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Chapter Text

It was as perfect a moment as you ever got at sea. The sails were fat with westward wind, the Revenge plunging into the sunset swift and true as a blade toward a heart. Blood-orange light spilled from the horizon and painted everything in its magic glow, and here was Ed Teach in the center of it. He stood at the prow of the ship, proud, hopeful and ready for his next adventure.

A perfect moment, and like most perfect things, it didn’t last.

As he cast his eyes over the cerulean waters, he was given pause by a darkness off the port bow. There was something beneath the surface, something big. And it was moving fast enough to keep pace with the ship, as if she were a fish who had caught the attention of a predator.

“Izzy!” he called. “Hey, Iz, come and take a look at this.”

He waved his arm in a beckoning gesture without looking around. If he was on deck, he knew Izzy would be as well, one ear cocked in Ed’s direction to listen for orders. His presence was as reliable as the pistol at Edward’s hip, but this time he failed to materialize, and Ed thought he saw that dark presence in the water draw a little closer.

“Izzy?”

He looked around. The crew of the Revenge were hard at work, but Izzy wasn’t among them, and suddenly Ed remembered with a dull ache that Izzy had left at the last port. An argument, a stupid quarrel the kind of which they’d had dozens, but for some reason this one was the last straw for Izzy, and he was never coming back. Ed could remember the pain of watching him go, but he couldn’t remember what the fight had been about, and somehow that made it hurt all the more. As if maybe in the end, the specifics didn’t matter, that losing Izzy had been inevitable from the start and there was nothing Ed could have done to prevent it.

The darkness was still out there, still keeping abreast with the ship. It faded from midnight blue at the edges to dead black in the center, and the longer Ed stared, the more convinced he became that that blackness was actually an eye, and it was looking at him.

“Fuck this,” Ed muttered, and went to take the helm. It was probably just a whale, or a pod of them. They could get paranoid when they had calves to protect; Ed knew the feeling. He pulled toward starboard, hard, to give them more space. The ship creaked in protest at the rough treatment, but the crew didn’t seem to notice. None of them even looked up from what they were doing.

It was crowded down there. They had taken on more crew, and Ed only recognized about half the faces he saw.

He stepped down and slowly crossed the deck, waiting for someone to look up and acknowledge him. Everyone kept their heads down, their eyes turned away, but Ed thought he heard whispers as he passed. Anger flared up in his gut and he whirled at the nearest source of sound, which turned out to be Jim and Frenchie. They greeted him with identical sullen eyes and tightly pursed lips.

“The fuck is going on?” Ed demanded, his hand automatically falling to the hilt of his knife. “Why’s everyone acting so weird?”

Frenchie shushed Ed with a finger to his lips, then pointed out over the taffrail. The darkness had moved to the starboard side of the ship, and it seemed to have grown even bigger, bigger than any whale Ed had ever seen, and far too solid to be a group of them.

“What the fuck,” Ed whispered, and Jim grabbed him by the front of his jacket and pulled him down to face them.

“Shut up,” they hissed. “Don’t let it know we’re here.”

Ed heard the fury in their voice, however hushed, and underneath that something like disgust. He glanced back up and saw the shape beneath the water move. A rippling, grasping motion.

Tentacles. The thing had tentacles.

Fuck. Fuck.

Ed ripped himself out of Jim’s grasp and fled, lunging toward the door to the captain’s quarters. He had to find Stede. He had to warn him that there was something out there, something that wanted Ed but would take the rest of them if it had to.

Jump over the side, a voice in his head suggested coolly. It’s the only way to save them. It won’t come after them if you give yourself up.

A whimper of fear stuck in Ed’s throat. He needed Stede. Stede would be able to help him, would be able to think of a way to keep them all safe. He tore through the cabin, yanking back curtains and flinging open doors. He could smell Stede, his perfume and the tang of his sweat, but he was nowhere to be seen, and soon Ed was charging through the secret passageways of the ship in a panic. He hadn’t brought a light, and as he plunged into the bowels of the ship the darkness closed around him and he realized it was too late, the beast was coming for him, and any second he would feel its cold and inescapable grip around his neck-

“Ed. Ed. Wake up, darling, it’s okay.”

Ed opened his eyes, and the darkness cracked at its center to let cool blue light come flooding in. He could still smell Stede, but now he could feel him too, a sense of warmth at his back, wrapping around him to hold him tight.

“It’s alright,” Stede’s voice puffed against his ear. “Just a bad dream, love. You’re safe.”

Relief surged through Ed’s veins and set his arms and legs to tingling. He shifted in Stede’s arms until they were face to face, all the better to wrap his arms and legs around him and squeeze him closer. Stede laughed as the air was forced from his lungs, a soft sound that turned into a hum as Ed kissed him. It was warm and gentle and chased all the nightmare feelings away, faster and surer than any intoxicant Ed had ever tried. If the way kissing Stede felt could be bottled, Ed didn’t think he’d ever need to touch a drop of rum again.

Through his nightshirt, he felt a familiar twitch against his thigh. He looked down between them, then back up into Stede’s eyes, which had taken on a shade of unease.

“Sorry,” he whispered. “That’s maybe not appropriate, is it?”

Instead of disagreeing out loud, Ed tightened his grip around Stede’s waist and rolled. Stede’s eyes widened adorably as he found himself on top of Ed. With one hand, Ed cupped the back of Stede’s neck; with the other he reached down to hitch his nightshirt up over his knees so he could wrap his legs around Stede’s hips, make it as clear as he possibly could that he didn’t want him going anywhere.

Amidst the jostling he felt Stede’s dick twitch again. His own responded in kind, their hardnesses pressing against each other through their clothes. Ed rolled his hips, savoring the warm friction, the comforting sturdiness of Stede’s weight pinning him to the mattress. They kissed again, open-mouthed, and even with the dry lips and morning breath it was perfect.

“You are so lovely,” Stede sighed. His fingers danced over Ed’s jawline, nails raking lightly through the stubble on his chin. “How on earth did I get so lucky?”

Even as he spoke, his hips were building up a rhythm, an insistent grind that contrasted deliciously against his tender sentiments. Ed fucking adored Stede like this, when he was right on that line between the gentleman and the pirate, trying to be proper while he took what he wanted by the fistful. Now that Stede was gaining some confidence, he was proving to be a vigorous, even demanding sexual partner. He’d put Ed through his paces last night, leaving him sore and panting and so fucking happy, he thought the top of his head might fall right off from the way he’d been smiling afterward.

This morning was more of an echo than a full reprise, the acrobatics put aside in favor of this comforting closeness. Ed nestled his face in the crook of Stede’s neck and breathed him in, savoring how safe he felt like this. Being with Stede didn’t just chase away the nightmares; it kept the colder parts of reality at bay as well. When it got really good, Ed could almost completely forget who he was.

They peaked within a few seconds of each other, then lay together kissing with all sense of urgency gone. Ed probably could have drifted back to sleep, but the come drying on his thighs was starting to get uncomfortable, and with that small concession to reality the rest of the day ahead started to roll in. He had a ship to keep afloat, a crew to feed, and it was going to be all that much harder, because Izzy…

Wait.

“Stede.” Ed rolled onto his side. “Izzy’s here, right? He didn’t leave again?”

Stede blinked. “Of course not. Not unless he snuck out last night, for some reason. Wait, is that what you were dreaming about?”

Confusion and relief swirled through Ed’s post-orgasmic haze, making him dizzy. It wasn’t like Izzy being gone had been the most hands-down disturbing part of the dream; it had just felt so much more real than the rest of it. Real enough that Ed’s waking mind had just accepted it as a matter of course, a dull pain that not even waking up next to Stede could chase away.

But there hadn’t needed to be any pain at all. Everything was fine.

“Ed? Are you okay?”

Ed swallowed around an unexpected lump in his throat. “Yeah, mate,” he whispered. “I”m great. ‘Scuse me a minute, yeah? I just need to go check on something.”

Izzy didn’t believe in curses, or bad juju, or any of that superstitious nonsense, but he recognized a pattern when he saw one. After four straight nights of waking up in his cabin in a cold sweat, struggling against imaginary chains, or being sent into a chest-cracking panic by the sound of a footfall outside his door, he decided the modicum of privacy wasn’t worth the stress. His sense of pride in his status as first mate might have made him hold out a little longer, but the truth was, Izzy wasn’t sure if he was first mate anymore. The chain of command on the Revenge was fucked, always had been, and Izzy’s new level of intimacy with the captains made his rank all the murkier.

With no clear successor to the role apparent, Izzy turned the first mate’s cabin over to the crew. To Izzy’s surprise, and Bonnet’s almost speechless delight, they decided to share it, turning it into what Frenchie dubbed a “recuperation room.” They’d stocked it with candles, and hung some bundles of herbs and flowers up to make it smell nice, and made a rule that anyone who wanted to be alone could stay in there for as long as they needed, and no one was allowed to interrupt them. Mostly it had just been Wee John and Frenchie using it, but so far no one had complained.

Perhaps it was this unexpected display of goodwill that made Izzy feel comfortable sleeping out on deck again, or maybe the fresh air was just a nice change. Whatever the reason, his sleep in a hammock on the quarterdeck was leagues better than it had been in his cabin. When he woke up, he didn’t have to remind himself that he wasn’t rotting in the Falling Star’s hold- the stars above and the snores of the nearby crew did that for him. And the ambient noise of the sea, the wind, the creak of the rigging, formed a soothing lullaby that drowned out any unexpected noises. The only downside to sleeping on deck was getting up in the night to piss and running into Buttons, who more often than not would be naked as a jaybird and babbling about the whispers of the moon, but Izzy could tolerate this absurdity in exchange for waking up feeling actually refreshed.

As for the nights Izzy spent in the captains’ cabin, well, they had their own risks, and rewards. But there was never very much sleeping done in there.

It was Izzy’s habit to wake before dawn, ground into him by a life spent at sea, but his duties aboard the Revenge rarely called for him to be up and about so early. Usually he just lay awake, mentally preparing himself for the day ahead, trying to predict the next harebrained scheme Ed or Bonnet would come up with. So he was fully awake this morning, when he heard footsteps approaching, and sharp enough to recognize Edward’s gait even before he loomed into view.

“Captain,” he said, struggling to sit up in his hammock. “Am I needed?”

“Could say that,” Ed replied, his voice rough with recent sleep. “But you don’t need to get up.”

He pushed Izzy back down with a hand on his shoulder, then clambered into the hammock next to him. Izzy made an indignant noise as he was jostled to make room, a noise that was cut off when Ed’s arms snaked around him and squeezed, hard. Ed was wearing one of Bonnet’s robes, unfastened, and just a thin nightshirt underneath, and Izzy could feel through the fabric how warm he was, almost feverish.

“Fucking hell, Edward,” Izzy muttered, twisting his head to avoid getting a face-full of silver hair. “You know you reek of sex?”

“Yeah,” Ed sighed happily. His right hand, which had been resting on Izzy’s chest, began to creep downward. “Want some?”

Izzy’s breath caught in his throat as Ed’s fingers teased for a moment over the tender skin on his belly, then began to pluck at his laces. It wasn’t fair, how even as Izzy grew accustomed to touching Edward, dutifully memorizing the surest ways to bring his captain pleasure, he was still rendered speechless when Edward turned the tables on him. Here he was, fully hard already, from nothing but the brush of Ed’s fingers and the feel of his breath on his neck. It was embarrassing, to be so nakedly besotted. All the more so because there wasn’t a damn thing Izzy intended to do about it.

“The crew,” he whispered, a token protest that he couldn’t even be bothered to put any force behind. Ed finished undoing his laces, and he shivered as the cool morning air struck him where he was most sensitive.

“They won’t hear us,” Ed replied, warm and smug against Izzy’s ear. “And I bet they’ll keep their mouths shut about it if they do.”

Fuck. That should have been enough to snap Izzy out of it, the thought of the crew hearing him getting jacked off in his hammock like a witless cabin boy. Instead it made him clench his teeth to hold back a groan, and his dick fairly jumped in Ed’s hand. Ed’s knowing chuckle in response only served to sharpen the humiliation.

“My Izzy. You’re mine and everyone knows it, don’t they?”

Izzy nodded helplessly, his eyes falling shut as Ed’s words flowed into him like sweet poison. He pointedly did not strain to listen for any sound of stirring from the deck below. They’d get over it, if they heard anything, and fuck it, Izzy did want them to know. He wanted everyone in the world to know that he belonged to Edward, in any role his captain would have him. First mate, bedwarmer, confidante, it didn’t matter as long as Izzy’s place in the world was near the man he loved.

At least Ed was showing him mercy in not deliberately teasing him. His grip stayed warm and strong as he worked up a steady rhythm, one that quickly had Izzy curling his toes and clenching his fists at his sides. He turned and buried his face against Ed’s shoulder, lost himself in the billowing fog of his hair, and came as quickly and quietly as he could manage. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he saw lights that flickered like flames, and his spend felt almost molten-hot against his skin.

And then all was quiet and still again.

“You won’t leave me,” Ed murmured, his voice heavy like he was drifting back to sleep. “Will you, Iz?”

“Never,” Izzy promised. “Not ’til I’m dead.”

“Mm. Come have breakfast with me’n’Stede.”

Izzy wasn’t sure how one request logically followed the other, but the connections Edward’s mind made were often a mystery to him. And he was hungry, now that the heady draught of lust and sleep was wearing off.

“You’re telling me His Nibs will deign to get up before noon? Must be a fucking miracle.”

“Yup.” Ed kissed Izzy’s cheek, long and hard. “’It’s gonna be a good day, Iz. Let’s get moving and make the most of it.”

When Stede had first begun dreaming of a life at sea, he’d had a very vivid picture of what mealtimes on his ship would be like. He’d imagined laughter and high spirits, lingering with Mary over wine as they recounted the day’s adventures, the children practicing sea shanties with the crew. Even after Mary had shut down the idea of them all going to sea together, Stede had continued to look forward to a future of sitting at the head of a table and seeing nothing but smiling faces.

Of course, he’d been disabused of that notion quickly. None of the crew had been comfortable enough to dine with him in his cabin in the early days, and his one attempt to join them in the galley instead had been met with such frosty suspicion that he’d retreated almost immediately. He’d resigned himself to dining alone, and tried to console himself with the wisdom that it was impossible to be left out of one’s own company.

Then Ed had changed all that, as he had changed so many things, and mealtimes became the scene of laughter and camaraderie that Stede had been longing for. Ed had enough thrilling stories for a whole table’s worth of seamen, and, miraculously, he seemed to actually be interested in hearing what Stede had to contribute as well. Seated next to Ed, giggling at a private joke or watching his lovely eyes sparkle as he took in some new delicacy from the kitchen, Stede could only look back on his old life with something like horror at what he had almost missed out on.

Now things were changing again, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it. On one hand, he still had Ed here with him, who’s company was as delightful as ever. On the other hand, now Izzy was joining them more often, and that made things…complicated. There was an unusual silence at the breakfast table; Ed seemed lost in thought, and Izzy was hunched over his plate as if dining were an arduous task best completed as quickly as possible.

“These biscuits are nice,” he said, to anyone who cared to listen. “Roach said he used pink peppercorns to flavor them. I didn’t even know peppercorns came in pink.”

“Hm?” Ed blinked slowly and turned his way. “Oh, yeah. Come in all sorts of colors. Pink, black, green. Had a spice merchant try to sell me some blue ones, once, but I’m pretty sure they were just mouse shit dipped in paint.”

“It’d be great to try some of the other kinds side by side. I could ask Roach to make an assortment, next time.”

“We should start a book of recipes. Blackbeard and the Gentleman Pirate’s Big Book of Biscuits. Be real popular, I bet.”

“Oh, there’s an idea.” Stede smiled and turned to Izzy, who was now turning a biscuit over in his hands with a look of grave concentration. “What do you think, Izzy? We could find ourselves a little printing press, turn the ship into a floating publishing house! Start a line of cookbooks.”

Izzy looked up, making a face as if Stede had sloshed tea into his lap. “Who the fuck goes to sea with a printing press?”

“Well, maybe we can find one on land and buy it,” Stede sniffed.

Izzy muttered something into his mug of tea that Stede resolved to let go. He really didn’t mean to bicker with Izzy constantly. It just seemed to be the only way they knew how to talk to each other.

He drew a breath, perhaps to steer the conversation to something that Izzy would find more agreeable, but before he could speak there was a perfunctory knock at the door. Buttons let himself in, his face and bearing as solemn as ever.

“Captain,” he said, nodding at Stede. “Captain. Mr. Hands. Thought you’d like to know we’re on course to cross paths with a merchant vessel bound for Charles Town. Should be laden with some tasty goods, ‘less my nose deceives me.”

“How long we got?” Ed asked, the light in his eyes going sharp and cold.

“Reckon with someone nimble at the helm, we could be on her in less than an hour, even if she spots us and tries to run.”

Ed pushed his plate away. “I’ll get us there in thirty minutes. Tell the crew to prepare for a raid.”

Buttons departed with another nod, while Stede and Izzy stared at Ed with competing dubious looks, which Ed either didn’t notice or chose to ignore.

“Real talk, have you ever seen that guy actually use a spyglass?” he observed thoughtfully.

“Thirty minutes to prepare for a raid?” Stede asked. “Isn’t that a little hasty?”

“It’d be fine for a normal crew,” Izzy said. “But in this case, Bonnet’s right, Ed. I doubt most of them have gotten around to their morning piss yet, let alone made themselves combat ready.”

Ed shrugged. “So we do it old school. Fly the Blackbeard flag, wait for them to finish shitting themselves long enough to surrender, stroll over there and take our pick of the loot. Won’t have to fire a shot, I bet.”

Tense silence fell as both men mulled this over. Stede couldn’t speak for Izzy, but to him, something felt off about Ed’s breezy confidence; a sour note in a familiar melody.

“We could just skip it,” he offered. “We’re pretty well stocked for supplies, are we not?” He turned to Izzy for support, but Izzy was focused on Edward and didn’t even glance his way.

A small, complicated smile played over Ed’s face. “Nah. It’s not about the loot. It’s about giving them a story to take home, right, Izzy?”

Stede thought he saw Izzy hesitate, just the barest clench of his jaw before he spoke, but then all he did was nod and say, “As you say, captain.”

“Right.” Ed got up, shoving his chair back from the table with a tad bit of excessive force, then looked between the two of them with another complicated smile.

“See you on deck, love,” he said, and dipped low to kiss Stede on the corner of his mouth. He turned like he might be about to do the same thing to Izzy, but the first mate chose that moment to shove a biscuit into his mouth, so Ed just nodded at him and turned away. They both watched him go, Stede silent, Izzy chewing with the joyless monotony of a cow in a field.

“Peppercorns,” Izzy muttered. “Fuck me.”

“S’cuse me?”

Izzy jumped, as if he’d managed to forget Stede was even there. He swallowed his mouthful of biscuit and chased it down with a gulp of tea.

“Used to be weeks’d go by,” he said, “and all I could get out of him was ‘yeah, okay,’ or ‘fuck off, Iz, I’m tired.’ Even during the good times, we wouldn’t talk all that much. Now you’ve got him rambling on about fucking peppercorns.”

Stede furrowed his brow. “Spices are interesting. And what’s your point, anyway?”

“My point is, I can’t tell what he’s going to do anymore. Not like I used to.” Izzy’s eyes were tired as he looked back at Stede. “And I’d feel better about that if I got the sense that you could. But you have no idea either, do you?”
,
“Well…no, not really,” Stede admitted. “But that’s part of the fun of it, right?”

Izzy sighed, in a way that made it very clear he was holding back another acidic comment. Stede wondered, not for the first time, how much credit he ought to extend Izzy for being nicer, when he was so dramatically transparent about the effort it was costing him.

Do it for Ed, he reminded himself. And it wasn’t as if Izzy was entirely without redeeming qualities. It was just easier to remember them when he wasn’t speaking.

“Go and get properly dressed,” Izzy said. “We can at least get you warmed up and ready to fight, in the time we have.”

“You think there will be fighting?” Stede sort of hated to ask the question, knowing it made him sound cowardly, but if he was frightened of anything it was the possibility that Ed had misjudged the situation. It happened so rarely, but it always seemed to turn out catastrophically when he did.

Izzy shook his head. “I doubt it. But I didn’t survive this long by assuming that everything was going to work out in our favor. And you won’t, either.”

“It’s worked for me so far. I survived you trying to kill me a couple times,” Stede couldn’t resist pointing out.

“Trust me Bonnet,” Izzy snapped, his mouth twisting like he’d bitten into a lemon. “The next person who comes for you will try harder.”

His eyes drifted to Ed’s empty place at the table, and Stede’s followed.

“Because you won’t really be the one they’re after.”

Chapter Text

“Oh.” Bonnet looked out over the railing to the merchant ship and wrinkled his nose. “Is that it?”

Izzy hated to admit it, but the man had a point. As Ed had predicted, they had caught up with the ship in thirty minutes (twenty-eight, actually,) and as expected, the white flag had gone up almost immediately. Still, something about the sight of the whole crew lined up on deck with all the loot neatly piled in front of them, rigid as schoolchildren awaiting discipline, didn’t sit right. Ed had one leg up on the taffrail, getting ready to swing over, and Izzy caught his elbow before he could jump.

“Something’s off, boss. This looks like a trick.”

Ed turned to look at Izzy, but his eyes seemed far away. He’d done the eye- and beard- shadow thing again, and while Izzy understood the intimidation factor he was going for, he didn’t think it was supposed to make him look tired.

“Hm? Oh, yeah, totally. I’m guessing there’s something on board they really don’t want us to find, judging by how they’ve hauled all the loot out for us already. Maybe some rich knob’s antique coin collection or something. Worth looking into.”

Izzy could feel Stede hovering at his side, but the other captain didn’t speak up. Probably he’d already fallen under the spell of Ed’s easy confidence. Izzy could relate, but it was frustrating.

“You don’t think that maybe we should proceed with a bit more caution?”

“We’re already here, mate,” Ed pointed out. “We dilly-dally much longer and they’re gonna think they’ve got us scared. Someone might decide to be a hero. We already know they’re hiding something. How much more prepared can we be?”

As was often the infuriating case, Izzy couldn’t think of an argument to that right that very second. Ed, already well aware that’s what would happen, swung out to the other ship with a whoop. Izzy saw a tremor pass through the captive crew as he landed, a low collective moan of fear. Ed was a hell of a sight, all leather and charisma and storm-colored hair blowing in the wind. In a way, Izzy envied these twats who were getting to lay their eyes on him for the first time, even though he doubted any one of them would appreciate it the way they ought to.

Stede swung over next, with Izzy bringing up the rear. By the time his boots touched the deck of their conquest, Ed was already launching into his victory speech.

“Hullo, everyone. First off, yes, it’s me, the one and only Blackbeard. Kindly hold any screams or fainting spells until the end of this little introduction, thanks a bundle. Any sudden noises or movements are likely to be met with-“

Ed drew his pistol and fired, and a seaman in the front went down, screaming and clutching his right arm. Izzy was pretty sure the poor bastard hadn’t been about to try anything, but he was one of the bigger and more seasoned-looking of the bunch. Izzy would have picked him off early, too.

“-with that. Got it? No more sudden moves. Fang, take care of that noise, would you?”

The injured man’s crewmates drew back in horror as Fang advanced and pulled the man into a chokehold.

“There you go, just hush up a bit now, there’s a good boy.”

The screams trailed off into a gurgling sound, then stopped. Fang dropped the unconscious man at his feet and looked back at Ed. “Want me to toss him overboard, captain?”

“Stop! Please, I implore you to stop.” A weak-chinned man near the back of the line spoke up, shouldering his way to stand next to the captain and the first mate, both of whom seemed none too pleased to hear from him. “I’m the owner of this vessel. We don’t want any trouble. Take what you came for and go, but spare these good men.”

The silence stretched out tight as a violin string as Ed turned to face the interruption. He took two steps forward, boots thudding heavily upon the deck, and Izzy saw the weak-chinned man’s Adam’s apple bob up and down.

“Owner, are ya? Rich boy out for a little pleasure cruise?”

“N-no,” the ship’s owner stammered. “I’m just a humble merchant, trying to make an honest living.”

Ed laughed, sharp and mirthless. “Maybe you are. Or maybe you’ve got something hidden belowdecks, something you don’t want the tax man to know about. Trouble is, you can’t declare it stolen either, if that’s the case. Your loss, ol’ Blackbeard’s gain. Would we find anything like that, if we had a look?”

“No!” the owner repeated, too quickly. “Just- just go, just take what you came for and get these- these degenerates off my ship-“

An affronted murmur rippled through the crew of the Revenge, and of course that was when Stede felt the need to step in.

“I’d take that back, if I were you,” he said, swaggering up next to Ed and putting his hand on his sword hilt. “If you think I’m going to stand idly by and let you insult my crew like that, you’ve got another thing coming.”

The ship’s owner blinked. “I’m sorry, your crew? I thought Blackbeard was the captain.”

“Yeah, babe, not really the time to get into the whole co-captain thing,“ Ed whispered to Stede.

“Well, why not?” Stede asked. “We’re Blackbeard and the Gentleman Pirate, remember? This is a joint operation.”

“No, I know, but I was hoping we could make our debut together more of, like, a thing, you know? Like some big, badass spectacle. This is more your run-of-the-mill shit, just thought it would be easier if we did things by the numbers-“

“That’s what you said last time-“

“’S’cuse me, but do you guys need us for any of this?” That was from Jim, who was holding a knife to the back of the first mate’s neck. “Or can we get back to the actual raid part of the raid?”

“Right. Sorry.” Stede held his hands up in a “carry-on” gesture, but as he retreated he leaned close to Ed and muttered, “We’re going to need to talk about this.”

Ed gave the barest hint of a nod, then drew his knife and rounded back on the ship’s owner. He shoved the tip of the knife under the cowering man’s chin.

“Okay, then, Mr. Humble’n’Honest. Let’s start by checking out your cabin, yeah? Izzy, with me.”

Izzy drew his sword and headed toward the main cabin, Ed following and dragging the pleading owner in tow. When he kicked the door down, he immediately saw that Ed was right. The furniture in the room had all been conspicuously moved to one side, piled up in front of a sturdy oak wardrobe. Whatever the owner was hiding was clearly in there.

Still unwilling to dismiss the possibility of a trap, Izzy kept his sword in hand as he pushed the obstacles aside. He heard one last muffled squawk of protest from behind him as he seized the wardrobe door and flung it wide.

“Oh, fuck,” he muttered.

The wardrobe contained no hidden riches, nor any interesting contraband. Huddled inside were two children, a girl and a boy. The girl looked to be about ten, the boy a few years younger. Both of them stared up at Izzy with tearful eyes, and the girl wrapped her arms around the boy as if she meant to shield him with her body.

“What is it?” Ed said, then stepped closer so he could peer around Izzy. He still had the ship’s owner in a headlock. “Oh, fuck.”

“What’s all this?” Stede butted in, because apparently it hadn’t occurred to him that at least part of the chain of command ought to remain on deck. Izzy didn’t dare take his eyes off the children, either of whom could be concealing a knife or a letter opener, but he heard Stede lumbering up behind him, and then a soft gasp. “Oh-”

“You unprincipled mongrel,” the owner screamed. “You lay one hand on my children, and you’ll be hunted down like the filthy dog you are-“

The man’s words were cut off by the hefty thud of a blow to the stomach. He fell into Izzy’s peripheral vision on all fours, wheezing, and Edward placed a boot in the center of his back and drove him flat.

“I’d try keeping that mouth shut, mate,” Ed growled. “It’s gotten you nothing but trouble since we came on board.”

He looked up at the kids, both of whom cowered. His expression was unreadable, the natural warmth in his eyes smothered beneath the black smeared around them. The boy sobbed and buried his face against his sister’s shoulder.

Ed didn’t move. The seconds stretched until Izzy could feel the whole situation threatening to snap, plunging them into chaos.

“We’ll handle it.”

It was Stede who spoke, his voice full of faux-bravado. Izzy could easily imagine him squaring his shoulders and puffing out his chest. “The great Blackbeard need not concern himself with such…trifles. Let me and Izzy sort this out for you, Edw- Captain.”

Ed’s posture relaxed, by a fraction at least.

“Right.”

He dug his heel into the small of the ship owner’s back, making him groan. Izzy finally tore his gaze away from the children to turn to both his captains.

“Take care of this,” Ed said. “Do whatever Stede says.”

Izzy winced. He wasn’t about to question Blackbeard’s orders in front of a hostage, but he dearly wished this particular order had been phrased to give him a bit more leeway. As it was, he could only be grateful that the man on the floor couldn’t see Stede beaming with excitement.

“As you wish, Captain.”

Ed left, and Stede stepped up to take his place. He smiled awkwardly at the children, then toed the man in the ribs with the tip of his beribboned shoe.

“I think you’ll find it easier to catch your breath if you roll over,” he said. “Less pressure on the abdomen.”

“Sir,” the man wheezed. “Please, sir. My children are innocent…”

Stede arched an eyebrow. “Oh, it’s sir now, is it? What happened to ‘unprincipled mongrel?’”

“You’re not…like him,” the owner said. “He’s a…a monster, but you’re a man. A man who can….choose mercy. I can see it.”

Stede’s face darkened dramatically.

“Get up,” he ordered, in a voice that even Izzy had to admit sounded ominous. Apparently it was lost on the ship’s owner, who actually looked pleased as he clambered to his feet.

“There,” he said, straightening up. “I knew that you would be reasonab-“

The crack across the jaw must have come as quite a surprise- Izzy certainly wasn’t expecting it. For all his foppish mannerisms, Stede packed quite the punch when he had a mind to. The man staggered backward, and the children wailed.

“Izzy,” Stede said, massaging his knuckles with his other hand. “Secure our…friend here, somewhere out of the way, where we don’t have to listen to him anymore. I think we’ve heard enough out of him.”

That was an order Izzy was happy to carry out. He marched the man over to his bunk to tie him up there.

“Your days are numbered, scoundrel,” the man hissed. Fucker was worse than Stede when it came to not knowing when to shut up. “Blackbeard’s face and ship are known at every port from here to Bristol, him and his…fancy little friend there. Every navy in the civilized world wants his head. There’s not a corner of the earth you can flee to where you won’t be hunted down.”

Izzy gagged the idiot with a couple of his lacy handkerchiefs, and took particular pleasure in pulling the knots as tight as he could. Over by the wardrobe, Stede nodded approvingly.

“Much better. As for our young friends here, I’m sure we can work something out.“

Izzy hurried back over and pulled Stede a couple steps aside, making sure he could still keep an eye on the children.

“Whatever your plan is next, you need to really think about it,” he whispered. “You’re a known associate of Blackbeard. You can’t do anything that would weaken his reputation.”

Stede looked alarmed. “I’m certainly not going to harm those children, if that’s what you’re implying,” he whispered fiercely.

“Then you better think of a good excuse not to,” Izzy replied. “We don’t want word getting around that Blackbeard’s crew has any soft touches on it.”

A pained look flashed across Stede’s face. “Fine. Then what do we do?”

Izzy shrugged. “You told Ed you could handle it. So handle it.”

“I said you and I could handle it! The least you can do is help me.”

“I am helping you. I’m reminding you to use your fucking head before you open your mouth and something insane falls out of it.”

“Fine,” Stede huffed. “Just…fine. Okay, let’s think. What would Ed do?”

Izzy ground his molars and tried to think. It still bothered him, how hard answering that question had become, even as the intimacy between them grew. Like every time Izzy inched closer to understanding him, Ed retreated an equal distance away.

Stede turned back to the children, and adopted a stern look.

“Right. Here’s the deal, kids. Blackbeard knows you’ve got a very valuable treasure hidden somewhere in here. Hand it over, and no one has to get hurt.”

“We haven’t got any treasure,” the girl said. She was still clinging fiercely to the boy, and her eyes burned like embers in her little face. “Father said the crew put anything worth taking out on deck.”

“Ah, you see, that was just a trick, to keep us from finding the real treasure.” Stede stooped, and peered closer at the kids. The boy shrank back, but the girl continued to stare up him. “And look at this. What’s that you’re wearing around your neck?”

“It’s nothing.” The girl was already reaching up to unclasp the delicate chain. Izzy hadn’t even noticed it until Stede pointed it out. “It’s just a necklace. I got it at the last port we stopped in.”

She held it out for Stede to get a better look. It was like any other necklace that Izzy had seen for sale by the hundreds in portside markets, silver chain from which dangled colorful shells and bits of sea glass. The person selling it had probably charged the girl twenty times what it was really worth, and her father had probably paid for it without batting an eye. Fucking tourists.

“Could it be? Do my eyes deceive me?” Stede knelt before the girl and waved Izzy to his side. “Izzy, look. I do believe our friend here- what’s your name, miss?”

The girl’s nose wrinkled suspiciously. “Charlotte.”

“Oh, that’s a nice name. Izzy, unless I’m mistaken, I do believe our friend Charlotte is in possession of the fabled Pepperton family necklace! Come on, take a closer look.”

Izzy wasn’t about to join Stede in crawling on the floor, thank you very much, but he craned his neck in a pantomime of deep scrutiny. “I do believe you’re correct, sir. You can tell from the, uh…”

“The striations in the gemstones. That’s exactly what I was thinking.” Stede beamed. “This is clearly the treasure that Blackbeard was looking for. Surrender it, and we’ll let the whole ship go free. We’ll even leave you with enough supplies to last you to the next port.”

Izzy did a double take. “We’ll fucking what-”

Stede elbowed him the gut before he could finish. “What do you say, Miss Charlotte? Do we have a deal?”

Charlotte’s eyes moved warily between Stede and Izzy, and the unnamed boy looked them both full in the face for the first time as well. Izzy felt a surge of bile toward their shit-for-brains father, wanted to go back over the bunk and thrash him a bit more for bringing them out here. He had no idea how lucky he’d been, that the Revenge was the ship that had caught them.

“Deal,” Charlotte said, and dropped the necklace into Stede’s outstretched hand.

“Excellent.” Stede straightened back up, tucking the necklace into his pocket. A grin that he no doubt fancied as roguish was breaking across his face as he turned to Izzy. “Go and tell Blackbeard the treasure is ours.”

Izzy quickly turned his face away to hide a scowl. Enough supplies to get this ship to port was probably half of what was worth taking to begin with. This whole raid was shaping up to be a gigantic waste of time, but at least Ed would probably get a kick out of what Stede had done. Maybe it would cheer him up, keep his dark mood away for a little longer.

Then Izzy remembered the look on the children’s faces when they had first seen Edward looming over them, and felt that hope turn sour.

Evenings after a successful raid tended to be lively. Regardless of how much plunder they had actually taken on, the thrill of the hunt seemed to be reward enough to warrant music and sometimes even dancing. Stede loved it, although he rarely was moved to participate. Mostly he was content to sit on the sidelines with Ed, and enjoy the company of their crew- their family- in happy silence.

Tonight, though, the first song was barely over before Ed tapped Stede gently on the shoulder.

“I’m off to bed, mate.”

Stede looked up from his perch on the steps, surprised. “Oh. Okay. Did you want me to come with, or…?”

“That’s alright.” Ed smiled and dropped a kiss on the crown of Stede’s head. “I’m really just tired. You guys have fun.”

“Alright.” Stede squeezed Ed’s hand and let him go, wondering why he was suddenly worried. It certainly wasn’t unusual for Edward to get sleepy at odd times; his catlike napping habits often put his rhythms far out of sync with Stede’s. But something had been off about Ed all day, and his sudden departure left Stede feeling cold, in a way that should have been impossible in the sultry Caribbean air.

He leaned his head against the railing and tried to put it out of his mind. Wee John, clad in an evening gown artfully crafted from repurposed nets, stepped forward to sing a ballad with a haunted, heartfelt melody.

Ne me quitte pas.

Il faut oublier.

Tout peut s’oublier, qui s’enfuit déjà…

In truth, Stede didn’t remember very much French from school. Maybe it was time to take it up again. It was the language of love, after all, and Stede was a man in love.

He felt a presence behind him, and turned, hoping Ed had come back. Instead, he found himself looking up at Izzy, seated a few steps above him, looking like he was the one who ought to have turned in early. In the torchlight, from this angle, the dark circles under his eyes were harshly pronounced. He had a bottle in his hand, the glass too clouded by dirt and fingerprints to figure the contents.

“Ed’s off to bed,” Stede told him. “Thought he might want company, but he said he was just tired.”

Izzy nudged one shoulder up and down. “It’s tiring work, our lot.”

Stede assumed that would be the end of the conversation, and had fully turned around again before Izzy spoke again.

“That was good, what you did back there. With those kids. You handled it well.”

“Ah.” Stede had actually been trying rather hard not to think about that. His memory kept replacing the two children’s faces with more familiar ones. “Yes, well. Hopefully those two will learn to be a bit more polite than their father.”

“Stupid fucking gobshite,” Izzy agreed. “Thought you’d have more sympathy for him, honestly. Didn’t expect you to hit him that hard.”

Stede’s first instinct was to bristle- Izzy didn’t really think he had so much in common with that clod, did he?- but he took a deep breath and kept his cool. “You heard what he called Ed.”

“That I did.” An unfamiliar expression crossed Izzy’s face, a look in his eyes that Stede could almost read as…affection? Approval? Whatever it was, it softened Izzy’s features and reminded Stede that, when Izzy wasn’t being a dick, he really didn’t mind looking at him.

Izzy took a swig from the bottle, and held it out to Stede. Stede accepted it, took a dubious sniff and was surprised to find it contained wine, something red and robust.

He fancied he could taste Izzy’s lips on the bottle when he drank. If so, it was the closest the two of them had come to sharing a kiss since that one time. Fraught with peril, Mad Monty’s men bearing down on them, and Izzy telling Stede, he can’t lose both of us. It had felt easy, to kiss Izzy then, just like it was easy to daydream about kissing a hero from a storybook. Kissing the actual flesh-and-blood man, the man who Stede lived and argued and shared a lover with, felt much more dangerous. Even when Ed wasn’t literally between them, he was metaphorically there. And where Stede’s relationship with Ed blossomed like a flower in the sun, whatever was between him and Izzy grew like an odd and fickle weed, one that would not stand to be deliberately cultivated.

He took another sip of the wine, then handed the bottle back. He tried not to fixate on the way their fingertips brushed when Izzy took it.

“Surprisingly good vintage,” Stede said. “Where’d you find it?”

Izzy grinned. “Mr. Honest Merchant’s chest of drawers. Call it a stupidity tax. To terrible fathers, eh, Bonnet?”

The children’s faces flared up in Stede’s mind. He shoved them back down before they could change.

“To terrible fathers,” he agreed, and waited patiently for the bottle to come his way again. He hoped the wine was strong enough to wash away the bitter taste of the words.

Ed really had planned to fall asleep. He was normally great at falling asleep, and staying asleep too. He’d once slept through the inn he was staying in catching on fire. He’d only noticed because he’d smelled the smoke and woken up hungry for bacon.

He should be sleeping now. But every time he closed his eyes, the faces of the cowering children were there, waiting for him. And something in the shadows behind them, something that smelled like low tide, cheap booze, and blood.

He tried looking out the window, out at the sea. The waters were calm, the moon was bright. He drew the bed curtains to wrap himself in a cocoon of glowing silver.

Look at you, hiding behind your mother’s skirts. Pathetic. Come here or I’ll really give you something to cry about.

He rolled onto his side and pulled the blankets over his head. The smell of Stede’s soap still lingered in the fabric.

This is your doing, woman. You’ve made my son soft.

He rolled onto his stomach, shoving his face into the pillow.

Look at me when I’m talking to you, boy.

“You’re dead,” Ed muttered, his mouth full of linen. “I don’t have to listen to this anymore.”

Aye, I’m dead. I’m nought but bones and fish shit, now. And who put me there, Eddie?

“The Kraken,” Ed answered stubbornly, like a child.

In Ed’s mind, his father laughed. In his mind, a deeper, darker voice joined in.

With a snarl of frustration, Ed heaved himself out of bed and braced for the ensuing headrush. It crossed his mind to go back out and rejoin the fun on deck, but the problem was he really wasn’t in the mood for fun. He just wanted to be asleep, to put some barrier between himself and this day. Leave those scared kids’ faces firmly in the past, and dive headlong into the future. There was better stuff waiting for him on the other side of tonight, he was sure of it.

He pulled his robe tighter around himself. He wasn’t cold, but the weight of the fabric reminded him where he was. He didn’t bother with a lantern as he crossed the cabin to the wardrobe; he’d lived here long enough to know his way around in the dark, and that was another source of comfort. By the time he hauled the small locked box out from its hiding spot, he felt calm enough to peruse the contents slowly, weighing in his mind what he actually needed, if anything.

There was opium, dark and resinous, and a pipeful of it would certainly help Ed relax, but it would also send his thoughts spiraling further off into deep water. Not a good idea for the mood he was in, with all those bad memories rolling around like unsecured cargo.

There was the powdered rhino horn, his secret ingredient in keeping up with the demands of two boyfriends. Getting a bit low there; he’d have to find a chance to slip away and stock up the next time they made port. There were tinctures and dried leaves the origin and purpose of which he’d forgotten, but held onto in the hope that he’d remember someday. There was a bottle with an entire preserved scorpion in it, a draught from which would cause a numbness that started at the lips and tongue and then turned to pure ice in the veins. The last time Ed had used that stuff, he’d taken a blow across the back of the head from a crossbeam and not moved an inch.

Lots of useful stuff, but what he needed tonight was stored in the smallest bottle, small enough that it easily nestled in the palm of his hand. Despite the meager amount, it was still mostly full. Ed rarely had any use for laudanum. It didn’t pay to be a heavy sleeper, in his line of work.

But tonight he could make an exception. He wasn’t the only captain on board, after all.

He put two drops in a glass of water and gulped it down, relief immediately blooming warm in his chest. Stede was here, and Izzy, and they were safe. The Revenge was special. The Kraken couldn’t reach them here.

Dreamless dark was waiting for Ed when he crawled back into bed, and he gratefully rolled into it and sank down, down, down.

Chapter Text

A bruised sort of silence followed, in the wake of the raid on the English merchant ship. Ed took to his cabin and stayed there, emerging only once in a while to scan the horizon and pass half-hearted directives on to the crew. Izzy, for his own part, assumed Stede would relish the opportunity to take on more captainly authority, and was surprised when instead Ed’s ennui seemed to be catching. He barely saw either one of them on deck for four straight days, and whenever he ventured into the captain’s cabin to report on something he’d find them lounging in their nightclothes or poking listlessly at trays of cold food. Izzy didn’t think they were even fucking; the electricity that normally existed between them had been replaced by an uneasy stillness. Izzy had been sailing long enough to have gotten caught in the doldrums a few times, and that was what going into Ed and Stede’s living space felt like.

He made up for it where he could, using the tricks he’d learned through grueling practice as Ed’s second-in-command. He tried to keep the crew busy, to cut down on time for idle chatter that could lead to speculation about the captain’s mental fitness. Most of them grumbled about it, but without Stede on hand to baby them their complaints were duly ignored. It wasn’t like he was trying to work them to death, for fuck’s sake. He made sure rations of both food and rum stayed generous. Crew with full stomachs slept better, and you couldn’t plan a mutiny while you were sleeping. And when he found himself losing patience with them, when Lucius sassed him or Roach served him a bowl of stew with a fine dusting of cigarette ash dissolving on the surface, he gritted his teeth and reminded himself that if he killed any of them, he’d have to answer to Edward when he came out of his fog.

It wasn’t a comfortable time, but it was tolerable. Ed had had these spells before, and he always came out of them sooner or later. Izzy tried to count their blessings: the ship was in good repair, they weren’t being pursued, they were well-stocked with supplies. They could theoretically go on for weeks like this, and if there was a small part of Izzy that wailed in distress at that notion, it was likely a part that had no business making his decisions for him. So what if he was lonely? Loneliness wasn’t a real problem. It couldn’t kill you.

Maybe that part of Izzy would have been forced to accept as much, if the weather hadn’t turned.

Izzy had no doubt there were signs of the impending gale he had missed, signs Ed would have picked up on easy as breathing. By the time Izzy saw the clouds beginning to form, it was too late to get ahead of it.

Within minutes, it was like the ship was caught between the paws of some huge, invisible cat, as the choppy seas batted it capriciously to and fro. There was no rain, not yet, just gust after gust of wind, clawing at the sails with such force that Izzy began to worry they would tear. He gave the order to reduce sail, then rushed to the bow, desperately scanning the horizon for a way out of this. The answers were out there, in the sky and the waves, he knew how to read them, he just had to ignore the rancid feeling in his stomach and focus…

He leaned out over the taffrail, as if there was something out there that would make sense if he was just a few more inches closer, and just as he did a gust of wind came screaming over the deck and hit him in the back with the force of an angry shove.

He did not go over the side; he didn’t even really come close. His hands were both curled around the railing when the gust hit him, his boots planted safely on the deck. But that implacable sense of force at his back, combined with the sight of the roiling seas below, did something to Izzy’s brain. He couldn’t think, and after a few seconds, he couldn’t breathe either. He was remembering Mad Monty dropping him into the water, the sickening plunge and then the brutal animal certainty that he was going to drown. His throat was full of salt, his eyes were burning with it, and he was alone, lost and alone-

He felt a hand on his arm and screamed, a strangled effort that hurt coming out. No matter; if he could scream, that meant he could breathe, if he could breathe that meant he could move. He turned, flinging the hand off of him and meaning to seize whoever was attacking him and heave them over the side like they clearly meant to do to him.

His hands closed over fabric. Soft. Yellow.

He knew this color.

His gaze traveled upwards until they met his attacker’s eyes. Hazel, like fertile land. He knew this color too.

Inside his head, all was still howling wind and bitter salt, but lower, somewhere between his pounding heart and his churning stomach, something settled.

“Bonnet,” he heard himself saying. “What-“

“Let’s get you inside,” Stede replied, his voice gentle, yet still somehow managing to carry over the wind. “Ed’s got the helm. It’s alright.”

“My arse it is,” Izzy said. The words came out with no input from his higher functions. Apparently arguing with Stede was an instinctive reflex, like keeping his hands up during a fight. “The ship-“

“Ed’s got the ship.” A touch of impatience crept into Stede’s tone. “Izzy. Come inside. That’s an order from your captain.”

Izzy felt the fight drain out of him at that. He had more reflexes than just the one, and a direct order from his captain trumped all the others. With one last sickly look at the horizon, he let Stede lead him into the corridor.

Closing the door behind him did bring a modicum of comfort, and for a few steps he actually had hope that the worst was behind him. Then the ship hit a swell, one big enough to send both him and Stede reeling. He ended up between Stede and the wall, and caught the full brunt of the bigger man’s weight. His skull crashed against the boards. That was bad enough, but the pain was secondary to the way Izzy’s stomach lurched.

“Fuck!” Stede yelped. “Ooh, I think I cracked my elbow. Why the hell are these hallways so narrow?”

“Shut up.” Panic, caustic as sulfur, was flooding through Izzy’s senses. “Fuck. ‘M’gonna be sick.”

He shoved Stede aside and bolted, muscle memory taking him through the passage into the captains’ cabin. Another swell hit the ship as he crossed the threshold and he stumbled to his knees. He half lunged, half crawled the rest of the way to the sleeping nook, praying with the last scrap of rational thought he had that there’d be a chamberpot where he expected to find one. There was, and it was even empty, but if God was expecting a thank you, He was going to have to wait a few minutes.

Over the sound of his own retching, he heard Stede come in. He cringed as far away as he could, hating Stede for witnessing this and hating himself even more for providing the spectacle. He tried to tell Stede to fuck off, but another wave of nausea hit him and all he could do was gag and cough, vision blurring from the sick-tears in his eyes.

“Izzy? Are you- oh. Oh, shit. Okay. You…just stay right there, alright? I’ll go get something. Don’t go anywhere!”

Izzy thought the sound of receding footsteps would bring relief, but his heart continued to slam against his rib cage, and even as the physical illness abated, the panic remained. He stayed where he was on his knees, huddled over the chamber pot, waiting and even hoping at this point for a fresh wave to hit him. Better to have it over with now, than to keep trying to fight it.

He didn’t look up when Stede came back in, couldn’t bear to look another man in the eye in this condition. He sensed Stede kneel beside him, and nearly lost it again when the proximity brought another rush of panic. His instincts were screaming at him to run, or to attack. Too weak to do either, he only succeeded in whimpering like a kicked dog. Stede’s hand fell warm and heavy on the small of his back.

“Hey. I’ve got a cold rag, and some water, when you’re ready for it. How about I just…”

Cool moisture enveloped the back of Izzy’s neck, sending a shock through him that made his teeth snap together. He whimpered again and tried to curl into a tighter ball. He couldn’t stop thinking about drowning. Mad Monty had stripped him and then thrown him into the water, like so much useless fish guts, and maybe Izzy had deserved it, and maybe if Stede got a good look at him he’d see the same thing.

“Breathe, alright? Just breathe. Everything’s okay. Here, try some water.”

Izzy’s hands were shaking, almost too much for him to grip the glass. He took a sip and the shivering expanded, through his chest and to the aching muscles of his stomach. He grimaced and shoved the glass back into Stede’s hand.

“C-c-can’t. J-j-just leave m-me-“

“Leave you alone? I don’t think so.” Stede’s hand moved from Izzy’s back to his waist, guiding him to sit back on his heels. “What’s the point in having two captains, if we can’t see to it that every crew member is looked after? Now, just try to take one deep breath for me. Just one. Bucket’s right here if anything else comes up.”

Izzy managed a breath like Stede instructed. The nausea had lessened, but the shivering was only getting worse. His heart was beating so hard that he was actually worried it might explode. Could that happen? Was it possible he was going to die right here, on the floor, for no fucking reason at all?

“I can’t,” he forced out through chattering teeth. “I can’t…” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence. There was no finish, he just couldn’t any more.

“Okay. Okay, come here. Just come here, Iz.”

Whether it was slip of the tongue or a deliberate attempt at familiarity, Stede calling Izzy that did the trick of distracting him enough to accept an embrace. His head thudded against Stede’s shoulder and he went limp, falling into the circle of his arms. Strong arms that held Izzy around the shoulders and the waist, grounding him against the ship’s movements. Izzy found he could take another breath and did so, and this time the shivering seemed to ease up a bit.

“Good, good,” Stede whispered. “Just take it slow. God, Ed really wasn’t kidding, was he?”

Izzy didn’t have the energy to wonder what that meant, not at first. He was too focused on breathing, and on convincing himself his heartbeat was slowing down. He might have put it out of his mind entirely, if the feel of the ship changing course didn’t make him think of Ed at the helm.

“Ed wasn’t kidding about what?” he asked. It hurt to speak, and he groped blindly for the glass of water. Stede put it back in his hand, and eased up his hold on Izzy to give him room to drink.

“Oh, just that you’d be useless in this kind of weather. I take it this isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened?”

The word “useless” turned the water in Izzy’s mouth to hot sand. He forced it down and nearly choked.

“So glad the secret to getting him to do his fucking job is to be complete shit at mine. I should have come in here and spewed my guts out days ago, if I’d known it would get the two of you moving.”

Stede scoffed. “Come on, that’s hardly fair. I’m the one who’s been in here all day and night, actually trying to talk to Ed, while you’ve just been-“

“What? Actually running the ship? I’m sorry, was I supposed to spend all day in here with the two of you, sulking and painting each other’s fucking toenails while the ship drifts into the bloody Antarctic?”

“Alright!” Stede scooted a few inches away, his hands raised up defensively. “You know, you could have said something, if you were feeling that overwhelmed-“

“Oh, fuck you.” Izzy bellowed this last with such force that he triggered another coughing fit, and ended up doubled over again in front of the chamberpot. “You stupid…fucking…twat…” he groaned.

He thought Stede would get up and walk away after that, but a few seconds later the warmth and weight at his back returned. Stede’s hand began to move in slow circles, soothing through the leather.

“Maybe I got a little too focused on helping Ed feel better. I probably could have spared a bit more attention for you and the crew.”

Izzy took a swig of water, spat it out, then drained the glass. “You fucking think?”

“Okay, well, I’m trying to apologize now!”

“Fine.” Izzy slumped back against the edge of the bed, feeling wrung out and filthy as a bar rag. “How’s he doing, anyway? I never could get him to tell me much, when he gets like this.”

Stede heaved a short, heavy sigh. “I’m not sure. He doesn’t want to talk much to me, either. He says it’s not my fault, but he won’t say what the problem is.”

“Could be he just needs some time to himself,” Izzy offered.

“I can’t just ignore him when he’s feeling bad,” Stede protested. “What kind of message would that send?”

Izzy stared straight ahead, at a loss for how to respond to that. Taking care of someone when they were ill wasn’t about sending messages, it was about making sure they didn’t fucking die. And for Ed, that meant protecting his reputation as well as his body. You couldn’t do that and hover over him twenty-four hours a day, playing at nursemaid.

Except you could, when there were two of you. And now Ed was at the helm, just when Izzy needed him, and maybe Stede Bonnet deserved some of the credit for that.

“My head’s fucking killing me,” Izzy said.

Stede laughed, not unkindly. “Why don’t you have a lie-down? I’ll-“ he glanced queasily at the chamber pot- “just tidy up a bit.”

It was a tempting offer, but one that Izzy’s work ethic would not allow him to accept. His stomach had settled enough that he thought he could keep it together on deck, at least long enough to make sure that Ed really did have things in hand.

He stood, smoothed back his hair, checked to make sure he didn’t have any sick on his collar or his shoes.

“Thank you,” he told Stede, and for once, the man let the moment pass with the quiet dignity it merited.

Up on deck, the wind was still plucking aggressively at the sails. There was a mood of quiet industriousness seldom felt on the Revenge, and at the center of it was Edward, wrestling with the helm and calling out the occasional order. Izzy balked to see that he was still wearing Stede’s pink bathrobe, but his odd appearance didn’t seem to faze anyone else. They hopped to their tasks as readily as they would have for Blackbeard. Much more readily, Izzy noticed, than any of them had responded to him, while he was filling in for their errant captains.

“Fuckers,” he muttered.

Ed spotted Izzy and waved him over. Izzy’s gait was still a little wobbly as he crossed the deck, and he braced himself for a bevy of “Dizzy Izzy” comments from the crew he passed. He was more than a little surprised when none came, at least not loudly enough for him to hear. In fact, the only person who said anything was Fang, who looked up from the barrels he was securing and asked Izzy if he was feeling all right, with no apparent trace of mockery. Izzy’s instinct was to take it as such anyway, but when he nodded stiffly and allowed that he was fine, Fang actually reached out and patted him on the back, the same spot between the shoulder blades that Stede had been rubbing. Izzy was too startled by the touch to do anything more than grunt in surprise, and Fang smiled at him.

“Captain says we’ll be out of this gale within the hour. Just hang in there, yeah?”

“Right,” Izzy said, and kept walking before any more confusing shit could happen.

The wind was whipping Ed’s hair across his face as Izzy approached. Izzy took his usual spot at Ed’s right elbow, but apparently Ed was still in something of an odd mood, because he jumped nearly a foot when the wind blew his hair the other way and he caught Izzy in his peripheral vision.

“Shit fuck! Fucking hell, Iz, don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“You knew I was coming. You waved me over here,” Izzy pointed out.

Ed’s nostrils flared. “Right. You doing okay, mate?”

“I’m fine,” Izzy said. He wondered if Ed was the reason the crew weren’t ragging on him- had he threatened them with punishment if they went in on the “Izzy the Spewer” routine? “Edward, are you okay? This is the first time you’ve been out of your cabin in days.”

“Me? Oh, yeah.” There was a rattling sound. Izzy turned and saw that it was coming from Ed’s fingers, drumming fitfully on the wheel. “Think the wind is helping, actually. Invigorating.”

Izzy watched Ed’s eyes skitter across the horizon, east to west and back again. Whatever Ed was looking for, and whether he found it, was a mystery to him.

“Well, it’s good to see you back at the helm,” Izzy added. “I can give you a report on our condition now, or if you’d prefer-“

“Later,” Ed said. “Later’s fine. Come join us for supper. We’ve missed you, Iz, you know that?”

“I’ve been right here.”

“Yeah, I know, but I mean…” Ed turned to face Izzy, his eyes bright as a beacon against the cloudy sky. He leaned in, and Izzy realized that he meant to kiss him and pulled away. Immediately Ed’s brow creased with hurt.

“C’mon, Iz, don’t be like that. The crew don’t care.”

“It’s not that. I’ve just been sick, Edward. You probably don’t want to be sticking your fucking tongue in my mouth.” The back of Izzy’s neck prickled with embarrassment, but Ed just laughed cheerfully.

“Alright, fair enough. Here.”

He caught Izzy by the tie and pulled him close, planting a kiss not on his lips, but on the tattoo on his cheek.

“How’s that?”

Ed’s lips were soft and pleasantly cool, and his eyes took up Izzy’s entire field of vision. He found himself having to grip Ed’s arm to keep steady, and it had nothing to do with the choppy seas.

“’S’good,” Izzy managed to rasp out; his mouth had suddenly gone dry. “Just…just fine.”

Ed grinned and let him go.

“You’re dismissed, Mr. Hands. For now.”

Izzy looked around, expecting to see the smug, snickering faces of the crew, but no one was paying them any mind. Even Lucius was ignoring them, focused instead on helping the Swede untangle himself from some rigging.

This fucking ship. No matter how much time Izzy spent on it, he didn’t think he’d ever quite know what to expect.

The evening, at least, went according to Izzy’s expectations. He gave his report, to which Ed barely listened and Stede responded with a dozen questions, more than half of which could have been answered if he’d spent a minute thinking before he asked them. They ate supper, Izzy taking only what would keep his tender stomach from audibly growling and no more. Brandies were poured and weak attempts at conversation were made, and a mercifully short time later Ed abandoned the charade and suggested they go to bed.

Just as they had done the previous times this happened, Izzy and Stede mostly ignored each other in favor of focusing on Edward. Stede spooned up against Ed’s back, frigging between his thighs while Izzy stroked Ed’s cock and his own with one hand. A few times, Izzy thought he caught Stede looking at him over Ed’s shoulder, but mostly his eyes were closed, his face buried in the silver-grey cloud of Ed’s hair. When they settled into a rhythm, Izzy too closed his eyes, tucking his head under Ed’s chin and losing himself in the sensations.

The air in the room was thick with the smell of incense and male sweat. Ed’s fingers clawed at Izzy’s back, digging into old scars, leaving red furrows that Izzy would treasure for days even if he couldn’t see them. He could feel their heartbeats, pumping in sync through the rigid flesh in his hand. The muscles in his arm tensed as he worked them harder, needing to come, needing to drive all the thoughts from his brain and just exist in the pure perfect filth of the moment.

A muffled groan made him look up. Stede was mouthing wetly at Ed’s neck, gasping, “Yes, God, yes,” into his ear while Ed’s eyes fluttered in bliss. His left hand was curled around Ed’s hip, and Izzy watched the knuckles turn white as his thrusts quickened. Izzy stared at that hand, imagining the marks it would leave, wondering how those fingers would feel digging into his own flesh, and realized he was swiftly reaching the point of no return.

“Ed,” he gasped. “I’m…I’m close.”

Ed moaned his approval and nuzzled against the crown of Izzy’s head.

“Me too, love,” he whispered, his lips moving in Izzy’s hair. “Just a little more, just like that…ah, fuck.”

The added heat and slickness from Ed’s come sent Izzy reeling over the edge as well. He squeezed his eyes shut and fucked into his own fist until they were both soft. He winced when he let go, tender from the friction, and Ed chuckled in commiseration.

“God, I love you.” He kissed Izzy’s damp, sweaty forehead, then twisted around, presumably to kiss Stede as well. “Love you both. So fucking much.”

“We love you too, Ed,” Stede purred. Izzy felt his arm wriggle between them to wrap around Ed’s chest and squeeze him close. “We’ll always be here for you, sweetheart. No matter what.”

Ed made a small, complicated noise, and Izzy wondered what they might have been talking about, locked away in seclusion for days. What fears Ed might have felt safe to express, to Stede and to no one else.

We’ll always be here for you. It was true, at least as long as Izzy had anything to say about it. He didn’t just love Edward; he owed the man his life. Edward had saved him, from the Navy, from Mad Monty, from his own shame and despair. Surely Ed knew that Izzy would always be there, would always do whatever he could to make sure Ed was safe and content.

I can’t just ignore him. What kind of message would that send?

We’ve missed you, Iz.

Ed could read so many things, with much more skill than Izzy could. The sky, the stars, Stede’s fancy handwriting. Was he reading things into Izzy’s silence that Izzy had never noticed?

“I…love you, Edward.” He forced the words out on an exhale; they crashed against Ed’s collarbone like the wind against a cliff face. “You’re my…my North Star. Always have been.”

As soon as he said it, he cringed, certain it was far too stupid. He waited for laughter from Ed or a cutting remark from Stede, but there was only soft silence, and then Ed’s arms wrapping around him.

“That’s a lovely thing to say, Izzy,” Stede said.

Izzy felt, for just a second, the brush of fingertips down his arm, from shoulder to wrist.

Then the touch retreated, and all was quiet, and still.

Chapter Text

Ed ran out of rhino horn three days before they next made port. He’d planned to make it last longer, but staving off the gloom proved more difficult than he’d hoped. Left to his own devices, he would have just closed the curtains in his cabin and spent a week sleeping it off, but he didn’t want Stede or Izzy to worry any more than they already had.

So he wasn’t feeling his best when they docked in Port Royal. Luckily, Izzy had the unloading of cargo in hand, and Stede was eager to help him out. The two of them actually made a brilliant team at dealing with the fences, to Ed’s relief. He’d never liked that part of the job. The actual trading he didn’t mind, but all the posturing you had to do to make sure the other guy didn’t fuck you over bored him out of his skull. Stede seemed to thrive on it, and Izzy clearly loved the chance to show his teeth and act as his captain’s loyal attack dog. Probably made him feel young again, like the little fucking maniac he used to be. It was kind of adorable, really.

Given all that, Ed felt confident leaving them to it, and setting off into town on his own. People stared, as they always did, but they kept their distance. He’d let his beard grow out a bit in anticipation of this trip, and he was back in the leathers again. They felt like torture after days of wearing whatever he wanted, but he could work with it. Sweating his balls off exacerbated the pissed-off look on his face, and gave everyone more reason to stay the fuck away. For anyone else stupid enough to approach, he kept his hand close to the knife on his hip.

He found his rhino horn guy in the same tavern he always did. It had been long enough that the man had lost an eye since Ed last saw him, but the way he twitched and snickered and rubbed Ed’s coins between his fingers was familiar. Almost comforting, in a creepy, off-putting way. Ed couldn’t stand to be in the guy’s company for more than five minutes at a time, but he liked buying from him because it was a good reminder of what he risked turning into, if he got too hung up on the stuff.

Once he was stocked up, he felt a lot better, his mood buoyed by the free sample the dealer offered him. He decided to walk back to the rendezvous point the long way, through the market, confident now that no one was going to mess with him. They wouldn’t dare- they knew who the fuck he was, and so did he. His gait took on a swagger as he moved between the stalls, slowing down to touch and examine whatever the hell he felt like. At a stall selling grilled chunks of pineapple on skewers, he stopped, enticed by the smell. The purveyor put one into his hand before he could finish asking about the price.

“On the house, Mr. Blackbeard, sir. With my compliments.”

That was more fucking like it. Fame had its drawbacks, but it felt good to be treated with proper respect again, after that last raid.

He passed a stand selling cheap jewelry, the same sort of shit that Stede had convinced the little girl was a priceless treasure. Ed had been impressed by that, and more than a little ticked off with himself for not thinking of it first. It wasn’t like him to freeze up the way he had. The last thing he needed was word to get around that he was falling off; he had more than just his reputation and his own skin to protect now. He had a family.

Ed’s mind hung onto that word, chewing on it with the same intensity that his teeth gnawed at the grilled pineapple. He wasn’t used to this warm, fuzzy feeling in his chest that word caused. Up until recently, “family” meant the past, and all the bad things in it he’d tried to leave behind. His parents were both dead; his dad by Ed’s own hand, his mum claimed by the toils of life in poverty before Ed had grown rich enough to get her out. He’d done his best to keep the guilt at bay, lock it in a box deep in his mind and leave it to quietly moulder away to nothing, but talk of family could bring it right out into the open again. As such, he’d done his best as captain to discourage a lot of sharing of personal stories among his crew. Fuck the past, live in the moment, that had been the unofficial policy on the Queen Anne’s Revenge.

And look where that had led him. That ship was on the bottom of the ocean. Sometimes Ed had to wonder if he really was as smart as everyone claimed, or had just been ridiculously lucky.

He finished the rest of his pineapple and threw the skewer on the ground. The lingering sweetness made his teeth hurt, but in a way that was oddly satisfying. Pretty apt metaphor for how his life was going, these days. Stede and Izzy, they were just…just something else. Something Ed had never expected to feel, something he wasn’t even sure there was a word for.

He wanted to get something for them, something to show his gratitude for how they’d been taking care of him. The market had plenty of offerings that he thought would please Stede; he knew a bloke nearby who sold weird skulls, taxidermied lizards and the like, stuff that he thought would appeal to Stede’s nature-boy streak. And of course there were all the usual options, jewelry and perfumes and such. The problem was Ed had no idea what to get for Izzy, and it felt weird to come home with a gift for one and not the other. The last time Ed had gotten Izzy a gift, it had been a sword to replace the one Mad Monty had taken. Izzy loved it, if the care he put into keeping it sharp and gleaming was any indication, but there were only so many weapons you could buy a guy before affection started to look like paranoia.

He ducked down a side street, thinking he might find something in one of the seedier shops to pique his interest, and found himself face-to-face with Stede.

Or at least a pretty damn good likeness, printed on parchment underneath the words:

“Ah, now this is a rendezvous point. I always thought the term denoted more class than the spots you’ve been picking, Izzy.”

They were at a pleasant outdoor cafe, one of a surprising number to be found on the outskirts of Port Royal. Izzy’s nose wrinkled in distaste at the sight of the sunny tables and smiling waitstaff, but Stede ignored him. They were flush with cash from a successful morning’s offloading of plunder, and he wasn’t about to let Izzy’s allergy to fun ruin his good mood.

“Drinks, please,” Stede told their waiter, a cheerful fellow with a mouthful of gold teeth. “Whatever you recommend for two pirates seeking refreshment.”

As soon as the waiter was out of earshot, Izzy scowled and leaned across the table. “Just because you’re in a pirate haven doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to tell every fucking person you meet that you’re a pirate,” he whispered. “These places aren’t known for being full of trustworthy sorts.”

“Oh, come on. These guys seem alright.” Stede beamed as the waiter returned with two coconut halves, each one garnished with a sprig of mint and a hibiscus flower. He took a sip while Izzy goggled in horror. “Lovely. Thank you so much, er…?”

“Devon, sir,” the waiter replied. “And may I say, it’s an honor to have you at our humble establishment.”

“Well, thank you, Devon,” Stede said, giving Izzy a pointed look. “The pleasure is all ours, I’m sure.”

Izzy lifted one corner of his mouth in a sarcastic attempt at a smile, then fished the garnish out of his drink, dropped it on the ground, and swigged back half of it.

“Least it’s strong,” he muttered. “A few more of these and I might be able to endure your prattling on.”

“You were more than happy to let me do all the talking with Hideous George back there,” Stede remarked. “Kind of an odd nickname, actually. He wasn’t that bad-looking under the scars.”

“Yeah, well, you only saw him with his clothes on.”

Stede nearly choked on his cocktail. “You and that guy? Really?”

“Only once,” Izzy said. He appeared to be hiding a smirk behind his drink. “And it was before he had that kerosene mishap, so his face still looked alright.”

A few moments were needed for Stede to process that. He leaned back in his chair, peering at Izzy, trying to tell if he was being messed with. Izzy stared coolly back.

“What? I’m not allowed to have a past?”

“Of course you are. I just…I got the impression that Edward was the only one you had eyes for.”

Izzy shrugged. “Never thought that would happen. Had to give my hand a break sometime, didn’t I?” His eyes widened. “My God, Bonnet, are you blushing?”

“No,” Stede lied. “Since when do you talk about stuff like that, anyway? Doesn’t seem like you.”

“You don’t know everything about me.”

Without taking his eyes off Stede, Izzy polished off the rest of his drink and signaled for another.

“You’re right,” he said. “That was refreshing.”

It occurred to Stede then, with a pleasant sort of jolt, that he was having fun. With Izzy, without having to try particularly hard. This despite the sniping at each other- in fact, the sniping might be enhancing the overall enjoyment. There was a look on Izzy’s face, guarded but also playful, that reminded Stede of the day they met. Stede knew, now, that the Izzy Hands he had matched wits with that day was mostly a persona, the same way that Ed’s Blackbeard was a persona, but it was one that Izzy seemed to genuinely enjoy embodying.

Izzy was right. Stede didn’t know everything about him, and he was curious. He’d been curious since that first encounter in the forest.

“Do you think we might’ve gotten on better, if we met under different circumstances?” he asked. “I mean, I know we had our differences. But do you think we could have ever become friends, without-“

“Ed?”

For one shocking moment, Stede thought that they had skipped to the “finishing each other’s sentences” stage of intimacy in a blinding flash, but then he noticed Izzy’s gaze fixed on a point over his shoulder, and turned around.

Ed was stalking toward them, the stormy look on his face the one Stede recognized as his “contemplating killing everyone at a fancy party” look. There were no mean aristocrats in sight at the moment, so it must mean something else had gotten under his skin.

He marched up to their table without a word and slapped a piece of parchment down in front of Stede.

“Look at this.”

Stede looked. The first thing he caught was the word “MURDER,” screaming luridly up at him in big black letters. It hooked on his senses and made its neighboring words blur and shrink, so much so that he only recognized the poster’s subject by the drawing, and not the name printed below it.

“This is me,” he said numbly.

“You’re fucking right it is,” Ed grumbled. “Read it, mate.”

Stede didn’t want to read it- he felt like he’d been suddenly plunged into a bad dream. He had to physically force his eyes to move to the top of the poster and start working their way down.

“Wanted for murder,” he read. His tongue felt papery. “Stede Bonnet, aka The Gentleman Pirate, wanted for the vicious murder of Nigel Badminton, officer of His Royal Majesty King George’s Navy. 700 pound reward offered for information leading to live capture.”

He looked up. Izzy had now adopted Ed’s grim look. Ed was seated next to him, drumming his fingers on the tabletop so restlessly his rings clattered together.

“What?” Stede asked, trying to force down the queasy feeling that was sticking the sides of his throat together. “You’ve both been on your share of wanted posters before. It was bound to happen eventually. Um. Right?”

Ed and Izzy exchanged a look.

“Bonnet,” Izzy said. “This is a…” He waved his hand in the air, trying to catch the appropriate word. “A profane amount of money they’re offering. I’ve never seen a bounty this high.”

“Closest I ever saw was for me,” Ed added. “And the fucker who wanted that reward had to kill me for it. These guys are offering this much just for information. No offense, babe, but who in the world is willing to put up that much, just for the chance to bring you in?”

The bottom dropped out of Stede’s stomach.

“Chauncey,” he whispered.

Ed nodded. Izzy had gone pale, and was silently mouthing curse words through gritted teeth.

“He’s getting desperate to find you. Guess he and his brother were close.” Ed reached across the table and laid his hand on top of Stede’s. The touch brought a small amount of comfort, as did the way it further obscured that horrible poster. “Stede. You’re not safe here.”

“Where?” Stede asked, barely listening. He was remembering the heft of a brass whale in his hand. What would have happened, if his eyes hadn’t fallen upon that paperweight, at that very moment? Would he have never met Ed? Would he be dead by now? Would this ringing in his ears go away?

Ed was trying to answer him. He should probably pay attention.

“Definitely not here in Port Royal. Probably not anywhere that anyone has seen this poster. They’ll be lined up around the block to turn you in for that kind of reward. We gotta get you back to the ship.”

“The ship…” A horrible thought occurred to Stede. “God, this puts the crew in danger too, doesn’t it?”

Another look passed between Ed and Izzy. They both looked ten years older than they had mere moments ago. These were not their personas Stede was seeing; these were the faces of the hard, ruthless survival instinct that had brought these two men to be with him here and now.

“We’ll take care of the crew,” Ed said. “For now, let’s just get you back where it’s safe.”

He rose abruptly, taking Stede by the elbow and tugging him along. Stede looked over his shoulder to see Izzy following, his hand firmly planted on the hilt of his sword.

“We didn’t pay,” Stede protested faintly. He thought of Devon the waiter’s broad smile. It had seemed far too genuine to hide traitorous intents, but could he be sure?

Ed barked a harsh, unhappy laugh. “Famous pirates don’t pay, mate. Everyone knows that.”

The drink Izzy had swallowed was turning to acid in his stomach. Rancid ingredients, probably- you could never trust these touristy places. The fact that the drinks had tasted fine before Chauncey Badminton’s name came up wasn’t something Izzy was willing to give much thought to. Easier to blame the barkeep, than to consider that what he was feeling was irrational, misplaced guilt.

He was always going to track Stede down eventually, Izzy reminded himself. That’s why you thought you could use him. He was already Stede’s enemy. It’s not like you fucking forced him to kill an admiral’s fucking brother.

Izzy knew all that. The logic was indisputable. But the mere invocation of the man so central to his failed, never-attempted scheme seemed to taint the very air. Izzy was certain that Edward remembered what he had planned to do. He was probably thinking about it right now as he stalked at Stede’s side, silently evaluating who he could and couldn’t trust. All that had happened between them since then, all the rapport built between Izzy and Stede, all of Edward’s declarations of love, seemed small and childish compared to the dark fury Izzy could feel emanating from his captain.

When under stress, the only thing Izzy knew how to do was whatever was expected of him. Right now his task was to get the three of them safely back to the Revenge, and so he did his best to let all other distracting thoughts fall away as he watched for any potential attacks. The weight of the sword at his hip was reassuring, as was the way people ducked their heads and avoided eye contact when they saw him reach for it. After what he’d gone through with Mad Monty, he had worried his reputation as a man not to be fucked with would suffer, but Monty’s death and the annihilation of his ship appeared to have put the final word on that story.

Despite his sense of self-discipline, Izzy felt his mind begin to drift. Shadows on a wall, made huge and monstrous by the light of a broken lantern. Righteous, purifying pain in the hollow of his throat. Ed’s hands, still warm from the kill, holding him down.

He could have done without the distraction of these memories, but nevertheless they brought some comfort. Had he actually been doubting Edward’s commitment to him? He’d been looking for reassurance in the wrong direction. Words were malleable, but what Edward had done for Izzy could never be undone, and nothing could make Izzy doubt the love he’d felt when Edward had fucked him next to Monty’s cooling corpse.

Thusly soothed, Izzy was able to set to preparing the ship to disembark with nothing on his mind but the reassuring monotony of the tasks. He was pleased when Ed had him conduct a roll call of the crew before they cast off, an important task that, naturally, was often left by the wayside aboard this vessel. He watched Ed watch him call out each crew member’s name, his expression betraying nothing. The crew clearly sensed the change in mood since this morning, but for once, they had the good sense to keep their opinions to themselves. The Revenge left port without incident, and shortly after Ed tapped Izzy on the shoulder and jerked his head in the direction of the hold.

“Which of them do you trust?” Ed asked without preamble, as soon as they were alone. Izzy gave it some thought before answering.

“Fang and Ivan, obviously.” he finally said. “And Jim. If they cared about money, they could be making a lot more of it with the skills they’ve got. Oluwande goes along with whatever Jim does, so he’s probably not a threat. But he’s sharp enough to put two and two together if he’s seen that poster, so best to assume he’s got the whole picture. Buttons is too much of a lunatic to care about any earthly reward. The rest…” Izzy shrugged. “They’d probably turn Stede in if they thought they could get away with it.”

A muscle in Ed’s jaw twitched. “You think any of them will try?”

“Not with you on board,” Izzy answered honestly. “They’re a pack of gormless children, for the most part, but even the Swede knows better than to cross Blackbeard. If they didn’t before, they have since what happened to the Falling Star.” He felt another little thrill of remembrance as he looked up at Ed. “And I’d be happy to give any one of them a reminder, if you feel it’s necessary.”

Ed gave a grim nod, then took a seat atop a barrel. Izzy was suddenly struck with the wild, entirely inappropriate hope that Ed was about to order him to his knees, but he only rested his chin in his hand and thought a minute.

Izzy stood at attention and waited, his hands fairly tingling with eagerness to carry out whatever his Blackbeard’s orders might be. God, but he’d missed this, this chance to bask in the warm glow of his captain’s confidence.

“Get some sleep,” Ed finally said. “I want you on watch tonight. Dusk to dawn. If anyone is planning to try anything, they’ll likely do it tonight, while we’re still close to land. Anyone does anything even a little suspicious, you stop them first, ask questions later. Understood?”

“Aye aye, sir,” Izzy replied. He wasn’t sure how much sleep he’d be able to get in his current state, but of course he had no intention of arguing with an order. He did, however, feel it was worth the breach of protocol to add one thing more. Edward wanted him to communicate- he needed to remember that.

“Edward,” he said. “Whatever else happens…Stede is safe with me. I swear on my life, I won’t let anyone harm him.”

Ed’s eyes scanned Izzy’s face, and for a split second, Izzy thought he caught a glimpse of something that didn’t sit right with him. It wasn’t mistrust, which he supposed would still be understandable. It was a darker look, darker and somehow flatter, as if whatever light illuminated Ed’s extraordinary eyes from within was suddenly snuffed out.

It happened in a flash, and then the light was back and Ed was giving him a tired but genuine smile.

“That means a lot, Iz. Really.”

He reached out and pulled Izzy into a rough, one-armed hug, planted a kiss on his temple.

“Means more than you could ever know.”

Chapter Text

There was a slight imperfection in the wine glass set in front of Stede. Nothing overt, just a tiny spatter of bubbles in the glass near the bottom of the bowl. An untrained eye would never notice it, and even Stede probably would have remained ignorant to it, if he hadn’t been staring so intently. His neck was actually beginning to cramp, from how intently he’d been staring.

He winced, and risked a peek up from his place setting.

Nigel Badminton was sitting across from him. He had no place setting of his own, and he looked rather cross about it. Of course, that might have still been on account of the sword lodged in his right eye socket. Didn’t seem like the sort of thing a fellow got over quickly.

He’s dead. He’s not ever going to get over it, and for that matter he doesn’t need to.

Since Stede had last seen Nigel, the blood around his injury had turned crusty and black. When he caught Stede peeking at him, his face broke into a knowing smile, and a fleck of dried blood dislodged itself from his face and floated down toward the table. Stede felt his gorge rise, and quickly dropped his gaze again.

“What’s the matter, Baby Bonnet? Can’t bear to face your own handiwork?”

You’re not actually hearing that. He’s dead, for God’s sake.

It was only thanks to decades of rigidly-enforced table manners that Stede managed to keep still. Ed was seated at Stede’s left, contentedly picking at his dinner, absorbed in a spread of maps. He hadn’t noticed anything unusual, because there was nothing unusual going on.

“My brother loved me, Bonnet. Loved me. He might have even cried, when he found out what you did to me. Just imagine what he’s going to do to you, when he catches you.”

“So, this Chauncey guy,” Ed said. “Know anything about him that we can use?”

Stede looked up, and was more than a little horrified that Nigel, too, was looking in Ed’s direction. The thought that his nightmares might be able to take notice of Ed made him feel weak with fear.

If he would just stop smiling like that…

Back to the wineglass, as if the tiny bubbles might hold the information Ed was looking for. Of what Stede knew about Chauncey Badminton, none of it felt useful. He hadn’t seen him since they were both boys, and in the intervening decades he had tried very hard to forget he had existed at all.

When the Badminton twins first began their mission to make Stede’s school days a living hell, it had been Nigel he first learned to watch out for. Nigel was the more brutish of the two, always eager to use his fists, and he had been the ringleader in the most prominent of Stede’s humiliations. The rowboat. The horse. Rousing a gang to help him beat Stede into compliance had always been his job, and it was one he’d clearly enjoyed.

But he hadn’t been the one to come up with these tortures in the first place. That had been Chauncey. The smarter one, at least when it came to honing in on Stede’s admittedly abundant weaknesses.

The horse incident had been the worst. Nigel punching Stede in the stomach, hard enough to make him retch, hadn’t quite convinced him to submit to the “prank.” He’d been fully prepared to dig his heels in and let them beat him up all they wanted, rather than actually kiss the horse. It wasn’t so much the act itself that revolted him into near hysteria, but how he imagined his father would look at him if he ever found out.

Then Chauncey had looked down on him, with a sharp glint in his eye, and said, “Maybe there’s a different part of the horse he’d like to put his mouth on. Is there something you’re not telling us, Bonnet?”

And so Stede surrendered.

No doubt it had been those keen tactical instincts that had eventually led Chauncey to the role of admiral. He’d never had to talk to Stede very much, after that. Stede always just went along with whatever he and his brother wanted, rather than risk him saying something like that again.

“We didn’t exactly spend a lot of time together,” Stede offered. “You’re probably more equipped to predict his movements than I am. All those years dodging the Navy and all.”

Ed made a skeptical noise. “Sure. I mean, yeah, I know their routes, know what their ships are capable of. But every captain’s different. Helps if we know what makes him tick.”

“He’s an admiral,” Stede whispered hollowly. He felt ill. Realities were colliding again, leaving him feeling unsure of where or even who he was. Was he about to get everyone he cared for killed in a fight with the English Navy? Had he spelled Ed’s doom by picking up a paperweight at the exact wrong moment?

“Whatever.”

“Do you think maybe we ought to…get away?” Stede suggested. “Just find somewhere to lay low for a bit, until-“

“Until what? He forgets his brother’s dead?” Ed chuckled. “Wouldn’t bet on that, mate.”

“So what- what do we do?” Stede could feel panic rising in his gut, a choking sensation not at all helped by Nigel’s continued glowering. “Seriously, what are we going to do?”

“Hey, hey.”

Ed shoved his plate aside so he could reach for Stede. His hand wrapped around Stede’s upper arm, squeezing gently.

“Just relax, alright? You think I’m gonna let anything happen to you?”

He flashed Stede a smile, full of warmth and bravery. Stede felt it- he didn’t think he’d ever stop being at least a little bit smitten when Ed smiled at him- but it was like the warmth of a candle flame rather than a sunny day. His fear was too smothering for anything more.

“I’m such an idiot,” he said. “I should have warned you about Chauncey. I should have realized he’d be after me. And if he catches us, he’s going to kill us all, and-“

“Hey. First of all, let me stop you right there, cause he’s not gonna catch us, okay? Give me a little credit, babe. I know a thing or two about keeping ahead of the law.”

“But if he never stops coming after us-“

“Then we find a way to make him stop. Stede. I swear on…on whatever the fuck you want me to swear on, those Navy dickheads aren’t getting anywhere near you. I’ll do whatever it takes, love. I promise.”

“I don’t…” Stede sniffed wetly, and wondered vaguely when he had started to cry. “I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret, for me. I’m not worth it-“

“Fuck off,” Ed snarled. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard you say. Course you’re worth it.”

“But-“

“And guess what? I’m not the only one who knows it, either. Right when we got back to the ship, Izzy told me, swore to me on his fucking life, he wouldn’t let you come to any harm. Think about that. Guy started off wanting to kill you, now he’s pledging his fucking sword to keep you safe. Sounds like you’re worth a hell of a lot.”

Stede wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve and looked up. “Izzy really said that?”

“Sure did.” Ed’s hand lit gently on Stede’s cheek. “We’ll think of a way out of this. All of us. Just like we figured out a way to get Iz back. Hell, this’ll be easier, since no one’s been kidnapped already.”

“I guess we do have that going for us.” Stede risked a glance across the table, and felt leagues better to see that Nigel Badminton’s chair was now unoccupied. “Do you think there’s a fuckery that can do the job? Get them off our backs for good?”

“There’s always something,” Ed said. “Tell you what. How about we have a drink and a brainstorming session? Break out that captain’s reserve rum and get the creative juices flowing.”

“You know,” Stede said. “I think I’d really like that.”

A couple of drinks and some entertaining conversation later, they still didn’t have much in way of a plan, but Stede was feeling much better. Better enough that he didn’t feel like thinking about Chauncey Badminton anymore.

He looked across at Ed, lounging on the chaise with his long legs stretched out in front of him, his glass perched on his knee. He looked like he hadn’t a care in the world, and honestly, why should he? They would think of a plan; they always did. And in the meantime, Stede had something else on his mind. Something he’d been working up the courage to ask for. He’d had enough of feeling like a coward for one day; tonight, he wanted to be bold.

“I was thinking maybe you could. Um. Have me. Tonight. If that’s something you would want to try.”

Ed blinked. “You mean, like. Have you, have you?” He made a suggestive motion with his fingers. “Like that?”

“Only if you want to,” Stede hurriedly clarified.

“Course I want to,” Ed said. “I want to do everything with you. But are you sure? Getting buggered isn’t for everyone- it’s totally fine if it’s not for you.”

Stede wasn’t sure if it was for him, to be honest, but he had seen plenty of compelling reason to give it a try. He’d performed the act on Ed several times now, and Ed’s patience and enthusiasm had gone a long way to reassuring Stede that it didn’t hurt if you went about things properly. And he knew Ed enjoyed being on the giving end as well; he’d watched him fuck Izzy once, had seen his eyes glaze over and his jaw go slack with pleasure as he ground the smaller man into the mattress with his powerful thrusts. Stede wanted to try everything with Ed, wanted to become an expert in every way there was to bring this man pleasure, and he wasn’t about to let the prospect of walking funny for a day get in his way of that goal.

“I want to try it,” he said. “All those noises you make, when I’m doing it to you? I’m pretty sure I’m missing out on something spectacular.”

“Spectacular’s a tall order, for the first time,” Ed replied gently. “But I’ll do my best. C’mon, let’s get a little less clothed.”

They began as they usually did, with lots of kissing, flirtatious glances, playful tussling and gentle love bites. Ed was radiant as always, the firelight pouring over his naked skin like a veil of gold. It felt perfectly natural to wind up beneath him, gazing up as he glittered and shone. It felt a little more awkward for Stede to spread his legs when Ed’s hand, fingers slick with oil, quested down between them, but he remembered how it felt to touch Ed there for the first time. How trusted, and loving, and loved he had felt. He laughed as the cool oil touched sensitive skin, traded the laugh to Ed with a kiss and lay back against the pillows. His cock was beginning to fill out against his thigh, and he took himself in hand both to ease the pressure and to get out of Ed’s way.

“Best to stroke yourself a bit while I do this,” Ed explained. “Makes it easier to adjust. And if you want me to stop, just say so.”

“It’s good,” Stede promised, giving himself a few lazy strokes. “It’s so good, Ed. You’re so beautiful.”

“Shut uuuup,” Ed giggled, mock-bashful. “Here I’ve got my fingers in your arse, and you’re the one making me blush.”

“You haven’t quite- oh.” Stede bit his lip as the tip of Ed’s forefinger pushed inside him. “Oh. That’s…”

Ed’s brow creased. “Too much? Does it hurt?”

“No. Keep going.”

Stede wasn’t lying. It didn’t hurt, but he wasn’t prepared for how strange it would feel. He could feel his body trying to contract, to force the intrusion back out. Not painful, but not exactly comfortable, either.

He took Ed’s advice and stroked himself more firmly. The satisfying, familiar friction caused something in him to slacken, and Ed’s fingers slid in a little deeper.

“Fuck, look at you. Still alright?”

Stede nodded and closed his eyes, willing himself to relax and let more of Ed into him. There was another dodgy moment when Ed began to pump his fingers in and out, but Stede just hung onto his cock for dear life and let the sensations build. It wasn’t until Ed withdrew his fingers to apply more oil that he realized he was already perilously close to his peak.

“Fuck me,” he said. “Now. Please.” He wasn’t sure how much longer he could last, and he wanted to cross this threshold tonight. He couldn’t have explained why, not in words. There was only a sense that stopping now would feel like failure, and he couldn’t stand to be a failure in this, as Ed’s lover, the same way he’d been a failure as a husband and a father and a son.

Ed was settling between Stede’s legs, his eyes so warm and soft they almost seemed to be melting. His hand brushed against Stede’s cock as he adjusted his position.

“Oh, God,” Stede gasped, nearly cross-eyed from trying to stave off his climax. “Do you think I could turn over, actually?”

“Course.” Ed backed up to give him room, running an appreciative hand over his flank as he settled onto his elbows and knees. “Not about to argue with this view. How’s that? Comfortable?”

“Mm-hm.”

Ed moved a pillow beneath Stede’s hips, and Stede settled his weight onto it. It was comfortable, save for how ridiculously exposed he felt, but that was all part of the point of this, wasn’t it? To show Ed how much he trusted him, to take something that could have been humiliating and painful in another context and turn it into something intimate and lovely. It was everything that Stede had thought the act of physical love could never be, when he was a confused, frightened schoolboy.

Ed replaced his fingers with the head of his cock, rubbing in slow, questing circles. That felt so genuinely good that for the first time, Stede felt his opening relaxing of its own accord, rather than him having to will it so. He moaned and tried pushing back a little, earning a startled noise from Ed and another soothing caress over his right cheek.

“Eager for it, are you? Don’t worry, pretty thing, I’ll give it to you.”

The sense of pressure increased, becoming huge and blotting out all other sensation. Stede wasn’t sure if he’d be able to pinpoint the exact moment when Ed entered him, or if it had happened already; everything felt so hot and slick and strange. Was it happening now? Was he being fucked?

“Are you-“

“Almost. Just- just relax-“ Ed sucked in air through his teeth. “Ah, fuck.”

Stede had been wrong- it turned out it was very easy to tell when Ed’s cock slipped inside him. The sudden feeling of fullness left him breathless, clutching at the sheets, right on the edge of panic. Any move he made seemed fraught with the risk of pain, save for touching his dick again, and he didn’t dare do that for fear he’d explode the moment he got a hand around himself.

“Ed,” he moaned, unsure how to ask for what he needed. He didn’t want Ed to stop; he trusted Ed. The problem was he didn’t trust himself.

Well, of course not. You can’t even pick up a paperweight without accidentally becoming a murderer. What on earth made you think you could handle this?

“Stede?” Ed’s hand on his shoulder, squeezing. “Babe, talk to me. You okay?”

Stede nodded and tried to push back onto Ed’s cock, thinking that even pain would be better than Nigel’s ghost managing to horn in on this moment.

His mind might have felt that way; his body had other ideas. As soon as he felt Ed push a little deeper in, every one of his muscles locked hard, and what had formerly been an ambiguous blend of pleasure and discomfort shifted brutally toward the latter. He yelped, unable to stop himself, and Ed immediately froze.

“Hey, hey. Easy, love. I’m gonna pull out now.”

“No!” Stede protested. Absurdly, he could feel tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. “I’m fine, I can do it!”

He took a deep breath, trying to prove how relaxed he was. He did alright until he exhaled, and it came out sounding like a sob.

“Nope,” Ed muttered under his breath. “Nope, nope, no way.”

He braced his hand on the small of Stede’s back and pulled out. Stede felt himself spasming around the sudden emptiness, and the panic redoubled upon him. Even as the pain faded, the horrible sense that he had lost control did not.

“I’m sorry,” he stammered. His arms were shaking. All his muscles felt too rigid for him to move. “I’m so sorry.”

“What? Hey, hey, no no no.” Ed was moving around, shuffling on his knees until he could see Stede’s face. “What’re you apologizing for? C’mon, love, just talk to me. Stede?”

Stede could hear the note of fear in Ed’s voice, and silently cursed himself for not only bungling this whole evening but for scaring Ed on top of it. He took a great, whooshing gasp of air, and the momentum it gave him was enough for him to lift his head. He looked into Ed’s wide eyes and forced a smile.

“It’s okay. I’m fine, just let me…”

He eased himself gingerly back upright on his knees, then rolled onto his side. His locked muscles gave a few tired twitches and relaxed, and the sense of impending disaster fled, leaving only a distant soreness in its wake.

“Fuck.” Ed curled up next to him, planted a soft kiss on his shoulder. “Don’t scare me like that again.”

“I’m sorry,” Stede said again. “I really wanted that to work.”

“No, fuck, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to hurt you. You know that, right?”

Stede felt a tremor run through Ed’s body as Ed burrowed closer, hiding his face against Stede’s chest.

“Oh, Ed. Of course I know that.”

Ed’s arms locked around Stede’s midsection and squeezed. Stede stroked his hair with the one hand he could pry free, and tried to think of something else he could say, to fix what had been shattered.

He couldn’t think of anything, but he could hold onto Ed, and be held, and in time the need for words seemed to drift away.

When Izzy finished his watch shift, he let himself into the captains’ cabin, despairing a little at his ability to do so. The door had a lock, but neither Ed nor Stede ever used it- Stede because he claimed it violated his “open door philosophy” of captaining, Ed because he just couldn’t be fucked to remember where he left the key. Izzy doubted he could persuade either of them to change their habits in that regard anytime soon. It would probably be easier if he just took to sleeping in here full-time. If he couldn’t get Ed and Stede to protect themselves properly, he’d have to start making up the effort in protecting them.

Silently as he could manage, he slipped inside the cabin and shut the door behind him. He took from the drawn bed-curtains and the soft sounds of snoring from within that all was well, and let himself into the ensuite. For reasons he’d never been able to figure, he preferred washing before he went to bed, rather than upon waking. Something about laying down to sleep with all the day’s dirt and sweat still clinging to his skin just galled him, was all.

He was far too tired to draw himself a proper bath. A basin of cold water and a few cloths would do, and then, almost furtively, he helped himself to a sliver of Stede’s lavender soap that had been left In the tub. The flowery smell still seemed too girly to him, but he knew Ed liked it. It had been a long time since Izzy was close enough to anyone on the regular for it to matter what he smelled like; he’d need to start stocking up on soap of his own. He worked the sliver between his hands until it was gone, then applied the thin, fragrant lather where he thought it would do the most good.

He left his clothes to air out and stepped back into the main cabin in his underclothes, still toweling dry the damp spots behind his ears. He planned to just nap on the couch for a few short hours, confident now that there was no one on the crew they need fear immediate attack from. He was also fairly certain Stede and Ed would be lolling in bed for at least a little longer, but that instinct turned out to be incorrect. Stede was seated on the couch, a book open on his lap and a vacant expression on his face. He jolted upright when he saw Izzy coming in.

“Oh. Oh!” His eyes bounced from Izzy’s face down to his bare feet, up to his chest, then back to his face again. “Good morning! Or, good night for you, I guess.”

“Right,” Izzy said, now wondering what had possessed him to leave his clothes behind. “Was going to kip right there, actually.” He nodded at the spot Stede was currently lounging.

Stede glanced over at the sleeping nook. “You’re not going to climb in with Ed?”

“Well, I thought that you would be-“ Izzy hesitated, not sure that was going to come out the way he meant it to. “It’s fine. I can just-“

“No, no, please.” Stede rose and beckoned. When Izzy didn’t move, he fetched a throw blanket off a nearby chair and laid it down over the spot he’d been occupying. “It’s all yours.”

Sighing, Izzy took the spot, hoping he didn’t look as big an idiot as he suddenly felt. He drew the blanket over his bare legs and watched as Stede seemed to internally debate where to go next.

“It’s your fucking cabin, Bonnet. Don’t let me put you out of it.”

“Hm? Oh.” Stede glanced at the chair by the fireplace, the one closest to the couch and currently enjoying the most direct sunlight. “I was just reading. It won’t keep you up?”

“Can’t imagine how it would.”

Stede still seemed hesitant, and Izzy wondered if he ought to just get dressed and go. He watched Stede take the chair, and with the light as bright as it was, it was impossible to miss the way he winced and shifted his weight onto his left hip. He looked up and caught Izzy looking, and his face flushed pink.

“Rough night?” Izzy asked pointedly.

“It wasn’t like that,” Stede huffed. “Just…tried something new, is all.”

“Bit off a bit more than you could chew, did you?”

Stede flushed a deeper red. “I didn’t say that!”

“No, but I know the way you do things.” Izzy rolled onto his side, getting comfortable while Stede squirmed. “Hope it was worth sitting funny for a few days, at least.”

“I...hoped it would be.” Stede looked up sharply, as if he hadn’t meant to speak that thought aloud. “It wasn’t Ed’s fault. He was lovely. I just-“

“Couldn’t relax enough to make it work? Yeah.” Izzy clucked his tongue in mock-sympathy. “It happens.”

“Yes, well, you manage it,” Stede said. “And you’re hardly the…the paragon of relaxation.”

Izzy thought about that, only half-sure of what he thought “paragon” meant.

“Fuck off.”

Stede sniffed and settled back into the chair with his book. Izzy hitched the blanket more firmly around his midsection.

“It’ll get easier,” Izzy said, after a few moments of tense silence. “Just takes practice.”

“That’s what you say about everything,” Stede sighed. “Just once, I’d like to be naturally good at something.”

“You’re a natural at getting on my fucking nerves. Does that count?”

Stede laughed and threw a pillow in his direction. It missed by several feet and bounced harmlessly to the floor.

“So, did you pick up all this knowledge in the fine art of buggery the same place you picked up your fancy swordplay?”

The laughter snagged in Izzy’s throat like a fishbone.

“You could say that,” he said. “Same motivation, anyway. Learn, or bleed.”

Stede’s eyes widened. “You mean-“

“I mean I didn’t have anyone looking out for me. Not like how Ed looks out for you. That’s all.”

“Oh.” Stede shifted uncomfortably. “That can’t have been easy. Ed told me some things, you know. About what you went through, in the Navy…”

“Yeah? Probably made it sound more interesting than it really was.” The scars on Izzy’s back itched faintly. He ignored them. “All the ones who made it a hard time for me are dead. Most of them I got to kill myself. Makes it easy not to dwell on it.”

“Ah. Well. Maybe I’ll have that peace of mind to look forward to. After we…deal with Chauncey.”

Izzy sat up slightly, peering close at Stede. He looked positively ill.

“This business, with killing Captain Badminton,” Izzy said. “It was more than just you being a pirate and him being a Navy officer, wasn’t it? It was personal.”

“It was,” Stede admitted. “Although I really didn’t mean to kill him.”

“But you’re glad he’s dead,” Izzy pressed.

A long pause, and then: “Yes.”

“And this Chauncey. You’ll be glad when he’s dead too, won’t you?”

“I…I don’t know.” Stede’s hands grappled in his lap, the book forgotten. “It seems worse to think about it like that, doesn’t it? To plan ahead.”

“Right. Well.” Izzy sighed and closed his eyes, feeling his grip on the conversation slip as a night on his feet caught up with him. “That gets easier, too.”

Stede concentrated on the book as long as he physically could, until Izzy began to snore gently. It mingled with the sound of Ed’s breathing coming from behind the bed curtains, a peaceful sound if there ever was one. A soft, slow morning, and these two captivating men, both of whom trusted Stede enough to rest so deeply in his presence.

He looked up from the book. Nigel was back, standing by the fireplace. The brilliant sunlight gleamed off the sword hilt in his eye socket, a horrible violation cast in an angelic halo.

I hope it hurts, Stede thought. He didn’t bother speaking it aloud; he knew Nigel could hear him.

Nigel had nothing to say in return.

Chapter Text

As it turned out, Izzy managed to sleep just enough to throw off his rhythms and wake up sometime after midday with a headache and a sour stomach. He still very much doubted that an act of mutiny was in store, but he found himself hoping that there would be a minor infraction- ammunition improperly stowed, dangerously neglected tricing lines- that would give him a reason to really tell someone off. Izzy knew Stede hated it when he yelled at the crew, but in his current state that only seemed like a bonus.

He arrived on the main deck to find it deserted, which really was the worst case scenario; it sharpened his ire while still depriving it of a specific target. He was going to have to settle for shouting at everybody, which meant the crew would use the relative safety of their numbers to backtalk him. Any other day, he probably wouldn’t have bothered, but with powerful enemies in pursuit and the possibility of a threat from within, now was not the time to let his own, and by extension Blackbeard’s, authority fall into question. If the crew thought they were going to continue to be coddled, it was as good a time as any to show them that things had changed.

He made for the galley, figuring that they had gotten distracted by some nonsense over lunch, and sure enough, he heard voices raised in argument as he approached. He slowed and kept his footfalls soft, hoping to pick up what they were talking about before they heard him coming.

What he heard made all the blood in his veins run cold, save for his sword arm, which immediately began to tingle.

“Why don’t we just kill him?” That was Black Pete, the traitorous lickspittle. “Easiest way to solve the problem, if you ask me.”

“Right. And who’s gonna handle that? You?” That voice came from farther away, but the accent and the dry tone made Izzy guess it was either Oluwande or Frenchie. Either one was bad news- if any of the smarter crew members were seriously considering mutiny, they wouldn’t have much trouble bringing the others to their side.

“I mean, I could,” Black Pete replied. “If no one else here is feeling up to it.”

“Or Jim could do it! They’re kind of the resident expert on assassination, right? No offense, Jim, that’s just…kind of the impression I got.”

That was unmistakably Lucius. Izzy felt his jaw start to ache as his teeth ground with rage. That boy wouldn’t have survived a week at sea if he hadn’t had Stede Bonnet’s money and mysterious aura of imperviousness to protect him, and now here he was planning to betray him with all the others. It was a fucking disgrace. And Lord above, was Jim in on it too? This couldn’t get any worse.

Izzy strained to hear what Jim would say in response. He wanted to know exactly what opinions their most dangerous crew member had of this whole plan, before he went to the captains’ cabin to turn the whole murderous lot in. But instead of Jim’s monotone growl, he was blasted at full force with the last voice he expected to hear.

“Thank you for your suggestion, Black Pete! Before we talk details, how about we put a pin in this whole ‘murder’ idea and toss a few other concepts around?”

Stede.

Stede was here, talking about assassination plots with the crew. Which meant he couldn’t possibly be the target of said assassination, which meant…

“Oh, fuck me,” Izzy muttered.

He stormed into the galley to find the crew gathered in a semicircle, facing Stede in all his overdressed, puffed-up glory. A piece of parchment was stuck to the wall with a knife. Izzy thought for a moment it was Stede’s wanted poster, but closer inspection revealed it to be one of Lucius’ sketches, a portrait of a scowling man with a birthmark on his forehead that Izzy could only assume was Chauncey Badminton. There was also a barrel with a plate of hors d’oeuvres arranged upon it. Stede was holding a finger sandwich in one hand, shedding crumbs as he gestured.

“Ah! Izzy!” Stede exclaimed, no doubt excited to have a new audience member to bloviate at. “Glad you’re up. We were just discussing ideas on how to deal with our Badminton problem. Or our second Badminton problem, I should say-“

There were, Izzy knew, several possible actions he could take that would get this situation under control. He could tell Stede there was an emergency on deck and he needed to speak with him in private. He could remind the crew of the daylight they were wasting, and inform them that no one was getting another crumb of rations until all necessary duties had been finished. He could find Ed and get him to talk sense into his stupid, stupid boyfriend for him.

All viable options, all likely to be much more effective than what Izzy actually ended up doing, which was marching to the center of the circle, flipping the plate off the barrel to send food flying in all directions, grabbing Stede by the front of his shirt and screaming:

“What. The fucking FUCK are you doing!?”

The worst part was, even as Izzy was doing it, he knew what a bad idea it was. But he couldn’t stop himself. He was too angry, too tired, and deep down in a place he couldn’t acknowledge, too scared.

Several crew members jumped in to intervene as soon as Izzy put his hands on their captain. He felt Fang’s gentle but implacable grip on his shoulder, pulling him back.

“Hey, boss. You okay? Maybe want to sit down a minute, or…?”

“Get out,” Izzy barked at him, refusing to take his eyes off Stede. There was an insolence in the man’s hazel eyes that made Izzy’s rage flare up all the worse. He looked like a spoiled child being denied a new toy. “All of you, get the fuck out. Anyone who’s still here in the next ten seconds, I’ll rip their guts out.”

A few seconds of tense silence followed, then the gratifying sound of retreating footsteps. Fang tried to give Izzy’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze, but Izzy pushed him away with a growl. None of them had any clue what was going on here; they’d all fallen under the Stede Bonnet spell of incompetency.

He advanced on Stede as soon as he was sure they were alone. Stede didn’t retreat, just stood there with his arms crossed until they were nose to nose.

“I run your ship for you,” Izzy said, trying to keep his voice low and even lest he start screaming again. “I help keep our coffers full and our crew fed, and I even call you ‘captain,’ despite your resolute fucking refusal to earn that title in any way, shape, or fucking form. I do all that for you, and how do you repay me? By doing the stupidest, most bloody-minded thing you could possibly-”

“You care to explain what you’re talking about, before you work yourself into such a lather?” Stede demanded. “Because last I checked, I was allowed to talk with my own crew.”

“Tell me you at least didn’t tell them about the reward on your head,” Izzy said. “For the love of God, Bonnet, at least tell me you had the sense not to do that.”

“Of course I did! I needed to give them the proper context for our situation, didn’t I? I’m sure if we all put our heads together, we can think of a way-“

Izzy shook his head in disbelief. “You stupid cunt. You useless, overgrown fucking child-“

“Alright, that’s about enough!” Stede drew himself to his full height, and actually dared to put his hand on Izzy’s shoulder and shove him back a step. “I’m still your captain, and there’s only so much verbal abuse I’ll tolerate before I-“

Izzy shoved back. “Before you what? Cry about it to Edward? For God’s sake, Bonnet, do you have any idea what you’ve just done?”

“No! How about you fucking tell me instead of throwing a great big tantrum about it? You’re the one acting like a child!”

“You’ve told everyone on this crew exactly how much they stand to gain from selling you out, and exactly who to fucking find to do it! What’s to stop any one of them from deciding they’d rather retire in luxury than try to fight the English Navy on your behalf?”

Stede scoffed. “That’s rich coming from you, considering that was your plan once upon a time. Remember? If there’s anyone on this ship I ought not to trust-“

“How. Dare you.” Izzy’s voice was choked with rage. “After everything I went through for you, because of you-”

“If you deserve my vote of confidence, Izzy, then so does everyone else on this crew.” Stede’s voice was calm now, infuriatingly so. He had the higher ground and he knew it, and Izzy felt like he was drowning. “If you don’t like that, then perhaps it’s best you find another ship to sail on.”

“You…” Izzy tried to breathe, to sort his whirling, panicked thoughts out. There had to be a way to talk to Stede, to make him see reason. “You’re going to get yourself killed, thinking like that.”

“By treating my crew with respect? I’m willing to take that risk.”

“You’re going to get Edward killed,” Izzy argued. “Any danger you bring down on yourself comes down on him too. And if you think I’m going to just stand idly by and let that happen, you’re an even bigger idiot than I thought.”

“You know, for someone who claims to love Ed so much, you don’t seem to think much of his ability to take care of himself,” Stede sniffed. “You’ll recall he managed to stay alive that entire time you were away. Do you really care about him, Izzy, or do you just care about being Blackbeard’s right-hand man?”

Izzy sputtered, trying to get a grip on how to answer that. Of course he cared about Ed. Being Blackbeard’s sword was part of that, and what bizarre world had he fallen into where that wasn’t obvious?

“Hey. Uh. What’s going on here?”

Both of them snapped their heads around to look at Ed, leaning in the doorway. Izzy clasped his hands behind his back, praying it was the capable, competent Edward he would get today, not Stede’s besotted lover. Their very survival might depend on what mood Ed found himself in at this moment. At least he was properly dressed.

“Your boyfriend- ‘scuse me, your co-captain-” Izzy punctuated this with a sneer in Stede’s direction- “decided it would be a good idea to inform the entire crew that Admiral Badminton’s put an obscenely large bounty on his head.”

Ed’s face fell. “Shit. Really?”

“Since when is it supposed to be this great big secret?” Stede whined. “You never said anything about that, Ed.”

Izzy turned back to Ed, his stomach sinking. “Is he telling the truth? You couldn’t have mentioned the grave danger we’re in, before settling down for a quiet evening of shagging each other blind?”

“Watch it, Iz,” Ed said darkly. Then he sighed heavily and rubbed his temples. “It wasn’t a good idea to tell them that, babe. You never know who’s gonna be tempted to sell you out.”

Stede looked between Ed and Izzy, his face turning red. “I can’t believe you’re saying this, about our crew! They wouldn’t do that.”

“They’re pirates,” Ed said.

“They’re family!”

Izzy laughed. “And family never fuck you over, right? Think we should swing by Barbados and ask your wife and kids if they agree?”

It was a rotten thing to say, and it had the exact effect that Izzy was hoping for. Stede reeled back like he’d been gut-stabbed again. Ed winced in sympathy.

“He’s got a point. He’s being a fucking asshole about it, but he’s got a point.”

“Edward. You can’t keep coddling him.” Izzy looked into Ed’s eyes, pleading. “He has to know what this life is really like. This ship, this…fantasy, he’s got us all living in. It can’t last. He’s going to get us all killed.”

“Excuse me, but my methods were good enough for you when I was rescuing you from Mad Monty. Twice.”

“Your plan only worked because Ed took control and did what had to be done,” Izzy snapped. “You lobbed a bunch of fake cannonballs. Ed was the one who torched the Falling Star, and Ed was the one who-“

The panicked look on Ed’s face stopped the words leaving his mouth.

“Does he know?” Izzy peered at Ed, who’s expression had gone as black and impenetrable as a thundercloud. “God. You never told him. Fuck me.”

“Never told me what? Ed?”

Stede reached out to touch Ed’s arm, and Ed shifted away, his shoulders coming up toward his ears.

“I killed Monty, alright? Fuckin’ strangled him to death. Bugger made it easy, wearing a chain around his neck. Rookie mistake.”

“Oh, Ed.” Stede’s expression melted into one of deep pity. The sight of it made Izzy’s stomach turn.

“It was the right thing to do,” Izzy reminded him. “It was the only way to stop him.”

And you were beautiful. Even among the blood and the smoke and death, you were so, so beautiful.

Izzy stared, trying to say as much with his eyes because he didn’t trust his tongue to handle the words with the skill they required. When it came to love-talk, he still felt as clumsy and slow as he had the first time he’d held a sword.

So practice. Be honest. Tell him how you feel.

“I’ve never loved you more, than in that moment,” Izzy said, raising his head proudly.

And Ed’s face…crumpled. Collapsed into despair. Like glass smashing. Like a rare bird being shot out of the sky.

No, Izzy thought, but it was too late. He’d said what he said, and meant it, and the fact that it had the exact opposite effect he intended just figured, didn’t it?

“Ed, I didn’t mean-“

“Didn’t you?” Ed grinned, a horrible rictus that didn’t touch his eyes. “Think I need to be alone for a bit.”

He fled, his footsteps fading quickly. Izzy looked up at Stede and could barely see the man through the rage and humiliation swamping his vision.

“I can’t believe it,” he whispered. “You fucking screwed me again, Bonnet.”

“What?” Stede goggled at him. “How?”

“You’re the one who kept banging on for me to tell him things,” Izzy snarled. “Express my fucking feelings.”

“Well, I didn’t realize your feelings were so…unsettling,” Stede replied. “I was thinking more along the lines of, ‘You look nice today,’ for God’s sake. Not…whatever that was.”

“Right. Fuck you. Fuck this.”

Izzy shoved past Stede, knuckling furiously at his eyes to hide the humiliation-induced tears gathering there. Why on earth had he said that to Ed? What good could possibly have come of it?

“Izzy! Come on, don’t be like that!”

Both the dinghies were in good repair. Izzy could take the smaller one and row to that island they had passed a day ago. Board a passing ship and be gone forever. He’d need something to barter for his passage, though. Everything of value that he owned was in Ed and Stede’s cabin, and there was a good chance Ed was in there. Alright, fine. He’d work for his passage. He just needed enough food and water to sustain him for the journey, which meant a trip back to galley-

Where Stede was. Fuck.

“Bugger it, I’ll catch a gull and eat it if I have to,” Izzy muttered. He stormed passed the suspicious glances of the crew on deck and started preparing the smaller dinghy for travel, ignoring the sound of Stede trundling up behind him.

“Izzy, come on. This is getting a bit old, isn’t it?”

“What’s getting old?” Wee John asked, not looking up from his knitting.

“Izzy thinks he’s leaving,” Stede huffed.

“For real this time?” Roach called down from the rigging. “Should I make some sandwiches?”

“No!” Stede yanked the line Izzy was coiling out of his hand. “He’s not actually leaving. He’s just being a…a…”

“Drama llama?” Frenchie suggested.

“Yes! That’s exactly what he’s being. A drama llama. Did you make that up, Frenchie? I like it.”

“Bonnet,” Izzy said, trying to keep his voice low in the vain hope that the crew would mind their own fucking business. “It would give me immense pleasure right now to put my sword through your gullet. You’d be wise not to give me a reason.” He tried to take the rope back from Stede, but Stede seemed unimpressed and held on tight.

“Seems like the last time you did that and made a dramatic exit from the ship, it worked out worse for you than for me,” he said.

The urge to just start stabbing people at random swelled. “Bonnet, I swear to God if you make me kill you-“

“Would that make you feel better? Probably for a few minutes, then you’d go right back to feeling sorry for yourself. So how about we skip the middle bits and you just move on to calming the fuck down!”

He yanked on the rope again, and Izzy yanked back, and then they were involved in an honest-to-God tug-of-war with it. It would have been the most embarrassing thing to happen to him that Izzy could recall in quite some time, if today wasn’t so fucking special.

“Hey, hey! Fuck’s sake, you two, knock it off.”

That was Oluwande, coming up to force a thick arm between them and pry them apart. Stede stumbled back on his heeled shoes, and Olu stepped in front of him.

“Captain, maybe you should be…somewhere else, for a few minutes,” he suggested. “Give yourselves a chance to cool off.”

“I’m cool. I’m perfectly cool! He’s the one who’s being-“

“Just…give us a minute, okay?” Olu planted his feet more firmly. “Take a walk. Count to one hundred or something.”

“Fine,” Stede sniffed. “But don’t let him leave! I’m still the captain, and I won’t have men abandoning their posts willy-nilly!”

“Just give us a couple minutes,” Olu repeated. “We’ll talk.”

He waited until Stede had trudged a few reluctant paces away before turning back to Izzy.

“Alright. So whatever’s going on-”

“Is none of your fucking business,” Izzy snapped.

Olu closed his eyes and heaved a short sigh. “Yeah. I was gonna say that, if you’d let me get a word in. Want to take the dinghy out with me and not talk about it for a bit? I told Roach I’d catch us a dinner special. You know how to fish, don’t you?”

Izzy glared suspiciously. Olu’s mellow brown eyes were unreadable, his folded arms and sardonic tilt to his head suggesting nothing but genuine, if frayed, patience.

Some peace and quiet did sound nice. And he could always throw Olu overboard if it turned out to be a trap.

Ed couldn’t think of where to go. He stomped around the secret passageways for a bit, hoping he’d end up somewhere that seemed like a good place to curl up into a ball and hide for a while. What he really wanted to do was take another sniff of rhino horn, just enough to chase away this sucking black maelstrom of self-doubt, but his stash was in his cabin and he was worried Stede or Izzy would be in there. He couldn’t handle seeing either of them right now.

Or rather, he couldn’t handle anybody seeing him.

I’ve never loved you more. Izzy said he didn’t mean it, but of course he had. Ed could tell from the way his eyes glowed when he said it, the vulnerable little quiver in his voice. And why shouldn’t he have meant it? He was only recognizing the love that Ed had to give. He’d killed his father for his mother, he’d killed Mad Monty for Izzy, he was going to kill Chauncey Badminton for Stede. And if the day came that he couldn’t kill anymore…

Then there will be nothing left to love, the Kraken mused. I’m the only part of you worth a damn, Eddie, and you know it.

Ed whimpered and stopped in his tracks, turning to press his forehead against the wall as if he could squish that voice right out of his head. Probably get nothing but a bunch of splinters in his face for his trouble, but hey, maybe he deserved that, maybe he ought to save some time and just bash his head into the wall again and again and again-

“Blackbeard! There you are. I had an idea about-“

The sudden intrusion into Ed’s self-loathing hit like a knife against bone. He whirled, lashing out blindly, felt his fist connect with something and felt the Kraken roar with approval. He lunged, nothing on his mind but blood-

-and was stopped by the wide, terrified eyes of Lucius. The boy was crouched on the floor, cradling Black Pete, who was clutching his nose and blinking up at Ed in a daze.

“Oh my God, Blackbeard, I am so, so sorry.” Black Pete sniffed, and a trickle of blood leaked between his fingers. “That was totally my fault.”

“How the hell was it your fault?” Lucius demanded. The shock was fading from his eyes, and replacing it was a glare at Ed that could have withered flowers on the stem.

“You should never sneak up on a dangerous man when he’s concentrating, babe. Remember our conversation, when you walked in on me in the bathroom?”

“You mean the one where you screamed and made me promise not to tell Stede you were using his face cream? That conversation?”

“Okay, the details don’t matter, but the point was, you should never sneak up on a dangerous man while he’s concentrating.”

“You definitely never said that part.”

What Ed should have done was taken the opportunity and bolted, but he lingered a moment too long and Lucius’s attention snapped back to him.

“So, is this another one of those cool pirate games?” he asked. “Hide in the shadows and break the nose of the first unsuspecting person who comes along?”

“It’s not broken,” Black Pete protested. He took his hand away, and a thick globule of blood came with it. “Oh. Shit.”

“I’m sorry,” Ed said. It came out all garbled, like his throat was clogged with something. He swallowed and tried again. “I’m really sorry, guys, I don’t- I didn’t mean to-“

His face was wet. Was the boat leaking? Why couldn’t he talk right, or for that matter, breathe right?

“Hooo boy,” Lucius sighed. “Okay, come on. Let’s get you two sitting down. I’ll make some tea.”

Stede wandered up to the quarterdeck, far enough away that he could no longer see what Izzy and Olu were up to. Fine. He didn’t feel like looking at Izzy anyway. He thought about going back to his cabin, but decided that would look too much like he’d been banished from the deck of his own ship. Besides, he didn’t want to intrude on Ed, if he’d gone in there to be alone.

God, what a mess they were in. And for once Stede was pretty sure it wasn’t his fault, which did nothing to ease his fears that every good thing in his life was about to be snatched away from him.

His thoughts in that vein were interrupted by a squawk, and a rustling of feathers.

“Hello, Karl,” he said, smiling weakly at the seagull perched on the taffrail. “How’s your day going? Better than mine, probably.”

Karl shuffled his webbed feet noncommittally.

“Must be a pretty good lot for a seagull. Flying around, eating fish. Bet you never have to worry about relationship drama.” Stede chuckled softly at his own attempt at a joke, and felt lonelier than before.

A gust of wind ruffled Karl’s wings, but he stayed where he was. He stared at Stede, his beady black eyes full of wordless curiosity. Most likely, he was just trying to discern if any of the buttons on Stede’s coat were actually cleverly-disguised shrimp, but it looked like he genuinely wanted to ask Stede a question.

Stede moved a little closer.

“Here’s what’s really bothering me…”

Chapter Text

After setting Black Pete up with a cold rag for his nose, Lucius brewed a pot of some powerfully herbal tea that had Ed longing for a proper cup with milk and sugar. He got the sense the stuff was meant to have some healing properties, from the way Black Pete inhaled the steam with a grateful sigh, and so he figured complaining would only serve to extend his time on Lucius’ shit list. He took small sips and tried to get himself under control.

You need to get a fucking grip, mate. Blackbeard doesn’t cry. You didn’t survive Hornigold by sniveling, did you? Damn right you didn’t.

He peeked up cautiously from the rim of his teacup and caught Lucius’ eye. “S’good,” he said, and forced another sip down. “How’s your nose feeling, Pete?”

“I really don’t think it’s broken,” Black Pete said, congestion sending his consonants askew. “It feels better already.”

“Yeah, should heal up pretty quick,” Ed agreed. He hazarded a smile at Lucius, but received nothing but a frosty stare in return. “Seen a lot of busted up noses in my time. They’re usually nothing to worry about. Hell, this one time when I was lead gunner on the Ranger-“

Lucius rolled his eyes. “Hey, you know what would be even better than another pirate story? You telling us what all that screaming in the galley was about. Because if your boyfriends are gonna fight to the death again, I’d love to be awake for it this time.”

“No one’s fighting to the death,” Ed said. This was good, actually. Addressing the incident with Stede and Izzy would distract from his own fuckups, and give him a chance to do some damage control there. “Whole thing was just a big misunderstanding. Izzy wanted us all to discuss it in private first, but Stede jumped the gun, is all. Probably excited about having his first wanted poster.”

The skeptical look on Lucius’ face didn’t budge. Ed looked to Black Pete for support.

“It’s a big deal!” Black Pete offered eagerly, only about half a beat too late. “I mean, for first-timers anyway. I don’t even remember my first wanted poster, since I was like, ten.”

“Uh-huh,” Lucius said, putting more unspoken questions into two syllables than Ed thought ought to be allowed. He decided to change tactics before the situation completely got away from him.

“Okay, well. I cold-cocked you, so it’s only fair you get a free shot in.” Ed pushed himself away from the table and stood, happy to put more distance between himself and the gross tea. “C’mon, sock me one across the jaw. Even the score.”

Black Pete goggled. “You want me to hit you?”

“Yeah!” Ed planted his feet and stuck out his chin. “C’mon, I’m fucking Blackbeard. I can take it.”

The top of Black Pete’s head was starting to redden. He rose shakily, coming to stand in front of Ed. Behind him, Lucius cringed.

“In the face?”

Ed nodded. “One clean shot. Seriously, I’ll feel bad if you don’t do it.”

Somewhere in the space between anticipation and memory, Ed could already feel the impact, the red haze that would follow and block out all the other stuff he was feeling.

Black Pete raised his arm. Lucius made a sound that was half-moan, half-squawk. Black Pete dropped his arm again.

“Sorry, I can’t do it. I’m too nervous.”

“Aw. Really?” With nowhere to go, the tension in Ed’s bloodstream zipped to and fro, making his arms and legs tingle. He bounced on the balls of his feet. “Okay, well, let’s do something fun then. You guys know how to play Knife Parade?”

He reached for the hilt of his knife, and Lucius stood up quickly.

“Or! We could do something else? Something that doesn’t result in one of us being horribly injured?”

Ed felt a low growl of frustration build in his throat. He swallowed it down. “Like what?”

“Ooh! He could help us with The Project.” Black Pete winked at Lucius.

“The Project?” Ed wasn’t sure he liked having something that so clearly denoted a capital letter happening on the ship without his knowledge, but at least it sounded interesting.

Lucius looked hesitant, but Black Pete was already leading the way out of the galley. Ed followed them, growing more nervous as they went. He’d sailed with some guys who got into weird shit- it didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility that Black Pete was about to proudly reveal a sculpture made of rat carcasses, or some kind of goat-fish hybrid.

He felt even more unsettled when they stopped outside Izzy’s former cabin. Ed knew the crew had turned the room into some kind of group hangout space, but it was still hard to shake the association of coming to this room specifically to fuck. Not the headspace he wanted to be in when he laid eyes on whatever was inside.

“Okay, so it’s not finished yet,” Black Pete said. “And it’s supposed to be a surprise for Stede, so you can’t tell him about it yet.”

He opened the door with a flourish. Ed saw nothing but darkness.

“It’ll be more impressive if you light the lamp, babe,” Lucius muttered.

“Shit! Right.”

There were a few minutes of awkward waiting around while Black Pete went to fetch some lanterns, during which Ed had a chance to calm down. He tried smiling at Lucius again, did the eye-crinkling thing that always got him a free round from Spanish Jackie.

“Sorry I hit your boyfriend,” he muttered.

“Thanks,” Lucius said. He seemed to have defrosted a bit. “Sorry your boyfriends are fighting. I know that’s no fun.”

“Okay! Here we go.” Black Pete bustled past them and placed the lanterns around the room, filling the small space with a warm glow. “Voila!”

Ed looked, and even before he could take it all in, he felt a smile tugging at his lips. This fucking boat, man. Surprises around every corner.

“The Project” occupied the entire back wall of the room. The wall had been painted over in white, brightening the space and forming a backdrop for what appeared to be the work of several different artists. Ed saw a turtle with a flamboyantly-painted shell, a portrait of a blonde-haired little girl picking flowers, an abstract swirl of teal and orange that seemed to suggest a shape without fully forming one.

“We’ve all been adding our own bits to it when we can,” Lucius explained. “Mostly depends on what we’ve been able to scrape up for paint.”

“This is what I did!” Black Pete pointed at a scene in the middle of a dolphin breaching a mighty wave. At least, Ed was pretty sure it was supposed to be a dolphin.

“We’re going to surprise Stede with it when it’s done,” Lucius went on. “Just to like, show him we can do something as a crew, without him prodding us into it.”

Ed pictured the look on Stede’s face when he saw this thing, and felt himself go all soft inside. “This is great, guys,” he said, trying not to choke up. “He’s gonna fuckin’ love it.”

“You should add something!” Black Pete opened a drawer and began taking out pots and brushes. “Let’s see…we’ve still got black, and, um, more black, and- ooh! Some green here…”

“You…you want me to paint on it?” Ed asked.

He took a small step into the room, still transfixed by all the details that were already on the wall. It was harder to tell who did what than he would have guessed. So many dreams and secrets, tucked here in the heart of the ship. Like tattoos, if you could get them on the inside of your skin, where they wouldn’t need to serve as armor.

“Yeah, of course.” Black Pete said. “You’re part of the crew too.”

Ed’s fingers hovered over the assortment of paints. After a minute he picked up the smallest brush he could find, and a pot still mostly full of black ink.

“Anywhere? Anything I want?”

“Just as long as you don’t paint over anyone else,” Lucius said. “But yeah, anything you want.”

Ed stood for longer in front of the wall, trying to decide where to begin. There were still some empty spaces in the middle, but he wasn’t sure about picking such a prominent spot. He’d drawn some of his own tattoos, but he’d never tried painting before. What if he ruined the whole thing?

Finally, he found a spot near the floor, in the corner, nearly hidden behind the chest of drawers, He settled down cross-legged, ignoring the faint twinge in his knee, and swirled the tip of the brush into the ink.

He touched it to the wall. A jet-black dot appeared on the wall and spread, seeping into the grain of the wood beneath.

He held his breath for a minute, then added another.

It actually was soothing to be out on the fishing boat, despite the heat and the smell of the chicken guts Oluwande had brought along to use as bait. It wasn’t until Izzy’s anger began to dissipate that he realized he might have preferred it over the sick, heavy feeling in his chest that followed, the distinct sensation of having cocked things up again. He tried to hang onto the anger by reminding himself of Stede’s incompetence, but the image of Ed’s stricken face wouldn’t leave him. The look on Ed’s face, and the words that had caused it.

I’ve never loved you more. What hurt the most was that Izzy had meant it with his whole heart. The night Ed killed Mad Monty had been, to Izzy, the purest expression of love that he could have ever hoped for. Edward and his beautiful, terrible darkness, not weighed down by it but wielding it, striking down his enemies like some kind of avenging angel, and doing it all to protect Izzy…it was the kind of thing you could get all swoony about, if Izzy was the swooning type.

Izzy thought Ed had understood that, had even dared to think that maybe he felt the same, if not from the kill then from what happened afterward. Fucking- no, damn it all, making love, it had been rough but it had still been making love- amongst the aftermath of all that violence, for reasons no one else could understand, for reasons they couldn’t even explain to each other beyond the unspoken promises made with their teeth and nails and blood…it had been the closest moment Izzy had ever come to feeling whole.

Clearly it had been something different for Ed. Something he had been too ashamed of to even mention to Stede. And Izzy wasn’t sure he could stand to come back to the ship, with the humiliation that came with knowing that now.

“Hey. You know you’ve got a bite?”

Izzy jumped. He’d been so absorbed in his bitter ruminating, he’d almost forgotten Olu was there. He was also correct- Izzy’s fishing pole was bowed downward, jerking from the struggles of whatever was on the line. He seized the pole and yanked, hoping that whatever it was was big enough to need some enthusiastic killing.

The line went slack as his quarry managed to free itself, and everything went still again. Fucking typical.

Izzy slumped back in the boat and cast an apologetic glance at Olu. “I’m actually know fuck-all about fishing, to be honest. Hope Roach has a backup plan for supper.”

“Eh, I wouldn’t worry about it.” Olu gave his own fishing pole a half-hearted jiggle, then shrugged. “Mainly just wanted to get off the ship for a bit, before Stede called another meeting.”

“Yeah?” Izzy supposed that the crew meeting really should have been what he was focusing on. Not that he’d handled that particularly masterfully, either. “Not time well spent, in your opinion?”

Olu eyed Izzy closely, as if he expected a trap, or maybe just sarcasm. He sighed and took off his cap to mop his brow.

“No offense, but how much does Stede really tell you about his, uh, pirating style? Did he tell you about how the first Badminton died?”

Izzy felt one of his signature Stede Bonnet-related headaches coming on. “You mean how he tripped and fell on his own sword?”

“Okay, so he did tell you. Cool.” Olu shifted around a bit, until he was facing Izzy properly. “So yeah, we know he’s not exactly cut out to murder a navy admiral in cold blood. But I’m worried he’s got it in his head to do it by himself, to impress Blackbeard or something. Because why the hell else would he be trying to get us to help him form a plan? This sort of thing has got to be old hat for Blackbeard, right?”

“Well…sure,” Izzy said. “Although the general strategy when dealing with the Royal Navy is to run, rather than fight. One of their ships has got even the best pirate crew outgunned five to one.”

Olu nodded. “Right. But the bounty on Stede’s head makes running a lot harder. I get that. But my point is, this is clearly a job for Blackbeard, not Stede Bonnet. So why isn’t Blackbeard the one planning it? Because from where I’m standing, it looks a lot like Stede is planning to get us all killed so that he can show his boyfriend that he’s, I dunno, on the same level as a pirate? And I’ll be honest, I don’t love that.”

Izzy took a minute to try and sort that all out in his head. It felt like when Edward threw a bunch of knowledge about weather patterns or fish migrations at him, just bits of information rolling helter-skelter through his skull. Olu was sharp, sharper perhaps than Izzy had given him credit for, and he had picked up on the inconsistencies of both Stede and Ed’s behavior. But he was missing a vital piece of the puzzle- that Ed had some weird hangup about killing, and that Stede was the only person he had talked to about it.

Oh fucking hell, Edward. We need to talk before this whole thing goes completely tits up.

“Blackbeard’s not going to let Stede get us all killed,” Izzy said, trying to sound like he believed it. “I’m sure he’s got a plan.”

Olu raised his eyebrows. “You’re sure? So he hasn’t actually told you anything.”

“Fuck off,” Izzy snapped. “Doesn’t mean he hasn’t got a plan. He does this all the time. Plays it close, then swoops in with the big dramatic solution.”

“Yeah, that also worries me,” Olu said. “The last time he did something like that, he kind of ended up punching Jim in the face.”

“And?”

“And…” Olu sputtered. “I fucking like Jim’s face! That was a real dick move your captain pulled, and I’d like some assurance he’s not gonna do something like that again.”

Izzy almost just went ahead and told Olu not to worry about it- it was obvious that Ed had nothing but regrets about the way that night had gone- but he stopped himself and went on the attack instead. “Seems like Jim can take care of themselves.”

Olu’s dark eyes grew hard. “I never said they couldn’t. I’m just looking out for my friend. You understand, like, the concept of having friends, right?”

Izzy gave Olu the finger and turned away. “You don’t need to worry about what Blackbeard’s plan is. Just be ready to follow orders when the time comes.”

They lapsed into silence after that, broken only when Olu hooked a fish and succeeded in hauling it in. Izzy helped Olu remove the wriggling thing from the hook, and sighed heavily.

“If I think Edw- Blackbeard is going to fuck Jim over again, I’ll do my best to stop him. Reckon I still owe them a favor or two.”

“Christ.” Olu pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, you could do that. Or you could, y’know, talk to the two guys you’re sleeping with before something fucked up happens. Maybe even prevent it from happening in the first place.” He took in the stymied expression on Izzy’s face and snorted. “Sorry, are we still supposed to pretend we don’t know about that?”

“I’m not…,” Izzy said, then quickly dropped the attempt at lying. He knew, of course, that the crew knew what was going on with the three of them. How could they not? He hadn’t really thought any one of them would have the stones to bring it up, though- another classic Izzy Hands miscalculation. God, he hated how stupid this ship could make him feel.

“It’s…more complicated than that,” he settled on.

“Not surprised to hear that.” Olu’s eyes narrowed. “You know you don’t have to do…whatever it is you guys are doing, right? I know Stede’s not always great at taking hints-“

“Mr. Boodhari, if you are about to insult me by implying that Stede fucking Bonnet could do anything to me without my consent, I’ll be bringing you back to Roach as the dinner special.”

“Fine, whatever, but what about Blackbeard?” Olu pressed. “You and him have this weird thing going on-“

“Which we already established is none of your business-”

“Someone’s gotta be looking out for the crew!” Olu’s voice quavered with the sudden surge in volume, and he slammed his hands against the edge of the boat hard enough to set it to rocking. “That’s all I’m trying to figure out. Is anyone looking out for us, or are Stede and Blackbeard only looking out for each other?”

After months on the Revenge, the effect of hearing a reasonable argument was nothing short of dizzying- Izzy actually felt lightheaded.

“And that’s why you brought me out here,” he finally said. “To find out where my loyalties lie?”

Olu shrugged, helplessly. “You’re part of this crew. Least, I thought you were. You sleep on deck with us, when you’re not…“ he caught Izzy’s glare out of the corner of his eye. “Elsewhere. You’re not as much of a dick, sometimes. Even caught you smiling at breakfast once or twice. But lately I get the feeling that it’s been the three of you against the rest of us, and now today, I frankly don’t know what the fuck is going on. And I’m trying to…you know. Keep my family safe.”

Izzy’s shoulders slumped. There was that word again, family, the word that seemed a surefire way to scramble both Ed’s and Bonnet’s brains. Maybe Izzy ought to include himself in that group- he certainly wasn’t reacting to Olu’s borderline-mutinous talk the way he’d been trained to.

“Are you not saying anything because I’ve got a point, or because you’re working out the best way to kill me?” Olu asked, after the silence went on a bit too long.

“The first one,” Izzy admitted. “It’s…good of you, to have the crew’s best interest in mind. ’S’the right thing to do.”

“Yeah, I know,” Olu said, not sounding terribly enthused. “So can you give me anything here?”

Izzy hunched in a desperate attempt to hide his no-doubt visible floundering. This was his job- reassuring the crew about Ed’s intentions, hiding the man’s fallibility to keep the legend of Blackbeard from being tarnished. But he was frustrated with Ed, sick of keeping his secrets for him. Secrets that Ed didn’t even bother sharing with Izzy, but expected him to protect anyway.

“The captain has…personal demons,” Izzy settled on. “They’ve been troubling him of late. But I don’t know why.”

Olu nodded. “D’you think Stede does?”

“Couldn’t say. I thought he told Stede everything, but…” Izzy sighed. “Got reason to believe that’s not the case, now.”

“Okay,” Olu said. “So the only person who really knows what’s going on in Blackbeard’s head is Blackbeard. And maybe Stede, but he’s…Stede.”

“He is,” Izzy agreed. “So the long and short of it is, we’re fucked.”

It wasn’t clear, which one of them started laughing first. Izzy thought they probably both started at the same time- there really wasn’t anything else to do.

“Wow. That looks really, really good.”

Ed squirmed happily in front of his contribution to the art wall. “You’re just saying that.”

“No, I’m not! I swear to God I’m not.” Black Pete elbowed Lucius. “Doesn’t it look good, babe?”

“It actually is pretty good,” Lucius said. He didn’t sound as excited as Black Pete. “Probably had a lot of time to practice doodling, right? All those years on ships…”

“Not really,” Ed replied. “Never thought to try it before. It just sort of came out of me.”

Black Pete grinned. “That’s so cool. Now we’ve got two amazing artists on board! We should start, like, our own floating gallery…”

Ed turned back to his painting, trying to picture it in a fancy gilt frame. It was a picture of a mermaid, or maybe a merman. A merperson. They were underwater, back and tail arched as if in the act of swimming toward the surface, and most of their face and upper body was concealed by their black hair that flowed around them in kelp-like ropes. It was hair like Ed’s had been when he was young, hair like his mother’s when she would free it from its pins and brush it out at night. The most defined human part of the merperson was one outstretched arm, brown fingers grasping upward at…something. Ed hadn’t gotten around to deciding what the something was.

It did look good so far, he thought. Just like how he’d pictured it in his head. Maybe someday he could retire from piracy and become an artist. Jeff the Painter, with his little seaside gallery. Paintings by Jeff. He thought of his merperson hanging in some rich guy’s house, proudly displayed in the great hall where guests could see it. I say, Lord Fossington, what an exquisite piece you have here. Why thank you, Lady Spimblepie, it’s a Jeff original, actually. Cost a pretty penny, I don’t mind telling you, but I think you’d agree it was worth it.

Ed frowned, wondering how much you were supposed to charge for paintings. It seemed like it ought to be a lot, considering how proud rich people were of owning them, but what if he asked for too much? What if some rich toff came into his gallery to buy a painting, and laughed in Ed’s face when he heard the price? You’re asking how much for these…daubings? Don’t be ridiculous, it’s clear the artist is an amateur with no pedigree to speak of. I’ll give you five shillings for it, and only because I find this piece’s…primitive enthusiasm so amusing.

Ed’s fists clenched. He could clearly see the obnoxious rich guy in his mind, turning up his snuff-encrusted nose at Ed’s genuine expression of himself. Fucking dickhead. The art collecting world was probably lousy with types like him. He’d have to spend all day dealing with people who felt free to insult him just because they had a little money, like they had any fucking idea what they were talking about. Like they knew anything about him.

He’d show them. He ought to paint a whole gallery of masterpieces, then burn them all to ash, just to show how little he cared about anyone else’s opinion.

“Maybe I’ll come back and work on it later,” he said. He got up slowly, biting back a groan at the sickening ache in his knee. What had he been thinking, sitting on the floor for so long? “Should probably get back to…captain stuff.”

“Sure,” Lucius said softly. “You know where all the stuff is now. Come down anytime inspiration strikes.”

“Just knock first,” Black Pete added, giving Lucius a sly glance. “Just in case someone else is getting…inspired.”

“Oh my God, could you not?” Lucius stifled a giggle behind his hand. “He’s joking, obviously. We don’t do anything in here.”

Ed looked back at the merperson. On a closer look, he wasn’t actually sure it was that good. He wasn’t sure how he felt about anyone else seeing it.

That’s because you’re not a painter, Eddie. You’re a killer, holding a paintbrush.

A sudden urge closed over Ed, to seize the pot of black paint and slosh it all over the corner he’d been working on. Smother those green scales and those reaching fingers, grasping at nothing.

Maybe he would have, except…the merperson did look a little bit like his mum. In real life, Ed had never seen her dip so much as a toe in the ocean. He guessed it was possible that she had at some point before her death. He liked to imagine that she’d found some form of happiness, after the disappearance of her husband and son.

Deep down, he knew it was a long shot. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to let her enjoy her freedom as a painting. For a little while, at least.

“I just have to wonder, is it meant to be this complicated?” Stede sighed. “Sometimes it really does seem like Izzy and I are making progress. Then he does something like this, and I just can’t for the life of me understand what Ed sees in him.”

Karl hooted softly. He’d taken to preening beneath his wings while Stede rehashed the incident in the galley, but Stede chose not to take offense to that. It was certainly possible to groom and listen at the same time, and Stede could hardly judge a gentleman- or gentlebird- for wanting to keep himself neat.

“I know there’s love between them, but they don’t always bring out the best in each other. And why didn’t Ed tell me he killed Monty? We could have talked about it. It’s not like I couldn’t tell something was wrong.”

He thought of the hundreds of hurt looks he’d received from Mary throughout their marriage, all the times he’d disappointed her, all the years he’d failed to be the husband she deserved. Was that an inevitability of being with him? Maybe he wasn’t meant to be with anyone. It was obvious that Izzy considered him as little more than a cross to bear, and Ed…

“Did he not tell me because he thought I wouldn’t be able to handle it? Does he think I’m too…too fragile, for this life?”

Another seagull landed on the taffrail beside Karl. Stede frowned.

“Excuse me. We’re having a rather private conversation here, if you wouldn’t mind.”

The other seagull ignored Stede’s hint and hopped over toward Karl. They exchanged some soft cooing noises, then the new seagull brushed its wing against Karl’s in what looked like a fond gesture.

“Oh,” Stede said. “Are you two, um…together?”

The two seagulls gazed at him implacably.

“My apologies, er, Missus Karl. Or Mister Karl, I guess? Sorry, I don’t really know how it all works with birds.”

Karl’s companion ignored him. The two of them twitched their feathers and bobbed their heads, communicating with each other in some subtle seagull cant that Stede could barely detect, let alone understand. Stede watched them with a growing sense of dread, that itching feeling that he’d been allowed to act a buffoon for far too long.

“Am I being rather selfish? Would they be better off without me, do you think? Maybe now that they’ve admitted their feelings for each other, I’m what’s causing the problem.”

The thought of life without Ed made Stede sob on the inside, but how could he be sure that it wasn’t just the whinging of a spoiled rich boy denied something he wanted?

I should find Ed, Stede thought. See what he has to say. Talk it through, instead of grasping about blind like this. But even that perfectly rational thought was suspect, all of a sudden. Because Stede knew that Ed, dear, kind Ed, wouldn’t hesitate to reassure him that no, his presence wasn’t the cause of any of their problems. That Ed loved him and wanted him here, no matter what.

Stede wasn’t sure that was what he needed to hear right now. It was what he wanted, desperately, but he was prone to wanting foolish, impossible things.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath of salt air, felt the breeze ruffle his hair. He wondered how anyone could claim to hate the ocean. When he was a boy, the ocean seemed to him like the only tangible expression of God’s benevolent strength, the only example of power without meanness. The ocean could be harsh, but it was never mean. It didn’t hurt for the sake of hurting. It was only doing what it was meant to do.

“Give me a sign,” he whispered. “Please?”

By some unspoken signal, the two seagulls took off. Stede watched them wheel up into the sky, circling each other in perfect unity, leaving him and his questions far below.

“Any time now,” he prodded the sea gently. “Don’t hold back. I’m listening.”

“I see you’ve met the missus.”

Stede frowned. He hadn’t imagined the voice of the sea having such a pronounced brogue. Also, it was coming from behind him. He turned.

Buttons was standing a respectful few feet away, with his usual rigid-yet-relaxed posture, his eyes angled upward. It was impossible to tell how long he’d been there.

“Uh…yes? Hi?” Stede fumbled around for the correct reaction to possibly being eavesdropped on during a conversation with a bird.

“I wouldn’t feel too badly, if Olivia doesn’t take a shine to you right away,” Buttons said, his eyes still fixed on the two tiny specks above. “She’s not been given many reasons to trust us land-beasts. I’ve only just been introduced to her meself.”

“Oh. Well.” Stede straightened his cuffs as he took this in. “I suppose I’m flattered, then.”

Buttons nodded. For a moment Stede thought this meant the conversation was over, but then he went on:

“It’s a tricky proposition, asking the sea for counsel on matters of love. Bit like trying to see your eye wit’ your own eye, if you catch my drift.”

“Right,” Stede said. “Um. I don’t, actually.”

When Buttons finally stopped gazing upward and looked at Stede properly, his eyes had that slightly mad cast to them that Stede still hadn’t quite gotten used to. He supposed it would be a bad sign for his own sanity if he ever did.

“The sea is love, captain. We’re all just living in it, whether we be creatures who skim along the surface or dwell deep in the dark at the bottom. Us that choose the seafaring life, we do it because we’re seeking love. And if we’re lucky, we live long enough to realize that we’ve found it.”

The hair on the back of Stede’s neck prickled up. He stared at Buttons. “Who…are you?”

Buttons shrugged, and smiled. “Just a creature in love, captain. Same as you. Same as any of us.”

Chapter Text

By some unspoken agreement, they all let each other be for the rest of the day. Izzy busied himself in the galley with Olu, cleaning and preparing their catch for supper. Ed climbed up into the crow’s nest with his pipe, where he appeared to be alternating between smoking, surveying and catnapping in a leisurely rotation. Stede puttered around on deck for a bit, then joined Frenchie, Wee John and Ivan to play cards. The lads were boisterous and chatty and ended up taking Stede for quite a lot of money, but he considered it a fair price for the company.

It was well after supper by the time all three of them found their way back to the captains’ cabin, and the gravity with which each of them did was impossible to ignore. Stede arrived first, and spent a tense few minutes contending with the possibility of spending the evening alone, but then Izzy quietly let himself in and took a seat by the fireplace. As soon as he sat down, Stede took a breath to begin speaking, but before he could get a word out Izzy held up his hand.

“Best wait for Ed to get here before we get into all that, yes?” he suggested softly. “About time we all got on the same page.”

Stede couldn’t argue with that, so he nodded and parked himself in front of one of the bookshelves, pretending to be fascinated by the familiar spines. He could feel Izzy’s presence in the room like a draft from an open window.

When Stede reached the end of the shelf he was perusing and had to start over, he began risking glances at Izzy in his peripheral vision. He looked tired, his hair coming loose from its coif to frame his sun-darkened face. Stede couldn’t imagine what he and Olu had gotten up to discussing on the boat, but whatever it was seemed to have poured cold water on Izzy’s rage from this morning. There was no tension in his posture as he sat and waited for Ed, just a weary sort of acceptance. A guilty man awaiting execution might have sat this way, but so might a man with nothing more pressing on his mind than tomorrow’s supper. It was maddening.

Just as Stede began to seriously worry that they were going to spend the whole evening frozen in their spots like actors waiting for the curtain to rise, Ed walked, or more accurately, crept in. The smell of salt breeze clung to him, sharpening the air in the cabin. Or maybe that was just the nervous energy rolling off of him in palpable waves. Stede’s first instinct was to rush over and give him a hug, but there was a formality to the way Ed took a seat on the couch opposite Izzy that made Stede think doing so would be a breach in protocol, for now. They were co-captains for the moment, rather than lovers.

Feeling large, clumsy and out of his depth, Stede took the other free armchair. Izzy looked at Ed. Ed looked at the floor between his knees.

“So,” Stede began. “I reckon we’re all still feeling…a bit tender, from today.”

Ed grunted. Izzy repeated the word tender under his breath, like he wasn’t sure what it meant. He glanced over at Stede, and gave the tiniest of nods.

“Maybe it would make sense to start with the simpler stuff, and work our way up from there,” Stede soldiered on. “Izzy, would you like to start? Maybe address your…earlier comments towards me?”

Izzy grimaced and knotted his hands together. “I’m sorry I spoke to you that way. Wasn’t appropriate, to do that in front of the crew.”

“Alright.” Stede wasn’t crazy about the implication that it was an appropriate thing to do in private, but it was a start. “And for my part, I’m sorry I didn’t give you and Ed a chance to voice your concerns, before I called that meeting. Although I still think you’re not giving our crew the trust they’re due.”

To Stede’s surprise, Ed and Izzy both nodded in response to that. Izzy’s mouth twitched, and Stede thought he might be genuinely embarrassed. There was a chance Oluwande deserved a hefty bonus, if he’d managed to induce that kind of breakthrough in their obstinate first mate.

“Okay,” Stede said. “So no hard feelings there. Great. Now, we ought to move on to the thornier subject. Get us all on the same page, as you put it so well, Izzy.”

Ed’s shoulders hunched, like he was trying to make himself smaller. Stede looked at him more closely, and saw that his hands were clasped on his knees so hard that the knuckles were turning white.

“Ed.” Stede tried to make his voice as gentle as he could. “I know this is hard. Maybe we should start with what happened on the Falling Star. Or Izzy could start, if you’re comfortable with that.”

“Already told you about that,” Ed replied, his voice trapped low in his chest. “I killed Monty. Choked him to death. Nothing more to say.”

“Edward.” That was Izzy, sounding even wearier than he looked. “That’s not all. You know that. We’re not going to get anywhere, the three of us, if we’re all keeping secrets from each other.”

Ed looked up sharply. “You want to tell him, then? Since you’re such a bloody expert on communication, all of a sudden?”

Stede flinched, fearing an acidic retort from Izzy, but Izzy only sighed and shrugged.

“We fucked,” he said, turning his face to Stede. “After Ed killed Monty. Shouldn’t have happened, probably wouldn’t have happened, except…”

His hands went up to undo the knot on his cravat. The ring he swiftly pocketed, as Stede had seen him do every time he disrobed. He undid the top two buttons on his shirt and pointed to the scar nestled in the hollow of his throat. Since that night, it had become a hard gnarl of dead tissue, fishbelly white shot through with ominous threads of black. Stede preferred not to look at it, when possible.

“Monty tattooed me,” Izzy explained. “Some insane rubbish about ‘testing my loyalty.’ I shouldn’t have let him, but-“ Izzy ducked his head and inhaled sharply. “Anyway. Point is, when Ed…after Monty was dead, I couldn’t stand to have it on me anymore. Ed burned it off, and afterward, it just- just sort of happened.”

Ed was progressively shrinking into the couch. Stede could just barely see his eyes glimmering through the curtain of his hair.

“And then we never talked about it again,” Izzy said. “Which I probably should have taken as a bad sign. So that’s on me.”

“No, Iz,” Ed rasped. “’S’really not.”

“It fucking well is, because I obviously thought it was…something different than it was.” Izzy clenched his jaw and took a few more sharp breaths through his nose. He was clearly trying to hold back a more dramatic response. “I’ve been walking around thinking of that night as…I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.”

“I think it does matter,” Stede objected. “Please, Izzy, could you try to tell us? Same page, remember?”

Izzy gave a tortured laugh. He was all tension now, practically clawing the armrests of his chair. “Ed, you saved me.” His voice snagged, and he had to clear his throat to continue. “I was…ending, in that room. But you didn’t let me. You came and you brought me back, and I thought… Thought it meant something, anyway. Had no idea you regretted it.”

“What?” Ed lifted his head fully for the first time since coming into the room. His eyes were huge, and red at the corners. “I don’t. Of course I don’t regret bringing you back, Izzy.”

“Fuck off. We both know there’s something you haven’t told me.”

Stede and Ed exchanged a look before either of them could stop it. Izzy nodded and leaned forward, eyes narrowing.

“Was Mad Monty your first kill, Ed? I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but looking back, I can’t recall seeing you ever actually do the deed. Lord knows you’ve fobbed it off onto me enough times. So is that the problem? That you had to sully that one last pure bit of your soul for me?”

Ed’s face twisted, as if he could taste the bitterness in Izzy’s words on his own tongue. His legs were twitching slightly, jerking up and down, and Stede suspected he was fighting off the urge to curl up into a ball. He wanted nothing more than to wrap Ed up in his arms and tell him not to worry about anything, but he sensed they were so close to a breakthrough. He forced himself to stay where he was.

“Ed? It’s time to clear the air.”

“Monty was my second kill,” Ed blurted out. He was looking at neither Stede nor Izzy, but some undefined spot between them. “First was my dad. That kraken story was just some shit I made up. It was me. I killed him.”

Stede watched understanding break over Izzy’s face, all the hard lines going soft.

“Fucking hell, Ed.”

In the smallest, fragilest voice Stede had ever heard from an adult, Ed whispered, “He hurt my mum.”

His shoulders trembled, and Stede decided that the “not hugging Ed” portion of his evening had more than overstayed its welcome.

As he went to the couch, he saw Izzy moving as well. Stede sat down next to Ed and put his arms around him, and Izzy, in an oddly balletic movement, knelt between Ed’s knees and took his hands.

“Hey, hey. Eddie. C’mon now, you’re alright. You think anyone here would judge you, for protecting your mum like that? Fuck, you must have been just a kid.”

“Fourteen,” Ed said, and took a big, wet sniff through his nose. “He’d always been a dick before, but...”

“But you’d had enough. If he’d been half as smart as you, he’d have realized he was playing with fire. Guess you got your brains from your mother.” Izzy clasped Ed’s hands between his own and looked up at Stede. “How long’ve you known?”

“Since the night of our duel,” Stede admitted, his arms tightening protectively around Ed’s midsection. “He told me right before that.”

Izzy laughed softly. “Shit. You’re better at keeping secrets than I’d have thought.” He looked back up at Ed. “Wish I’d known, to be honest. Probably wouldn’t have bothered with the stupid duel, if I’d known you were gone on him enough to tell him that.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Ed replied, his voice thick with unshed tears. “You’re a pretty stubborn fuck.”

“That’s true.” Izzy lowered his head and kissed Ed’s threaded knuckles. “So, two kills. Your dad to protect your mum. And Monty to save me. The way I see it, you’re a fucking angel compared to most in our line of work.”

“I liked it,” Ed croaked. “Killing them. Felt good. And I think…think maybe it’s gonna feel better every time. What if that’s all I wanna do, what if I can’t stop-“

“You can!” Stede said. “You don’t have to kill anyone ever again, Ed.”

“Yeah, except Badminton. And whoever they send after him, and the next one after that, and-“

“So we figure out another way! You turned our ship into a lighthouse, you think we can’t figure out a way to throw one bald creep off our scent?”

Ed shook his head and slumped against Stede. He was weeping freely now, and Stede could still sense a deep well of fear in him, something they hadn’t yet touched.

“Ed. Are you worried that you have to kill Chauncey, to prove that you love me?”

Ed’s breathing stopped short, his whole body going tense. Then his head moved against Stede’s shoulder, a rapid up-and-down that could have been an accident. Except Stede knew that it wasn’t.

“Oh, Ed,” he sighed. “What on earth gave you that idea?”

Instead of an answer, Stede got a shudder and a spreading patch of moisture on his shoulder. Probably the best he could hope for, considering how idiotic the question was. Ed had gotten that idea from inside his own head, a place as full of shadows and deep pools as it was with love and whimsy.

“S-s-sorry I’m such a s-stupid piece of shit,” Ed mumbled into Stede’s shirt collar.

“Hey! Don’t you dare speak that way about my boyfriend. Or our boyfriend, rather.”

Stede looked down at Izzy for support, but Izzy’s eyes were closed, his head bowed over their clasped hands like a penitent at the altar.

What makes a person good?

It was a question that Izzy had never given much thought. Philosophy was neither in his blood nor his upbringing. He’d been born into the least respectable family in a God-fearing town, and had always taken it as a matter of course that he was wicked. The major change in his life had come from his deciding that just because he was wicked, didn’t mean he had to be poor. Since then, he had perceived his fate as being solely defined by actions and their consequences. Matters of the soul were better left to those who had the leisure time to think about such things.

So it came as no surprise to him that he didn’t give a toss about how Ed’s father had died. When you lived on the edge, you met people who needed killing. The fact that in his life Ed had encountered only two such people was the only part of his confession that Izzy found in any way shocking. The rest of it all made too much sense.

Ed was crying, pained little sniffles that it sounded like he was trying to hold back. Izzy might have told him not to bother, except of course Stede was already ahead of him, whispering to Ed that it was alright, to let it out, that he had nothing to be ashamed of. This last might have been for Izzy’s benefit. Izzy wouldn’t blame him for assuming that he wouldn’t take the sight of Ed crying with perfect grace. But for once, Blackbeard and his reputation were nowhere in Izzy’s thoughts. He was thinking only of Ed, and about what made a person good or bad.

I don’t know if I’m a good person, he thought, as he pressed his lips to Ed’s calloused knuckles. But I know that you are. Why you can’t see that for yourself, I’ll never know. But I know it’s true.

Izzy knew there was no sense in saying it out loud, that it would only fall on deaf ears. Ed needed to hear it from someone like Stede, someone who was untainted by the life Ed and Izzy had both chosen. As always, it stung to fall short, to not be what Ed needed, but Izzy could tolerate the pain. It was worth it to be able to be close to Ed, to touch him, to make him feel good even if Izzy couldn’t make him believe he was good.

A hundred moments were replaying themselves in Izzy’s head, every moment Ed had stood over a conquered, but still breathing, foe, and ordered Izzy to finish the job. It felt good, to have a better understanding of those moments. It wasn’t a shattering revelation, it didn’t illuminate anything new in Izzy’s head, just colored what he already knew in a way he found pleasing. Ed didn’t like to kill, for such and such reasons. Izzy liked killing for him. There was still symmetry to it. It still felt right.

Ed’s sniffling became quieter, and soon was replaced by the soft sounds of kissing. Izzy peeked up, saw Stede holding Ed’s face between his palms, wiping the salt tracks away with his thumbs. Ed was visibly melting, collapsing into the gentle touch, and when Izzy let their clasped hands go Ed’s fell open like the pages of a book.

He kissed Ed’s fingertips, one by one. These hands were sacred objects, the instruments through which Ed meted love, soft and gentle or harsh and bloody. It made sense that Ed chose to keep them wrapped in leather and armored with rings. Izzy dared to suck the tip of Ed’s thumb into his mouth, feeling like a blasphemer, but Ed made a pleased noise and stroked Izzy’s cheek in return. Izzy shuffled forward, fitting as much of himself as he could between Ed’s spread knees.

Peeling off Ed’s gloves felt as raw and intimate as anything else they’d done together. There was something almost obscene about how soft the center of Ed’s palms were. It was a terrible, beautiful, viciously funny secret, this butter-soft skin against Izzy’s tongue, and he felt himself start to smile as he worshipped each line.

“Shit. Is it fucked up that I want you both right now?” Ed whispered. “That’s probably really fucked up, right?”

Izzy was quite sure he wasn’t qualified to answer that. He nuzzled against Ed’s thigh instead. The smell of leather and arousal zapped into his brain and made him feel like he was floating. He didn’t hear what Stede said in response to Ed’s question, but whatever it was must have been encouraging, because Ed groaned and dug his fingers into Izzy’s scalp, making him look up.

“Would you fuck me?” Ed’s voice was rough, his eyes hazy. “Both of you, I mean. I just…I want to feel you both…”

He sounded scared, or shy, or drunk. He was so damned beautiful. Izzy’s stomach did a nervous little cartwheel, and he nodded.

“How should we do this?” Izzy asked, looking more to Stede than Ed for answers. “Bed, or…?”

“Bed would be best, I think,” Stede replied. Izzy was gratified to hear that he, too, sounded nervous. “Ed, darling? Shall we-“

Ed was up and moving before Stede even finished saying his name. The other two men followed him as if tethered, which in a way Izzy supposed they were. Despite the arrangement Ed was proposing, there was no doubt who was in charge here. If Ed wanted to get fucked, he would get exactly what he wanted. Izzy only realized when he stood up that almost none of the blood in his body was making it to his head. He almost tripped over a footstool, had to grab Stede’s elbow to steady himself.

Ever before he reached the bed nook, Ed was working on ridding himself of his clothes, but Stede stopped him with his hands on his waist.

“Would you like us to help you with that, love?” As he spoke, he brushed Ed’s hair aside and kissed the back of his neck. “You like having us unwrap you, don’t you? Like the lovely gift you are.”

Izzy reached the bed just in time to see the extravagant flush creep from Ed’s collarbone to his cheeks. He leaned back into Stede’s embrace and nodded. Stede hooked his chin over Ed’s shoulder so he could look at Izzy.

“Well?”

Izzy closed the distance between them so that Ed was encircled on all sides. He pushed Ed’s shirt up, baring the rash of scars on his belly. Stede’s hands slid over Ed’s hips to undo the buttons on his trousers. Ed moaned and grabbed Izzy by the hair, pulled him into a rough kiss that made his knees buckle.

“Don’t be mad at me,” Ed whispered, when he broke the kiss. “Please? Iz?”

It was another knife to the ribs, another reminder of Izzy’s failures in the past, that Ed would need to ask him something like that now, in such a fragile voice. With no way to change the past, all Izzy could do was keep kissing Ed, trying to be soft, trying to be good.

Ed’s shirt came off, his cravat, his jewelry. His trousers were slid down his legs and peeled off with his boots, and then he was standing naked between his two fully-clothed lovers. They closed around him protectively, crushing him between them so tightly that he barely needed to use his own power to get onto the bed. Izzy got up to pull the curtains shut while Ed curled up in Stede’s lap, loose-limbed and pliant now that he was free of the leather.

“You’re safe, Ed,” Stede crooned, as the curtains enclosed them in a cocoon of moonlight. “You’re safe here, with us. Always.”

Izzy turned, his mouth too dry to concur. His hands hovered over his own buttons, the waistband of his trousers, unsure what was expected of him. He knew Ed wanted touch; that seemed safest. He sat down on the bed and reached for the closest part of Ed available, his bare calf, elegantly accented with faded ink and crisp black hairs. He touched, then stroked, all the way up the long, muscled line of Ed’s thigh, all the while reminding himself, Soft, soft. He deserves it.

Perhaps his hesitation showed in his face. Perhaps Ed just knew him too well. Whatever the reason, Ed’s face broke into a teasing smile, and he shifted upward until Izzy was within arm’s reach.

“No fair, you two,” he said. “C’mon, Stede, get your kit off. Fuckin’ love watching you do that.”

Now it was Stede’s turn to blush as he rose and began to follow Ed’s instruction. Ed wrapped himself around Izzy from behind, leisurely tugging at this and unfastening that, baring Izzy inch by inch to keep pace with Stede.

It was a long process, one that Ed clearly and audibly relished. Stede had been dressing with more care for practicality these days, at least when they were working, but today he was in full gentleman regalia, maybe because he felt it gave him more authority when speaking to the crew. As Izzy watched each piece come off, he glimpsed, with rare clarity, why this man had so captured Ed’s fascination. There was such audacity, in the way the rich adorned themselves, the way they took being worthy of such adornment for granted. Of course such a practice would rile Edward, who was worth more than all the rich fuckers in the world put together, but had been shut out of such recognition by dint of his birth. Watching Stede Bonnet discard bauble after bauble, frippery after frippery, only served to emphasize how easy it was to adorn and remove such things. How swiftly one could move from a gem-encrusted riddle to just another naked man.

Well, maybe not just any naked man. The sight of Stede without his clothes always left Izzy a little tongue-tied, a little flat-footed. Maybe it was because, unlike a lot of men, Stede appeared no smaller when undressed. Nudity emphasized his broad chest, this thick arms, the ostentatious jut of his cock from its gingery nest. He looked strong and just a little bit brutish, just enough to set certain notions buzzing in the back of Izzy’s mind, notions from his fevered teenage years of lust and shame. What would happen if this man decided he wanted Izzy, decided to take what he wanted, decided to hold him down and…?

But some stones were best left unturned.

Stede rejoined them on the bed, and Ed moved fluidly to all fours, with Stede behind him and Izzy in front. He nuzzled against Izzy’s stomach, then looked up at him, the moonlight glowing on his eyelashes, his brows, the silver stubble on his cheeks.

“Let me suck you, Iz. Please? Let me make you feel good.”

Izzy nodded, although his heart was in his throat. Ed had only tried to pleasure Izzy this way one other time, when they were alone, Izzy with his hands clasped behind his head as he followed Ed’s strict orders not to move. Despite Ed’s undeniable skill, he hadn’t been able to get off from it; the sensations were too new, the dynamics too complicated. It had been a blessed relief when Ed had gotten bored, rolled him over and proceeded to fuck him senseless.

He took hold of his cock, stroking carefully, making sure he wasn’t already too close to be of use. Stede was running his hands over Ed’s smooth flanks, murmuring his approval when Ed arched his back. Ed leaned forward and kissed the tip of Izzy’s prick- fucking kissed it, like a lord would kiss a lady’s hand- then lunged and took as much of it into his mouth as Izzy’s grip on himself would allow. Izzy jolted at the sudden enveloping heat, his hands flying to either side of Ed’s head. He froze, fearing he’d overstepped, but Ed made an unholy noise in the back of his throat and nodded.

“Just relax,” Stede sighed. It made sense to assume he was talking to Ed, but his eyes flicked up to meet Izzy’s as he spoke. It was good advice regardless, and Izzy tried, although that became markedly more difficult the second Ed started sucking him in earnest. Within moments he was struggling not to claw at Ed’s hair like an animal, a struggle that only intensified when Stede started doing things with this fingers to make Ed moan.

His conscience tried to nag at him, to remind him he was treating his captain like a whore. He pushed these thoughts aside. They didn’t help. They had never helped. All they had ever done was make it harder for him to give Ed what he needed.

He touched Ed’s cheek, ran his thumb along his cheekbone. The fitting thing right now would be to tell Ed how beautiful he looked, but the words stayed lodged in Izzy’s throat. It was too easy to imagine that devastated look crashing over Ed’s face again if he said the wrong thing. Safer to try and convey these things without words. He tried to tell Ed that he looked lovely by continuing to map his face with his fingertips, caressing along that heartbreaking jawline like he was trying to commit the shape to perfect memory. He tried to tell Ed his mouth felt like heaven by moving slowly, savoring the glide of his cock over lips and tongue. And for once, he appreciated Stede’s inability to let silence go undisturbed. There was a constant stream of endearments coming from that side of the bed, lots of gentle praise for Ed’s body, his skin, the ease with which he took Stede’s fingers. Ed soaked it all up as his due, only breaking rhythm when Stede took him by the hips and began the slow push inside.

Ed’s jaw dropped, Izzy’s cock slipping wetly from his mouth. His head sagged between his straining arms. Izzy could hear gasped profanities from behind the curtain of his hair. This was different from the other handful of times he’d watched Ed get fucked. Those other times had been Ed taking his pleasure, reveling in his own desirability, but here was Ed desperate to give something of himself. Izzy could see it in the way Ed rocked back against Stede, impaling himself too quickly and suddenly to be comfortable. Stede yelped, and Izzy plunged his hands back into Edward’s hair and tilted his face up, finally finding his voice as he did.

“We’ve got this, Eddie. Let us do the work.”

It was the right thing to say, thank God. The tension melted out of Ed’s shoulders, his jaw going slack as Izzy fed his cock back into his mouth. Eager to be true to his word, Izzy took it more upon himself to support Ed’s head, to cradle the weight of it between his hands as he set a slow but steady rhythm. He kept his thrusts shallow, worried he’d come too fast if he ended up fucking Ed’s throat. Ed would have what he needed, every second of it that was within Izzy’s power to give him.

In and out, soft and slow, warm and wet. Ed was moaning again, guttural, in time with their movements, a constant ebb-and-flow of vibration that Izzy felt from his balls to the base of his spine.

He glanced at Stede, who was staring transfixed at where his body entered Ed’s. There was a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead and his chest that caught the pale light from the window, making his golden hair look almost white. He was breathing sharply, his hands braced on Ed’s hips to keep himself from thrusting too deeply. He was obviously struggling in the same way Izzy was, and Izzy, struck with a sudden flash of instinct that had put his sword through many an opponent’s guts, switched his grip to the hair on the back of Ed’s head and gave a short, sharp tug.

Ed cried out around the cock in his mouth, and the muscles of his back rippled. The motion must have carried further downward, just as Izzy expected it would, because Stede gasped raggedly and his rhythm faltered for a second. He looked up at Izzy, eyes going wide enough that Izzy could almost see his own grin reflected in those glassy depths.

A questioning sound made Izzy look down. Ed was looking up at him, and the request in his eyes was every bit as clear as if he’d been shouting it.

Izzy pulled Ed’s hair again, then used his hold to force Ed a little deeper onto his cock. The sobbing sound that Ed and Stede both made, half a second apart, was almost identical in tone. Izzy’s blood surged and he pulled back, not willing to give quarter yet. He’d never felt so powerful, controlling the pleasure of both these men with the smallest of movements. It felt every bit as good as the first time he’d bested an opponent at the sword. It felt as good as standing over Stede, telling him to yield, or die.

He closed his eyes and hissed in a long, slow breath. Ed was still sucking him, but his movements gentled, as if he too sensed the tension and was playing a game of his own. Toying with the both of them, even as he was being ravaged on both sides, because he could. Because they were safe here, like this.

You’re ours, Izzy thought, but didn’t dare say, as he let go of Ed’s hair and went back to caressing his face. We’re yours, and you’re ours.

When he locked eyes with Stede again, he could have sworn he saw the same sentiment there, a feral quality that looked far better on the man’s face than it had any right to.

But even that glimpse couldn’t have prepared Izzy for what Stede did next, which was to readjust his grip on Ed’s hips and slam against him. Ed yowled, and the movements of his mouth went from gentle to frantic. Izzy found himself rushing swiftly to the edge again. He gasped, scrabbled at Ed’s shoulders, heard Stede laugh- the fucker- and repeat the same move again, and again.

Ed’s narrow semblance of control evaporated in seconds. He was mewling, shouting, pleading around Izzy’s cock, his face red, his ribs heaving. It was debatable that he could even hear Izzy’s warning that he was about to come over the racket he was making. Whatever warning he got, he paid it no attention, just carried on sucking and swallowing until Izzy had to grab him by the shoulder and pry him off.

“God, fuck, yes,” Ed groaned, when he finally relented and let Izzy’s spent cock go. “Fuckin’ use me, do it, c’mon, fuck me fuck me fuck me-

He dropped to his elbows, his fingers clawing at his own hair. Izzy fell back on his heels as the overtaxed muscles in his legs finally made themselves known. He couldn’t do much more than twitch helplessly and try to catch his breath as Stede chased his own release, draping himself over Ed’s back and burying his face in the crook of his neck.

You win this time, Bonnet. The thought rolled through Izzy’s head like a stray penny, shaky and swiftly lost. Stede cried out. Izzy watched, transfixed, at the telltale tightening of his haunches as he ground Ed into the mattress. Ed keened happily and clawed at the sheets. He raised his head and caught Izzy’s eyes, the dreamiest, happiest, most fucked-out smile Izzy had ever seen breaking over his face.

“Come here,” Stede purred. He wrapped his arms around Ed’s chest and pulled him off his belly, easing him onto his back. Ed went bonelessly, his legs splayed open, his eyes closed as he reached out for Stede’s warmth. Stede settled down next to him, and looked over at Izzy, who was still trying to place this strange feeling flooding his body. Warmth, but sweeter. Satisfaction, but sharper.

“You were so good for us, Ed,” Stede said, running his fingers over the inside of Ed’s right thigh. “Let us take care of you now, okay?”

Catching what Stede was getting at, Izzy joined them on Ed’s other side. He wrapped his hand around Ed’s cock, his fingers twining with Stede’s as they stroked him together, kissing and nipping at his ears and neck and chin, any part they could reach. Ed fell apart in what seemed like seconds, heels digging into the mattress as he thrust up into their combined grip. He was trembling when he collapsed back down, and Izzy could see a tear track running from the corner of his eye down to his temple. No doubt Stede could see very much the same thing, on the other side.

What was this that Izzy was feeling, as he clasped himself against Ed and breathed in the scent of the three of them together. It was the absence of any pain, any tension, any doubt whatsoever.

Fuck. Was he happy?

“Hey. You guys awake?”

Ed’s voice, in the dark, maybe an hour later. After a half-hearted attempt at cleaning up, they had tangled themselves back together as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Ed stayed in the middle, his head pillowed on Stede’s chest, Izzy’s arms wrapped around his waist from behind. Izzy had just about drifted off, his forehead pressed against Ed’s back, Ed’s heartbeat echoing through him.

“Not really,” Izzy said. Stede grunted in agreement.

“I just had an idea,” Ed went on. “About what to do about Badminton.”

That got their attention. Izzy lifted his head, taking in Stede’s owlish look of surprise over Ed’s shoulder.

“We’ve been thinking about this all wrong,” Ed said. He squirmed around until he was lying on his back, able to look between the two of them. “We can’t get rid of him. That’s the whole problem with these Navy fucks. You kill one, King George throws ten more at you. Be a fuckin’ bloodbath, if we take the guy out. We want Badminton to leave us alone, we gotta persuade him to give up the chase.”

“Bribe him?” Izzy asked. “Stede killed his brother. I’m not sure there’s enough gold to make him forget that.”

“You’re right. There isn’t.” Ed grinned. “There’s only one thing in the world this guy wants, and the only way to get rid of him is to give it to him.”

He turned to Stede, took his hand and threaded their fingers together, brought it up for a kiss.

“Babe? We’re gonna have to kill you.”

Chapter Text

A crew meeting was called the next morning, this time with both captains’ and the first mate’s prior knowledge and endorsement. The crew shuffled warily into the so-called jam room, several of them casting pointed glances at Izzy as they jostled for seats. Izzy supposed he deserved that. At least he was confident that he wouldn’t be embarrassing himself this time. They had gone over what was going to be discussed, and Izzy was happy that his role was confined mostly to keeping his mouth shut and making it known that the captains had his full support.

“Right,” Ed began, clapping his hands briskly. “It’s come to our attention that some of you are concerned about the direction we’re going. Not like, the literal direction, but, you know. The big- big picture-“ He waved his hands in a vaguely square shape.

“Our long-term agenda,” Stede offered.

“Right! Our ‘long-term agenda’ for dealing with our problems.”

Roach raised his hand, which seemed to throw Ed for a loop. He frowned.

“Yes, Roach!” Stede said. “You have a question?”

“Yeah, so, just to clarify. By ‘our problems,’ you’re referring to the one English guy who wants to kill you, specifically. Right?”

“Yes, correct,” Stede replied, either completely missing the cook’s sarcasm or else choosing to ignore it- Izzy didn’t think he would ever be able to reliably tell. “We’ve been keeping you rather in the dark on this issue, and for that, we would both like to apologize. Right, Ed?”

“Uh.” Ed fiddled with his hands. “Sure.”

“Great! Now, on to the good news. We have…a plan!”

Based on the dramatic pause and Stede’s pop-eyed expression, Izzy guessed he was expecting thunderous applause at this announcement. He got a few muted grumbles and lot of blank looks. Near the back of the room, someone belched.

Stede’s smile dropped into a pout. “Tell them about the plan,” he prompted Ed.

“Right. Okay.” Ed swaggered forward. “It’s like this. We need to get Badminton off our backs, without making ourselves an even bigger target for the British Navy. He wants Stede dead, so that’s what we’re gonna give him. And we’re gonna need all of you to help.”

Several hands went up. Stede ordered everyone to hold their questions for now, with no small amount of peevishness.

“Admiral Badminton shows up to arrest Stede, but before he can- boom!” Ed mimed crashing through a wall, making the crew members in the front row flinch back. “Blackbeard shows up, and oh, fuck, he’s pissed off! He’s all, ‘I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you, Stede Bonnet!’ And the Navy guys are like, ‘Oh, shit, it’s Blackbeard, what the hell have you gotten us into, bro?’ And then me and Stede fight-“

“It’s a dramatic breakup fight!” Stede added excitedly. “I’m going to be a philandering scoundrel!”

“Yeah! And I’ll be all, ‘How could you do this to me, you asshole!’ And Stede’ll be like, ’No, mate, I swear it’s not what it looks like,’ and-“

Line by line, the crew began to look more enthused, so Izzy wasn’t going to jump in even though the captains were swiftly straying off script.

“Maybe I could say something really cool,” Stede said. “Something like, ‘As once I kissed you with my lips, so now I’ll kiss you with my steel!’”

Dissatisfied noises broke out in the crowd.

“We’ll work on the dialogue,” Ed promised. “But here’s the good bit. I stab you-“ he pantomimed a vicious stab to Stede’s chest- “and you fall back into like, a bush or a shed or something-“

“Are you going to really stab him?” Wee John interrupted.

“No!” Ed and Stede both said at once.

Wee John shrugged. “I dunno. Would look pretty awesome if you actually stabbed him.”

The rest of the crew nodded and muttered in agreement.

“You’ve already survived it a couple of times,” Frenchie pointed out. “You’re probably, like, immune to it by now.”

“I could help you practice sounding like you’re dying,” Roach said. “Something like-“

He took a deep breath and let out a bloodcurdling shriek. Lucius, who was sitting right next to him, clapped his hands over his ears and glared in protest.

“Everyone will get a chance to contribute!” Stede shouted. “The point is, after I’ve been pretend stabbed, I fall into the shed or shrub or whatever, inside of which has been hidden a corpse that looks like me.”

“Right. And I drag it out and just start, like, going to town on it.” Ed began to mime a flurry of kicks, stomps and stabbing motions. “Bam! Bang! Fuck you, Stede Bonnet! This is what happens when you cross Captain Blackbeard, you piece of shit!”

“I’m literally getting chills,” Black Pete whispered to the Swede.

“And then- pow! Massive inter-crew fight breaks out, total fuckin’ riot, and we all slip away in the confusion. Badminton moves on with his life, and we move on with ours.”

A contemplative silence fell. Izzy watched the faces of the crew closely. He saw confusion on some, excitement on others, but there was one look of skepticism near the back that drew his attention in particular.

“Mr. Boodhari,” he said. “What troubles you?”

Oluwande looked up slowly. “How do we get Badminton where we want him, without getting all of us killed?” he asked. “It sounds like this plan is meant to happen on land. If Badminton knows where Stede is gonna be, what’s to stop him from showing up with a whole regiment and just arresting the lot of us?”

“We…” Stede turned to Ed. “How are we dealing with that?”

Ed’s brows knit together. “We…uh. Shit.”

“I’ll get him there,” Izzy said.

Ed and Stede’s heads both snapped in Izzy’s direction.

“I’ll go and track him down. Tell him I know where Bonnet is going to be and how we can nab him without putting any of his own men at risk. Make sure he brings a small enough guard that we won’t be overwhelmed. And I can slip away in the chaos same as the rest of you.” Izzy shrugged. “Shouldn’t be too hard.”

It was strange. This had not been part of their prior discussions, but the words were flowing from Izzy’s mouth the same as if he’d rehearsed it a hundred times. Was this what it was like to be Ed? To have an innate understanding of exactly what to say, of what move to make?

Maybe not. Stede was looking at him askance.

“Izzy…” he began. But then Ed cut him off with another clap of his hands.

“Okay. That settles that. Izzy will make sure Badminton’s in the proper place. Now, who feels comfortable being put on corpse detail?”

An excited clamor followed that, and soon Stede and Ed both had their hands full fielding questions and suggestions. Izzy retreated gratefully back into silence, but when he caught Ed’s eyes, he knew that there was going to be another difficult conversation in the very near future. He just hoped he knew enough not to fuck it up this time.

After the meeting, Izzy decided to take stock of the munitions. It wasn’t technically his job, but he figured it was a good spot for Ed to come find him, when he inevitably wanted to talk in private. And the repetitive acts of counting and notating were calming, although for once Izzy didn’t feel much of a need to be calmed. That rare surety he had been feeling since last night, that doing what was best for Ed was not only productive but morally correct, hadn’t left him. It was an itch in his spine finally scratched, a knot in his stomach dissolved. It felt like how he imagined being young was supposed to have felt, if he hadn’t spent so much of his own youth frightened and full of rage.

When he heard the sound of someone coming down the hall, he took a deep breath to fortify himself. Newly-found confidence or no, arguing with Ed was still like attempting to reason with a hurricane. Izzy would need to be as sturdy as he’d ever been to keep his resolve intact.

The fact that Stede was the one who bustled in, instead of Ed, and the fact that Izzy was surprised by this, just went to show that he was still nowhere near the tactician that Ed was.

“What was that about?” Stede hissed. He drew close to Izzy and kept his voice low, wary of eavesdroppers. “You’re going to go get Chauncey yourself? No one asked you to do that!”

“Yeah. Because I volunteered,” Izzy agreed. “It makes the most sense for me to go. I know how to talk to his lot, and I can make them believe I’d be willing to sell you out. Was true enough, once upon a time.”

Stede’s nose scrunched up, whether in distaste at the reminder or because Izzy had made a fair point, Izzy didn’t know.

“Ed’s not going to want you to go.”

“He seemed alright enough with it to agree in front of the crew. So did you, for that matter.”

“Well, I wasn’t about to have another argument with you in front of them, after yesterday’s fiasco. Which you caused, by the way.” Stede fidgeted, clearly thrown off by having his opening argument so quickly rebuffed. “Need I remind you that the last two times you struck out on your own, you got yourself kidnapped?”

“By the same person, both times, and he’s dead,” Izzy riposted. “And Badminton will never settle for me when he’s got a chance at you. You know that. If anything, I’ve got a better chance than anyone on this crew of surviving an encounter with him, if only because I’m a big enough name that he’d rather drag me back to civilization to have me hanged, rather than killing me on the spot. Anyone you sent in my place, you’d be putting in unnecessary danger.”

“And you’re alright with that? With possibly being captured and executed?”

Izzy laughed. “I’m a pirate, Bonnet. If I wasn’t alright with that, why the fuck would I have picked this line of work?”

Stede’s bluster faded, but his look of concern did not.

“Maybe you felt like you didn’t have a choice,” he said. “Maybe you felt like you had to do this, to make up for past mistakes, or…or because you still owed something to me…”

He was grasping, and they both knew it. Izzy sighed and turned back to the gunpowder stores.

“You read Edward like a book, I’ll give you that. Doesn’t make you an expert on what everyone is thinking.”

“I don’t want you to go!”

Izzy froze, unsure what to make of what he heard in Stede’s voice. Anger was there, yes, but something else. Something more vulnerable. Guilt?

He turned, and saw that Stede was flushed bright pink, from his forehead down to the exposed skin of his collarbone.

“I don’t want you to go,” Stede repeated. “It’s a stupid idea, and you’ll probably just get captured again anyway, and I’m your captain and you have to do what I say, so just…so just get used to it, pal!”

He huffed and put his hands on his hips to emphasize this last, and with that went Izzy’s ability to keep a straight face. His lips trembled, and then the floodgates opened and he was laughing, so hard he had to brace himself on the crate in front of him.

“Bonnet…oh my God…”

“It’s not that funny,” Stede grumbled.

Wheezing, Izzy tried to pull himself together. He raised his head, looked right into Stede’s little scrunched-up pout, and lost it again.

“Oh, bugger off, Iggy. You know, you really are the most annoying person in the entire Caribbean.”

“And yet you can’t bear to be without me. Is that about right?” Izzy cackled.

“Now hold on, I didn’t say that.”

Izzy had done a lot of risky things in his career, gambled with his life and the lives of the men he led many times, but nothing felt quite so fraught with the potential for ruin as what he did next, which was to come around to Stede, grab the taller man by the front of his shirt and pull him into a kiss.

Maybe it was the risk that made the kiss taste sweeter. Or maybe it was because deep down, Izzy had known this moment was inevitable.

Stede squawked and gripped Izzy by the shoulders, but he didn’t try to push him away. He just clutched him, fingers twitching slightly, lips rigid and then softening as their breath fell into synchronicity.

Izzy broke the kiss, before Stede could do it. He wanted to keep the upper hand in this interaction, and it seemed like that advantage would go to whoever pulled away first.

And he wanted to see what Stede would do in response.

What Stede did was continue to hold onto Izzy’s shoulders, peering down into his face with guarded curiosity.

“Why did you do that?” he asked softly.

Izzy met Stede’s gaze, his jaw set, calling on every memory he had of besting an opponent that had underestimated him.

“Had to shut you up somehow, didn’t I?”

Stede rolled his eyes. “You’re such an ass.”

“I am.” Izzy grinned. “Do you want me to do it again?”

The beat of silence in response told Izzy everything he needed to know, but still he waited. Because he was a pirate, and he was greedy, and he wanted to hear Stede say it.

Hazel eyes slid shyly to the side, landing somewhere around Izzy’s left shoulder.

“Yes.”

Izzy leaned back in, and this time Stede’s lips were ready for him, soft from the first touch.

Kissing Izzy was a lot like kissing Edward.

There were differences, of course. The angle at which Stede had to tilt his head, the contours of a different shape of nose brushing against his own. But the rhythms were familiar, the surge forward and the falling back, the speed at which the pressure between them built. From what Stede knew about Izzy, he guessed that most of the kissing he had done in his life had been with Ed, the same as Stede himself. What was more likely was that they both kissed like Ed. Ed was here, between them, as surely as he had been last night. He was in the way Izzy nipped at Stede’s lower lip, and in the way Stede’s hands roamed over Izzy’s torso, seeking out places where he was sensitive.

This was how they knew to touch each other. This was how they knew to say yes.

Izzy had Stede backed up against the wall, hidden from the doorway by a stack of crates. If Stede tilted his head just so, he would be able to see anybody coming in before whoever it was could see them. But of course it was hard to maintain that perfect angle with Izzy pressing in on him, demanding, hungry, lips and teeth and panting breaths. Stede would have thought Izzy hadn’t been touched in years, he seemed so eager for it. It was actually quite flattering.

When they came up for a breather, Izzy’s eyes were wild. They had some green in them. Stede had never noticed before.

“What are you smiling about now?” Izzy whispered.

“You’re smiling too,” Stede replied. He was. A crooked, half-deranged smile, the kind Stede recognized from being on the business end of Izzy’s sword, but it still counted. “Hard to come off like you’re not enjoying this, when you’re the one who’s got me pinned to the wall.”

Izzy’s smile broadened. “You can move me,” he said. “You’d fucking better be able to move me, if you’re worth shit in a fight.”

It was clearly a challenge, and after a moment’s hesitation, Stede remembered it was one he actually did know how to meet. Sliding his foot between Izzy’s, he moved the way Ed taught him to, using his weight to push the smaller man off balance and spin the two of them around. Izzy grunted as his back connected with the wall.

“Alright. Maybe you are learning.”

Stede countered with a fresh onslaught, crowding Izzy until he had nowhere to go and taking another kiss, and another. He slid his hand upward to grip Izzy by the hair, the way he’d seen Ed do, but Izzy’s arm quickly came up and stopped him.

“Some things you’ve got to earn first, rich boy,” Izzy muttered against his lips. “Don’t assume I’m ready to call you ‘Daddy’ just yet.”

“Daddy?” Stede pulled back. “Is that something people say? Wait, yet?”

Izzy cut his eyes away, two spots of color forming in his cheeks.

“Or whatever,” he said. “Just…shut up.”

Stede’s laugh of triumph was swallowed up by more kissing, the heat and urgency of which swiftly rose. There was a lot of stuff happening with teeth, and with hands as well; Izzy’s on Stede’s hips, fingertips sliding beneath the waistband of his trousers, Stede’s unbuttoning Izzy’s waistcoat to paw at his chest. Soon they were pressed flush against each other, Stede’s body weight pinning Izzy in place.

Even though it was clear to Stede where this was going, he still gasped when he slotted his thigh between Izzy’s legs and felt him growing hard beneath the leather. No matter how many times he had seen Izzy in various states of arousal by this point, this was the first time that such a reaction was inarguably for him, and that was an entirely new kind of titillating. His right hand slid lower, finding the source of all that heat and pressure and cupping it, then possessively squeezing.

Izzy’s head knocked back against the wall, his eyes fluttering.

“Jesus Christ,” he sighed.

“Want me to stop?” Stede teased. He was pretty sure he already knew the answer, but self-doubt plunged into his gut like a knife when Izzy- the rest of Izzy- went rigid in his arms.

“Oh, do you really want to stop? ‘Cause we can! That’d be fine.”

There was a mortifying few seconds during which Stede yanked his hand away from Izzy’s groin to put it on his shoulder instead, then back on the wall next to him, then on his own hip. He was spared from carrying on in this fashion when he heard the clearing of a throat behind him.

Ed was standing in the doorway, eyes hooded and wary. His lips twitched, but whether he was fighting off a smile or a snarl Stede could not tell.

“Edward,” Izzy said. He batted Stede’s arms away, shoving him aside as if he meant to lunge at Ed with an apology. Stede wasn’t sure that was the best course of action- a startling situation was rarely improved by adding more startling elements to it- but before he could say something to that effect, or really anything besides some vague stammering, Ed had turned on his heel and vanished.

Chapter Text

Ed ran, even though he knew it was pointless. You never got away on a ship. They trapped you in close quarters, keeping you jammed up against each other until the lines between friend and colleague and enemy were blurred to shit. In a way, all ships were floating prisons. Ironic, considering how they symbolized freedom for so many people.

He hadn’t felt free, his first day on a ship, his first kill so recent that he still had the rope burns on his palms. What he’d mostly felt was scared shitless, and that was a fair assessment of how he felt now. His heart raced and his mouth tasted like metal and there was nowhere he could run to get away from it, because the source of the fear was coming from inside him. He knew that, but he couldn’t make himself stop.

It didn’t make any fucking sense. If Stede and Izzy had come up to him and told him they wanted to hook up, just the two of them, he’d have signed off on it with a smile. He knew they wanted to; probably knew it before either one of them did. And he wasn’t enough of a dickhead not to understand how he might get in the way of that, how with him in the room, neither one of them would feel the confidence needed to reach for each other. He knew that, he accepted it, it was all fine, so why had his gut reaction upon seeing them together been to grab them both by the scruffs of their necks, rip them apart and scream, What the fuck do you think you’re doing?

It was the Kraken. That was the only explanation. The Kraken was still inside him, thirsty for blood, and it was making it clear to Ed that if he wasn’t willing to keep it fed on his enemies, it would start grasping for his friends. For the people he loved.

No. No, no, no, you tentacled fuck, it doesn’t work like that. You work for me, not the other way around.

But the Kraken just laughed, a rumble so deep and low Ed thought it might crack his heart.

“Ed! Ed, wait!”

And oh, fuck, that was Stede, oblivious to the danger that just being near Ed put him in. Izzy was probably following him, too, wearing that kicked-dog expression as he wondered what he’d done wrong. They both trusted Ed so much, but if they only knew the kind of thoughts he had, the kind of person he really was…

He stopped, and turned. If he didn’t, Stede would catch up to him and try to touch him, and Ed was too scared of how he would react to an unexpected hand on his arm or shoulder.

“He-ey,” he said, trying to play it cool even as they caught up to him, wearing the exact hurt expressions he’d feared. “Sorry about that. Looked like you two didn’t want to be interrupted, so I thought I’d just, you know. Bugger off.”

Stede didn’t look convinced. Neither did Izzy, but only because he looked too nauseous to feel much of anything else.

“Ed, I’m so, so sorry,” Stede said. “Obviously, we should have all talked about this, um, new development, before diving right in. You have every right to be upset-“

“I’m not upset,” Ed replied quickly. “Why would I be upset? This thing, it’s all three of us, isn’t it? It’s not just, like, you two doing me whenever I feel like, so why shouldn’t you guys do your own thing? Armory maybe isn’t the best place for it, but, whatever. No judgement.”

“It was my fault,” Izzy said. “I started the whole thing. Stede’s right, we should have talked first-“

“No, no, Iz. I totally get it. I mean, look at this guy.” He leaned in to kiss Stede on the cheek. “How could you not go for it?”

Stede blushed, which Ed took as a good sign, but Izzy still looked worried.

“It’s really okay, guys. I love you both. I’m happy for you.”

He could see them both wanting to believe him. The lust between them was a lingering presence, warm and urgent. They wanted to give into it, they wanted each other, and Ed couldn’t let himself get in the way of that. There was a chance that one day each other would be all they had. This was the best-case scenario, an assurance that they would take care of each other if

(When)

he was gone.

They just needed a push. A little something to get them moving in the right direction again. It was a tad underhanded, but Ed had an idea that he was pretty sure would do the trick.

Turning to Izzy, he brought his hand up slowly, trailing his knuckles over one weathered cheek. Then he grabbed Izzy under the chin, hard but not too hard, squeezing just enough into those sensitive spots beneath the jaw to make the first mate’s eyes go wide.

“Izzy,” he purred, letting his smile grow meaner by a few crucial degrees. “What if I told you I want you to take Captain Bonnet to our cabin, and see to it that every. Single. One-“ he squeezed- “Of his needs are taken care of? Think you can do that for me, Iz?”

The move had the exact effect Ed was hoping for; Izzy’s eyes damn near rolled back in his head. He stayed perfectly still in Ed’s grip, barely breathing as Ed caged his windpipe with his fingers. Funny how something like that could chase the fear out of his eyes, when none of Ed’s reassuring words had been able to.

“Is th-that what you want me to do, sir- Ed?”

Oh, yeah. He was putty in Ed’s hands, now.

“Yeah, it is.” Ed pulled Izzy in closer, until their foreheads touched and he only needed to whisper to be heard. “And I’m gonna check with him later, make sure that you did a good job. So don’t disappoint me. You got that, boy?”

He gave Izzy a little shake as punctuation and let him go. Izzy stumbled back, steadying himself with his hands against the wall. He’d gone from looking queasy to rapturous in a breath, and Ed swallowed down a familiar surge of guilt. He never felt great about pulling Izzy’s strings so blatantly. He always hoped the day would come when he wouldn’t have to, but they clearly weren’t there yet.

Ed turned away from Izzy with a wink and kissed Stede again.

“Go on, love,” he murmured into Stede’s ear. “Nothing to worry about. Just enjoy yourself.”

When he pulled back, there was still a shadow of doubt in Stede’s eyes. Ed employed another trick, one that was a lot easier but worked just as well on Stede as playing up the authority angle did for Izzy. He laughed, soft and playful, and it was like he could see that laughter hit Stede in the brain and go fizzing through his nervous system like a swig of champagne. He loved laughter so much, the sweet, beautiful madman.

You know why you can fool them both, don’t you? Because you’re not like them. They’re good, and you’re…

It didn’t matter. What mattered was keeping these two safe. Even from himself, when it was needed.

Stede finally peeled his eyes away from Ed’s face, and glanced sidelong at Izzy.

“Um. Should we?”

He held out his hand. Fingers shaking, Izzy took it.

And in the cold place beneath Ed’s heart, all was quiet and still. He could only assume that was a good thing. At least it was better than what he’d been feeling before.

Stop thinking so much.

It had been, if Stede recalled correctly, the third or fourth time he and Mary had attempted to make love, when she had said that to him. Back when there had still been a veneer of optimism to their marital couplings, as they both clung to reassurances from friends and relatives that a little awkwardness was to be expected at the beginning, and would smooth out in time. Back before they both came to understand the awkwardness was insurmountable, before optimism was replaced by resentment, before they had stopped speaking to each other during the act in favor of having it over with as quickly as possible. Stede remembered floundering in their bed, his young wife’s body as confounding to him as a pocket watch to a pachyderm, feeling somehow both huge and oafish and small and scared all at once, and Mary had said, stop thinking so much, and the irony of course was that hearing it made him think even more. So much more, in fact, that their third or fourth attempt at lovemaking had ended in another embarrassing failure, capped off with weak smiles and strained excuses, it’s just so bloody humid tonight, isn’t it, hard to work up a proper mood when the weather is like this, don’t you agree? And the dread in Stede’s stomach as he thought about how there was no way in his fumblings he had managed to give Mary a child, which meant they were going to have to do this again, and again and again until he finally got it right…

Stop thinking so much.

It wasn’t in keeping with the kind of advice he usually got. Up until then, most of his advice had come from his father or his masters at school, and it was usually along the lines of, Try using your head for once, you wooly-brained simpleton. In other words, think more. There was other advice mixed in, advice to pay attention and sit up straight, you’re not a savage and stop sniveling, they barely did anything to you, but far and away the biggest point of contention was that he wasn’t thinking enough, or at least was thinking the wrong thoughts. Mary’s advice to think less was, in its way, refreshing, just for being so against the usual grain.

It would have been good advice, if Stede had been a different person. Stop thinking, do what comes naturally. In a way, the advice eventually did sink in. It was just that when Stede stopped thinking and did what came naturally, he ended up building a boat and running off to sea, rather than impregnating his wife. Not the result Mary had in mind, but it could hardly be argued that the advice hadn’t ended up changing Stede’s life for the better, in the end.

Stop thinking so much, and so Stede was trying, as he and Izzy grappled each other around the cabin. Stop thinking about Nigel and Chauncey and King George and the danger he was bringing on his crew. Stop thinking about Mary and Alma and Louis and all the people he had yet to let down. And Ed, the distance in his eyes, he said he wasn’t angry but God, it was so easy to lie about that, Stede had done it for years, and yet, and yet…

Stop. Do what comes naturally.

At least his instincts were better here than they had ever been with Mary. The unfamiliarities of Izzy’s body were things Stede’s hands could appreciate without coaxing. It felt good to map the corded muscles of his shoulders, scrape his fingers through the thick pelt on his chest, grip him by his slim hips and shove him into the soft give of the mattress. It felt good to be touched in kind, marked by Izzy’s fingertips, soft and hard and soft again. They’d both be bruised after this, but that only made sense. It was in their natures to bruise one another. Or maybe it was only in Stede’s nature, to damage what he touched.

Images flashed through his mind as he clawed at Izzy’s trousers, one after another in a dizzying wheel; Mary wincing beneath him turned into Ed, stabbed and gasping in his arms, turned into Nigel, blood oozing from his slack lips. Stop thinking so much. Do what comes naturally. Yet what he wanted to do to Izzy was a sin against nature, or so he’d been told, was it his nature to always be wrong, to never get it right no matter how many times he tried? He tried to touch Izzy the way Izzy was touching him, soft and hard and soft. Hard. Soft.

Soft.

“Bloody hell,” Stede muttered. He wriggled his hand free of Izzy’s trousers to palm himself, hoping the familiar weight and pressure would soothe him where his mind couldn’t.

“You alright?” Izzy asked.

His eyes were feverishly bright, his voice strained, the very picture of urgent need even without the sight of his erect cock peeking through his undone laces. Stede reached for him, thinking that at least part of this encounter could be salvaged, but Izzy stopped him with a hand on his wrist.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing,” Stede said. “It’s just…”

“Ed?”

“No. Yes. It’s a lot of things. Not just Ed. But also Ed. I’m sorry.“

Izzy sighed, then scooted up into a half-sit and started putting his trousers to right.

“I’m sorry,” Stede said again. “It’s not a reflection on you. I could still, er, do you? If you wanted?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Izzy said. “Probably a bad idea anyway. I’m not sure what’s wrong with Ed, but he’s clearly up to something.”

“You don’t think it’s another secret plan, do you? Like what happened with Mad Monty?”

Izzy winced sharply, like that thought hadn’t even occurred to him.

“Fuck me, I hope not. I just thought he was getting stroppy over not being the center of attention for once, and trying to hide it so he didn’t come across like a self-centered twat.”

He ducked his head as he pulled his laces taut, with enough force that he might have torn them.

“That’s probably it,” Stede attempted to reassure him. “There’s no reason to think he’s going to change up the plan again. It’s a good plan.”

“We came up with it in the middle of the night, post-fuck. Maybe it’s not as good as we think it is.”

“Well, it’s all we have!” Stede flopped back against the pillows, frustrated. “Should we talk to him?”

“Thought he made it pretty obvious he didn’t want to.”

Izzy was now sitting on the edge of the bed, his shirt in his lap, his head in his hands. The scars on his back were pink from the friction of the sheets, and Stede felt an urge to reach out and touch them that he guessed would not be appreciated in the moment. He clenched and unclenched his fists instead.

“So what do we do?”

There was a pensive silence as Izzy put his shirt back on, the scars disappearing beneath their black armor once more. He did up his buttons, then picked up his cravat and ring, holding one in each hand and looking between them. When he spoke again, it was soft, the way you’d speak to soothe a child.

“If I get the chance,” he said, “I’ll kill Badminton myself. Whatever Ed might be planning involves me bringing Badminton to him. If I kill the fucker, he can’t go through with whatever he’s planning.”

“You…you’re going to…” Stede groped among his possible objections. “But…Ed said we can’t kill him. He said we’ll just have more of them after us, if we do that.”

“That’s what’ll happen if you kill him. Or even if they just think you did.” Izzy heaved another sigh as he gathered his thoughts, his shoulders rising and falling. “It’s not just cause of what you did to his brother. The rest of the Navy doesn’t give a fuck about that. It’s the fact that you did it. One of their own.”

“I don’t understand.”

“No, wouldn’t expect you to. Me and Ed, famous pirates or no, we’re still lowborn scum to them. Barely more than animals. If one of us kills one of you, it’s because we hardly know any better, do we? It’s in our natures to be savage, and dirty, and stupid, and that’s why it’s your God-given duty to keep the rest of us in line.”

Stede wanted to object, but even as he cringed in denial he remembered his father saying much of the same sort of thing. He bit his tongue and let Izzy continue, his cheeks burning with shame on behalf of his own kind.

“But for you to do what you’ve done- not just killing Badminton, but all of it, turning pirate the way you have- that fucking scares them, because what if it means they’re not cut from a different cloth the way they think they are? What if they’re just as savage as the rest of us, deep down? What if they’re not better, just better dressed?” Izzy laughed. “In a way, you scare them worse than Blackbeard ever could. How fucked is that?”

Stede blinked. “So if you kill Chauncey?”

“Then I’m just a pirate, doing what pirates do.” Izzy made a throat-slitting gesture with his fingers, and laughed again. “And they’ll send out a fresh wave of pirate-hunters, and they’ll make a lot of noise about how piracy is a scourge upon the Empire that must be eradicated for the good of all God-fearing Englishmen, but they’ll do it with a sigh of relief inside, because they’ll be able to forget about you and go back to doing what they do best. Stepping on the necks of everyone else.”

A shiver ran down Stede’s spine. He’d imagined his life would be full of speeches like that, when he was daydreaming about piracy. Righteous and true words to drown out the niggling voices of self-doubt in his head.

He sat up, so that he could put his hand on Izzy’s shoulder.

“Just promise me one thing,” he said. “Don’t get yourself killed. If it’s a choice between you bringing Badminton to us alive, or neither of you coming back at all, promise me you’ll pick the first option.”

Izzy smiled ruefully. “Is that an order, captain?”

“No,” Stede said. “It’s a request, from a friend.”

The smile dropped from Izzy’s face.

“Is that what we are?”

“I think we’re whatever we want to be,” Stede answered. “We’re already a lot of other things. We might as well be friends, too. Right?”

Izzy said nothing. His hands flexed on his knees, and then he abruptly stood.

“You can tell him we fucked, if you want,” he said. “Might be less weird for him, if he thinks we’ve gotten it over with.”

Stede stared at the crinkles in the bedsheets as Izzy’s footsteps drew further away. He wished he could stop thinking, or at least think the right thoughts. Surely being able to say the right words came with that skill, or failing that, the ability to keep your stupid mouth shut.

“Stede.”

Stede looked up. Izzy was standing in the doorway, looking back over his shoulder.

“I promise.”

Chapter Text

Stede wasn’t confident that he could lie to Ed about what he and Izzy had gotten up to, but the point turned out to be moot. As soon as Ed came in for the evening, he took a look around the cabin, and whatever damning evidence he detected- whether it was the unchanged sheets, the undisturbed furniture, Stede’s posture as he set his book down in his lap and looked up- told the story without Stede having to say a word.

“Fuck. I made it weird, didn’t I?”

“No, I’m pretty sure that was me.” Stede moved his legs, making room on the couch for Ed to cuddle up next to him, but Ed remained standing. “It’s not a big deal. We can always try again another time.”

“Yeah,” Ed sighed. He was still dressed in his leathers, and his shoulders drooped in a way that suggested they felt particularly heavy this evening. “I really am okay with it. I think I felt weird about it for like, one second, when I first saw you. But that was it. I didn’t mean to make you feel like you did something wrong.”

“Thank you,” Stede told him. “I think I already knew that, but it’s nice to hear you say it out loud.” He patted the couch cushion next to him. “Fancy a cuddle? I could read to you, if you want to close your eyes for a bit.”

Finally, a smile peeked through Ed’s grave expression. “That sounds amazing. Lemme just get this shit off first.”

He peeled off his jacket and draped it over the back of a chair, then stepped over to the wardrobe to change.

“What brought it on in the first place, anyway? I mean, I knew you guys both wanted to, but I could never figure who would crack first.”

“Well, he kissed me, but maybe I’m the one who cracked,” Stede said. He was watching from the corner of his eye as Ed’s costume came off, piece by piece. “I told him I didn’t want him to go.”

Ed paused, and looked back at Stede over his shoulder.

“Shit. Practically a love sonnet, the way you two communicate.”

Stede laughed. “I guess he thought so too. Ed…are you sure about-“

“Funny story, me and Calico Jack got caught the same way, one time,” Ed said, his back turned once again. “On Hornigold’s ship. Captain himself came in just as we were getting down to it, so we- we were so stupid back then- we tried to play it off like we were fighting. Like, ‘gimme back my trousers, you asshole! Captain, this dog’s trying to steal the kit right off my back!’ You know? Course, Hornigold knew what was what, so he hauls us up on deck by our ears, Jack’s cock is still hanging out of his pants, mind, and gathers everyone round and tells us that on this ship, we settle our disputes out in the open, like men.”

Ed sat on the floor to take his boots off, his hair hiding his face as he spoke.

“So everyone’s watching us, and Jack, crazy fucker, starts taking the rest of this clothes off. Yelling, ‘fuck yeah, I’m ready to fight you butt-naked, bro, let’s do this!’ You should have seen the look on old Horny’s face. So I start doing the same thing, and just as I’m pulling my shirt over my head, Jack rushes in and socks me one right in the gut. Bowls me over like a ninepin.”

He looked up, his warm laugh fading as he caught the perplexed look on Stede’s face.

“I mean, it was a good shot, but I still ended up winning. Had to knock two of Jack’s teeth out before Hornigold decided we were done. And the old bastard still put us on half-rations for a month for slacking on the job.” His lips twitched in a valiant, final attempt at a smile. “Don’t think I’m telling the story right. Usually sounds funnier.”

“Perhaps you had to be there,” Stede suggested. He tried not to think of a bare-faced, dewy-eyed Ed, being forced to pummel his only friend for the amusement of a bully disguised as a captain. “I didn’t convince Izzy, if you were wondering. Not to go, I mean.”

“Yeah, I figured.” Ed pulled his favorite robe on, and the tension in his shoulders seemed to melt away. “Let me guess. He’s planning to just kill Badminton himself, if he gets the chance?”

Stede fumbled for a noise he could make that wouldn’t sound like a confession, and came up with something that could best be described as a slack-jawed wheeze. Ed laughed, gently.

“That’s my Iz. Don’t worry, mate, I won’t tell him you fessed up. He wants to keep it a big dramatic secret, he can.”

“But…why?” Stede sputtered. “If you know what he’s planning to do, why not just talk with him about it honestly? You know he thinks you’re hiding something, too?”

“Yeah, that’s just…kind of how we work.” Ed took the spot next to Stede, curling up catlike with his legs tucked under him. “Izzy’s great, but he’s got a very black-and-white way of looking at things, sometimes. If I tell him I know he’s gonna try and kill Badminton, he’s gonna take that to mean that he has to kill him, no matter what kind of danger he puts himself in to do it. But, if he thinks there’s some whole other element of the plan going on that he doesn’t know about, he’s gonna be less inclined to fuck with it, since he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. You know?”

Stede’s head swam as he tried to parse this. “That can’t be the healthiest way to work together.”

Ed wiggled noncommittally. “Never said it was healthy. It’s just…us.”

“So you’re not hiding something? There’s really no secret part of the plan you haven’t told us about?”

“Not that I know of. So, what are you reading tonight?”

Stede stared down at the page, the letters blurring. He tried to think of the magic words, some way he could phrase the question, Ed, what’s wrong? in a way that would yield an answer he wanted to hear and, more importantly, could readily believe. Ed had always been so open and honest with him, from the instant that they’d met. Suspecting him of lying now felt not just wrong, but cruel.

“Hey.” Ed’s hand came to rest on his knee. “You okay?”

I should be asking you that, Stede thought. Or better yet, I should already know the answer. You and Izzy know each other so well, and I’m so thick that I didn’t even notice my wife had taken up painting. And I’m scared that I’m just bad at this, and that you’ll never tell me, because you’re such a gentle person, Ed, you really are. And I’m scared I don’t deserve that gentleness. I’m scared I don’t deserve any part of this life.

“I”m okay,” Stede said, taking Ed’s hand in his and squeezing. “It’s just been a hell of a few days, hasn’t it?”

“You got that right.” Ed snuggled up against Stede’s shoulder. “I’m just closing my eyes. Not falling asleep, I promise.”

As Stede read, Ed’s head sagged steadily lower, sliding down Stede’s front until he was fully horizontal, his legs dangling off the edge of the couch and his head pillowed on Stede’s thigh. Stede stroked Ed’s hair and kept reading aloud, even when the sound of muffled snoring began to intrude over the words. Whatever was troubling Ed, maybe the sound of Stede’s voice and the cadence of a simple, well-told story, could ease his ever-turning mind.

It took three days to reach a safe harbor, where Izzy could disembark from the Revenge and proceed overland to Bridgetown. On the third night, Izzy caught a few hours of sleep in the captains’ cabin, until Ed came to wake him up. It was still hours before the first light of dawn, the tail end of a moonless night, and Ed felt a chill run down his spine as he slunk through the dark cabin.

“Iz,” he whispered, as he approached the sleeping nook. “Wakey wakey, mate.”

He pulled back the curtain to the sound of Izzy snoring. He could barely make out the shape of him, sprawled on his back, but the way his breathing didn’t change told Ed he was dead to the world. Izzy had told Ed that he didn’t sleep well belowdecks, since he’d been held captive by Mad Monty, but Ed wondered if that was just his excuse for not wanting to squeeze into bed with him and Stede. He sure seemed comfortable now.

He feels safe here. And you’re sending him away, to do your dirty work for you. Again.

Ed shook that thought away, and leaned down to touch Izzy’s shoulder.

“Izzy. Izzy.”

He gave him a hard nudge, and Izzy came awake all at once, cut off mid-snore as he jolted upright. Ed’s eyes, now adjusted to the dark, caught the movement of Izzy’s arms coming up to protect himself, and the knife in his gut twisted a little deeper.

“It’s okay, Iz. It’s me. Just me.”

“Ed…” Izzy groped through the dark, his fingers wrapping around Ed’s upper arm and squeezing. “Time to go.”

Not a question, just a cold acceptance of the fact. Whatever guilt Ed might feel in his heart of hearts, there was no question that Izzy was ready for this. God, he was a tough little fucker, when you got right down to it.

“Time to go,” Ed agreed. He moved to get up. “Hang on a sec, I’ll light a lamp so you can get dressed.”

“Wait.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, just…” Izzy’s hand slid up Ed’s arm, then across his back. Ed felt the press of a forehead against his shoulder, another hand coming to rest on his chest, right above his heartbeat.

He felt Izzy take a deep breath and slowly let it out.

“Waking up in the dark, it’s not…I don’t always remember…” Izzy tightened his fingers in the fabric of Ed’s shirt. “Doesn’t matter. You’re here.”

“Aw, hell, Iz.” Ed turned so he could wrap his arms around Izzy properly, squeezing him hard around the middle. He felt Izzy’s heart pounding, slowing but still thudding heavily against the cage of his ribs. “You sure you want to go? We can figure something else out, I could send Jim, maybe, or Frenchie-“

“No, Ed. I’m going. I have to.” Izzy’s breath was warm against Ed’s exposed collarbone. “Not just for the plan. I can’t be too scared to go off on my own. That’s not someone you need on your crew.”

“Don’t give me that. I need you, however you are,” Ed told him.

“I need to do better than that. For me, alright? Not for you. So mind your own fuckin’ business.”

Ed laughed, but he didn’t let go of Izzy.

“You’re coming back, right?” he asked. “You’re not planning to do some stupid thing where you like, sacrifice yourself for me, because you think I’ll get along fine without you? ‘Cause I swear, if that’s what you’re planning, I’ll find the spot where you’re buried so I can dig you up and kick your scrawny dead arse, okay?”

“I’m coming back.”

Izzy squirmed, and must have sensed the reluctance with which Ed let go, because he took Ed’s hands in his as soon as he was free.

“Eddie. I promise. I don’t…” A pause for a shaky breath. “I don’t want to lose this. This thing, with you and me and Stede, even if it’s fucked sometimes, I’m…happy. I didn’t even think that was possible for someone like me. So no, I’m not about to sacrifice that. Not even for you.”

They kissed, warm and slow in the dark. Ed promised himself that by the time Izzy came back, he’d have this whole bed redone, big enough to fit all three of them comfortably, and Izzy would be able to wake up in the night and instantly remember that he was safe, that Ed had him and was never going to let him go…

But it was a lie. Even as Ed was imagining this future, Izzy was slipping out of his arms.

And Ed let him. What other choice did he have?

Izzy was surprised, but relieved, to see Jim waiting with the dinghy. He’d been worried that Stede would insist on ferrying him to shore, a move that would be tactically unwise even if you didn’t factor in the likelihood of Stede getting lost or capsizing on the way back to the ship. He was getting marginally better as a seaman, but Izzy still didn’t trust him to pilot a small vessel on the open ocean in the dark.

Which wasn’t to say Stede was making himself scarce for this part. He stood by awkwardly while Izzy loaded his things into the boat, bathrobe flapping about his ankles in the chill predawn wind.

“Well. I guess this is goodbye. The next time you see me, I’ll be dead.”

He chuckled weakly. Izzy couldn’t bring himself to crack a smile in return. Stede had led a charmed life so far, but there were so many ways to die suddenly at sea, and every one of them was running through Izzy’s head at the moment. He tried to remind himself that Ed wouldn’t allow Stede to come to any harm, but that consolation had its own sharp edge, the inevitable tradeoff that if Ed was here with Stede, he wouldn’t be out there with Izzy. Izzy was striking off on his own again, and he’d barely survived doing so last time. If anyone ought to be making grim jokes about the specter of mortality, it was him.

“My advice, don’t over-rehearse the fuckery,” Izzy said. “You’ll get bored and start adding shit to spice things up, and the whole thing won’t feel natural anymore. Focus on staying healthy, and fit. We’ll need to move quickly when it all comes together.”

Stede frowned. “Well, you be careful too. Especially around Chauncey. He was always smarter than he looked.”

Izzy straightened up. The two of them stood facing each other, arms dangling at their sides, for an agonizing few seconds before Stede went in for a hug. Izzy huffed in surprise, then gave in and returned the embrace, patting Stede between the shoulder blades.

“Right. Bye then.”

“Seeya! Safe journey!”

Jim was smirking as they climbed into the dinghy.

“That was pretty fucking cute,” they said.

“Suck my knob,” Izzy replied, infuriated by the blush he could feel creeping up his neck. They hit the water to the sound of Jim’s continued snickering.

For a while they rowed in silence. The torchlight from the Revenge grew smaller with each heave of the oars. To the east, the sky was lightening, but the sea beneath them was still black. It was always harder, in a small boat, to put the indifference of those yawning depths out of one’s mind. Everyday, there were men who slipped into that blackness and were never seen by mortal eyes again. You might be next. The sea made no promises.

“You should wait until full daylight, before rowing back,” Izzy told Jim. “It’s not safe to go it alone, in the dark.”

There was a pause, a weighty silence that Izzy could detect even through the slap of water against wood.

“Yeah. You be careful too, viejo.”

At first it seemed like that would be that, but after another awkward interval Jim cleared their throat and said, “I could come with you, you know. Watch your back.”

Izzy lifted his head, startled. Jim wouldn’t waste their breath on an insincere offer, and he wondered if he ought to take it as a bad sign that they thought he needed help. That, coupled with the fact that it was unusual for Jim to be here at all, rather than Fang or Ivan, someone used to this kind of errand…

“Did Blackbeard put you up to this?” he asked. “Or Bonnet?”

“Nope. I’m just offering.” Jim’s voice was mellow, with no sign of affront at the question. “You went through hell the last time you got captured.”

“That’s why I’m not getting captured again,” Izzy said.

“Mad Monty was an idiot,” Jim shot back. “You think Badminton’s going to be as big of an idiot as he was?”

“He might be. They don’t waste a lot of time teaching those Navy cunts how to think.”

Jim didn’t laugh. Izzy sighed.

“I’ll be fine. Besides, the crew needs you. They can’t lose their best and second-best fighter.”

He meant the comment as a distraction, the opening lunge in a friendly sparring match of which one of them was which, but Jim refused to be deterred.

“You’re part of the crew, too. Just…remember that, okay?”

Maybe Izzy was getting soft in his old age, because that touched him more than it ought to have done. He’d been part of one crew or another for decades. He knew what it felt like, was familiar with the push and pull of that bond. Being first mate put you at a bit of a remove, caught between the captain’s authority and the crew’s camaraderie, but you never lost track of who you trusted to eat, shit and sleep next to day in and day out. You couldn’t live on a ship and not come to think of your crew as a family of sorts - the ones that weren’t able to do that were usually too fucked in the head to survive for long.

But the crew of the Revenge was different, always had been. Maybe it was because Izzy had fought for so long to keep that bond from taking root, certain as he was that the ship and her crew were as doomed as their captain. No sense getting attached to those who were just going to end up shark food anyway. Then everything had gone sideways, and when Izzy had returned to the Revenge little more than chum in his own right, the crew had been…well, a bunch of incompetent idiots, still, mostly. But a bunch of incompetent idiots amongst whom he had survived and healed. And it was only now that he was leaving them, that he realized how deep the roots had grown.

He looked over at Jim. They’d undergone a transformation of their own, since putting aside their mission of revenge for the ship of the same name. Gone were the wide-brimmed hat and long hair to hide their face, the patchwork, colorless clothing. That version of Jim had been a killer trying to evade notice; this Jim wore their ferocity for all to see. The shorn, elaborate hairstyle, the shark’s teeth and fishhooks sewn into their clothing, these flourishes forewarned of their deadly capabilities the same way bright colors did for venomous animals. Yet this version of Jim also talked more, smiled more, laughed more. No one on the crew seemed afraid of them, and Izzy could only assume that was the way Jim wanted it.

They weren’t an assassin anymore. They were a pirate. And such a transformation must have taken a leap of faith on their part, just as much as deciding to trust Stede and the crew had required of Izzy.

“I won’t forget,” Izzy said, after swallowing down the lump in his throat. “I’m coming back. You have my word on that.”

That seemed to satisfy Jim, at least enough that they said no more until they reached the shore. They said their farewells and Izzy offered a handshake, which Jim accepted and then turned into a hug. It was good deal less awkward than the one Izzy had exchanged with Stede.

Then Izzy was on his own, walking along the deserted dirt road leading into town, sweating in his leathers as another Caribbean morning bloomed. Back at sea, the air would be fresh with promise, salty, cool, invigorating. Here on land it was already thick and heavy, like trying to breathe through a sodden dishrag.

There were two sleepy-looking sentries in front of the Navy outpost. Izzy did not allow his gait to speed up or slow down as he approached them. From this moment on, his survival was going to depend on his ability to show no fear or uncertainty. It was a role he’d played hundreds of times, and the fact that he was still alive was proof enough that he must at least be decent at it, but a merely passable performance wouldn’t do this time. He was on his own. If he misstepped, he was done for.

“Move along, stray dog,” one of the guards called out as Izzy approached. “We’re here to keep the peace, not dole out alms for the poor.”

Izzy dropped his left hand to the pommel of his sword. “Do I look like a fucking beggar to you?” he growled.

The guards’ eyes widened. They straightened up and reached for their own weapons, and Izzy held up his hands. He’d gotten their attention. Now it was time to sell them on his story.

“I need to speak to Admiral Badminton,” he said. Slowly, he reached into his waistcoat, and pulled out the wanted poster with Stede’s face on it. “I’ve been sailing with Stede Bonnet for some time. I know where he’s going to be next, and I can see to it that he’s captured alive. Badminton does want him alive, doesn’t he?”

A glance passed between the guards.

“Give us the message,” the guard who had spoken said. “We’ll make sure that-“

“I’ll speak to Admiral Badminton, and no one else.”

The interruption clearly put the man on his back foot. He wasn’t used to being spoken to that way, at least not by someone who wasn’t wearing a fancier uniform than his own.

“Admiral Badminton is a very busy man,” he said. “Perhaps you’d like to follow us to the garrison and wait for him there.”

Izzy looked the man in the eye and laughed. “So you can clap me in irons and cheat me out of my reward? I think not.” He jerked his head back in the direction from which he’d come. “Saw a tavern on my way into town. Fancy place, white and gold sign out front. Your admiral can meet me there, if he’s interested in talking. And tell him to bring his purse. I’ve had a long journey, and I’m very thirsty.”

The other guard wrinkled his nose. “And who should we tell him awaits his company?”

Izzy lifted his chin, so that the swallow on his neck and the ring at his throat were plain to see.

“Izzy Hands. I’ll assume he knows the name, and the name of the man who’s flag I sailed under.” He looked between the two guards, his smile widening. “So do the both of you, if the way you’re quaking in your boots is any indication.”

And that was it. From this point on, there could be no turning back.

Chapter Text

Izzy wasn’t usually much for ale - it disagreed with his stomach, especially at sea - but the stuff the fancy tavern sold was good, bracingly bitter. He was mostly through with his second pint of it when Badminton came in.

It was easy to note his arrival, even from Izzy’s poor vantage point at the largest corner table. Before he caught sight of the man himself, he saw the way everyone else in the room reacted to the presence of uniforms. He’d seen schools of fish react the same way when a barracuda swam through their midst, a burst of panicked motion followed by a wary stillness. Izzy had been enjoying his drink with the quiet confidence that came from being the most dangerous man in the room, but it was clear that in the eyes of everyone here, he’d just been knocked down a peg.

That wouldn’t do. Izzy locked eyes with Badminton the second his bald head came into view, and raised his tankard in a welcome.

“Over here, Admiral. You’re just in time to buy my next round.”

Badminton scowled as he approached. The two Navy grunts he’d brought with him walked in lock-step behind him. They might have been the same two that Izzy encountered on his way into town, or they may not have been. Izzy honestly couldn’t tell. Same uniforms, same rigid posture, same contempt in their eyes.

“So. You’re the alleged Izzy Hands.”

“Alleged?” Izzy set his tankard down and leaned back. “You see something here that doesn’t match my reputation?”

“Quite. Most notably, the absence of Blackbeard. I’d be hard-pressed to recall a story that mentioned your name without including his.”

A saucy little smile punctuated this remark. It was a decent angle of attack, one that would have rankled Izzy badly if he really was the spurned second-in-command he was pretending to be. Badminton probably wouldn’t be easy to intimidate, but that didn’t mean Izzy didn’t have a responsibility to try.

“You’re right, of course. Have you heard this one? It’s one of my favorites.” Izzy lowered his voice, forcing the standing men to lean down to hear him. “Israel Basilica Hands, joined His Majesty’s Royal Navy at the age of fifteen. Started as a cabin boy, then worked his way up. Had dreams of making officer, young and naive as he was. Nothing like serving fancy dinners he’ll never taste a scrap of to stoke a poor boy’s ambitions.”

He made sure to make eye contact with Badminton’s lackeys at this last bit. Badminton noticed, and tensed, shoulders drawing up.

“The King’s Navy is not a charity organization, nor does it reward anything less than the exceptional man with distinction. One could argue that this unfortunate Mr. Hands entered service with a considerable debt to the Crown, for the opportunity to better himself.”

Izzy spat on the floor. The other men recoiled.

“You know, he may have believed the same thing, at least for a time. But eventually, he began to notice that it was only the men with family connections who were ever deemed exceptional enough to move up. Seemed like what the Crown valued most in a man was the foresight to begin his existence in some rich fucker’s bollocks.”

This time, Badminton held his tongue. Satisfied he wouldn’t be interrupted again, Izzy continued.

“At the age of twenty-three, Hands shipped out from Liverpool on the twenty-eight gun ship Fortitude, under command of one Captain Thomas Masterson. While en route to the Carolinas, the Fortitude was set upon by the pirate ship Queen Anne’s Revenge, captained by Edward Teach, who would soon come to be known as Blackbeard. Captain Masterson was killed, as were several officers. The remaining crew were ransomed, save for a few defectors, among them Seaman Hands. Of course, it’s not as easy to join a pirate crew as it is to join the Navy. Not enough just to be poor and hungry. You’ve got to prove your mettle.”

He paused, and smiled, making a show of savoring the memory.

“The quartermaster’s name was Dewberry. He made this…sound, when he died. A sort of hissing, squealing noise. Like a lobster when you throw it in the pot. I never knew a man could make a sound like that.”

The background noise of the tavern faded from Izzy’s perception as he spoke, and was now little more than a distant hum as he watched Badminton’s face. The contempt Izzy saw there didn’t budge an inch, which was no surprise. There was nothing Izzy could say that would make him respectable in this man’s eyes, no more than there ever had been with any of the officers he’d served under as a lad.

Badminton took a seat. His companions did not. Izzy chuckled, and raised his hand to summon the barman.

“Not so fast,” Badminton said. “The question of who you are is one thing. The question of why I’m not arresting you on the spot is another.”

“That’s an easy one. Because I’m not the one you want.” Izzy slapped the wanted poster down on the table between them. “Stede Bonnet. You’re offering a fortune for him, and if anyone is going to become a rich man on account of that ponce, it ought to be me.”

Hatred flared up in Badminton’s eyes at the sight of Stede’s likeness.

“The rumor is that he’s taken up with Blackbeard. I didn’t believe it, because, well.” Badminton snorted. “The world’s greatest pirate, throwing in his lot with Baby Bonnet? I couldn’t imagine something more ludicrous.”

“That makes two of us,” Izzy said. “But Blackbeard, he doesn’t think like you and me. A man of his skills, he needs variety in his life. And I can only guess that Bonnet made for an interesting change.”

“Ah. And now, Blackbeard’s gotten tired of his plaything, and sent you to collect the reward. Is that about right?”

“Oh, no, Admiral.” Izzy sighed. “Although somewhere deep in my sentimental heart, I wish that were the case. No, I’m here as my own man. I’m offering you Bonnet and Blackbeard. Two for the price of…well, for a price I’m sure your king would still consider a bargain.”

Badminton’s eyebrows shot up his not-inconsiderable brow. “Double crossing your captain? I suppose that’s in keeping with a deserter’s character.”

Unfazed, Izzy glared back. “Blackbeard earned my loyalty in ways the Navy never did. But then he met Bonnet, and-“

“Mr. Hands, my men and I have already had to listen to one tedious and, frankly, self-serving story from you. I do hope you’ll show some consideration to those of us at the table who are still employed, and keep this one brief.”

This time, Izzy had to bite back a genuine laugh. Badminton might be a cunt, but he wasn’t a complete dullard. Pity that Izzy couldn’t show his appreciation for that.

“Bonnet’s…done something to my boss’s brain,” he said. “How he’s managed to captivate him so, I cannot say. But it’s not the same, sailing under him now. He’s a shell of the man he once was. Frankly, I’d rather see him dead and his legend secure, than have to watch him frittering his reputation away with that twat.”

“I see.” Badminton traced his finger along the edge of the wanted poster. “So. Seven hundred pounds, for the live capture of the two of them. If you-“

“Seven hundred pounds, my arse,” Izzy growled. “That’s the reward for Bonnet on his own. You want Blackbeard too, you’re going to need to do better than that.”

“How much better?”

“A full pardon. Safe passage back to England. And a country estate waiting for me, when I get there. Doesn’t need to be too big, just a cozy spot where I can put my feet up. And enough funds for me to live out my retirement comfortably, of course.”

“Of course,” Badminton replied, his upper lip curling. “Just the sort of fate a man of your…distinguished record deserves.”

Izzy shrugged, and said no more. He and Badminton stared each other down, and for a moment Izzy worried he might have overplayed his hand. But then Badminton huffed through his nose, and looked back down at the inked image of Stede.

“You’re certain that we can take Bonnet alive?”

“He’s survived this long, against all reason. It’s a fair guess he’ll hold out long enough for us to catch up with him.”

Izzy was surprised that the wanted poster wasn’t starting to smolder, so fixedly was Badminton glaring at it. He’d bet his right that that there were all sorts of torturous images, akin in ferocity to the fires of Hell, dancing beneath that bald pate.

Yet when Badminton looked up again, his eyes were cold.

“Alright, then, Mr. Hands. Tell me where we’re going.”

Stede wasn’t sure what compelled him to climb up to the crow’s nest. Not at first, anyway.

It wasn’t for the purpose of navigation. Ed had already set their course for the Republic of Pirates, and they were still several days away. It wasn’t to enjoy the sunset, since it was only just past noon, and it wasn’t in search of Ed, because he knew where Ed was. Had only just, in fact, slipped away from Ed’s spirited lecture on crowd control, to which most of the crew was still listening raptly. Ed was in as magnetic form as he ever was, but Stede still couldn’t bring himself to focus. This part of the fuckery wouldn’t involve him anyway. He’d be doing his best to lie still under a pile of debris at this point, while Ed got a few parting blows in at the decoy corpse. After that would come the riot, during which his presumed mortal remains would be gruesomely trampled, while the real Stede was spirited back to the Revenge over Fang’s shoulder, disguised as a sack of ill-gotten loot.

It was the part after returning to the ship that Stede was dreading. Waiting for Ed and the others to return safely, while he twiddled his thumbs belowdecks. Not the sort of thing a proper pirate captain should be doing, but then, Stede had never been much of a real pirate captain. And now, with his untimely “death” only days away, he never would be. The tale of Stede Bonnet, the Gentleman Pirate, was going to end exactly as any of his former landed peers would have predicted - in bloody, humiliated defeat.

He wondered what Mary would make of it, when word of his death finally reached her. Was there any part of her that would mourn him, or would she feel only relief that her wayward embarrassment of a husband was well and truly gone? And what about the children? Would they remember him, as they grew up? Did they even remember him now?

It doesn’t matter, Stede reminded himself. You’ve got a new family. And you’ve got Ed. It’s all worth it, just to be with him, isn’t it?

It was. God, it was. Stede had no business pouting like this. Still a spoiled rich boy, with no concept of how fortunate he really was.

The wind gusted, causing the rigging to sway and creak, and the sound made Stede realize why he’d climbed up here. It was nostalgia. He was thinking of their lighthouse fuckery, of that magic moment when fear had melted into triumph. Had there ever been another moment in his life when he’d felt so giddy, so free, so bursting with joy to be alive?

“Hey, you.”

Ed’s voice, closer than Stede would have thought possible. For all his getting on in years, he still moved up the rigging with catlike speed and silence.

“Hey, you,” Stede replied, scooting over so Ed could join him on the platform. They sat side by side, legs dangling over the edge. “All through with today’s rehearsal?”

“Mm? Oh, yeah, they’re gonna do great. You don’t want to over-rehearse these things, you know? Starts to look unnatural.”

“Yeah. Izzy said the same thing.”

Stede leaned against Ed’s shoulder. His cheek met leather, supple from the heat of the sun.

“What happens afterward? To the three of us, I mean. After I’m, you know. Dead.”

Ed made a contemplative noise, and put his arm around Stede.

“We start over somewhere else, I guess. Get a new boat, new names, new backstories. Go somewhere they’ll never find us.” He smiled. “We could go to China.”

“China.” Stede tasted the exotic name he had read many times, but rarely spoken. He tried to remember what he knew about China. Tea came from there. That was a good start. Tea was nice. “That’s…quite far away.”

“That’s the whole point,” Ed said. “Our old lives will be gone. Dead. Never were.”

He spoke so softly, like he was divulging some treasured fantasy. Stede wished he could feel whatever Ed was feeling, rather than the encroaching sense of panic that grew with every word Ed spoke. It didn’t even make sense. What was he so scared of losing? The life of Stede Bonnet had never been worth all that much.

He swallowed around a thick lump of anxiety. “What about-“

“Izzy? He’d come around on it. Probably grumble a lot at first, but-“

“Oh, I mean, that’s good. But I wasn’t actually asking about him.” Stede laughed sheepishly. “I was going to say, what about Blackbeard?”

Ed’s face dropped. “What about him?”

“It’s just, can it really end like that? History’s greatest pirate, disappearing without a trace?”

“As opposed to what?” Ed demanded, his grip on Stede tightening. “Cut down in battle? Shot full of holes? Strung up and left to rot in the sun, birds eating your fucking eyeballs? Every story’s got to end sometime, mate, and for most pirate stories, the end is pretty grisly. Disappearing’s alright, when you look at it that way.”

Stede sighed, and melted gratefully into Ed’s embrace.

“You’re right. God, I’m so stupid sometimes.”

“C’mon, don’t say that. I hate it when you say that about yourself.”

“Sorry.”

“No, no, don’t apologize! I didn’t mean…aw, balls.” Ed’s brow crinkled in frustration. “Just…you don’t deserve to feel that way, alright? You’re not stupid. Sometimes I think you’re the only person in the whole world who’s got it all figured out.”

Stede had to laugh. “Sometimes I think you’re the only person in the world who could possibly be crazy enough to think that.”

“Heh. Good thing we found each other, isn’t it?”

The tension broken, the two of them relaxed against each other, enjoying the breeze and the warmth where their bodies touched. Stede turned his head to rub his nose through the scruff on Ed’s jawline. Ed was growing the beard out again, in anticipation of Blackbeard’s last hurrah, and the soft, uncut hairs tickled whenever they brushed against Stede’s skin.

“We had our first kiss up here,” Stede sighed. “Remember?”

Another moment, when Stede had felt more alive than he’d thought was possible. So many memories, on this ship, with this crew. Could he really expect to be so lucky, to find another place where such things could happen?

“Kind of. Memory’s a little fuzzy, to be honest.”

When Stede looked up at Ed, his eyes were sparkling, and his beard couldn’t quite hide his teasing grin.

“Is it, now?”

“Yeah,” Ed said. “Could use a refresher, I think. I’m sure all the details’ll come flooding back, if we try a few things.”

They spent some time jogging each other’s memories, up in the crow’s nest while the crew toiled obliviously below, and then Ed must have dozed off. When he woke up, the sun was a big orange eyeball dipping towards the west, a haze of clouds encroaching on it like the first signs of blindness. He was too warm, and his neck hurt, and his right arm was asleep from Stede leaning against his shoulder.

“Agh, fucking hell,” he groaned. “Babe, wake up.”

Stede mumbled sleepily, but didn’t move. Ed tried to wriggle free, wincing as pins and needles raced up his arm. He felt a rush of anger, that no one from the crew had come up and roused them. Without Izzy, the chain of command had become dangerously un…linked? Unwelded? Whatever happened to chains when they got fucked up. He worried that no one was keeping an eye on those clouds. They were thin, but still, he didn’t like the look of them.

“Stede. C’mon, mate, wake up.”

Ed finally got his arm free. He let Stede’s head bonk against the mast, then immediately felt guilty about it. He’d make it up to him later. The sense of anger and urgency was gnawing at him, wouldn’t let him sit still. He rose on sleep-jellied legs and leaned over the railing, trying to get a better read on the clouds.

And then he saw it. The dark shape in the water.

His heart lurched. Every part of his body instantly became blood-hot or frost-cold, as his instincts to fight or to cower in terror collided. The thing in the water - and oh, fuck, it was big, easily as big as the ship if Ed was judging the distance correctly - seemed to jolt awake in the same instant that Ed spotted it. Its tentacles rippled outward, questing for something, or maybe just stretching, reveling in its own size and strength. What must it feel like, to be so big that nothing else in the ocean could hope to match your power?

When it moved, it was faster than Ed could ever have predicted. Something that big, there was no way it should be able to swim that quickly, and yet it shot toward the boat with the speed of an arrow loosed from a bow. Ed didn’t have time to shout a warning before he lost sight of it beneath the hull, and then the impact came, a mighty wallop that reverberated all the way through the mast at Ed’s back. He tried to shout for someone to man the fucking helm, for God’s sake, but all that came out of his throat was a tight, miserable whimper.

“Stede,” he whined. “Stede, wake up, please, wake up.”

Stede didn’t wake up. He was still slumped against the mast, and only now did Ed notice the waxy quality of his skin. Ed knelt before him, lifting his head, waiting for those hazel eyes to open, but his features were slack, his cheeks cold. Ed pawed at him, searching for a wound, the whimper in his throat growing louder and sharper.

His hand wrapped around something hard, on the left side of Stede’s midsection. The hilt of a knife. Ed’s knife, plunged through Stede’s ribs into his heart.

“No, no, no.” Ed keened and scrabbled uselessly at the knife’s hilt, knowing that all pulling it out would accomplish was confirming what was already done, what he had done. There was no coming back from this. There was no escape.

Another impact rocked the ship. From below, someone screamed.

“Wait,” Ed moaned, not sure who he was talking to. The knife in his hand was slippery, with sweat or blood. “Wait, just wait a fucking minute, I can fix this, I’m Blackbeard.”

He heard the sound of deep, booming laughter, as the ship began to crack and splinter apart…

Ed woke with a sickening jolt, his heart a trapped animal trying to claw its way out of his chest. He was on his belly, and when he rolled over and saw the familiar moon-washed sleeping nook around him, he almost started sobbing with relief. The actual events of the afternoon came back to him all at once, sublimely comforting in their mundanity. He and Stede had spent some time making out in the crow’s nest, but then they’d come back down, bullshitted around deck for a while, hung around the galley annoying Roach while he prepared supper. Everything had been fine, and why Ed’s sleeping mind had decided to twist it into some kind of cheap horror-drama was beyond him.

But it was okay. It was over. Except…

“Stede?” he called.

There was enough fear lingering in his system to tell him that he would receive no answer, that Stede had somehow picked up on the horrible images in his head and left, all for the best really, how could anyone possibly want to be with Ed when he was capable of imagining such things…

“Ed?” Stede’s voice came from just beyond the curtain. “I’m so sorry, darling, I just got up to have a pee. Did I wake you?”

Ed didn’t answer, just tore the curtain aside and pulled Stede back into bed with him. Stede yelped in surprise, but clambered back in eagerly enough. The rancid taste of fear on Ed’s tongue receded, washed away by kiss after frantic kiss.

He was out of his nightclothes in about thirty seconds, straddling Stede’s hips scarcely two minutes after that, panting, “I love you, I love you,” as he rode his dick like he meant to try and break it off. Stede dug his fingers into Ed’s thighs and stared up at him in shocked, dreamy wonder. When he reached for Ed’s cock, Ed grabbed his wrists and pinned them above his head. He didn’t want to come, not yet. Stede was safe like this, under him, inside him, and Ed wanted to stay this way as long as they could. He’d stay this way forever, if his body would let him.

It wouldn’t, of course. But he gave it an honest try, to the point that when he finally succumbed, they were both shaking from exhaustion.

“Wow,” Stede gasped, his chest heaving beneath the weight of Ed’s head. “That was…wow.”

Ed agreed, muzzily, and let his breathing get slow, his limbs wrapped around Stede growing heavy. After some sleepy kisses and a few more wows, Stede began to snore. Ed started counting in his head. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty. When he got to thirty, he risked untangling himself, and Stede snoozed on. He was the heaviest sleeper Ed had ever met, which made sense. He’d spent his whole life sleeping with the knowledge he was safe. Ed meant to keep it that way.

He slipped silently out of bed, his movements guided by moonlight and rote instinct for where everything in the cabin was. He found his stash box in its hiding place, the supply of rhino horn still ample from the last time he’d stocked up. He had more than enough to last until they reached the Republic of Pirates. Enough to keep any more dreams away, at least.

His arms and legs tingled pleasantly as he climbed back into bed, wrapped Stede up in his embrace once again. With his head pillowed on Stede’s chest, he had a perfect view out the window, and with the rhino horn zipping through his veins, he wouldn’t miss the first sign of a threat. Whatever tried screaming at them over the horizon, or breaching its ugly head up from below, Ed would see it.

But there was nothing out there to see. Nothing but the surface of the water, and the endless darkness beneath it.

Chapter Text

To my children,

To my beloved children,

Dear Louis and Alma,

This is Stede Bonnet, your father, writing to you. Long time, no see, am I right?

“Fuck.”

Stede swept the latest ruined piece of parchment aside, letting it drift to the floor with the others. He only had two fresh pieces in front of him now. He set the quill back in its inkwell and pushed it all the way to the far corner of the writing desk, hoping that putting some distance between himself and his tool would dissuade him from using it again, until he was absolutely certain of what he wanted to write. He’d been sure that it would come to him in the moment when he’d sat down for this task, but that had been over an hour ago, and his optimism was starting to wane.

He thought of finding Edward and asking for his input, but it seemed like an imposition, one that Stede was unwilling to put on Ed’s already overburdened mind. He was under enough pressure as it was, planning for their future, while Stede remained infuriatingly stuck in the past.

Dearest Louis and Alma,

I hope this letter finds you well. No doubt you have some questions about where I’ve been, and why I left so suddenly. Perhaps your mother has told you some things, and I want to give you my side of the story. I don’t expect you to understand this until you’re older, but it turns out marriage isn’t for everyone, and oh what are you even saying, you complete moron?

The tip of the quill snapped beneath the force of Stede’s hand as he scrawled the question mark. With a growl, he shoved the whole mess- quill, inkwell, parchment both soiled and pristine- onto the floor. He pulled his arm back to see streaks of ink on his sleeve, and pounded his fist on the surface of the desk.

“Bugger!”

Just at that moment, the door swung open and Lucius sauntered in.

“Hey, boss, the Swede’s caught in the rigging again and- oh, sorry, is this a bad time? That’s cool, I’ll just leave you to it.“

“Hang on,” Stede said. Lucius, who had already turned on his heel and was mostly out the door, stopped with a distinct air of reluctance. “If your father was going to die, what’s the last thing you would want him to say to you?”

Lucius turned back around, his expression quizzical. “My dad? ‘Cause that’s a whole thing that we really need a couple of bottles of wine to get into properly-”

“Once this plan is through, Stede Bonnet will officially be no more,” Stede continued. “My kids deserve some kind of sense of closure, don’t you think?”

“I mean, maybe, yeah. If their mum hasn’t already told them you’re dead.”

Stede blanched. “Why would she do that?”

“Uhhhh.” Lucius’ eyes darted toward the door. “Maybe we better go check on that rigging situation…”

“I guess if she felt she had to come up with an explanation…” Stede pictured Alma and Louis’ little faces crumpling in grief, and felt his heart start to ache. “Would they have had a funeral, do you think? But what would they bury? Just an empty coffin?”

“I’m sure there’s some kind of standard procedure for it,” Lucius said. “Married men die at sea all the time, after all. Kind of what they do best, if you ask me.”

Stede wasn’t listening. It would never have occurred to him to think that his children already thought he was dead. The thought that he may be a permanent past-tense to them, that they’d already wept and grieved and moved on, with him completely oblivious to it all…it just didn’t feel right. Not to mention it made this letter-writing task all the more arduous. What would be the appropriate opening line from a dead man? Dear kids…Surprise! No, that was rubbish.

“Uh, boss, not to be that guy, but how were you planning to send this letter, anyway?”

“Hmm? Well, I figured there’d be a postal service somewhere on the Republic of Pirates…” Stede trailed off at the skeptical look on Lucius’ face. “Oh. Shit. This is a terrible idea, isn’t it?”

Lucius scrunched his nose and nodded. “Want me to help you clean up?”

“I’d appreciate that.”

Lucius began gathering up the discarded papers and tossing them into the fireplace, while Stede got down on hands and knees to pick up the pieces of the shattered inkwell. Ink was starting to seep into the boards, and he was digging around for something that might remove the stain when he came across a box he didn’t recognize. He opened it without thinking; he was preoccupied by thoughts of cleaning up the mess, and it seemed much more likely that the box was something of his that he’d forgotten about, rather than something that had been deliberately hidden from him.

He realized his mistake immediately. The inside of the box was dominated by what looked like a huge, partially damaged horn of some animal. He definitely would have remembered acquiring something like that. Surrounding it were unfamiliar bottles, twists of herbs- a first aid kit? But then why was it tucked away like this?

“Something wrong?” Lucius asked, from the other side of the room.

“What? No!” Stede slammed the box shut and put it back where he found it. Whatever it was, he was pretty sure it wasn’t something he wanted Lucius gossiping to the whole ship about.

It was no easy task, waiting to get Edward alone to bring the subject up. He was in one of his more scattered moods, and seemed to be everywhere on the ship at once, except for where Stede wanted him. Stede finally managed to catch him holding still for more than a few seconds during an animated conversation with the Swede, who had since come untangled from the rigging and was, apparently, attempting to recount the afternoon’s events to Ed in his native tongue.

“One more time,” Ed said, his hand on the Swede’s shoulder. “Just say it one more time, I swear I’ll get it.”

“Tilltrasslad,” the Swede replied, enunciating as carefully as Stede had ever heard him.

“Tiltra-salad,” Ed repeated. “Fuck, no, I fucked it up again, didn’t I?”

He collapsed into a fit of giggles, then caught Stede hovering and flashed him a brilliant smile.

“Hey, babe, c’mere and listen to this. I’m learning Swedish.”

“Actually, I was hoping we could maybe turn in,” Stede said. As he leaned down to kiss Ed’s cheek, he caught a whiff of rum on his breath. Not ideal for the conversation they needed to have, but it could hardly be helped, could it? Stede didn’t think he’d get a minute of sleep if he tried putting it off until tomorrow.

Ed’s brows knit together. “Really? Kinda early, isn’t it? Thought we might tie a bit of one on tonight, seeing as it’s one of our last nights as Blackbeard and the Gentleman Pirate!”

He yelled this last bit so the whole room could hear him. Everyone turned their heads, and the attention seemed to have a buoying effect on Ed, sending him lurching to his feet to throw his arm around Stede’s waist.

“Everyone c’mere a minute,” Ed called. “Come on, all of you gather round. Come here and take a look at this fuckin’ guy.” He squeezed Stede closer and waved everyone over with his free arm.

“This is your captain.” Ed’s voice dropped into a more somber register. “And what a captain he is, right? This beautiful lunatic had a dream, and look what’s come of it. All of us, here, together, on this…magical unicorn boat. I never thought I’d end up somewhere like this, did you? Huh?”

There was an awkward silence before everyone seemed to realize the question was more than rhetorical. A few people shook their heads. Black Pete clapped, twice, then stopped when no one else joined in.

“It’s gonna be time for you all to choose a new captain, soon.”

Stede’s stomach did a flip.

“Now, I’ve seen a lot of crews elect a lot of captains, and the temptation is to pick the person who’s killed the most people or stolen the most treasure. But take it from me, that’s not what’s really important. ‘Cause the thing is, a crew, a real crew, it’s a family. And your captain needs to be someone who’s…who’s willing to do whatever it takes, to protect their family…”

Ed’s eyes drifted over the faces of the crew, then settled on some imaginary horizon far away.

“Whatever it takes. So keep that in mind, when you’re making the choice, alright? Pick someone like Stede. Someone who really cares.”

Awkward silence fell, silence that Stede knew he should have been filling with a few heartfelt words of his own. But he couldn’t think of anything to say. He couldn’t focus on much at all, besides how heavily Ed was leaning on him, and how strong the smell of rum was. Had he been drinking all day?

“Can we go to bed now, please?” he whispered into Ed’s ear.

“Alright, alright,” Ed conceded. “Insatiable fucker, aren’t ya?” He winked at the crew members still milling about, and let Stede lead him unsteadily toward their cabin.

Stede had left the box sitting out, open with its damning contents on display, but even so Ed had shed his jacket, pistol and knife and dropped them in a clattering heap on the same table before he spotted it. When he did, he froze, his eyes swiftly going from sultry to suspicious.

“Fuck’s this about?”

“That’s what I was hoping you could tell me,” Stede replied. He calmly took a seat at the table, hands folded in front of him, hoping Ed would do the same. Ed did not.

“Ed, what’s all this stuff?”

“”S’just…stuff.” Ed rolled his shoulders uncomfortably. “Stuff to help me sleep, and shit like that.”

Stede frowned. “Do you have a lot of trouble sleeping?”

Again, Ed shrugged. “I wouldn’t say a lot, but, y’know. It’s part of the job.”

“And what about this?” Stede tapped the partially-ground horn. “This is rhino horn, isn’t it? That’s not meant to help you sleep.”

“Oh, so you’re a fucking expert all of a sudden?” Ed scoffed.

This wasn’t going at all the way Stede hoped. He should never have broached the subject now, not while Ed was drunk and tensions were high. He wished Izzy were here. Izzy probably wouldn’t have handled the situation any more tactfully, but he would have at least been able to provide information that Stede could only guess at.

“I may not be an expert, but I’m not completely ignorant-“

“Yeah? Cause if you weren’t, you’d know that the first rule of living on a ship is don’t go through another guy’s stuff!”

“Well, it is my ship,” Stede snapped. “Technically.”

Storm clouds were swiftly gathering on Ed’s face. “Wow. Okay. You really want to go there? You think I can’t get my own fucking ship? I’m fucking Blackbeard, in case you forgot. I could have five ships by suppertime tomorrow if I wanted to.”

“That’s not the point!” Stede hands were shaking from the effort of keeping them still, trying to remain composed. “Ed. I thought we agreed on no more secrets!”

Ed stopped his pacing, took a deep breath, then grabbed a chair opposite Stede and sat down.

“Fine,” he said. “You want all the details? I like to do a little rhino horn sometimes. It helps me concentrate, and I fucking like it. Happy? Now you know my biiig, daaark secret.” He fluttered his hands mockingly by his head. “Now let’s do you. Why did you feel the need to go through my stuff?”

“I found it by accident,” Stede said. “While I was tidying up.”

“Tidying up from what? C’mon, mate, no secrets here, right? You made a mess of the room, I have a right to know how.”

Stede was worried that he might start crying. He’d never heard Edward speak this way, in this caustic, bitter, bullying tone.

“I broke an inkwell. While I was trying to write a letter.”

“Uh-huh. A letter to who?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Stede pleaded. “I didn’t even end up finishing it, it was a bad idea anyway.”

“No? Sounds like a pretty big deal.” Ed leaned across the table, pinning Stede to the back of his chair with his eyes. “Who were you writing a letter to, Stede?”

“To…to my kids.” Stede’s shoulders slumped. “I just thought they deserved some closure, since I’m going to be…to be dead and all…”

Ed chuckled bleakly. “Closure? You mean more than they would have got, when their mum told you to fuck off? You don’t think that was enough?”

“I know,” Stede whispered, his voice thick as he tried to hold back tears. “Lucius said the same thing, more or less. That’s why I didn’t bother finishing it.”

“Man, why do you even care what those kids think of you anymore? That part of your life’s fucking over, mate. Don’t you think it’s about time you let it go?”

“Yes, well, maybe I’m not like you, Ed. I can’t just deal with the past by just…shoving it aside and pretending it never happened. I can’t just say, ‘oh, the Kraken did it’ and move on.”

“Mhm, mhm, okay.” Ed shoved himself back from the table, the chair legs screeching across the boards. Stede got up as well, coming around and reaching out for Ed, desperate to take back the stupid, awful thing he’d just said.

“Don’t,” Ed said, his voice deadly quiet. “Just…don’t.”

He slammed the door on his way out, hard enough that Stede heard something delicate break inside the latching mechanism. Something for the new captain to deal with, whoever that might be.

“Capital job, Baby Bonnet,” Nigel Badminton taunted, from the corner by the bed nook. “Really, exactly the kind of performance I’ve come to expect from you.”

Without thinking, Stede picked up Ed’s abandoned knife and threw it in the direction of Badminton’s head. It passed through him and stuck in the wall, quivering. A perfect throw, the first successful one Stede had ever made.

Nigel looked offended, then disappeared. Stede left the knife where it was. He could use a reminder at the moment, that he could at least do something right.

“Useless, utterly useless when we were boys. I can’t imagine someone less equipped for a life at sea.”

Badminton knocked back the dregs in his cup of wine (his third, by Izzy’s count) and signaled to his steward for a refill. It was fancy stuff, good enough that it would have given Izzy a powerful headache had he done more than sip at his own glass, but Badminton was treating it like tavern plonk. If any of the other officers at the table had an opinion on this, they kept it hidden. They sat rigid and indistinguishable, powdered wigs on their heads and china plates in front of them. Izzy wasn’t sure if their scrupulous table manners were the usual order of business, or a means of separating themselves from the black-clad interloper at their table. He’d never spent much time amongst officers, even when a ship like this was home.

He hadn’t expected to be invited to supper with them now. He wasn’t a prisoner on this ship, but he was far from an honored guest, either. He’d assumed, and frankly hoped, that he would be left alone in the tiny sliver of a cabin he’d been granted. Badminton had confiscated his sword upon boarding, promising he’d get it back when they reached the Republic of Pirates, and Izzy felt its absence the same way he would that of a missing limb. The knife he had tucked in his boot that Badminton hadn’t thought to check for only brought a small modicum of comfort.

Badminton had taken Izzy’s sword, then seen fit to sit him down at a place setting with two knives and something like six fucking forks in front of him, and maybe Izzy’s discomfort was the point of it all. For a certain type of man- Izzy thought of Calico Jack here- the discomfort of others whetted their appetite like the smell of woodsmoke. Maybe Badminton was one of these. Or maybe he just wanted a sympathetic pair of ears at the table while he harped on about the only subject that seemed of interest to him: Stede Bonnet, his incompetence, and his impending arrest and execution.

“I mean, Nigel spilled a bucket of dishwater on him once- harmless prank, the sort of thing that happens at school all the time- and Bonnet actually cried. And now he’s trying to be a pirate? Completely ridiculous.”

“He’s enough of a pirate to have caught Blackbeard’s interest,” another officer chimed in, cutting his eyes at Izzy. Ordinary contempt, or hoping Izzy would prompt a change in the conversation? “That’s the real curiosity, if you ask me. From all the legends I’ve heard, he’s not one to make alliances.”

Ah yes, the legends, the ones that were only about twenty-five percent correct on a good day. Izzy hid his smile behind a gulp of wine, while a third officer snorted in distaste.

“He’s a bloodthirsty madman. Pointless to try and ascribe logic to anything he does.” He pointed across the table with his fork. “Wellington here can tell you as much. He was Blackbeard’s captive for a while, isn’t that so?”

Izzy looked up sharply. He hadn’t recognized the man in question, not whilst he was seated among his identical colleagues, but now Izzy recalled the face of the hostage from that fateful day Stede Bonnet had come crashing into his life. He cringed inwardly, furious at himself for missing such a vital detail. It was the sort of thing Edward would have clocked right away.

Wellington smirked in Izzy’s direction. “A short while. I was ransomed quite expeditiously, I’ll give him that.” He toyed with his glass of wine, his eyes never leaving Izzy’s face. “Although perhaps the credit for that should go to our guest. Rumor has it he’s the real brains of the operation. Would you agree, Mr. Hands?”

“I’m not the one the legends are about,” Izzy said flatly.

“No, but that’s often the case, isn’t it? Real men of intellect put in the work, while some idiot savant takes all the glory.” Wellington looked around the table, his smile becoming wider and crueler. “From what I saw of Blackbeard, he’s more animal than man. A clever animal, certainly, but still possessed of a beast’s motivations.”

“If that’s true, we may arrive at the Republic of Pirates to find he’s eaten poor Stede Bonnet,” someone said.

The officers laughed. Izzy sawed at his meat, imagining it was the smarmy fucker’s throat.

“That won’t happen.”

The laughter died as everyone turned to look at Badminton.

“Bonnet’s alive,” he said, his voice gravid with wine, and with anger. “God will not deny me justice for my brother’s murder. I know that as surely as I know my own name.”

Izzy watched the faces of the officers closely. Some seemed to echo Badminton’s righteous fury, while others looked more concerned. Someone eventually broke the silence with a weak, “Hear, hear,” and everyone focused their attention back on their plates. All save Wellington, who’s eyes continued to bore into the side of Izzy’s head throughout the rest of the course and a dessert, for which Izzy had no appetite.

Because of this, it came as no surprise when Wellington volunteered to escort Izzy back to his cabin. He probably felt he still had some score to settle with Izzy, over his time as a hostage. Izzy didn’t expect any physical violence, but it was still a tense walk back, as Izzy waited for Wellington to get in whatever shots he felt entitled to.

“I understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, you know,” Wellington said, once they reached Izzy’s cabin. “There’s only so long an Englishman, even one from such…humble origins as yourself, could stand to play second-in-command to a savage.”

“You’re quite the little fucking philosopher, aren’t you?” Izzy replied through gritted teeth. “I don’t recall you having quite so many opinions, when you were a hostage.”

“Oh, I had them. I just figured philosophy would be wasted on the two brutes you tasked with guarding me.”

He was talking about Fang and Ivan, Izzy realized. He wondered what Wellington would make of it if he knew that Ivan had taken up watercolors these days, and that the last time Izzy had seen Fang, he and Roach were giving each other pedicures.

“Sounds like we took the wrong hostage,” was all Izzy said. “Bonnet’s ship may have been a better fit for your tender sensibilities.”

Wellington grimaced. “Hardly. He nearly killed Officer Hornberry, you know. Although he does have a certain mystifying effect on people, I’ll give him that. Hornberry’s still insisting he’s not that bad a sort. Not when the Admiral is in earshot, of course.”

“Of course,” Izzy muttered, wondering what on earth it was going to take to make this infuriating knobhead fuck off and leave him in peace.

To Izzy’s dismay, Wellington leaned against the doorframe as if he planned to stay awhile.

“You’re going to be quite the figure of intrigue, when you get back home. You could make some very influential friends. I suspect King George himself will want to meet you, to thank you for your service to the Crown.”

Ah. That was it, then. Wellington saw an alliance with Izzy as a chance to improve his own social standing. All that odious talk about Edward and his crew must be the man’s idea of building rapport.

The urge to pull his knife from his boot and plunge it through Wellington’s eye swept over Izzy, intense to the point of physical pain. He could imagine the visceral squelch of the eyeball giving, the man’s shocked expression, the shrieks of pain that would bring the whole ship down on both of them…

No, that wouldn’t do. But imagining it helped make the conversation more tolerable.

He was so absorbed in this possible scenario, that he was completely unprepared for what Wellington did next, which was to crowd Izzy against the doorjamb and place one spidery hand on the inside of his thigh.

“I know how things work, in your world,” he breathed against Izzy’s ear. “I’m not above a little quid pro quo.”

Icy shock flooded Izzy’s veins, leaving his arms hanging heavy and useless at his sides. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” he said.

“You were a Navy man, once,” Wellington continued, unperturbed. “An enlisted man, with something of a checkered disciplinary record, to boot. I think I can guess why.”

His hand moved to palm against Izzy’s groin. Izzy was horrified to feel blood rushing to his cock from the pressure, and even more so to realize his brain was considering the option as well. He had no desire for Wellington, but this could be a golden opportunity. He could lure Wellington into his cabin, kill him quietly, then sneak off to find Badminton. The admiral had been drinking; he’d have his guard down. If Izzy had the stomach to get Wellington out of his clothes before he cut his throat, he’d even have a perfect disguise in which to make his escape.

Clever, resourceful, perfect - the exact sort of plan Edward was always coming up with, and Izzy could never seem to. It was right here in front of him now, if he could just swallow his pride and take it.

Then Wellington’s nose nudged against his ear, and Izzy’s reflexes, always faster than his strategic thinking, took over before he could prevent it.

“Fuck off,” he snarled, and shoved Wellington away as hard as he could.

The officer stumbled back and hit the opposite wall. When he righted himself and looked up, his eyes were molten with embarrassment.

“Suit yourself,” he huffed, straightening his mussed wig. “I trust you’ll at least have the good sense not to speak of this to anyone. If you do, I’ll be forced to explain it was you who propositioned me. You know who the admiral will believe.”

Izzy couldn’t speak. His throat was full of acid, bitter memories stirred up from the familiar mix of shame, arousal and helpless anger. He backed into the cabin and slammed the door in Wellington’s face, then stood with his head pressed against the wood, shaking.

How could he be so stupid? His best chance to kill Badminton was fucked, and now, for good measure, Wellington thought he had some kind of leverage over him.

You’ll hang. That’s what they do to degenerate little shits like you.

He was in over his head. He was on a ship full of enemies, and everyone knew he didn’t belong, and he wasn’t smart or quick or charming enough to survive. It was only a matter of time before they closed in on him.

I could end you with a word, Hands. Think about that, the next time you’re dawdling on the job.

He couldn’t do this. He didn’t want to be on this ship anymore, feeling his old wounds reopen and fester. He wanted to be back on the Revenge. He wanted…

Ed and Stede. God help him, he wanted to be back with them, so badly it hurt.

Just the thought of being back in bed with them, lying peacefully in a tangle of limbs, was like a warm blanket draped over his shoulders. Nothing had ever felt so safe as drifting off to sleep, with Ed’s hair in his face and Stede’s elbow in his ribs. He could admit that to himself, now that there was no chance of one of them looking over and seeing it on his face.

Maybe when he got back, he’d have the courage to tell them out loud.

For now, all he could do was console himself with the knowledge that they were out there, together and safe. Probably tangled up in each other’s arms right this moment. Telling stupid jokes and whispering sappy things to each other, Ed’s head on Stede’s shoulder, Stede’s fingers tracing the curve of Ed’s spine. Beautiful. Izzy had never thought that what men like him did together could be beautiful, before seeing the two of them.

He would get home. He had to. He’d promised.

His stomach was still in knots, his heartbeat slowing but still thumping hard in his chest. It would be a long time before he could sleep. He sat on the bed with his back against the wall, his arms wrapped around himself, and tried to pretend that the faint whoosh of the waves outside was the sound of his two companions breathing.