punishment if he didn’t want Ed to hurt him.

Izzy wouldn’t have asked for a punishment if he didn’t want Ed to hurt him.

The kraken is there—right there—slithering around just underneath the surface of his skin. It wants to tear Izzy open, make him bleed… but Izzy… Izzy wants to bleed. This… This isn’t like when he’d cut off Izzy’s toe. Ed is fairly confident that he can keep a lid on the kraken, can give Izzy what he needs without injuring him permanently. And then… maybe, once Izzy is settled, they can take a stab at this whole ‘talking it through’ thing again. Izzy has been cutting himself open and bleeding for him (both literally and figuratively) for decades… Ed… Ed could do the same for him.

“Go to your cabin,” he begins, bile rising in his throat, “and strip to the waist. Keep the splint on, and don’t disturb your bandages.” Izzy’s head snaps up, his eyes widening. “Wait for me, like the good boy I know you can be. I’ll be along shortly.”

“Yessir.” Ed cannot remember the last time Izzy moved so fast, and does his damndest to ignore the way it causes his stomach to lurch. Gods, one of these days, Izzy will let him be soft with him. That day is apparently not today.

Roach is moving far too slowly for Stede’s liking. While he appreciates that the ship’s doctor wants to make sure that he’s in tip-top shape, the more he hears about what’d transpired while he was… indisposed… the more he wants—needs—both Ed and Izzy in his arms right the fuck now. Roach confirms Oluwande’s story—he’d been struck by an improperly secured barrel and been thrown overboard during the storm, and Izzy had gotten hurt rescuing him. Nobody could say how severe Izzy’s wounds were—while Roach had tended to the wounds, Izzy had refused to unbutton his blouse to let Roach have a proper look at his injured wrist, despite the fact that the pressure on the broken bone was clearly painful. …There was also the fact that Lucius had stolen medical supplies from the galley, including aloe, which was used to—

“Treat burns,” Stede says, breathless. “…You’re sure that he stole the supplies for Izzy?”

“Like I said,” Oluwande chimes in, “he and Izzy have been real buddy-buddy as of late. And Lucius is healthy as a horse, which means…” He trails off, allowing Stede the chance to fill in the blanks. “When Izzy burned himself is anyone’s guess, but, all things considered, it must’ve been pretty bad for him to ask Lucius for help.”

Stede vaguely recalls the sickeningly sweet scent of burning flesh filling the captain’s cabin… his eyes drift to the candelabra resting in the middle of the table, the color slowly draining from his face, “I… think that I might have an idea.” He couldn’t be sure, seeing as he hadn’t been fully conscious at the time, but…

Thankfully, neither man pushes for more. Instead, Roach leans back, admiring his handiwork, “Alright, captain. I have a few questions for you, just to make sure that your memories are all sorted, and then—”

Stede swallows hard, barely daring to hope, “I can see them?”

“Yes.” Roach confirms, and Stede’s heart soars. “Now, first off… what is your first mate’s full name?”

Ah, he’s starting him off easy, then. “Hezekiah Hands.” Stede says, confident. “But… if you call him that, he’s liable to run you through on the side with all the important bits.” Oluwande snorts, “His mom used to call him Israel, and that’s what he prefers to be called, now. That, or Izzy.” He says, emphasizing the ‘z’s.

“Good.” Stede relaxes a little bit. Knowing all of that doesn’t make the fact that he’d kept calling Izzy ‘Iggy’ any better, but… it feels good to know that he knows. “Next question. How long have you, Ed, and Izzy been together?”

“What’s today’s date?” Stede asks. Oluwande supplies it, “Six months, three weeks, and four days.” Not that he’d been counting. “It’d be about seven months and two weeks, but… Izzy took a bit of convincing. As soon as he was able to stand without his innards becoming outards, he’d tried to run… and Ed had a bit of a relapse.”

“A bit?” Oluwande scoffs, “That has to be the understatement of the century.”

A little over half of the crew had been certain that Ed was going to kill Izzy. The remaining members of the crew had been certain that Izzy was going to kill Ed. It was the first—and only—time that they’d ever seen Izzy stand up to Ed, and it was fucking terrifying. Izzy was a tiny little thing (whose abdomen was held together with several dozen neat little rows of stitches), but holy fuck was he strong. And he fought dirty. He’d torn one of Ed’s earrings out with his teeth, yanked a chunk of hair clean out of Ed’s scalp… Ed had pressed fingers into Izzy’s still healing wound, mangling the stitches holding his skin together, headbutted him hard enough to leave a bruise the size of a bloody grapefruit on his forehead. It’d all come to a head when Izzy had managed to pin Ed to the deck and press a switchblade to the tender line of his throat—

Ed had once told him, without an ounce of shame, that Izzy was likely the only person in the world who could actually kill him. He doubted he ever would, because Izzy was so twisted up about him and their relationship that, if he ever did, he’d kill himself immediately after. Stede… had had many concerns. He’d also been terribly confused because, well… Izzy was a bit like a dripping wet chihuahua. Mostly bark, with a nasty little bite… but ultimately harmless. Except… he certainly hadn’t been harmless then, his chest heaving as blood frothed over his chapped lips, his blade pressed to Ed’s bare skin—

“Let me go, Ed…” He pants, and there’s so much blood—too much blood. He doesn’t seem to be aware of the way it’s pouring out of him, “I’m tired of having to share you… of not even being asked if I want to share you. I’m not a fucking toy for you to play with and throw aside when you get tired of dealing with me. I… I-I…”

Ed blinks up at him, his one eye almost swollen shut, his other a little misty, “Fuck, you’re beautiful.”

Izzy looks like he doesn’t know what to do with that. A moment later, he whimpers, his shoulders slumping a little… the knife stays pressed against Ed’s neck, but some of the tension bleeds out of his frame, “…I fucking hate you.”

“Love you too, Iz.” And those words… they did something to Izzy. Had tears pouring from the corners of his eyes, his breath stuttering inside of his chest as Ed flipped them over and laid him out beneath him on the deck, like he was handling something delicate—fragile—and not the ruins of his first mate.

And the crew—well, the crew stopped paying attention after that (except Lucius, who documented the whole bloody thing).

If—no, when—Izzy finds out, he’s liable to set the whole bloody thing ablaze.

Roach was many things… brave enough to pull a bloody, frenzied Izzy off of Ed’s cock was not one of them. The man still had the switchblade in his hand, and even though he was half out of his mind from a heady mixture of lust and pain, Roach had every confidence that he could—and would—still kill a man for trying to separate them. And if he didn’t, well… Ed had sunk his teeth into the meat of Izzy’s throat, right beside his swallow tattoo, until blood stained the pale length of his neck… Stede shifts a little, suddenly feeling a little hot under the collar—

His thoughts are interrupted by a somewhat panicked knock at the door. Before he has the chance to tell whoever it is to come in, the door swings open, revealing a frazzled-looking Lucius, “Captain, you’re awake.” Stede cannot decide whether or not he sounds relieved.

“I am,” Stede confirms, unable to completely keep the panic from bleeding into his tone. You don’t just come rushing into someone’s room like that to shoot the breeze, “What’s the matter, dear boy?”

Lucius swallows hard, “It’s… Ed and Izzy.” He says, “I-I haven’t seen Izzy since we talked earlier, but I think that he might’ve gone to talk to Ed about… things.” He doesn’t elaborate, and Stede doesn’t press, “B-But Black Pete, he said that he thought he heard Izzy screaming. And not the… the good kind of screaming, you know? Like, the…”

Stede, admittedly, had very little experience with Izzy screaming. That’s all the confirmation he needs to know that any situation in which Izzy is screaming can’t be good. “…Where did Black Pete think that he heard the screaming come from?”

“Izzy’s quarters,” Lucius says. “I… Jim and I went down to check things out, in case someone needed to, you know, stab Ed.” Just saying the words has Lucius a little green in the gills. All of the color drains out of Stede’s face, “The door is locked, but they’re definitely in there. Jim is still down there, to keep an eye on things, but—”

“You want back-up.” Roach says, nonchalant, like they’re discussing the weather and not—

Oluwande turns to him, “Well… you wanted to see them. At least this way, they’re both in one convenient location… And, if we hurry, hopefully both will still be in something close to one piece.” He says. Unsurprisingly, that doesn’t make Stede feel better.

Roach grabs a small vial of clear liquid from his medical kit, “A sedative.” He explains, “Better to be safe than sorry.”

Oluwande shoots him a look, “…That’s enough sedative to knock out a horse.”

“…And we’re talking about a man who likes to be stabbed for sport.” Roach says, like he’s talking to a small child. “We all know that Izzy could put Ed down if need be.” He continues, “We also know that Izzy hasn’t been in the best headspace since all of this.” He gestures to the injured side of Ed’s face, “Maybe Ed won’t be able to stop. Maybe Izzy won’t want him to—”

Stede frowns, “…You’re not suggesting…” He can’t even bring himself to say the words. His earlier conversation with Oluwande comes back, unbidden:

Stede’s brows pinch with worry as he says, “Well, he hasn’t pitched himself overboard—”

“Certainly not for lack of trying.”

He… wouldn’t try and push Ed to kill him, would he? No. No. Of course he wouldn’t. Izzy had been frightened enough by the thought of Ed being capable of taking shears to his body and cutting him to pieces, the idea of him actually killing him… And then he remembers how sure Ed had been that Izzy was the only person in the world who was capable of killing him, and that, if he ever did so, he’d kill himself almost immediately thereafter. Did that work the other way round, too? Was Ed the only one capable of killing Izzy… and would Izzy’s death be the straw that broke the camel’s back, destroying the fragile barrier holding the kraken at bay once and for all? Before he even realizes what he’s doing, Stede is on his feet, his robe tied tight around his middle. There’s no time to dwell on what-ifs when every second that passes could spell disaster for Ed and Izzy both.

He grabs his own dagger from the bedside table drawer, secreting it away inside of an invisible pocket in the lining of his banyan, “…What’re we waiting for?” He asks, when he turns to find that no-one else has moved, “Let’s go.”

Chapter Text

It looks like the entire crew of the Revenge has crowded into the small hallway outside of Izzy’s cabin.

Jim stands closest to the door, their hand curled tight around the hilt of their dagger, their ear pressed to the still-locked door. Fang and Ivan stand on the other side of the door, near the brass doorknob. Unlike Jim, neither Fang nor Ivan appear to be armed… but then, Stede had watched Ivan yank a man’s teeth clean out of his skull with his bare hands—they didn’t need weapons to be dangerous. The remaining crew is crowding the hallway behind Fang and Ivan, whispering conspiratorially amongst themselves. Their sound of their panicked chittering only serves to highlight the absolute silence coming from Izzy’s cabin—

Stede is reminded of when he’d first returned to the Revenge, after Barbados. Ed had locked himself in Izzy’s room then, too. Izzy had been in a bad way—in those rare moments he was conscious, he was delirious with fever, scarcely able to string a handful of semi-coherent words together. According to Jim, shortly after Ed had marooned the crew, Izzy’s wound had become infected. Ed had managed to find a doctor, but… well, no-one was sure what, exactly, the doctor had done, but Izzy’s infection had worsened considerably, and the doctor disappeared relatively soon thereafter (Frenchie and Jim had a standing bet as to whether or not Ed had actually killed him, and, if so, whether there was enough of him remaining to wash up on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean). After that, no-one had been allowed to see Izzy, and any and all suggestions to hire another doctor had been summarily ignored.

While sailing back to the Revenge, Stede had heard all sorts of stories about the horrors his men had endured while serving under the dread kraken. He’d thought that those stories would prepare him, somewhat, for what awaited him on the other side of Izzy’s door. And yet… nothing could’ve prepared him for what he saw when he finally forced the lock. Ed, thinner than he’d ever seen him (frightfully so), streaks of kohl marring his beardless face, was bent double over Izzy’s sickbed. Izzy wasn’t moving—was barely breathing. Stede wouldn’t be surprised if Ed had seen the writing on the wall, and had gone so far as to order Izzy not to die, because he knew that, even half-dead, Izzy would do everything in his power to obey a direct order from his captain. Neither man noticed his presence, not until Stede was almost close enough to lay a hand on Ed’s shoulder. And then…

Ed shifts, twisting his body around so that he’s practically laying on top of Izzy, like a distraught widow draping herself across her fallen husband’s casket. It takes Stede a moment to realize that Ed is trying to protect Izzy… from him. “You can’t have him,” he says, his voice crackling from disuse. “You’ll have to go through me, first.”

“I don’t…” The words catch in Stede’s throat, “I have no intention of taking Izzy from you, darling.” That’s… not necessarily true, but something tells him that they should ease into the idea of separating Ed and Izzy. He doesn’t know whether or not Ed is armed, but he wouldn’t be surprised if there were at least half a dozen different weapons within easy reach of Izzy’s bed—

“…Stede?” Ed turns just enough to catch Stede’s face in his periphery, “You… You came back.” He says, his voice laced with awe and disbelief. “H-How did you get past Fang and Ivan? Fang was supposed to be standing guard by the… the door.”

Stede’s not sure how much he should disclose… and decides that it’s best to err on the side of caution, “How long have the two of you been in here? You look so thin, Edward… and Izzy, he—”

Ed narrows his eyes, “Izzy is fine.” He says, “He’s fine.” He says again, almost like he’s trying to convince himself, “Tell him, Iz.”

Silence. For one horrible moment, Stede thinks that Izzy’s died. But then, Ed starts to shake Izzy, his voice growing in volume until he’s practically screaming. Izzy’s dark eyes flutter open and struggle to focus on Ed’s face, which is now so close to Izzy’s own they’re practically breathing the same air. “B-Blackbeard…” He croaks, his voice scarce above a whisper.

“See?” Ed asks. Stede sees, yes, but not what Ed wants him to see. He sees a broken, dying man, clinging desperately to life through sheer force of will. “Izzy’s fine.” Stede takes a cautious step forward, and Ed growls at him, “Stay back!” Stede freezes, “I don’t know why you’re here, why you’ve come back, but whatever the reason, you can do it from over there.”

“Ed…” There’s a flash of silver by the bed… so Ed is armed, then. “Ed, please… let us talk like two civilized individuals—”

“We have nothing to talk about.” Ed says, “You made your choice. When you didn’t show that day on the dock…” something like a whine bubbles up in Ed’s throat, “Izzy was there. Izzy’s always been there. A-And I forgot that for a while, but I won’t forget again. Iz and I… we don’t need you, we don’t need anyone. We have each other, and that’s—”

“Actually, I think we do have something to talk about—something that we need to talk about quite desperately.” Stede says, “I’m sorry that I didn’t come to you that day on the docks, my love, but—”

“Don’t call me that!”

Needless to say, the situation had devolved rather quickly from there. Unsurprisingly, Ed hadn’t forgiven Stede right then and there… in fact, it wasn’t until Fang and Ivan were able to convince Ed to let Roach see Izzy (and even then, Ed would only allow it if Roach promised to do everything in his power to save Izzy’s foot), and Izzy’s condition slowly but surely began to improve, that Ed would even consider leaving Izzy’s side… and even then, it’d taken another two weeks before he’d talk to Stede. And even then, to say that he’d talked to Stede was a bit of an overstatement. For one, Stede had done most of the talking, while Ed had sat there and twitched like a caged animal. If Ed’s hands hadn’t been visible at all times, Stede would’ve worried that he’d been about two seconds away from being shot at all times. But also… it was clear that the only thing Ed was worried about—the only thing he cared about—was Izzy.

But… he’s getting a bit off-track, isn’t he? He just… He’d hoped that he’d never have to see either of them like that ever again. Of course, the situation had been… different, then. Although Ed had been the one to cut off Izzy’s toe, no-one could have foreseen how horribly the wound would become infected. He’d stabbed Ed… Izzy had stabbed him… Lucius had amputated his own finger… There’d been plenty of open wounds on the Revenge, and only a small percentage of them had become infected. And even then, those infections couldn’t hold a candle to the absolute mess that’d been Izzy’s foot. It was nothing short of a miracle that Roach had been able to save it.

But Ed… he’d blamed himself, for everything from the actual amputation to hiring the chop-doctor that’d nearly cost Izzy his foot. And that guilt had festered, joining with the kraken to become a brand-new breed of monster that was hyper-fixated on Izzy in all the best and worst ways. Because Izzy was the one person in the world who would never leave him willingly—

Nothing short of death would take Izzy from Ed’s side… and Ed would kill Death itself for just a little more time with Izzy.

Stede sighs… continuing to postpone the inevitable isn’t going to make the scene that he walks in on any better.

“Jim,” he tries to keep his voice low… but considering the hallway, and the room adjacent, are silent as the tomb, any noise he makes is far too loud, “Sorry. Sorry.” He offers an apologetic smile to the crewmembers that’d jumped at the sudden noise, “I was wondering if you might—carefully—jimmy the lock for me? I’d like to enter without startling them, if I could—”

Jim frowns, “Se supone que debes estar descansado.” Stede… needs to brush up on his Spanish, but, going by their tone, he assumes that they’re not all that thrilled to see him. “Why’re you here?”

Lucius raises his hand, a little sheepish, “I… told him what was going on.” He says. At Jim’s look, he adds, “What? He would’ve found out eventually, especially if one or both of them are—” The rest of his sentence is cut off by a chorus of ‘shhs.’ Lucius puffs out his cheeks in indignation, but when he speaks again, he’s far quieter, “Look, he’s the only one of us who isn’t afraid of the kraken.”

Jim rolls their eyes, “Speak for yourself.” They say, “Just because he tossed your ass overboard doesn’t mean we all wet our breeches the second that we detect a subtle shift in his mood.”

Lucius’ face burns bright at the suggestion, “I… I don’t… Really, Jim?!”

“Idiota.” And, really, there’s no translation required, there.

Stede tries again, attempting to be a bit more commanding this time around, “Enough, you two.” Two sets of eyes flit toward him, before Jim returns their attention to the door, and Lucius begins anxiously picking at the fraying hem of his shirt, “Jim—the door, if you would.” For a moment, it looks like Jim is going to disobey… and then they slip their dagger between Izzy’s door and doorjamb and—

The door opens with a quiet pop, and continues to swing open near-noiselessly. The room is dark—unsettlingly so, considering the time of day—but Stede thinks that he’s able to make out the shadow of two figures laying in the middle of Izzy’s bed. As a bit of light from the hallway slowly starts to bleed into the room, Stede is able to confirm that the two figures he sees are Ed and Izzy, and both men appear to be… asleep. Both are very clearly breathing, and (while Stede admittedly cannot see all that well with the limited light coming from the hallway) neither appear to be injured. At least, not so severely as to warrant an actual scream from Izzy. Which begs the question… what the actual fuck? Black Pete had been known to… bend the truth on occasion, but Stede trusts that he wouldn’t with something so serious… especially not after the whole messy business with the kraken.

Stede wants to enter the room, but something holds him back. He feels a bit like that one piece of the puzzle that doesn’t quite fit anywhere, even though you know that it’s supposed to be part of the set. The crew is whispering amongst themselves, tossing around various theories about what might’ve happened. The prevailing theory is that they’d gotten a bit too rough with each other, but had managed to correct course before any serious damage was done. Which… you know, Stede might have an easier time believing if he hadn’t seen, first-hand, just how rough Ed and Izzy can get with each other when the mood strikes.

You don’t exactly forget your lover looking you dead in the eye and telling you the best sex they ever had resulted in them sustaining a fairly serious concussion. Nor do you forget watching your lovers go at it so ferociously, Roach had had the great joy of popping one of their hips back into the socket (and got punted in the groin for his efforts).

If they’d gotten rough with one another, they would be able to tell, even from all the way out in the hall. No, something else had happened, but Stede couldn’t quite put his finger on what. That is, of course, until he catches a glimpse of something… unusual. It looks like Ed is holding Izzy’s face, which is unusual in and of itself, but his thumb…

It looks like his thumb is resting inside of Izzy’s mouth.

It’s something they do on occasion, when Izzy needs something to ground him… only, it’s usually Ed’s cock in Izzy’s mouth instead of a finger. While Izzy doesn’t usually like to give blowjobs, he does enjoy the weight of a half-hard cock resting on his tongue. Occasionally, when Izzy is desperately in need of something to take him down, and Ed doesn’t feel that whatever he’d done warranted a proper punishment, he’ll have Izzy warm his cock. (Despite the fact that Izzy had Ed’s cock in his mouth, both Ed and Izzy maintained that the act wasn’t meant to be sexual. Stede wasn’t certain that he understood, but, in the end, he didn’t have to. It worked for Izzy, and that was all that mattered). Stede wonders if that’s what’s happening here… if it is, then he needs to find a way to shake the crew before they see something that they were never meant to see.

“Well,” Stede clears his throat, trying for subtle and failing horribly. “I do believe we’ve established that no-one is dead… or at risk of dying at any time in the foreseeable future.” He says, reaching blindly for the doorknob so that he can swing the door closed before they wake Ed, Izzy, or both. “I say we let them sleep and sort this whole unfortunate mess out once they wake.”

“Dime que no habla en serio.” Jim fixes him with a look, “I don’t care if the two of them hold hands as they run into the sunset singing kumbaya.” They say, “We still don’t have any idea why Izzy was screaming—”

“And we’ll find out,” Stede assures. “But we’re not going to get anywhere waking them like this… unless any of you are particularly keen on being stabbed.” Again, Stede couldn’t exactly tell if either man was armed, but he wouldn’t put it past Izzy to be able to run someone through with a blunt object. His body aches at the very thought.

Silence. Then, “Fine. We check back in on them in an hour.” Jim says, “And if Ed so much as breathes the wrong way, he won’t be waking at all.” Jim makes a sharp stabbing motion. Stede swallows hard, both appreciating that this is Jim’s attempt to meet him halfway and fearing for Ed’s life. “And we’ll be taking turns standing guard outside of Izzy’s cabin.”

Once again, Stede fails at subtlety, “I’ll take the first shift, then.”

Lucius shoots him a knowing look, “Admit it, you just want to climb into bed with them.”

As… tempting as that idea might be, once again, Stede isn’t exactly keen on the idea of being run through with a blunt object. “I assure you, my intentions are absolutely noble.” The crew stare at him blankly, clearly unimpressed. “I’m going to sit right here in the hall and wait—quietly, so as not to disrupt their much-needed rest.”

Oluwande chimes in with, “Jim and I will come to relieve you in an hour then, Captain.” Jim shrugs, not exactly on-board with the plan but lacking a better alternative. “After that, Fang and Ivan will take over. Then Frenchie and Wee John, and so on—”

“We’re not exactly being subtle if we’re pairing off, are we?” Lucius asks, “Or, well… everyone but the Captain, I suppose.”

Oluwande shrugs, “There’s safety in numbers.” He says, “If things aren’t all sunshine and roses, we don’t want to run the risk of him throwing another crewmember overboard.” He shoots a knowing look at Lucius, who looks suitably cowed. Nobody likes to be reminded of their time serving under the kraken, especially of those lives that’d very nearly been lost.

“It’s decided, then.” Stede claps his hands, focusing all of his energy into not making a ‘shooing’ motion to send the crew on their way. Izzy is a remarkably light sleeper—it’s any wonder that all of this commotion hasn’t already woken him. “Jim, Oluwande, I’ll be seeing the two of you in an hour.” He says. Jim looks like the want to run him through with their blade.

It takes a moment for the crew to clear the hallway—there are far too many bodies attempting to navigate a relatively small space, and the first thirty seconds or so are spent tripping over one another and going ‘you go first; no you go first.’ As soon as Stede is alone (or, as alone as he can be, considering that Ed and Izzy are laying just on the other side of Izzy’s door—a door which is now unlocked), he realizes that his plan had been rather short-sighted. While he’d told Jim (and everyone else that’d gathered in the hall) that he intended to sit there and wait for either Ed, Izzy, or both to wake-up, he actually intended to head back into Izzy’s cabin and check to make sure that his hunch was, in fact, correct. While the brief glance he’d had of Ed and Izzy had reassured him that everyone was alive, and likely to remain so, he needed something a bit more concrete in order to feel okay about the current state of things.

And, well… he liked to think that they both wanted and needed to see him, too. As far as they knew, there was still a major gap in his memories. It might help to know that Stede remembers that he’s in a relationship with both Izzy and Ed—a relationship that means the world to him, because he understands just how hard the three of them had fought to get there. Even if it hadn’t been his fault that he’d lost his memories, he’d still been unnecessarily cruel to Izzy—Izzy had risked his life for him, and that should have meant something. Apparently, all it meant was that Stede felt okay treating him like shit on the bottom of his shoe.

…Before they even try to talk this mess through, Stede’s going to have to do quite a bit of introspection. Because how he acted—how he treated Izzy—wasn’t okay, and he cannot say why he thought that it was okay in the moment. He cannot stop thinking about the look of absolute devastation on Izzy’s face when he’d run out of the room immediately after Stede had first awoken—

“That’s not my fucking name!”

…He’s going to have to do a bit of soul-searching before he can have a proper conversation with Izzy about… well, everything.

It works out well, because he’s pretty sure Izzy is going to need time to come to terms with the fact that they’re going to need to talk.

Taking a deep breath, he steels his nerves and reaches for the doorknob once again. There’s a soft click as the door opens… For a moment, the scene before him looks exactly the same as it did a moment ago. Ed and Izzy are curled around each other in Izzy’s bed, blissfully dead to the world. But then, Ed’s eyes blink open, slowly, leisurely, and fix on Stede where he hovers in the doorway—

“I was wondering how long it would take you to come back in.”

Stede bites his lip, “I… I wasn’t expecting you to be awake.” If only one of them were to wake from the commotion, Stede was sure that it would’ve been Izzy. After all, between the two of them, Izzy is the lighter sleeper, hands down.

“I wasn’t asleep.” Ed says, “Not really. I might’ve dozed a bit, but…” His eyes flit from Stede to Izzy, who is definitely still sleeping, “I’ve been keeping an eye on Iz.” He shifts his hand a little—the one that’s partially inside of Izzy’s mouth—humming softly to himself when he realizes that Izzy actually has a pretty solid hold on his thumb, “Believe it or not, this is the calmest he’s been since…”

Stede arches a brow, “Since…” He trails off, hoping that Ed will be kind enough to fill in the blank.

“He wanted me to punish him.” Ed says. It seems like a bit of a non-sequitur at first, but Stede catches on soon enough, “And I tried—I did.” He draws in a slow, shaky breath, tracing the fingers that are not currently inside of Izzy’s mouth along the curve of his jaw. “I went to strike him, and he flinched from me so hard he fell down and landed on his broken wrist.”

Stede’s eyes flit to Izzy’s splinted wrist, which is cradled carefully in-between his and Ed’s bodies, “W-Was that… the scream?”

“Yeah.” Ed chuckles humorlessly, “That was the scream.”

Unsurprisingly, watching Izzy flinch away from him, and injure himself in the process, had sent Ed into a pretty nasty spiral. As Ed tells it, his immediate instinct had been to take Izzy into his arms and hold him tight, to kiss everywhere he could reach until the pain began to dissipate. But Izzy hadn’t wanted to be touched—had been far too overwhelmed by his fear of Ed, and his anger at himself for being afraid of Ed, to handle any other stimuli. He’d started babbling, talking about incidents that Ed barely remembered—a couple of times, the kraken had had a hold of him… but more often, Ed had been too drunk, or too high, or just too… focused on himself, and his own boredom, to care that what he was doing might hurt Izzy. He’d talked about the time that Ed had stripped his back, and the resulting wounds had become septic. He’d talked about the loss of his toe, and how, high on laudanum, he’d tried to—

Ed had cut off rather abruptly, there. …And then he’d shifted a little, to try and completely hide Izzy’s injured arm from view.

Stede listened, just as Ed had listened to Izzy, attempting to make sense of the absolute avalanche of information coming his way. Once Izzy had stopped making any sense at all, Ed had apologized—and, horrifyingly enough, Izzy had tearfully accepted his apology before climbing into his lap, burying his face in his chest, and sobbing. Ed’s… not the best at comforting on the best days—and these last few weeks certainly hadn’t been the best they’d shared. The only way that Ed really knew how to settle Izzy—sans violence—was the whole cockwarming bit, but… well, it turned out that using fingers worked just as well in a pinch.

Ed’s rambling comes to an abrupt halt when he realizes, for perhaps the first time, that Stede is standing there.

Why the fuck is Stede standing there, when he’s supposed to be in bed—

“Why are you here?” Ed asks. The question comes out significantly harsher than he intends, but, honestly, he cannot think of a gentler way to ask it. “Much as I hate to be the buzzkill… with Iz out of commission, I guess it falls to me to take up the metaphorical torch.” He says, “Your wound is never going to heal if you don’t rest… and if you start prattling on about things you don’t actually remember—”

“I…” Stede begins, “I remember. I remember everything.” He says. Ed freezes, his eyes widening ever so slightly, “Ask me anything… anything at all that I should know about Izzy, and I’ll answer.”

He expects Ed to ask the same sort of questions that Roach had asked—what is Izzy’s full name, how long have the three of them been together, etc. He probably should’ve known that those were too vanilla for Ed’s tastes. Instead, he comes out with, “When did Izzy first tell you that he loved you?”

Stede freezes. He knows, of course he does, but… “Three weeks ago.” He says, “Pretty much right before…”

There’s no way that Ed doesn’t see the way that the question is breaking his heart… but that doesn’t stop him from continuing to press the matter, “How did it come about?”

“I noticed that the insert that he uses for his… his toe… was causing his skin to chafe. Scar tissue is incredibly sensitive, and I knew that the chafing was causing him a substantial amount of discomfort, and so I spent a bit of coin having a special cream blended for him.” Stede says, “I helped him apply it to the chaffed skin and… he became incredibly flustered and blurt it out.”

Ed snickers, relaxing just a bit, “And you turned red as a tomato.”

“I wasn’t expecting it!” Stede exclaims, “I… I had my suspicions that he had developed feelings for me, of course. The fact that he’d stopped actively trying to kill me at every turn was a fairly big giveaway.” He says, “That, and he’d started staying in the captain’s quarters with us overnight, had started letting me coax him into breaking the fast with us…”

Silence. Ed leans forward to press a soft kiss to Izzy’s forehead, “It’s going to take a while before he feels comfortable doing that again.” Ed says, “And I don’t… I don’t blame him, mate. You were pretty brutal. And Iz… Iz isn’t used to letting himself feel things. You gave him a real pretty toy, and then you took that toy away from him and shattered in front of him.”

“I love him.” Stede says, hating the way that Ed’s words cause his throat to constrict, the air vacating his lungs in one vicious whoosh.

“I know that.” Ed’s voice is soft, like he’s placating a small child in the middle of a tantrum, “I’m also not the one that needs to hear that. And, honestly? If you tell Iz that now, you’re liable to take a knife in-between the ribs.”

Stede knows this. Izzy is fragile—and yes, he knows that Izzy would sooner slit his throat than admit to being fragile, but it’s true. Just as Ed had said, Stede had given Izzy something beautiful and precious… and then he’d taken it away from him and broken it. It wasn’t the first time that Izzy had felt love before—Stede was well aware of the fact that Ed and Izzy had been together, in some capacity, from the very beginning, and while he might not categorize their relationship as ‘loving’ (and, if the bits and pieces that Ed had told him about their relationship were any indication, there were times when it most definitely hadn’t been), he also recognized that he’d been trapped in a loveless marriage for how many years… and those that lived in glass houses shouldn’t be throwing stones. The point was, while this was hardly the first time that Izzy had ever felt love before, it was the first time that he realized love could be… gentle.

(Stede wasn’t ashamed to admit that, once upon a time, he’d thought that the dysfunction in Ed and Izzy’s relationship was entirely Izzy’s fault. But then… well, he’d seen the scars that Izzy had told Ed about—the ones that Izzy had told Ed had resulted him becoming septic. He’d seen Ed whip Izzy before—it was one of a handful of punishments that Stede insisted he be present for, to make sure that Ed didn’t take things too far. And even with Stede’s supervision, it’d taken several tries for Ed to be able to flog Izzy without reducing him to a mangled mess of blood. And that’s when he realized… that Ed and Izzy had broken each other.

…On the bright side, that meant that they could put each other back together. They just… needed a little bit of guidance, is all).

Ed yelps, yanking his hand back—Izzy’s entire upper body comes with, a thin line of blood trickling down the side of his thumb.

“What the fuck?” Izzy glares at him fiercely, now wide awake, “Iz… much as I admire Black Pete’s whittling skills, I’d much prefer to keep my flesh and bone finger.” He says, his voice gradually rising in pitch as Izzy’s incisor sinks deeper and deeper into his flesh. And, okay… that’s really starting to look like it hurts.

“Izzy…” By the gods, Izzy is glaring at him, now. While he knows that he’s more than deserving of Izzy’s ire, that doesn’t make it any easier to bear. “I… I-I…” Gods, why is it so hard to talk to Izzy all of a sudden?

He opens his mouth and Ed removes his bloodied thumb, “Go fuck yourself, Bonnet.”

“Izzy,” Ed chastises, and oh, if looks could kill. All of the work that Ed had done to settle Izzy down is undone in an instant, “Baby… Baby, it’s okay. Stede has his memories back.” To no-one’s surprise, that doesn’t actually make things any better. In fact, that actually seems to upset Izzy more. “Izzy… Izzy, you need to calm down, baby—”

Izzy spits a mouthful of blood, “When has telling someone to calm down ever actually worked to calm them down?” He sneers. And, well… he has a point. Not that Stede is of a mind to tell him as much… Not while Izzy is in a bite-y mood. He’d seen Izzy sever a man’s jugular with those teeth—there was no doubt in his mind that he could take Ed’s finger clean off, if he wanted to.

“Okay. Okay, that’s fair.” Ed says, attempting to placate their angry—and hurt—first mate. “Look, all I’m trying to say is that things are going to be better now. We can pick up the broken pieces and start over—”

Izzy wrinkles his nose, “Yeah? And what if I don’t want to start over?” Ed freezes, his heart leaping up into his throat, “What if I just… do what I should have done when you first decided to track down the fucking Gentleman Pirate, and fuck off to some distant corner of the world where you and your little ponce, and his little merry band of idiots, will never find me—”

“Y-You can’t… You know you can’t leave me, Iz.” Ed counters, but the words are lacking their usual heat. There’s something off about the look he gives Izzy, too, but Stede can’t put his finger on what.

Izzy is already tumbling over him to climb off of the bed—“Watch me.”   

Chapter Text

“Izzy…” Ed hooks an arm around Izzy’s middle and yanks, knocking him off-balance and sending him tumbling backwards onto Ed’s chest. He lands messily, his face contorting into a picture of raw agony as his wrist catches just so—

“What the fuck, Ed?!” Ed is smearing blood all over Izzy’s midsection. His finger is bleeding profusely, as is his arm, now, where Izzy has scratched him hard enough to leave five dark red lines on his skin. “Let me go.” Stede is reminded of their fight, several months earlier, and realizes with a sinking in his gut that there’s no way that this will end without significantly more bloodshed.

“Ed…” Stede breathes, “Let him go, Ed.” Ed looks at him in much the same way he did when he’d started spouting off about the toe incident.

“Are you perhaps short of a marble, mate?” Ed asks, annoyed. “Izzy is saying he’s done—with you, me, us… everything.” Stede is well-aware of that, yes. “If you let him leave now, he’s not… he’s not coming back.”

Stede isn’t so sure about that. He’s taking a calculated risk, attempting to balance Izzy’s need for space with his need for reassurance. If Stede lets Ed continue to restrain Izzy while he attempts to apologize for… everything, then everything that he says to Izzy will fly right over Izzy’s head. Izzy won’t internalize any of it, because he’ll be too angry over the loss of bodily autonomy to really listen to what it is that Stede is saying. But also… the fact that Ed was the one to take that bodily autonomy away will make things infinitely more complicated. While a tear-filled conversation about everything that’s gone wrong between them over the last few decades was definitely a step in the right direction, it didn’t change the fact that Izzy was patently incapable of getting angry with Ed over… anything, really. Getting angry at Ed was practically sacrilege. Which meant that Stede would bear the brunt of the maelstrom that was Izzy’s emotions. And while he knows that he more than deserves it, he doesn’t think his heart can take it—not right now.

If Ed releases him now, then there’s a chance that Izzy will run. He doesn’t think that Izzy will flee the ship, but he supposes that anything’s possible. Stede thinks that it’s far more likely that he’ll kick the both of them out of his room and sit and—for lack of a better term—stew for a while. And yes, it’ll hurt to be kicked out of Izzy’s room… but if Izzy cannot even have some time to himself in the relative privacy of his own cabin, then nowhere is safe. And so he tells Ed, one more time, to release Izzy. The command—because that’s exactly what it is, a command—startles both Ed and Izzy long enough for Izzy to stop struggling… and for Ed to come dangerously close to dropping him right onto the ground.

Stede doesn’t repeat himself—mostly because he knows that it will start a fight if he does. And the last thing he needs is to get into a full-blown fight with Ed over Izzy, while Izzy is still stuck between them, immobile. There will be plenty of time for him and Ed to discuss—calmly—the decision that Stede is making here. Right now, his foremost concern is taking care of Izzy—

Ed splutters for a moment, trying—and failing—to form a complete sentence, before he just… releases Izzy, just like that.

And Izzy just sort of… stands there, his body listing to the side, just a bit, like he’s expecting Ed to grab him again—like he wants him to.

…It doesn’t take long for Izzy’s anger to resurface with a vengeance. The shock of being released had tempered it a bit, yes—but when it returns, it burns with the white-hot fury of one-thousand suns. “Get out.” He doesn’t yell, not at first. Somehow, that makes it worse. And then, “Get out!”

Stede’s not ashamed to admit that he runs. Ed rises off of the bed and follows him out the door, his face a blank mask. Izzy hardly waits for him to clear the doorframe before slamming it closed behind him. When it’s just the two of them standing in the hall, Stede shoots him a nervous glance and tries to offer, “It’ll be alright, darling. He just needs some time to—”

Ed narrows his eyes, “Oh, and I suppose that you’re a regular Izzy whisperer now, huh?” He snaps, “We never should’ve left him alone.”

Stede shakes his head, “He needs time, Ed—”

“He’s going to hurt himself, Stede.” Ed says, overenunciating each word like he’s talking to a small, recalcitrant child. “He doesn’t need time, o-or…” Turning his back to Stede, he runs his hands roughly through his hair, “What he needs is for you to sit your ass down and let him scream at you for a while. Right now, he probably still thinks that you’re being a colossal asshole.”

Stede bites his lip, “I wouldn’t say that I’ve been a colossal asshole.” Ed shoots him a look over his shoulder, and Stede deflates a little, “I’m not saying I did a good thing, mind. I just… take umbrage at your wording.”

Ed’s expression is carefully blank as he repeats, “You… take umbrage with my wording.”

And… okay, perhaps now is not the time to throw around fancy words that Ed may or may not know. Right now, he needs to figure out how to fix what he’d inadvertently broken. He has no idea how long he was in Izzy’s room, but he knows that Jim and Oluwande will be coming around soon. Maybe it would be better if he asked Jim and Oluwande to switch with Fang and Ivan? If what Ed said is true (and he has no reason to believe that it isn’t), then maybe it would be better if they didn’t send Jim in, metaphorical guns blazing. Izzy trusts Fang and Ivan—far more than he trusts Stede (or Ed, now—he flinches a little, realizing that, while he’d entered with the absolute best of intentions, he might’ve (pardon his language) fucked things up royally). He’s… unsure whether or not they know that he’s actively hurting himself (Stede himself hadn’t known, and doesn’t that hurt like a blunt instrument piercing his gut?), but he knows that they’ll be able to help, regardless.

Ed stares at him, like he’s waiting for him to say something, anything, that will magically make all of this better. But when it becomes apparent that Stede isn’t about to pull some grand plan out of thin air, he just kind of… deflates. “I… I need a minute, mate.” Ed says. From his tone, it’s clear that he needs far more than a minute, but is doing everything in his power to reign himself in, “Why don’t you just… go make some tea or something?”

There are a great many things that Stede wants to say in that moment. That he knows tea and fancy foods aren’t a magical cure all. That he knows he fucked up, but making him feel like even more of an ass isn’t going to make any of this better. Instead, he says, “Right… You, uh… You go do that, then.” And watches, pained, as Ed wanders away.

Surprisingly enough, it’s Izzy that seeks Stede out (after hiding from him for three days (although, if you were to ask Izzy, he would swear on pain of death that he hadn’t been hiding—he had absolutely no reason to hide from Stede, after all; it wasn’t like he was the one in the wrong here), of course). He lets himself into the captain’s cabin with a familiarity that makes Stede’s chest ache, wanders over to the table, still set for breakfast, and snags one of the deliciously greasy omelet-bites that Roach had prepared for him that morning and pops it into his mouth. He looks like he’s psyching himself up to say something, and so Stede bites his tongue, holding back all of the pretty words he’d wanted to say since the moment Izzy appeared in the doorway. It’s never been easy for Izzy to talk about his feelings (and he’s called out Stede for pushing him to do so on more than one occasion, highlighting the fact that Stede himself can’t be bothered to practice what he preaches half the time), after all—

And right now, Stede has a sinking feeling that any words of encouragement he might provide would only make the situation worse.

It doesn’t take long for Izzy to decide what it is that he wants to say, but the single question he poses leaves Stede more confused than ever.

“Why?” He asks. Stede thinks he understands what it is that Izzy is asking, but something tells him that answering Izzy’s cryptic question incorrectly will just make things infinitely worse. And just because he knows what it is that’s being asked of him doesn’t mean he knows how to answer. Why had things transpired the way that they had? Why had he thought it was okay to be so needlessly cruel to Izzy? Why? Why? Why?

“Izzy…” There’re dozens of ways he could possibly proceed—so many that the words get caught in his throat, and the only word he seems to be able to say is Izzy’s name. Unsurprisingly, that’s not anywhere near enough for Izzy.

Izzy twitches, “I always knew that I was the expendable one in the relationship.” Stede’s eyes widen, “That you were only with me because… b-because…” Izzy shakes his head, “And I knew that you could be a cruel bastard. All you rich twats are. And yet, even knowing all of that, I let myself believe it when you told me that you loved me. I let myself believe all of your pretty little lies—”

Stede flinches, “It wasn’t—isn’t—a lie, Izzy. I do love you.” He says, the words tumbling out of his mouth so quickly that they all crash together into one long incomprehensible mess. Izzy just stares at him, his face painfully blank.

“Then why was it so easy for you to treat me like shit beneath your ponce-y fucking shoe?!”

Why? Why? Why? Stede wishes that he had a satisfactory answer for him, but, really, there’s no way to justify how he treated Izzy. Even if he didn’t remember that they were together, he’d been told, time and again, of how Izzy had gotten hurt saving his life. Izzy had risked his life for Stede’s, and had been rewarded with cruelty upon cruelty. But he knows he needs to say something, and so he offers, “Because… Because you’re you.”

Izzy recoils sharply, “What?”

Because if there’s one thing Izzy knows, it’s how to be a sailor. And once upon a time, before it’d really occurred to him just how much Izzy didn’t like him, Stede had marveled at all the things he could learn from him. Stede had done his fair share of studying before officially making the decision to take to the sea—and he knew what to do to keep the ship afloat, technically. But, as it turned out, theoretical knowledge was very different than practical knowledge. There was nothing that could replace having spent an entire lifetime at sea. No matter how hard he worked, no matter how many lessons he asked for from Ed (or Jim and Oluwande, the only two members of his crew who seemed to consistently know which end to hold the sword by), there was still more to learn. And while Stede liked to consider himself to be a life-long student, it was also more than a little disheartening to know that, no matter how hard he tried, he would always fall just short of the mark—

Wasn’t the captain supposed to be the most knowledgeable? The most capable? Ed had started properly training him with a sword shortly after the whole debacle with Izzy’s foot was settled… however many months later, he could still hardly hope to fight his way out of a wet paper bag. He was utterly useless in a battle unless the enemy happened to trip over their own two feet and impale themselves on their own weapon—

Which happens more than he cares to admit.

See, Izzy is by no means perfect. It’s impossible for any one person to know everything, and Stede knows for a fact that Izzy’s learned a great deal during his time aboard the Revenge—from Buttons, specifically, but from other members of the crew as well. That doesn’t change the fact that there’s so much he could teach Stede and his crew, if only they were willing to listen. And he gets the whole ‘Izzy is always about three seconds away from blowing a gasket because no-one is listening to him’ thing… but also, Stede had been willing to listen—one-hundred percent. But Izzy had kept biting his head off for not knowing things, and it’d taken him a long, long while to realize that it wasn’t because Izzy didn’t want to teach him… or didn’t want him to get better at his job (because, let’s face it, a knowledgeable captain made everyone safer overall). Izzy kept biting his head off because he didn’t understand how his captain (whom Stede would later find out was also his lover) could fall for someone so utterly incompetent.

Stede was jealous of Izzy’s skill, and the ease with which he did everything that Stede wanted to do and struggled with so severely. He was also angry that Izzy couldn’t be bothered to get to know who he really was behind the rich landowner façade. And anger and jealousy were always an explosive combination. That’s not to say that the way he treated Izzy was in any way right or fair. He’s not here to make excuses. The way he acted was wrong—period, the end—and he only wishes that he had a bit more time before Izzy confronted him about it to come up with a better apology for his actions. Or… any kind of apology, really, since this has been less of an apology and more of a messy word vomit.

From the way Izzy is just kind of… staring at him, he supposes that some of what he’s saying is resonating with the other man. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking, and what’s really happening is that everything he’s saying is flying right over Izzy’s head because, while anger and jealousy is a volatile mixture, anger and heartbreak is even more so.

And then Izzy chokes back a sob, and Stede thinks that he might’ve lost the plot somewhere along the line.

Did he say something wrong? Did he somehow break Izzy? Dear Lord, he thinks that he might’ve accidentally broken Izzy.

“You’re an idiot.” Izzy says, his voice wet as tears begin pouring from his eyes. He reaches up to scrub at his cheeks, only to realize at the last moment that he was about to do so with his injured arm. “I-I would’ve… I was used to Ed stepping out on me. I would’ve gotten over it eventually.” He says… only to realize belatedly that there was no way for Stede to know that.

Stede’s heart sinks, “You shouldn’t have had to have gotten used to that… You deserve so much better than you got, Israel, dear.”

“Yeah, well… that’s easy to say when you’ve only had to deal with me for—what, two years now? I’ve been with Ed for most of our lives, now. That sort of closeness… it gets grating after a while. Honestly, I’m surprised he didn’t get tired of me sooner.”

Stede has the sudden, overwhelming urge to hug his lover. The only thing keeping him from doing just that is the knowledge that it’s extremely unlikely that his touch would be welcome right now. “Oh, darling… The fact that you cannot see how important you are, how deserving of love you are, breaks my heart. You deserve the world—”

“Says the man who spent the last however many days treating me like shit because he was apparently thought I was an angry little bitch that was too jealous that you were fucking my lover to help you learn how to not get us all killed.”

“I never claimed that it made sense!” Stede says, a little too anxious to defend himself.

“It would be great if it made any sort of sense at all.” Izzy counters.

“Look, I…” Stede begins, only to realize a moment later that that might come across as a little aggressive—and the last thing he wants is to accidentally provoke Izzy into a fight. “I just wanted to say that I’m sorry, is all. How much time I lost… that was out of my control. But how I treated you after I realized that something was amiss… that was all on me. And I can’t take it back, but…”

Izzy draws in a slow, shaky breath, “Shut up, Bonnet.”

“I…” Stede looks stricken, “I will not shut up, Izzy—I’m trying to make things right between us, and I can’t very well do that if I shut up.”

“Stede,” it takes a moment for Stede to register that Izzy had, in fact, called him by his first name—but once this registers, his brain promptly proceeds to short-circuit, because he’d honestly started to think that he’d never hear that sound again. “Shut up.” This time, when he tells him to shut up, Stede listens. He blinks big, tear-filled eyes at Izzy, and for a moment, the two of them simply exist in the silence.

It’s not like in one of Stede’s romance novels, where insisting that someone should shut up often precedes a desperate kiss and a violent outpouring of emotion. Instead, Izzy just kind of… stands there… clearly still in need of something to make him feel better about everything that’s happened but absolutely clueless as to what that something is. He strokes his fingers along one of the metal sides of his splint, which Stede cannot help but think looks… darker than the other, somehow. And then, he recalls the sickly-sweet scent of charred flesh filling the captain’s cabin, and begins to wonder… He can’t just come right out and ask, of course. Even if he thought that Izzy might be amenable to answering his questions and addressing his concerns, all talking about the various wounds on his arm will do is dredge up more uncomfortable feelings (which absolutely need to be addressed, but also, absolutely do not need to be addressed right this second).

Izzy, however, is just full of surprises today. He continues to stroke at his splint, his face pinched in misery as he says, “I didn’t… I heard what Ed said, the other day.” He bites his lip, waiting for Stede to say something, anything—but Stede remains silent. “I didn’t hurt myself.” He whispers, finally, like he both wants and doesn’t want Stede to hear what it is that he’s saying.

“Izzy…” If his heart hadn’t already been breaking—

“I didn’t want to tell you.” Izzy continues, “Not until I was ready. And honestly… I-I don’t know if I would’ve ever been ready. It’s not… It didn’t start with this. I-It started on a beach, when we were just dumb kids. And I… It was pain I could control, and it distracted me from things I didn’t want to feel. It’s not your fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. It’s just… something that happens sometimes, that I’m trying to stop—”

“Izzy… Izzy, my love, you don’t need to explain anything to me.” Although he appreciated the fact that Izzy was trying, he knew that this was embarrassing and stressful for him… there would be plenty of time for them to discuss all of this later. Izzy shouldn’t have to feel like he has to talk about it just because Ed mentioned it the other day. “I’m just glad that you’re alright.”

Izzy pulls a face, “Of course I’m alright. It’s not like I would’ve—” He cuts himself off abruptly. So abruptly, in fact, that there’re only a small handful of ways that he could’ve completed that sentence… and all of them make Stede’s stomach twist into tight little knots.

“Izzy…” Stede feels like his heart’s been ripped out and served to him on a silver platter.

Izzy flinches, “Don’t. Just… don’t.” It’s clear that he’s said far too much at this point, disclosing far more than he ever intended. He’s plunged headlong into the water with weights around his ankles, and only has a split second to decide whether he wants to let the weight drag him under or he wants to try and keep his head above the surface. “It didn’t happen, and that’s all that matters.”

“Oh, Izzy… that’s not all that matters. Your feelings matter, whatever they may be. And I want nothing more than for you to feel comfortable with sharing them with me—even if you think that it’s not something that I want to hear.” Stede says, “I know that… that I haven’t shown you that this is a safe place for you to share your feelings with me, but—”

“It’s not about feelings.” Izzy spits, like the very thought offends him. “…And don’t pretend like you care. You’d be the first, and only, person stupid enough to waste their time feeling bad for little Izzy, who just couldn’t cope—”

“Izzy, that’s not it at all—”

Izzy steps back, shaking his head. “It… This was a mistake. Just… forget I said anything, alright?”

Before Stede can respond, Izzy ducks out of the room, closing the door behind him a little bit harder than necessary. Stede wants to chase after him… but something tells him that that would do more harm than good right about now. He doesn’t think that Izzy will hurt himself—or anyone else, for that matter (he’s still not sure what exactly went down between Lucius and Izzy, but he knows that Lucius is now giving the first mate a wide berth). Odds are, he just needs some time to process everything that’d just happened and decide how he wants to move forward. And until he figures out just how to do that, he needs some time to himself. In the meantime, Stede needs to do… something. It’s amazing how little there is to do when everyone is avoiding you, but… maybe he can talk to Buttons, get himself back up to speed on everything that happened while he was out of commission. And, you know… maybe learn a thing or two about tying a proper knot while he’s at it.

Izzy wasn’t hiding from Ed. No, what he was doing was much, much more severe. It was like he was somehow capable of materializing out of existence each time that Ed came within spitting distance. So imagine Stede’s surprise when, the next time he finds Izzy, he and Ed are together. Ed is crying, his lower lip warbling as Izzy… oh no. There’s blood—an unsettling amount of blood—on Izzy’s hands, Ed’s arm, and both of their clothes. Stede seems to have missed the first part of their conversation, because Ed is blubbering incoherently as Izzy pointedly avoids his gaze, dipping a needle in and out of Ed’s heavily inked skin. He gets the impression that this is not the first time that Ed’s hurt himself, but it is the first time that Izzy’s discovered that he’s hurt himself… Stede isn’t sure how he manages to keep his hands so steady, when Stede can feel himself start to shake just from the sight of the blood and the knowledge that Ed had hurt himself.

But then… of the three of them, Izzy has always been the most level-headed—which is really saying something, considering Izzy is usually the one screaming himself hoarse over something or other. Stede can’t make out most of what Ed is saying, but the little bit he does understand allows him to begin formulating an image in his mind. Ed had been fine, for the most part, for the first couple of days following the incident in Izzy’s cabin… but as time went on, and both Izzy and Stede continued avoiding him, and the crew formulated their own opinions about what’d transpired to lead both Izzy and Stede to avoid him… he’d started cutting. It started with cutting the pads of his fingers, but then—

He'd cut his arm. He’d avoided the wrist, but had still cut just a bit too deep… and now, Izzy was stitching him back together. And Stede’s heart is breaking. He hates that it never occurred to him to check in with Ed. Ed had seemed… not good, but… okay, but really… he was falling apart at the seams, trying and failing to hold himself together while everything else fell to shit around him.

Stede feels like he’s failed both of his lovers. And he knows… he knows that this is not his fault, not really, but it still feels like it is.

Like maybe, if he’d been… better, somehow… none of this would’ve happened.

And… he knows, logically, that that’s not the case. Izzy had told him, albeit in an incredibly roundabout way, that he’d been battling self-harm and suicidal tendencies since he was a teenager. Whatever it was that he’d done to his wrist (on top of already having broken it in the fall) wasn’t a new development. And it wasn’t Stede’s fault. He could rake himself over the coals however many ways he liked—at the end of the day, Izzy was the one that’d made the decision to take a blade to his skin, or to burn himself. And Ed… Ed may not have the same history of self-harm as Izzy, but the principle of the matter was still the same. Stede hadn’t forced either of them to hurt themselves. But he could be there for each of them in their time of need, to help them move forward. Love wasn’t a magical cure-all. In fact, at least in Izzy’s case, Stede had a feeling that love was a major part of the reason that Izzy hurt himself in the first place.

“Oh, my loves…” Stede doesn’t know if he’s welcome in this space with them, and so he lingers by the door—ready to leave if that’s what Ed and Izzy desire. But Ed just stares at him, tears clinging to his dark, dark lashes, and whines like a puppy that’s been left out in the middle of a storm.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He says, over and over. And Stede hasn’t the slightest as to what he’s apologizing for—but he knows that Ed doesn’t need to be apologizing for anything right now. “I fucked up. I fucked everything up. If I hadn’t been such a fucking twat to Izzy, then he never would’ve—” His sentence breaks off in a heartbreaking whine as Izzy presses down hard enough on Ed’s fresh stitches to cause him to start bleeding anew.

“You don’t have anything to apologize for.” Izzy says, his voice eerily flat. But Ed just shakes his head, certain that Izzy is the one in the wrong here.

“But I do. I do.” Ed insists. “That day on the beach. Jack, he said that… that you were my boyfriend, or my lover, or something. And I told him… I told him that you were just a convenient fuck.” He says. Izzy tries hard to keep his face schooled into an expressionless mask, but he falls a bit short of the mark. “That’s when it started, right? The cutting? Because I couldn’t keep control of my own bloody mouth.”

Izzy opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. After a while, he lowers his gaze and whispers, “I’m surprised you even remember that. It’s not like you remember most of the bullshit that comes out of your mouth when you and Jack are fucking around.”

Ed flinches, but doesn’t deny it. Instead, he says, “Of course I remember. I knew, the second it left my mouth, that I’d fucked up. But I couldn’t take it back.” And then, “Isn’t Stede always preaching about the… the paper? That once you crumple it, you can smooth it back out, but it’s never the same again? That… Our relationship is like that piece of paper, Iz. I knew I fucked it up right then, but… I didn’t know how to fix it, or if…”

“If…” Izzy presses, loosening his grip on Ed’s arm just enough to allow Ed to think without experiencing mind-numbing levels of pain.

“Back in the cabin…” He continues, miserably, “You said that you didn’t want to try and fix things anymore, and I… I started wondering if you’d ever actually wanted to try and fix things, and if all of this hasn’t just been me failing miserably at trying to compensate for that day on the beach when I broke your heart and—” The rest of his sentence is swallowed in a startled moan as Izzy swoops in to capture his lips in a desperate kiss.

Chapter Text

Izzy is the first to break the kiss.  He does so with full-understanding that he’s opening the door to a conversation both of them had been avoiding for some time. He cannot say whether or not he’s ready to have that conversation now, but... he has to try. While neither of them have ever been particularly good at expressing their emotions in a constructive manner, if they want to salvage the remnants of their relationship, he has to try.

This is easier said than done, however. The moment he looks into Ed’s tear-filled eyes, he’s reminded of the way Ed seems to snap his backbone in two without actually trying. On those rare occasions where he’s actually stood up to Ed... Ed has always managed to find a way to make him crumble to pieces, whether it be through the use of sugary words... or physical force. Talking about their past, and everything that’d transpired to bring them to this point, involved standing up to Ed and calling him out on his bullshit. It involved acknowledging all of the ways in which Ed had hurt him... and all of the ways that he’d hurt Ed, in return. It involved admitting that he hadn’t fully forgiven Ed for all of that hurt, despite saying he had.

For one brief, fleeting moment, he finds himself horribly, explosively angry. None of this would’ve happened if Stede hadn’t gotten hurt. Hell, he could even take it one step further and say that none of this would’ve happened if Ed hadn’t developed such an obsession with the Gentleman Pirate. If their paths had never crossed, then... then... He shakes his head, releasing a long sigh. His eyes return to the wound on Ed’s arm. Much as it pains him to admit it, Ed self-harming wasn’t actually a surprise. He’s reminded of one of their first nights aboard the Revenge, when Ed had talked about dying like... like it was some kind of game he hadn’t had the chance to play yet. Ed self-harming was not so much a matter of if, but when.

When he thinks about it like that, any anger he might’ve felt toward Stede comes rushing out of him like...

Ed’s blood continues to ooze through the now-ruined stitches Izzy had placed in his arm, and Izzy thinks that he’s going to be sick.

He feels... unbalanced. Like he’s back in the not-mutiny, about to be thrown overboard. Only... Ed hadn’t come back, hadn’t stopped them from following through with their plans, and... he’s struggling against invisible binds, desperately trying to make his way back to the surface before he drowns. ...It’s not working. The more he struggles, the faster he sinks, and all he can think is ‘I should’ve been able to prevent this—I could’ve prevented this, if I’d seen how badly and how long Ed was suffering and...’ It’s all he can do, to stare at Ed, his brain punishing him brutally for all of his perceived failures. He feels himself spiraling... and cannot do a damned thing to prevent it, or even slow it down.

And then... Stede lays a hand on his shoulder, gentle and reassuring. It feels heavy, although, in truth, it’s anything but. But Izzy needs the weight, needs something that will keep him anchored to the earth—because right now, it feels like a stiff wind would break him into dozens and dozens of tiny little pieces, and he cannot allow that to happen. He and Ed cannot break down at the same time. They can’t.

If Izzy has to patch his broken pieces back together with wax and ribbon, he’ll do it—whatever it takes.

Ed comes first. Ed comes first. Ed comes first.

“Enough of that, now.” Stede says. He’s raising his voice, but it doesn’t feel like he’s yelling. “The both of you are hurting... and you both deserve a chance to feel hurt by the situation, by each other... and by me.” He continues, “Nothing good ever comes from bottling up negative emotions and pretending they don’t exist. You’re hurt... so, in this moment... be hurt.”

Izzy scowls, the corners of his mouth wobbling as he fights against the tears that’re burning in the corners of his eyes. “That’s easy for you to say, when you’re not the one who had to stitch his bloody arm back together.”

“I-I’m sorry.” Ed says, misunderstanding Izzy’s meaning. “Y-You shouldn’t have had to... I... I-I never meant for you to see.”

“And how do you think I would’ve felt if I hadn’t seen, huh?” Izzy presses, Ed’s attempts to apologize only serving to stoke the fires of his anger. “What if you had cut just a little bit higher? What if I hadn’t found you before you... you...” He tears his eyes away just as the first tears start falling, “I’m supposed to be keeping you alive. If I’m the reason you die, then clearly, I’ve failed you—”

Ed shakes his head, his long, graying hair glued to his face by sopping wet tear tracts, “You could never fail me, Iz.”

“Liar.” Izzy’s response is immediate and biting. “Don’t... Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying.” Ed bites back, his voice gradually rising in both pitch and volume. “You’ve never failed me, not once. I might not always agree with the shit you do, but... you do it because you’re trying to protect me.” A pause, “And... I might not’ve always wanted to see that—to hear that—but that doesn’t make it any less true. You have always been, and will always be, a f-first-class first mate, and I’m s-sorry I ever made you doubt that.”

“D-Don’t...” Izzy’s plea is broken by a gut-wrenching sob. “Just... don’t.” Ed falls silent, his own tears continuing to fall as Izzy works through exactly what it is that he wants to say. “Y-You can’t just say shit like that, like... like...” He’s shaking now, the tremors so violent it’s actually frightening to watch. “You enjoyed hurting me. It helped you, I know it did. So you can’t... you can’t just say shit like that.”

“I can.” Ed presses. “I should’ve said it a long time ago—back when this started, and—”

“I’ve been a fucking failure since day one—”

“Izzy,” Stede intervenes, unable to handle Ed and Izzy’s self-flagellating back-and-forth a moment longer. He’s pleased that they’re finally talking—of course he is—but it’s clear that their conversation could benefit from a bit of... gentle guidance. If all they’re going to do is talk themselves in circles about how they’ve failed each other, nothing is ever going to be accomplished. “Take a breath, my love. In... and out. Yes, just like that.”

It takes a moment, but he’s able to walk Izzy back from the brink of hyperventilation. Once his breathing is steady, he cleans his face with a handkerchief and leads him a few paces away. The distance seems to help, because as soon as Ed’s bloody arm is no longer in his immediate line of sight, he slumps like a sack of flour, suddenly so very, very tired. Like this, it’s far easier for Stede to coax him into following orders, and he uses this fact to his advantage. He keeps his instructions simple: head to the galley and have two glasses of water; if Roach is around, ask him to prepare you a sandwich, otherwise, have an orange. If you have an orange, peel the skin with your nails—no knives allowed.

Izzy grumbles a bit at that—he’s not a child, he can be trusted to handle a bloody knife—but doesn’t protest. This is mildly concerning—even when their relationship could still rightfully be called a relationship, Izzy was still Izzy. He didn’t just... roll over and show Stede his belly, like an extremely friendly dog. He challenged him, meeting each of his orders (no matter how mundane) with snark.

Now, he simply nods and quietly takes his leave... not even bothering to try and make a comeback.

Stede worries about sending him off on his own, but... something tells him that the situation will only continue to deteriorate the longer the two continue to try and air their individual grievances without any kind of guidance. Izzy probably shouldn’t be alone right now, true, but having him here, in this space, is definitely the greater of two evils. He’ll be back after he’s drunk his water and eaten his snack—after he’s had time to decompress—and then they can try this conversation again. Or, perhaps Stede will take Izzy aside, while Ed has a chance to decompress, and have a similar conversation to the one he’s preparing to have now. He supposes he’ll just have to play it by ear.

Ed won’t even look at him as he moves to take a seat in the space Izzy had once occupied. Stede tries not to let it bother him—this isn’t about him, not really. His accident had simply drudged up feelings which both men had been repressing for nigh-on twenty years... and it’s easier for them to direct their anger at him then it is for them to direct it at each other. Which... they shouldn’t be directing their anger at any living being, but... you know, he’s just happy that they’re expressing their emotions, period. They can work on expressing their emotions in a constructive manner as they work through this crisis together... and hopefully all come out on the other side stronger for it.

He spots the knife that Ed had used to cut himself and carefully moves it out of reach, just in case.

Silently, he asks permission to touch Ed... and, after a beat, he nods, shifting slightly to allow Stede easier access to his injured arm.

Stede... has never done stitches before. Roach had been the one to stitch him up each time he found himself in a situation requiring it. But he’d watched Roach do it often enough that he felt reasonably confident that he could do it. That confidence carries him through the removal of the old stitches and the cleaning of the wound, and then...

If Ed notices how he’s struggling, he doesn’t say a thing. Instead, he launches right back into the conversation he’d been having with Izzy, like he hadn’t even noticed that Izzy had left. “What can I do to make this better? Anything... I’ll do anything.” He says, “Would it be better if I left the ship? Or... Maybe I should give him his own ship? Distance... will help, right?”

“Talking will help.” Stede insists, “It may not feel like your conversation from earlier helped much of anything, but it did.” Ed is clearly skeptical. Stede is just thankful he’s still focused on Izzy—and not, say, the horrifically crooked stitches Stede is putting in his arm.

“He...” Ed swallows hard, “He wanted me to die, Stede.” He exhales shakily, “A-And sometimes, I think it would’ve b-been better if I had.” The confession is so soft, Stede struggles to hear it. “He’d be better off w-without me.”

Stede is silent for a long moment, before offering, “Don’t you think that that’s something Izzy should decide for himself?”

“He’ll never leave.” Ed shuts him down almost immediately, “He’ll kill himself first. And I... I don’t think I could live with myself knowing that I was the reason he died.” The knowledge that he’d been the reason Izzy had tried to kill himself way back when already cut deeper than any knife.

“I know that I don’t really have a leg to stand on here, but...” Stede finishes the stitches, and moves to wipe the excess blood off of the uninjured bits of Ed’s arm. “It seems that part of your problem is that you both have spent so long thinking you knew what the other was thinking—and being right, more often than not—that you stopped actually talking to one another.”

That ruffles Ed’s feathers, “Izzy and I talk plenty.”

“Really?” Stede counters, “Because, if I remember correctly, upon first boarding the Revenge, you and Izzy were hardly speaking to each other.”

“We spoke—” Ed begins, confident as ever. And then... his sentence ends abruptly, and he just kind of... wilts.

They hadn’t been talking. Izzy had yelled (screamed, really, but they weren’t here to argue semantics) at him about wasting time playing dress-up with Stede (Stede would later find out that this was due to the fact that Ed had sacrificed nearly his entire crew to rescue Stede in the first place—as time went on, and Izzy resolved himself to the fact that Stede (and his crew) were going to be part of their lives indefinitely, it became clear that Ed did irreverent shit all the time... and only rarely did it ever incite Izzy to the level of anger he’d displayed in the early days). Ed had ignored him... for the most part. That’s not talking. That’s just... sad.

What’d happened earlier... was eerily similar to what’d happened back then. They’d just... come at each other with a lot of extremely negative energy, and hadn’t actually managed to resolve anything. They’d just made the other feel infinitely worse about themselves. But... they’d tried, and that had to count for something, right? They’d tried, and they’d just have to keep trying, until things finally clicked.

Unfortunately, not everything clicked the first time ‘round—but that didn’t mean that they should give up.

“...I say this with full understanding that Izzy is not used to, and does not like, asking for what he wants.” Stede says, “But when he comes back, it might be helpful to set the tone by asking what it is that he wants... and how you can help him get that. Don’t make suggestions, or try to influence the way in which he answers. Just pose the question and let it be.”

Ed shakes his head, “Izzy... he needs guidance.”

“Izzy is a self-actualized individual who is capable of telling you when he wants—or needs—guidance.” Stede counters, “Perhaps it would help, in the future, if the two of you had a word—not unlike the safety word you use when you’re being rough with each other. Just... something to let you know that Izzy wants you to be fully in control...”

Ed flinches, “Fucking fuck... I’m still fucking this up, and he’s not even here.”

Now, it’s Stede’s turn to shake his head, “You’re not fucking anything up, darling.” He tries to keep his voice as gentle as possible, “It takes time to unlearn behaviors that’ve been ingrained in us over the course of a lifetime. You’re trying—”

Ed sniffles, “I meant what I said earlier. H-He... He was never s-supposed to see...”

Stede swallows hard, “It hurts me, to know that you were in so much pain that you felt your only option was to take a blade to your skin. And while I do not presume to speak for Izzy, I’m certain he feels the same.” He says, “But if it’s a question of seeing this, or walking in to find you dead... Edward, darling, there is no question. I love you. Izzy loves you. And the thought of living in a world without you... no. Just... no.”

“Why would you love me? Why would anyone love me after...” And there it is—a full-blown sob.

“Just because you’ve done some bad things, doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person, my love.” Stede says, “And it doesn’t mean that you’re not still deserving of love. It just means we have some obstacles to move past... together.”

Ed... doesn’t appear to be wholly convinced. But... even though he’s just voicing these concerns now, Stede knows that they’re just as deeply rooted as Izzy’s belief that ‘everything the captain says—about me or anything else—must be true.’ He’s having flashbacks to finding Ed curled up in the bathtub, trembling, with tears in his eyes, because the thought of killing Stede filled him with so much anxiety, he couldn’t bring himself to move. He’d been so sure that Stede would hate him... that he’d want nothing to do with him once he knew the truth... This problem predates him—predates Izzy. He’s not going to be able to convince him to change his mind with a couple of pretty, flowery words...

But that doesn’t mean he won’t keep trying to find something that does work, to help everyone finally begin to heal...

Izzy looks... better. Not great, but... as Stede had suspected, some time away had served him well.

Ed is sleeping, which allows Stede a chance to have a bit of a one-on-one with Izzy before trying to have Ed and Izzy talk again. Since separation had helped before, Stede decides to keep it up—he directs Izzy down into the captain’s cabin, sitting him down on one of the couches and placing an array of finger foods in front of him. Izzy makes a face—hadn’t Stede just sent him to the galley for a snack?—but Stede knows his lover well. His stomach is touchy, especially when he’s in a state of emotional turmoil. There’s no way that he’s been eating enough. So, if Stede just... puts the plate down in front of him, no pressure... odds are, he’ll start to nosh simply because it’s there, within easy reach.

After a second, he places a glass and a pitcher of water on the table as well... Another second passes, and he decides to fill the glass with water.

Moving around... it helps. The second he sits down, he’ll feel obligated to start talking. And talking without thinking is how they’d gotten here.

He’s beginning to realize that the whole ‘talking it through like a crew’ bit is easier said than done.

Izzy looks like he’s about due for a nap as well... Stede wonders how much sleep he’s gotten over the last couple of days, and concludes that the answer is ‘far too little,’ if the bags underneath his eyes are any indication. Perhaps, if he plays his cards right, he can convince Izzy to rest in their bed for a little while. Not for anything untoward—none of them are in any condition to fool around, and even if they were... Izzy isn’t in the right headspace mentally, and Stede would never take advantage of that. He just... worries that part of the reason Izzy hasn’t been sleeping well is because he’d grown accustomed to sharing a bed with his captains, and wants to try and remedy the situation if he can.

Each and every time he tries to speak, however, the words end up catching in his throat. Perhaps he should try and take his own advice—instead of trying to decide how to fix the problem without bothering to consult Izzy, who was the actual injured party, he could ask Izzy what he wants. He just... has to find a way to phrase the question without accidentally antagonizing Izzy... which, considering their current situation, is no small feat. As he debates how best to proceed, Izzy finally decides that the snacks Stede laid out before him aren’t poisonous and snatches one up, popping it into his mouth in one smooth motion. The snack leaves a grease stain on his fingers, which glows oddly in the candlelight.

Stede finds himself wanting to lick it away—but, again, not the time. In an effort to clear his mind, he prepares a pot of tea, placing it and two teacups down on the table—one in front of Izzy, the other in front of himself. It takes all of the willpower he didn’t know he had to not try and track down more... pretty soon, he’ll just be wasting food and drink, and nothing gets under Izzy’s skin like frivolously wasting resources.

Izzy is the first to break the silence. “How is he?” He asks, trying for nonchalance and missing by a mile.

“He’ll be okay.” Stede is unsure of how to describe Ed’s current state to Izzy... it’d been a bit like looking at a puzzle, where all of the pieces had been assembled incorrectly, yet it somehow still formed the picture it was meant to. It’s... odd, he knows, but... he can’t think of a better way to describe it.

Izzy catches on to the fact that Stede is trying to avoid his question almost immediately, “That’s not what I asked.”

“I know.” Stede concedes easily enough, “I also know that you saw the exact same thing that I did in that room. You want to hear the details so that you can self-flagellate about all the ways you ‘should’ have been able to prevent it from happening. Well... I’m here to tell you that what happened to Ed isn’t your fault, and the last thing he would want is for you to sit in here, blaming yourself for it.”

“...He cut himself because of me.” Izzy says.

“No.” Stede corrects, gently but firmly. “He cut himself. Period. The end.” Izzy looks like he wants to fight, but is too tired to work up the oomph to do so. “I fixed his stitches and bound up his arm... in a couple of weeks, he’ll be all healed.”

“There’ll be a scar.” Izzy says, his voice so quiet Stede has to strain to hear.

“We all have scars.” Stede says. “A scar is proof that you were strong enough to overcome—it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Izzy’s hand clenches and unclenches at his side, “I’m ashamed... of my scars.”

Those five little words cut Stede to the quick. He’d known that Izzy was ashamed, of course. The older man had practically said as much when he’d confessed that he wasn’t ready for Stede to know about his cutting—wasn’t sure if he’d ever be ready. But knowing doesn’t make the words any easier to hear, “Can I... Will you let me look at your wounds? Just to make sure they’re healing properly.”

Izzy flinches like he’s been struck, “What? So you can see first-hand how badly I butchered myself?”

“Israel...” Stede has to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep from meeting snark with snark, “It’s okay if you’re not comfortable with me tending to your wounds. I can call Roach in—” the moment he mentions Roach’s name, all of the color bleeds out of Izzy’s face, “...or not.” A beat passes, and Izzy relaxes a little, “...I just want to take care of you, however you’ll let me.”

For a long while, Izzy doesn’t answer, choosing instead to toy with the mechanism keeping his splint closed. Stede busies himself with preparing a cup of tea—focusing his attention somewhere other than Izzy, so that Izzy doesn’t feel pressured to do one thing or another. In the end, Izzy never actually answers him verbally. He just kind of... shoves his injured arm in Stede’s direction, coming dangerously close to knocking the teacup out of Stede’s hand while he’s at it. Worried that he’s going to burn him, he moves the cup out of the way before gingerly taking Izzy’s arm in hand. He does his best to keep his touch light, but even the slightest pressure has Izzy squirming, which is... concerning.

He removes the splint as carefully as possible... as soon as the protective instrument is gone, Izzy begins babbling, telling him all about how Lucius had insisted that he put aloe on the burns. Stede listens, making soft sounds every once in a while to demonstrate that he’s listening as he tries to remember whether or not they have any unscented soap. And... yes, yes, they do. He’d bought some right before the incident, because he’d wanted to surprise Izzy... Izzy was severely allergic to the lavender soap that Ed so adored (Izzy had broken out in hives, and cried for nearly an hour and a half because clearly, this was a sign he wasn’t meant to have good things), and so Stede had gotten him a couple of unscented bars—

They are wrapped neatly in a box that is, ironically enough, located underneath the table. He feels bad about opening it—especially when he’d wrapped it so beautifully (not that Izzy was likely to appreciate his wrapping job, but that was neither here nor there)—but it’ll help Izzy feel better, so that makes it more than worth it. So, he sets Izzy’s arm down long enough to grab the box from where he’d hidden it—

“This was supposed to be a present for you.” He says, “I bought it a while back, before...” He doesn’t need to say it for Izzy to understand, “It’s a goat milk, oat, and honey blend... gentle on your skin, so we don’t have any more unfortunate breakouts.”

Izzy blinks. He doesn’t look at Stede, because that would mean looking at his arm, but he does stop glaring holes into the carpet. “You bought that... for me?” He sounds surprised—and that hurts Stede’s heart.

“Of course I did.” He says, “I know how much it upset you, to not be able to use the fancy soap that I bought for us.” Izzy is about to protest, but Stede cuts him off before he can, “And even if it didn’t... it’s nice to have something that’s all your own, no? You don’t have to share it with anyone else, if you don’t want to.” He explains, his lips curling upward into a gentle smile. “Not to mention... it’s an excellent moisturizer.”

Izzy pulls a face, “What use do I have for a... a moisturizer?”

“Well, first of all...” He removes the bandages from Izzy’s arm and sets them aside, before wrapping a bar of soap in a soft washcloth and using some water to work it to a lather. “It’s another way to add moisture back into the burned skin here, which will keep it from becoming irritated. But also... it’s a nice preventative measure, to keep your healthy skin from becoming chaffed or irritated down the line...”

Carefully, he begins washing the burned skin... the slight twitch of Izzy’s fingers is the only indication he has that he’s causing the older man any discomfort. He tries to lighten his touch accordingly. “...Why’re you doing this?” Izzy asks.

Stede frowns, “Why? Because I love you, and the idea of you hurting hurts my heart.”

“That’s not...” Izzy clenches his injured hand into a fist—and immediately regrets it. “Why would you love me? Why would anyone love me after...” Stede’s heart shatters upon realizing that Izzy had, unwittingly, quoted Ed’s earlier question verbatim.

...Stede doesn’t know Ed and Izzy’s whole story... but he doesn’t need to in order to be confident in the assertion that nothing they could’ve done, to themselves, to each other, or to anyone else, was capable of making them unlovable. Clearly, they both feel awful about what’d happened—although... he has to wonder if Izzy thinks that Ed only feels bad now that Izzy’s reminded him of his past sins. Because, well... Stede has some thoughts about that thoughts he knows better than to share, considering all the damage he’d caused by talking out of his ass about the toe incident... but thoughts nonetheless.

See, the thing is... Ed remembers killing his father, down to the last grizzly detail. But, when asked about it directly, he deflects—someone, no, something else killed his father, while Ed himself was just an innocent bystander. It’s his way of dealing with trauma without really dealing with it, because if he confronted the trauma head-on, he’d fall apart. Stede thinks the situation with Izzy is very similar. If he treats it like the harm Izzy suffered was caused by another (or doesn’t exist at all), then... Meanwhile, to Izzy, it looked like he was dismissing his suffering... like he enjoyed hurting him, and that was that.

“Why is the sky blue? Why is the grass green?” Stede asks, “I’ll be honest, darling... I never intended to fall in love with you. But... if there’s one thing my failed marriage taught me, it’s that you can’t force yourself to love someone... and you can’t force yourself to not love someone.” He says. “I thought I could run away from Ed... thought I could return to my old life and make myself be happy.’

“But I couldn’t force myself to love Mary—and I couldn’t just stop loving Ed, either. My feelings for you are much the same. I realized how I felt for you long before I told you, but I kept it to myself, convinced that you would never—could never—feel the same. Apparently, I didn’t learn a damn thing from my first go-round with Ed, because I’d fully convinced myself that the feelings would just… go away if I ignored them long enough.’

“But they didn’t go away. In fact, the harder I tried to ignore them, the stronger they became.” Stede says, “I can’t say I understand why it is that I feel the way I do, but… I don’t need to understand it. I love you, and that’s all I need to know.”

Izzy pulls a face, “You’re such a fucking sap.”

Stede only smiles, looking for all the world like Izzy had just given him the world’s greatest compliment. “I’ll gladly be a sap, if it means I can tell you just how much you mean to me as often as you deserve.”

Izzy is so distracted by their conversation that he doesn’t notice the fact that his arm has been rebandaged and the splint replaced. Somehow, Stede had even had time to wipe down the metal, to take some of the harshness out of the burn marks. It’s still clear that the splint had been burned, but it’s significantly less jarring. When Izzy finally notices, he looks at it like he’s looking at a limb he never before realized was attached to his body. Tears burn in the corners of his eyes—even when he was being a prickly bastard, Stede was right there, taking care of him, treating him with a gentleness he most definitely didn’t deserve.

Something inside of Izzy seems to break as he looks at it, and when he finally stutters out, “I… I fucking love you, too, you twat,” Stede feels like it’s safe to say they’re finally making some progress.  

Chapter Text

It doesn’t take much to convince Izzy to come and rest a while in their bed.

He’s carrying so much tension that lying down is actually painful—at least, momentarily. It takes him a while to become comfortable, as he’s accustomed to sleeping on his left, and he cannot do so without putting pressure on his injured arm. Once upon a time, he’d been able to sleep on his back… the first time he’d tried, post-kraken, however, he’d woken in the middle of the night, only an hour or two after finally managing to fall into a fitful sleep, tumbled out of bed, and gotten violently ill. He never said that it was related to the toe—hell, he’d made a point of avoiding talking about it entirely, save for reassuring that he was fine and that it wouldn’t be happening again—but Ed and Stede knew the truth.

Some wounds are readily apparent, like the one on Izzy’s foot. Each time they looked at the space where Izzy’s toe should have been, they were reminded of what’d happened, of what Ed’d done. But wounds to one’s psyche run so much deeper, and are not always visible to the naked eye. The damage from the toe incident went far beyond the infection that’d nearly claimed Izzy’s life… beyond his limp, and his phantom pains…

They just weren’t able to see it… until it slapped them clean across the face.

The stomach is a sort of… compromise. Izzy is just this side of full, his belly slightly distended from all the food he’d eaten. (Stede honestly hadn’t realized he’d eaten that much, but then… the greasy delicacies must’ve provided a much-needed distraction while he said his piece, acting as a sort of barrier so that he could talk to Stede without talking to Stede, if that makes sense). Putting a little bit of pressure on it (not enough to make him sick… just enough to be soothing) might help to make him a little bit more comfortable. Lying on his stomach also allows him the chance to rest his head on Stede’s lap, and, well… after everything that’d happened, Stede wasn’t about to turn down the chance for a bit of cuddling.

He would like to state, for the record, that he’d offered to let Izzy have the captain’s quarters to himself. He is a gentleman, after all… and has no desire to impose himself where he’s not wanted. The suggestion had been met with a look frosty enough to freeze over the entire Atlantic Ocean. I just told you I love you, you fucking twat, he’d said. What part of that makes you think I want to spend the night in this stuffy old cabin by myself? And so, Stede had let himself be bullied down onto the bed and covered with an Izzy-shaped blanket. He’d combed soft, silver hair back from the older man’s face, humming soothingly beneath his breath until he was sure that Izzy was well and truly out .

A bit too wound-up to get any proper rest himself, he’d resigned himself to reading until Izzy woke again. He stokes over the soft lines on Izzy’s face as his eyes scan the page, taking in each of the words but not really registering them. He’s so out of it that he doesn’t even realize he’s touching Izzy’s mouth until surprisingly soft lips part and his thumb pops into the warm, wet heat of Izzy’s mouth.

…Izzy doesn’t bite. He doesn’t grumble, or fuss, or otherwise acknowledge the presence of Stede’s thumb in his mouth.

He does , however, relax just that little bit more into Stede’s side… and Stede is so overcome he cannot quite bite back the sob that builds in his chest.

Stede is absolutely not trying to delay the inevitable.

He knows that Ed and Izzy need to talk—and that waiting longer to have this conversation isn’t necessarily going to make it go better . (Really… they’ve already put the conversation off for twenty years, and look where it’s landed them). One conversation won’t resolve all of the issues between them, but if they get into the habit of talking things over when they happen (or a reasonable time thereafter, once cooler heads have had a chance to prevail), they can likely prevent something of this magnitude from occurring in the future. If everyone feels like they’re being heard, and that their feelings are being respected, then their relationship can only get stronger as time goes on.

He’s just… a little bit worried, is all. Considering the way the first conversation had devolved, and how awful both men had felt after-the-fact, it’d be more surprising if he weren’t. He just really, really wants this to go well. Not expecting a miracle fix or anything, but… well, he’d like for the situation to not deteriorate significantly, either. Things have had a way of going from bad to worse as of late—one bad thing after another just piling up until it honestly felt like they were drowning beneath the weight of it all. They needed to do something to raise their collective spirits, to get everyone in the right headspace to put their best foot forward in order to move forward with the intention of healing .

Luckily, Stede had just the idea—a little something he’d had in his back pocket ever since the crew had been reunited, that he’d saved for a rainy day.

(Metaphorically speaking, of course. Considering his plans involved a great deal of outdoor activities, he sincerely hoped the skies remained clear).

He explains his plans to the crew, who look at him with a mixture of confusion, resignation, and horror. Izzy, in particular, is looking at him like he’s suddenly sprouted a second head. “You want us to do… team-building exercises?” He spits, as if the very idea physically pains him.

“Yes!” Stede claps his hands together, a bright smile very nearly splitting his face in two. “I’ve already devised the teams. Lucius will be with Jim, Fang with Black Pete, Ivan with Frenchie, and Wee John with the Swede.” The mumbles of discontent grow significantly louder, “And, of course—Izzy will be with Ed.” Izzy and Ed share a look from across the deck… Izzy is the first to look away, choosing instead to glare daggers at his boots.

“Si me dejas con este, el barco se hundirá como un escribano.” Jim inclines their head toward Lucius, who seems to understand that his life has indeed been threatened despite not understanding a lick of Spanish.

“What I think Jim meant to say was—” Oluwande begins, only for Jim to cut him off.

“Quise decir lo que dije.”

“…Right.” Oluwande pinches the bridge of his nose, “Look, the… randomness of all of this aside, I think what Jim was trying to get at is… why these teams, specifically? Wouldn’t it be better to have me and Jim, Frenchie and Wee John, Fang and Ivan, Lucius and Black Pete…”

“No p e.” Stede says, with an obnoxious pop of the ‘p.’ “The point of this exercise is to take each of you out of your comfort zones… to strengthen your communication and interpersonal skills by forcing you to work with someone you may not know all that well.” He continues, “Hard though it may be, there are some things we cannot simply intuit… when all else fails, we must be able to fall back on our words—these exercises will help with that.”

They’re not far from land—which is good, because this first event, specifically, is not one that Stede is particularly anxious to try on a ship. Given the crew’s propensity for injuring themselves, odds were high that someone (or multiple someones) would end up going overboard… and drowning would definitely put a damper on things (and not just because it was bound to remind everyone of the recent near-drowning that’d set this whole catastrophe into motion). So, they set sail for a nearby uninhabited island, and once they make land, Stede leads the charge to disembark. He’s loaded his satchel full-to-bursting with supplies, and he’s extremely excited to use them.

The first activity, he explains, is to be a three-legged race. He’ll go between the various teams, binding their legs together tightly. Once all the teams have been bound, they’ll be expected to race from one designated point to the next. If the team wants to win, they’ll need to work together to account for their conjoined legs—otherwise, they’ll end up falling, which is liable to be as painful as it is embarrassing.

Izzy and Ed are already bickering before Stede even arrives—

“Are you perhaps short a marble?” Izzy snaps. “Your knee is fucked. And you didn’t bring your brace—because of course you fucking didn’t.” He throws his hands in the air, exasperation rolling off of him in waves. “You want your injured knee to be on the inside , so that is has the additional support from my leg —” He’s still in the process of explaining when Ed cuts him off.

“Yeah, except that’s your fucked-up foot!” Ed says, gesticulating wildly. At one point, his hand very nearly collides with Izzy’s face. “Your balance is already shit. Putting your fucked-up side and my fucked-up side together is just asking for it, mate.”

“And whose fucking fault is it that my foot is fucked in the first place, huh?” Izzy counters, voice rising in both volume and pitch.

Ed flinches like he’s been struck, “It’s… mine. I know it’s mine.” He whispers, like a kid admitting guilt in front of a disappointed parent.

Stede decides that now would be the time to intervene, before words are said that cannot be taken back. “How about this?” Taking Izzy by the hand, he steers him around so that he’s standing on Ed’s other side… now, both of their injured extremities are on the outside, and Stede will be binding their good legs together. “Remember, we’re here to have fun.”

Izzy sneers, “I hate you.”

“Oh, don’t be like that, Israel.” Stede coos, not at all bothered by the half-hearted vitriol spilling from Izzy’s lips. He knows that this whole situation has him off-kilter—normally, he’d be thrilled that Stede was letting him partner with Ed for one of his little ‘bonding’ exercises. But he’s no fool. He knows exactly why this is happening, and he wants it to stop as soon as humanly possible.

The prize for winning this first event is the ability to pick the menu for the week immediately following their next trip to port. If Izzy rolled his eyes any harder, they were liable to pop clean out of his skull. Only a member of the landed fucking gentry would reward their crew with such a waste of resources. He’s absolutely not salty because he knows that, regardless of which team wins, the odds of him being able to stomach whatever it is they’ve chosen for their meal are slim to none. Ed stares at him for a long moment, looking for all the world like he wants to ask him something—something important —but ends up deciding against it at the last moment.

A second later, a whistle blows—when the fuck had Stede gotten his hands on a whistle? —and all the teams are off.

Ed and Izzy both take a step forward with their right leg… and end up falling flat on their faces.

After everyone’s (read: Ed and Izzy’s—and only Ed and Izzy’s) injuries have been tended to, it’s time to move on to the next event.

Where Stede had come up with these ideas (or the supplies to follow through with them) is anyone’s guess… but Izzy has never seen sweaters that look quite like the ones Stede is currently holding before. Apparently, they’d just missed the anniversary of Karl’s death (Izzy grumbles something underneath his breath, which is summarily ignored). In celebration of his life, they’d all be making snacks for his widow, Olivia. The quality of the snacks would be judged by Buttons and Olivia, herself. When asked how exactly Olivia was meant to judge the entries, Stede shrugged, and deemed that ‘whichever plate she eats the most of would be considered the winner.’

Wee John and the Swede had won the last event (Black Pete had very loudly called shenanigans—Wee John was significantly bigger than his partner, and stronger, too. He’d taken off like a bat out of hell, and the Swede had kind of just… hung on for the ride. How they’d both managed to remain upright was anyone’s guess—especially considering the fact that Izzy and Ed had spent much of the race on the ground, actively attempting to kill each other—but the Swede didn’t fall flat on his face until after they’d crossed the finish line, so, as far as Stede was concerned, they’d won fair and square), and were already dreaming up all of the meals they’d ask for—

(Everyone else had gotten what essentially amounted to a participation trophy for trying their best . Everyone… except Ed and Izzy. Because they hadn’t even made an effort to try and work together, they’d been sent to time out , to go and think about what they’d done . This meant standing in separate corners of the captain’s quarters in absolute silence while the rest of the crew got to enjoy some beach time.

Ed complained that he was being treated like a child. Stede explained that he wouldn’t have to, if he stopped acting like one.

When he’d come back into the room, they’d left their respective corners… and Izzy was gently, but firmly, putting Ed’s brace back onto his leg.

They didn’t say much—there wasn’t much to say after they’d spent much of the afternoon cussing each other out, after all. But the way that Izzy touched him, handling the most fragile parts of him with such care , such reverence , said more than words ever could. He slid the brace into place with practiced ease, not at all hampered by the fact that he could only use one arm. Watching him tighten bits here, loosen bits there… bend and straighten Ed’s leg to make sure that the brace wasn’t hindering his range of motion… Despite the anger and indifference he’d displayed earlier, here, in this space, he treated Ed like he was something worthy of being treasured—

And when Ed touched him, in turn, he treated him the same.

He loosed Izzy’s brace, gently sliding it off of his injured wrist so that he could access his bandages more easily. Sand and other debris had gotten underneath the bandages when he’d fallen, and so Ed unwrapped Izzy’s arm, cleaned the wound with cotton thick with alcohol, and dressed it again. The scent of blood and alcohol was thick in the air, but neither man seemed to mind. Stede couldn’t help but feel like he was intruding on something sacred, here. Something that he was never meant to witness. In that moment, he could see how, even when their relationship fell to pieces around them... they still stayed together. It gave him hope for the future, both for Ed and Izzy... and for the three of them, together).

Not five minutes into the event, Izzy is already threatening to stab Ed directly in the dick.

...And Ed is fucking egging him on. His boldness would almost be admirable, were it not likely to end up with blood in... whatever it is their making.

“Oh, this tastes positively heavenly, Roach.” Perhaps it was a bit unfair of him, allowing the ship’s cook to participate in a cooking competition, but... perhaps they’d discover that someone had a hidden talent. He never would’ve found out that anyone other than Roach knew how to sew if he didn’t have them all make their own flags, once upon a time. “Is that... honey?”

“Yep.” He says, “A lot of folks who feed the ‘gulls give them a bunch of empty calories and sugar. This here is made with natural rose honey... about as healthy as you can get.” Stede nods along as Roach explains the health benefits of the meal he and Buttons (but mostly he) prepared. Leave it to the ship’s cook to not only consider the taste of the meal, but the nutritional properties as well.

“And what about you two?” He moves on to Ivan and Frenchie, who seem to’ve made something with sunflower seeds they’d roasted themselves. Their creation is a little bland, seeing as they hadn’t salted it (“salt is bad for seagulls, didn’t you know that?”), but it’s still... decent .

“You’re making a face.” Frenchie says, clearly unimpressed. Stede doesn’t think that he’s making a face, but tries to fix it anyway.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“If you don’t like it, just say so, man.” Frenchie continues, undeterred. And, sure... it’s not exactly Stede’s cup-of-tea, but they put time and effort into making it, and he doesn’t want to disparage their efforts. Not to mention... he’s not the one they’re meant to impress. There was a very real chance that Olivia would be over the moon about it, and that was what really mattered.

Still... Stede cannot help but want to smooth things over. This is supposed to be a fun team-building exercise, to help foster better communication amongst the crew (specifically between Ed and Izzy, but... well, everyone could do with a bit of help in that regard—he didn’t need them all to hold hands and run off into the sunset singing kumbaya, but... being able to trust that you can rely on someone other than your partner(s) is important). Even now, after all this time... there was still a sort of ‘us versus them’ mentality amongst the crew. Part of that stemmed from the fact that they’d never really talked about Ed marooning the crew before... or what’d happened while they were stranded on that island.

There... was quite a bit that needed to be talked about, wasn’t there? For all he preached about ‘talking it through as a crew,’ he’d really tried to sweep this whole mess under the rug, hadn’t he? Once the kraken was gone and things returned to some semblance of normal, he’d been reluctant to rock the boat, worried that the slightest push was all it would take for the whole thing to capsize.

But... perhaps, in his efforts to keep the boat from capsizing... all he’d really done was make it sink faster.

“It’s...” Stede weighs his words carefully, “a distinctive taste.” Distinctively bitter, yes. “Unique. Different. Those aren’t necessarily bad things.”

Frenchie rolls his eyes, “Not necessarily a good thing, either.”

Stede tries the other dishes that his crew has prepared—some are good, some are... decidedly not . All pale in comparison to Roach’s dish. By the time he arrives at Ed and Izzy’s little station, he’s thankful that he’s not the one who has to decide who wins... and also upset that he’s gone around tasting the other dishes, because now he’s established a precedent and, well... Ed and Izzy’s dish looks...

There’s no point in mincing words in an internal monologue, is there? It looks absolutely disgusting.

“What, um... What happened here?” He asks. He makes no move to take a piece of the dish to try—in no small part because he worries that, if he does try to eat it, it’ll turn out to be poisonous.

“Izzy wanted to make something bland—”

“Ed wanted to make something with an entire pound of sugar—”

Stede takes a deep breath—in through the nose, out through the mouth—and interrupts before they decide to spend the next five or so minutes talking over each other. “One at a time, now. This is meant to be an exercise in teamwork and communication... Did you know that the words ‘listen’ and ‘silent’ are spelled with the same letters? You can’t really hear each other if you spend all your time talking over each other.”

Ed and Izzy share a long look… and for a moment, it seems like they might take Stede’s advice to heart. However, it soon becomes clear that they cannot seem to decide who should do the speaking and who should do the listening … and, not five minutes later, they’re back to talking—and then yelling —over each other. Stede pinches the bridge of his nose, wondering how his seemingly brilliant plan could’ve derailed so spectacularly. He’d thought that, if he could get them to focus on something other than the ever-present elephant in the room, it might be easier for them to address it when the time finally came. A plant needs to establish strong roots if it ever hopes to grow big and strong, after all—

It’s clear that addressing the elephant directly is a no-go, at least for the time being. It seems he was right to be worried—if they cannot even have a civilized conversation about how much sugar to add to the biscuits they’re making, how can they be expected to have one about something infinitely more important? They need to re-learn how to listen to one another… how to engage with one another as equals…

Luckily, Stede still has a couple of tricks up his sleeve.

“You want us to do… trust falls?” Izzy’s been in a foul mood ever since Roach and Buttons won the last event. Their reward? A week of no chores. Which… Buttons and Roach held their own, but because of their respective positions, they didn’t do nearly as many chores as the rest of the crew. Still, the little bit that will be taken from their shoulders will be placed directly onto Izzy’s… and he’s less-than-thrilled about it.

“What’s the matter, mate?” Ed has been oscillating wildly between moping and pushing every last one of Izzy’s buttons, until the first mate eventually snaps and whirls on him to give him something to mope about. He’s like a child, pulling on Izzy’s pigtails because he wants the other man’s attention, and then pitching a fit when the attention he does get turns out to be negative. “Worried you won’t be able to catch me?”

“More like I’m worried you’ll drop me flat on my ass, just for shits and giggles.” Ed pulls a face at that. He’d never hurt Izzy on purpose… not anymore, at least. They were moving toward a better, brighter future… one itty-bitty little baby step at a time.

But sometimes… those little baby steps were the hardest to take, and Stede couldn’t express how proud he was that Ed was trying, regardless.

There’s no denying that he’s hurt Izzy before—and that there’s a not-insignificant part of Izzy that believes that hurting him like that was Ed’s way of showing love and affection. He’s not used to being treated kindly, in or out of the bedroom… and this whole mess with the amnesia hadn’t helped at all. It’s like… every time he’s presented with something wholesome and good, he takes it with full-expectation that it’ll be taken away from him again at some point in the future. Ed is only being nice to him now because he’s been reminded of all of the ways in which he’s failed Izzy over the last twenty years. Once things are back to normal, Ed will return to how he was before…

And Stede… all his near-drowning had done was show his true colors. Even knowing that Izzy had risked his life to save him, he’d slipped back into his nasty old habits… calling Izzy the wrong name, treating him poorly… He was being nice now because he felt bad, and because he felt obligated as captain to abide by the rules he’d established for the rest of the crew. Once he decided that things were ‘fixed’—whatever the hell that was supposed to mean—his behavior would shift again. Stede sees the walls which he is rapidly building around himself… but finds himself at a loss for how to knock them back down. Words are cheap—and yet, have the power to cut deeper than any knife. Actions speak louder, but what would be loud enough?

In the end, he decides to run through the trust fall exercises with Izzy first. Izzy is clearly skeptical… but when it becomes clear that the rest of the crew is taking these events very seriously (the prizes for winning are actually decent, and everyone wants a chance to be recognized), he decides to bite the metaphorical bullet and get it over with. Odds are, Stede will catch him before he hits the ground and cracks his head open on a rock…

That doesn’t mean he’s not still a little surprised when Stede actually manages to catch him and prevent him from cracking his head open on a rock.

When they switch places, Izzy is quick to catch him, as well. He manages it one-handed, which is even more impressive—

“See? That wasn’t too bad, was it?” Izzy grumbles something incoherent underneath his breath, as he shoves Stede back onto his feet with a little more force than necessary. The Gentleman Pirate stumbles a bit, struggling momentarily to get his bearings—

“Yeah, yeah.” Izzy begins fiddling with the brace on his arm, needing something other than Stede (and Ed) to focus on as he works out exactly what it is that he wants to say. “I didn’t think you’d drop me. Even at your lowest, you’re too much of a gentleman for that shit.” He says. Inclining his head toward Ed, he adds, “But just because you caught me doesn’t mean this big lug over here will do the same.”

Now, Ed looks hurt, “You must really think that I’m absolute shit, huh?”

“Ed,” Izzy releases a long-suffering sigh, “We’ve been fighting this whole fucking day. We haven’t even been able to agree on something as simple as whether or not to add sugar to our dish.” Stede wants to interject that they hadn’t actually been fighting the whole day—but he bites his tongue, knowing he was never meant to see what went on in that room. “What reason do I have to believe that this would be any different?”

“I’d never do something that’d put you in harm’s way, Iz.” From the look on Izzy’s face, it’s clear that Stede is not the only one who remembers how their earlier bickering had resulted in both of them falling flat on their faces.

“Oh, and I ate an entire mouthful of sand and rocks because… what? I tripped myself?”

“You wouldn’t have tripped if you would’ve just led with your left foot instead of your right!”

“Of course, it has to be my fault.”

“Well, it can’t be my fault all the time, now can it?”

This… is not going well. There’s… really something to be said when groups of people who’ve known each other for nearly two years are managing to get on better than a group that’s known each other for twenty. Even with all of the executive dysfunction in their relationship, they’d managed to work together for how many years without going for the jugular each and every time they spoke to one another. But now… now that they’ve been made aware of all of the cracks that’ve been there since the beginning, they’re no longer trying to keep them from growing bigger and bigger and bigger until they cause a complete and total break.

If he were to be perfectly honest… he’d expected a little bit of resistance. Not just from Ed and Izzy, but the rest of the crew as well. But… aside from that little incident earlier, when Oluwande had asked what’d possessed him to divvy up the teams in the way that he had, everyone had just kind of… accepted the situation for what it was and resolved to make the most of it. Everyone, that was, except for Ed and Izzy.

Ed and Izzy, however, seemed more than content to fight him (and each other).

“Just…” Stede looks at the other groups, who’ve each managed several successful trust falls by now. What to do, what to do… “Try it, okay? I’ll be right here to supervise… and to intervene, on the off-chance that someone drops someone else ,” he’s not about to name names, but… when it comes right down to it, odds are that Ed is more likely to drop Izzy than Izzy is to drop Ed.

Izzy rolls his eyes heavenward, “Ah, yes… because I have total faith in the reflexes of a man who just suffered a massive head injury.”

“Just… try it.” Stede repeats, unable to think of anything else to say. “I promise that it’ll be fine.”

Izzy (reluctantly) follows Stede’s not-order, turning his back to Ed and putting himself in position to make the fall. Ed makes a show of bracing himself, offering Izzy a couple of reassuring words as he prepares himself to fall. Stede instructs him to fall on the count of three, and makes it all the way to two before getting distracted by a member of the crew in need of his help. Izzy doesn’t notice—or, if he does, he misinterprets what Stede said as his cue to go ahead and fall, because a second later, Izzy is on the ground and Ed is apologizing profusely . Izzy doesn’t say a word… just stares up at Ed like a disappointed parent, and somehow that cuts so much deeper.

There’s an apology lingering on the very tip of his tongue… Izzy doesn’t stick around long enough to hear it.

There’re several more events after this… Stede is so caught up in the activity that he can only check-in on Ed and Izzy a couple of times, but… honestly, the situation doesn’t seem to be getting any better. By the time night falls, the crew begins gathering the supplies for a pig roast. It’s only once the fire is going, and the pig has been set up on the spit, that he realizes Ed and Izzy have gone missing entirely. That’s… definitely not good. There’re only so many places they could’ve gone, and none of them are all that far. Certainly not far enough that he wouldn’t be able to hear if they’d gotten into some kind of trouble… or another fight.

To Stede’s surprise, it’s Lucius who relays, “If you’re looking for Ed and Izzy, they’re back on the ship.” He says, before adding a rather cryptic, “I, uh… I wouldn’t interrupt them. It seems like they have some things they need to… work through.” Lucius swallows hard.

…And really, when he put it like that… how could Stede not go and investigate?

Chapter Text

Stede knows that Ed and Izzy are in the captain’s quarters. Don’t ask how, because he couldn’t explain it if he tried. And yet... something keeps him from heading straight there after boarding the Revenge . There’s a part of him that wonders if this is because he’s not ready for what it is that he’s about to walk in on. There’s another part that tells him that, if he’s not ready for what he might see, he needs to be moving all the faster.   

When he thinks about all the things that could’ve happened in the time since they’d disappeared, his stomach knots so tightly, he feels sick.   

If Ed or Izzy (or both) are hurt, it’s his fault. He should’ve kept a better eye on them. He should’ve—  

He searches the entire ship, just for the sake of being thorough. (He’s wasting time. He knows he is. And every room that he doesn’t find Ed and Izzy in just makes him all the more nervous, like a parent slowly coming to the horrible realization that their children are nowhere to be found. He can’t even remember the last time he saw them—he’d been so preoccupied with literally everything else, he’d forgotten all about them (what kind of lover was he, to plan all of this with the intention of fixing their relationship, just to let himself be distracted from his goal by literally anything and everything to come down the pike?)). As he’d expected, Ed and Izzy are nowhere to be found.   

With all the time in the world to waste, and the deeply-unsettling knowledge that nothing good could possibly come from wasting it, he decides to bite the bullet and head back down below-deck. He uses one of the secret passageways to get there just a little bit faster—the second he’s inside the walls, he hears it. The rhythmic thump-thump-thump of the bed colliding with the hull. There’s no screaming—at least, not the sort of screaming that should be concerning . It would seem that, while Stede had wasted precious time worrying about what he could be walking into, Ed and Izzy had fought it out... before deciding to make much better use of their time.   

“C-C’mon, mate. You can’t tease me like this. It’s not fair.” Ed is whining he can just hear Ed, ever defiant, trying to deny it... but there’s no denying the way his voice pitches up, the words coming fast and breathy, as he speaks.  

“...I thought you said you would do anything to make up for being an absolute shit partner earlier.” Is Izzy... teasing him? By the gods, he thinks that he is. The realization has Stede thickening in his breeches... and it’s by sheer force of will alone that he keeps from making a sound—the walls are incredibly thin here, even the slightest sound would be able to be heard loud and clear by those in the other room.   

“I-I did. And I... I will. But Iz, you... y-you can’t... oh fuck ...” Just a little bit further now. Ed bites his lip, holding his breath to fight back the not-so-little sounds that want to escape him as he listens to the utterly delicious cacophony of sounds coming from the captain’s quarters.   

God, what he wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall right now.   

The secret passage lets him out about a foot or so away from the door to the captain’s quarters... which stands open, allowing everyone and their cousin to hear exactly what it is that Ed and Izzy are up to. Stede enters the room, scarcely conscious of the fact that he’s doing it. His footsteps fall into rhythm with the rocking of the bed. His heart is beating so fast, he swears Ed and Izzy should be able to hear it. But they don’t hear it, and they don’t hear him. They’re too focused on each other to worry about much more than exactly what they’re doing right now. And he knows he should leave them to it—he does. They don’t know that he’s here, they haven’t given him permission to witness this—  

He knows this. And yet, the harder he tries to make his feet carry him back out of the room, the faster they move in the other direction.   

Before long, he’s at the curtain... and then he has to take a peek, right? After all, he had come all this way...  

It… takes a moment for Stede to process what it is that he’s seeing.   

Ed and Izzy are in the midst of having sex, that much is obvious. But… where Stede had been expecting violence and bloodshed, he finds tears and snot and all manner of other decidedly unsexy bodily fluids instead. The crying doesn’t seem to be the result of either one of them hurting the other, which is a relief. A small one, but a relief all the same. They’d done quite enough of that earlier.   

The crying actually seems to be cathartic , like whatever had happened before Stede had come looking for them had sent their respective walls tumbling down—leaving them raw and vulnerable, and, perhaps most importantly, ready to heal . And now… Izzy is perched atop Ed’s prone body, naked as the day he was born, baring scars—both self-inflicted and not—that he’d been hiding for up to twenty years. Despite the tears that streak down his ruddy cheeks, his cock is full, the fat, mushroom head leaking a steady stream of pre as he rides Ed, slow and steady. He’s in no rush, and the dark, bejeweled fingers that’re sunk deep into bit of fat on his hips, do not try to press him to move faster.   

Stede’s watched Ed and Izzy fuck countless times before. What he’s witnessing here… is new. Before, the only time he’d ever seen Izzy cry in the bedroom was when the pain switched from pleasurable to not—and Izzy could take one hell of a beating before even thinking about crying ‘uncle.’ But now… Ed moves to wipe the tears from Izzy’s cheeks, and lets his hand linger a beat on the smaller man’s jaw. He opens his mouth to speak, but seems to still be too choked-up to do so. Izzy’s features soften a little at this… turning his face in toward Ed’s palm, he places a gentle kiss to the calloused skin there—and Stede skitters away to hide seconds before Izzy would’ve seen him. That… was far too close for comfort.   

From his new position, he can no longer see—but he can hear. And it’s not long after Izzy kisses Ed that the words he’d wanted to say earlier come to him in a complicated jumble, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I-I…” a heart-wrenching sob threatens to break him in two, “Izzy, please …”   

“Shh…” Here, Stede can hear the steady creaking of the bed, can hear Ed’s mewling as every fiber of his being screams for Izzy to move faster —and yet, Izzy continues to maintain that slow, steady pace. “Deep breaths, now. In… and out…”   

“W- Why don’t you hate me?” And oh, hearing the way Ed’s voice breaks at the start of that question breaks Stede’s heart.   

Izzy doesn’t even hesitate, “Because… even at your worst… even when I was sure you were going to kill me… I could never hate you.”   

Another sob, “I… I-I hate myself.” Ed says.   

A pause, “I know.” The creaking slows, until it ceases completely. For a long moment, there’s nothing but silence. “I think… I’ve always known.” Another pause—this one is longer, broken only by the sound of their panting. “That’s why I tried so hard to make you happy. And hurting me… it seemed to do the trick, for a while.” A sniffle, “But… at the end of the day, I think it only made you hate yourself more.”   

“I hurt you so badly…” Ed wails. Izzy doesn’t try to deny it. The scars, from two decades’ worth of abuse, are plain to see. There’s no point in trying to sugarcoat what’s very clearly there . “You should hate me.”   

“Maybe.” Izzy concedes, far too easily. That just makes Ed cry all the harder. “But… I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. And I realized… I might not’ve hated you, but I did resent you.” He says, “For not seeing me the way that I saw you .”   

“W-What?” Ed’s confusion cuts through his despair like a hot knife through butter, “Izzy, baby…”  

Stede can almost imagine the rueful little smile on Izzy’s face as he says, “I knew you were hurting… long before Stede came onto your radar. I knew, because I watched, and I listened, and…” Here, he trails off. “You don’t see me the same way that I see you. I see your pain and I want to—and try to—help. Even if I fuck if up sometimes, at least I try . But you…”   

“Izzy, I… that’s not true.” He says, with a surprising amount of conviction. “I see you. Of course I see you.” The bed creaks —Izzy’s startled yip indicates that they’ve changed positions, with Izzy now tucked away underneath Ed. “I just… I hadn’t thought that you’d want me to help. I was the one who’d broken you… why would you want me to be the one to piece you back together?”   

Once again, there’s no hesitation, “I’d never want anyone else.”   

Ed is silent for a long while, after that. So long, in fact, that Stede decides to chance it—and angles himself so that he can see the bed again. He does so just in time to see Ed pull out of Izzy (earning a long, low whine from the smaller man—in his mind’s eye, Stede can see the way his pretty little whole is fluttering, desperate for something else to fill it up), roll Izzy over onto his stomach, and enter him again. It takes a moment for Stede’s lust-hazy mind to ascertain why Ed would want to take the time to roll Izzy over… and then he remembers: Izzy’s back. He cannot see the scars from here, but from the wounded sound Ed makes, he knows they must be formidable.   

It goes without saying that Ed blames himself for Izzy’s scars… and the fact that the wounds had become septic, and had nearly cost him his life twice over. He reaches for them, hesitantly—stopping just an inch or so before his hand would’ve actually made contact with the skin, likely realizing that Izzy had never given him explicit permission to touch. After a beat, Izzy makes a small, affirmative sound, and Ed closes the gap. His touch is so light, it can hardly be considered a touch at all—but Izzy’s back is so sensitive , such a featherlight touch is required. He traces the crisscrossing scars, committing their brutal pattern to memory. He did this—this, and so much more. He can no longer deny accountability for his actions.   

A moment passes, then two... Ed bends down to brush his lips over the raised, uneven skin of Izzy’s back, placing gentle kisses all along the crisscrossing lines. Despite the way in which their bodies are joined, there is nothing sexual about the way that Ed touches Izzy’s scars. Instead, there’s a... gentleness , a reverence , which cannot be accurately defined in words.   

If Ed’s touch alone were capable of mending Izzy’s wounds... Izzy would not have a single scar left on his body.   

Izzy sniffles, hiding his face away in the pillows as Ed continues to lavish him with gentle affection. Stede cannot see much more than the mess of sweat-slick silver hair atop his head, but he knows that he’s blushing. Even if this weren’t such an emotionally charged moment... it takes a lot for Izzy to be able to handle this level of emotional vulnerability. He needs to be in a certain headspace for it... and he’s certainly not in that headspace now.   

But he doesn’t try to stop Ed. If anything, he leans further into his touch, his entire body shaking.   

Stede feels the tell-tale burning of tears in the corners of his eyes... if this is a lot for him, he can’t even begin to imagine how Izzy feels.   

It’s only after Ed has kissed every last one of the whip-scars on Izzy’s back that he draws back. Careful to keep their bodies joined, he reaches to open the bedside table and retrieves a small container of ointment. Stede is able to recognize it, even from his place by the door. He’d bought it several months back, before two became three. Ed’s knee had been bothering him quite a bit—especially the scar—and so Stede had invested in a numbing essential oil blend to help ease some of the pain on those days where he could hardly move. Ed uses it on Izzy now, scooping a generous gob onto his fingers, before tracing his scars, carefully distributing the ointment before rubbing it in.   

“Y-You don’t...” Izzy bites his lip. “You don’t have to do that. I... I’m not a child , I don’t need to be coddled.” Never mind the fact that this isn’t coddling. Ed is taking care of him —even if he cannot fully fix what he has broken, he’s trying. He wants to make it better. He wants... He wants ... Izzy hisses when Ed presses down on a particularly sensitive area on his back, and Ed removes his hands immediately—  

“What’s wrong?” He tries not to sound like he’s panicking, but he definitely is. He was trying to make the situation better, not worse. “D-Did I hurt you? I was trying to be gentle, but—” The longer he speaks, the less coherent his speech becomes, until eventually the words come out in one terrific jumble. “Do you want me to stop? Just say the word, and—”   

“Oh my god, are you going to be like this forever?” Izzy quips. Ed’s mouth shuts with an audible click . For a long moment, there is nothing but tense silence. “Because, in the spirt of openness and honesty and all that other bullcrap... I don’t think I could handle that.”   

Ed furrows his brow, “Handle what?”  

“You treating me like I’m broken.” Izzy says, “Because I’m not.” That catches Stede by surprise, “What you said earlier, about being the one to break me? That’s not true. You hurt me, yes. And there were many times where I felt like I’d never be able to come back from what you did to me. But you didn’t break me . I’m not broken . And the day I just... roll over and let you break me , is the day I want you to put me out of my misery—”  

“Izzy, don’t... don’t talk like that.” Ed whispers, unable to keep his voice from breaking. “I’m not going to kill you.”   

“Sometimes, I wonder.” He says. He sounds almost wistful , like he knows it’s going to happen—he’s accepted it—and wouldn’t have it any other way. Ed looks like he’s about to be ill.   

“Izzy,” and there it is—the tone of command that Izzy takes to so well; his voice is heavy with power and dominance, and just a little bit of danger, as well. Izzy melts beneath him like butter, coming pretty damned close to purring like a cat. “ I’m not going to kill you.”  

Izzy hums, but doesn’t answer. He probably doesn’t want to start another fight—which is admirable, considering the two of them had been fighting nonstop literally all day . It was any wonder they hadn’t killed each other lord knows it certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. “If you must know... it’s my back.” He says, after a long moment. “I must’ve tweaked something when I fell.”   

Once again, Ed deflates, “You mean when I dropped you.”  

“If you feel so bad about it, you could just... I don’t know, massage my back? Just... mind the scars.”   

When Ed touches him again, he is so very gentle , it’s like he’s not even touching Izzy at all. Izzy grumbles beneath his breath, encouraging Ed to press a little bit harder—hard enough for him to be able to feel the pressure, at least. It takes a little while for Ed to believe that he can apply that pressure without... well, breaking Izzy —and it certainly doesn’t help that, the moment he does, Izzy’s back cracks . It’s definitely the good kind of crack, but the sound of it still causes Ed to shoot up off of him like a fucking rocket. The sudden movement startles Izzy... when the older man realizes what’d happened, he starts laughing. And god, if it isn’t the most beautiful sound Stede has heard in a long, long time.   

...There was a part of him that was honestly worried he’d never be hearing it again.   

“What happened to not treating me like I’m broken, huh?” He asks, but there’s no anger, no malice in his tone. If anything, he sounds almost... teasing . “You cracked my back. It felt good. Not everything that sounds bad is.”   

“I just... fuck, Iz... I don’t want to fuck this up.” Ed says, unable to keep his voice from shaking.   

“I’d say that you won’t, but... I can’t promise that.” Stede cannot help but feel a little surge of pride at that. Good on Izzy, he thinks, for not making promises that he knows that he cannot keep. Had they been having this conversation a couple of weeks ago, before all of this began, he couldn’t guarantee that Izzy wouldn’t have just told him exactly what it was that he wanted to hear.   

While Stede would like to think that all of this was a result of his team-building exercises (not that they’d worked for much, besides showing Ed and Izzy exactly how dysfunctional they’d become over the last couple of years), he knows that that’s not the case. Ed and Izzy needed to want their relationship to get better. No amount of meddling on Stede’s part was going to make that happen. If they wanted to continue to operate at such a level of dysfunction that they were actively hurting one another without even trying, then that was their prerogative. Stede knew better than to try and stand between them—physically or otherwise.   

They were a bit like magnets—drawn to one another, regardless of what stood in their way. If they had to go blasting through Stede to get where they wanted—no, where they needed to be—then that was a small price to pay. Stede had made peace with the reality of their relationship that day on the deck, when they’d beaten each other to an unrecognizable, bloody mess—before proceeding to fuck.   

They could be good together— so good . They’d never be able to survive apart.   

...That seems to be all the talking either of them can handle right now which, honestly, is far more than Stede had been expecting from either of them... he’s immeasurably proud, and a not-insignificant part of him is disappointed that he cannot tell them just how proud he is, because they still don’t know that he’s here. Within seconds, they’re going at it like fucking rabbits —Ed rocking into Izzy so violently, Stede is sure that Ed isn’t going to be able to walk tomorrow; and Izzy is making sounds that, if Stede didn’t know better, he’d think meant the older was actually in pain . (Honestly, he might very well be... but the good kind of pain, the kind that leaves him twitching and drooling on the bed as he rides out the aftershocks of pleasure).  

Stede doesn’t even try to stop his hand from sliding down the front of his breeches. Damn it all, he’s already here...  

After, Ed is the first to break the silence. “Did you mean what you said earlier? About... not being broken?”   

Izzy shoots him an odd look, “I... Yeah, I did.” A pause, “I’ve been... doing a lot of thinking, lately. Mostly about shit the kid said—and if you ever tell him I said his words made a lick of difference to me, I’ll slit your throat in your sleep.” Ed laughs, not at all threatened by Izzy’s words. “But... yeah. I’m hurt, and it’ll take me a long time to not be hurt. But...”   

Just because the pieces of a puzzle don’t fit together perfectly, doesn’t mean that there isn’t beauty to be found in the slightly warped picture that they create. Thinking of himself as broken, and letting others treat him that way, made it seem as if the person he was—the person he’d become after suffering countless hardships, both by Ed’s hand and not—was somehow lesser than the person he had been. That Ed and Stede and anyone else who’d hurt him—including himself—had just chipped away at him until little more than a husk was left. There were so many reasons why thinking of himself like that was unhealthy, he couldn’t even begin to name them all.   

Hells, he probably would’ve never even thought to try, had Lucius not decided to stick his nose where it didn’t belong.   

Again, if anyone gets any bright ideas about telling the twerp that he was right, Izzy will have the whole crew scraping barnacles for a week.  

He’d experienced a major shift in perspective in the days that they’d been separated, and he liked to think that it was for the better. (He didn’t think it was possible for his headspace to get worse , but he wasn’t about to tempt fate by saying as much aloud. Murphy’s Law seems to be the story of his fucking life, and he’s not about to tempt fate to find a way to make this absolute shitshow worse ).   

Maybe all of this wasn’t Lucius’ doing at all. Maybe it was Stede’s. After all, he’d been the one to wax poetic about how he didn’t need a reason to love Izzy—he just did. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and Stede Bonnet loves Israel Hands. Even if he acts like an absolute twat about it sometimes, Izzy... well, he believes him. Just like he believes Ed loves him—and has loved him for a very long time.   

We always hurt the ones we love the most.   

“I was wrong, before.” Izzy continues. “I shouldn’t have told you that I’d forgiven you when I hadn’t. In my defense, I’d thought that I’d forgiven you... but I see now that I jumped the gun a bit.” After a beat, he adds, “But... now that I think about it... I don’t know that I would’ve had the balls to tell you that I was still angry, still hurt. And I don’t know that you would’ve really listened.”   

Ed swallows hard, before admitting, soft and sheepish, “I probably wouldn’t have.” And then, even quieter, “Most likely, I would’ve told you to get over it... or given you something else to cry about.” He looks a little green around the gills as he confesses this.   

Much to Ed’s surprise, that earns a bark of a laugh from Izzy, “...We really fucked this up, didn’t we?”   

“It’s fixable.” Ed insists, because it has to be. Fate could not possibly be so cruel as to have them stick together through all of this, just to tear them apart at the last minute. Ed is willing to continue working to better himself. He’d come a long way since they’d first met Stede, but, if anything... all that did was show him just how much further he had to go.   

There was a light at the end of the tunnel, but they wouldn’t reach it by sitting, unmoving, dwelling on all manner of what-ifs.   

They sit and talk for a while (Ed cannot remember the last time they did that (without it inevitably devolving into a fight), and it hurts his heart). Ed combs his fingers through Izzy’s silver hair as Izzy tucks himself seamlessly into Ed’s side. There’s no real point to the conversation, save to hear the other’s voice and revel in their contentment. It’d been a long day for both of them, and both would be more than happy to stay here for the rest of the evening. But even here, in the warm, quiet seclusion of the captain’s quarters, they can hear the crew becoming rowdy as the promise of good food draws ever closer. They should join them—but that means leaving the bed, which honestly feels like a lot right now.   

Would Stede understand if they decided to sit this one out? Probably. Hells, he’d probably be grateful that he wouldn’t have to spend the remainder of his evening keeping the two of them from killing each other over who got the better serving of pork (not that there would even be a question—if Izzy so much as suspected that his cut of pork was superior to Ed’s, he’d hand it over without a second thought). But if no-one told him that they weren’t planning on attending, he would definitely come looking for them. Once he saw what they’d been up to, he would have questions. Questions that neither Ed nor Izzy were prepared to answer, despite all the talking they’d just done.   

It would seem that, even after everything that’d transpired between them, some of that intrinsic understanding remained. For everything that they’d said to each other, there was infinitely more that went unsaid—and for the first time in a long, long while, it really felt like they were on the same page. That’s not to say that they were going to just... stop talking again, because that was what had gotten them here in the first place—  

But they’d finally started reading the same book, in the same language, at the same pace. And that was something.   

Maybe, if all of these little somethings continued to snowball, one day soon, Izzy could tell him he forgives him... and mean it.   

Which is the absolute perfect time to ruin everything with, “I, uh... I had an idea.” Ed says. He’s not looking at Izzy, but there’s no doubt in Izzy’s mind that Ed is talking to him. “And... you’re free to say ‘no,’ of course. I don’t want to pressure you into anything. I just... I thought it might be a good way to give you back some agency, is all?” Ed flinches, almost like he’s expecting Izzy to whirl around and hit him.   

Izzy looks like Ed had just told him that he wanted to go skinny-dipping in shark-infested waters. “I was with you right up until you suggested this was a good way to give me back my agency. Now, I’m scared.” He says, his tone suggesting he’s only half-joking.   

“I... You don’t have to be scared. Like I said, I wouldn’t pressure you to do anything. I was just thinking—”  

“That’s a dangerous pastime.”   

Ed rolls his eyes, reaching over to lightly tap Izzy on the back of the head. “Don’t be a dick, man. I’m trying to propose something nice.” Izzy perks up a little at that, “There’s this... thing people do, to take ownership of their scars.” He pauses here, taking time to figure out what exactly it is that he wants to say, “They put a, uh... a tattoo over them.” He says.   

Izzy’s eyes immediately drop to his foot, which is hidden away beneath the blankets. Truth be told, he’d never really thought about the scar Ed’s actions had left behind... far more concerned with his actual loss than the permanent reminder of it. “Wouldn’t that... hurt?” All tattoos hurt, of course... but there’s something particularly painful about the idea of tattooing over all of that scar tissue.   

“Yes and no.” Ed says, answering absolutely nothing at all. “Scar tissue is... weird. Sometimes, when you touch it, you feel the pressure right there. Other times, it moves around. I could be touching the side of your foot, and you might feel it in the heel. It might hurt more in that new place, it might hurt less.” He shrugs, “It’s going to hurt one way or another. How much, I can’t rightly say.”   

Izzy stares at his foot for a long while, trying to think of what he would even have tattooed there. A kraken? Too literal. ...Maybe a blackbird? Blackbirds were symbolic of death and change. That would definitely fit here. “...And you’d do the tattoo?”   

Ed looks nervous again, “I... I was thinking that I would, yes.” He says. “I was the one who hurt you, after all. If... If you’re open to the idea of doing this, then maybe...” He’s no longer looking at Izzy at this point. “Maybe this could be a way to show our commitment to healing... together?”  

Izzy bites his lip, trying and failing to meet Ed’s eyes, “You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”   

“...Honestly? I’ve been thinking about it ever since...”   

Ever since that infection had nearly claimed his life. In other words, ever since he’d had the awareness and clarity to fully comprehend what it was that he’d done. The toe was not the root of all of their problems—but everything had really started to spiral the moment he’d cut it off. There was no changing what’d happened. Even if Izzy were to agree to do this, it wouldn’t change the fact that Ed had maimed him, nor would it magically make the toe grow back. All Ed could do was show Izzy that it would never happen again—because words were cheap, and Izzy had been lied to often enough by Ed, specifically that he knew better than to trust blindly.   

Ed wanted to do this because he was sorry —and even if Izzy does find it in his heart to one day forgive him for what he’s done, Ed knows that he’ll never be able to forgive himself. This tattoo is meant to be healing for Izzy and self-flagellation for Ed. And Izzy knows this all-too-well... it’s what keeps him from responding immediately, despite being... at least open to the idea.   

“Can I think about it?” He asks, after a beat. Ed visibly deflates, relief and something else coloring his features.   

“Yeah. Yeah, of course, mate.” He leans over, pressing a gentle kiss to the crown of Izzy’s head... Izzy keens at the gentle attention, snuggling down a little closer into Ed’s side. “Take all of the time that you need.”