Chapter Text
It’s the yelling that wakes him, raised voices loud enough to carry from somewhere else on the ship and jolt him from sleep. If this was The Whydah, if this was thirty years ago, the shouts wouldn’t have roused him, angry voices are background noise on most ships but on The Revenge Sam has found they’re uncommon, uncommon enough to startle him now.
“You got me shot with a fucking cannonball!”
“You got yourself shot with a fucking cannonball!”
The second voice is Ed’s, the first -
He can’t quite place it.
Or rather, he places it immediately but questions himself, because that would be impossible, but then -
Izzy mummers against him, Sam gives him a few moments to properly wake up and then asks, “Is that CJ?”
Izzy shifts, frowns at the ceiling as he listens to the continued shouting and then nods.
“Sounds like it.”
Which is -
Well.
Jack is dead.
Izzy and Ed haven’t told him what happened exactly, but Sam knows that he was the last to go, that the circumstances were pretty fucked, and that when they raised a toast in remembrance of him, Izzy and Ed wouldn’t look each other in the eye when they drank.
Jack Rackham died in 1717. Apparently, as Sam is hearing now, courtesy of perhaps a not so accidental cannon shot. But then again death isn’t seeming to stick the way it used to, and it will be really nice to see CJ again, when he’s done yelling at Ed.
Sam has almost fallen back to sleep, face pressed into Izzy’s skin, half touching him, half dreaming about touching him, warm and content when the yelling starts up again, closer this time accompanied by angry banging on the cabin door.
“I know you’re fucking in here, Hands.”
Izzy groans.
The banging gets louder.
“Open the fucking door, you fucking prick.”
“What does he want?” Sam asks, untangling himself as Izzy sits up.
Izzy is quiet for a moment before he sheepishly says, “I kinda got him shot with a fucking cannonball.”
Sam sighs, presses his face back into the pillow and wonders not for the first time just how much he missed.
“I’m fucking coming.” Izzy yells at the door as he swings his legs over the edge of the bed and reaches around for a shirt before pulling himself over to the wall his stick is resting against.
He takes his time about it.
Jack keeps banging on the door and coming up with increasingly creative insults.
It would be quicker for everyone if Sam just got up and got the door, but they established quite early on that Sam wouldn’t help Izzy with things like this unless he was explicitly asked to.
The way they established this was through Izzy yelling ‘I managed without you for thirty fucking years, I don’t need your help now and I certainly don’t need your fucking pity’ in Sam’s face one afternoon after he’d gotten sick of Sam’s fussing. They’d both cried quite a lot about it, and Izzy had apologised and Sam had apologised and now Sam knows to leave him to it. Izzy doesn’t mind, occasionally, if Sam asks if he needs a hand, but right now the bed is warm, and the cabin is cold and opening the door means being yelled at so he’s more than happy to let Izzy do this one by himself.
“What the fuck happened to you?” Jack says when Izzy finally opens the door, followed quickly by “What the fuck are you wearing?”
Sam lifts his face back up from the pillow. The shirt Izzy picked up off the floor is his from yesterday, a deep turquoise silk with mother of pearl buttons. It’s too big for him, obviously. Hanging off his shoulders in a way that makes Sam want to dress him in his clothes all the time, parade him in front of Stede’s mirrors and touch his skin through silk and velvet. If he asks nicely Izzy might even let him.
Izzy looks down at himself, noticing the shirt properly.
“Oh, Sammy’s here.” Izzy tells Jack in a voice that is achingly fond.
Sam just about has time to sit up and has barely finished a sleepy wave before Jack is shoving past Izzy and throwing himself down onto the bed, his arms wrapping around Sam’s waist as he tumbles them back down in the sheets.
“You magnificent fucking bastard.” He crows.
He presses Sam into the mattress, practically sitting on top of him and moving one hand to brush his fingers against Sam’s face, dancing over his cheekbones, touching him like he can’t quite believe he’s real.
“You’re actually here.” He says as he absently tucks a strand of Sam’s hair behind his ear.
“You’re here too.” Sam points out.
“Yeah, what the fuck’s up with that?” Jack asks.
Sam shrugs, as much as he can with Jack on top of him.
“Look at you though –” Jack continues, “you’re so young.”
Sam shoves him off. He hates people telling him how young he is, like he wasn’t born before all of them, like he isn’t a fucking pirate captain.
“It’s just because you’re so old these days.”
“I’m old? What about him? Fucking cradle snatcher.” Jack looks over at Izzy, seeming to forget, for now, that he’s mad at Izzy over the whole cannonball incident.
“You could do so much better than him Sammy.” Jack tells him, pressing wet over exaggerated kisses to Sam’s cheeks, laughing as he does so. “I’d treat you real good.”
“Piss off Rackham.” Izzy tells him, but he’s laughing too, and when he makes his way back over to the bed Jack shuffles him and Sam over so Izzy can lie next to them.
“It’s good to have you here.” Jack tells Sam as he rests his head against Sam’s chest.
The bed isn’t really big enough for the two of them, with CJ in it none of them are really comfortable but that doesn't matter. It reminds him of when the three of them, sometimes four of them, would all try to cram in one hammock, a mess of limbs that would only last a few moments before they inevitably flipped and fell to the floor. At least there’s no chance of that happening in the bed, no matter how small it is.
He doesn’t comment on just how hard Jack is clinging to him, on the fact that he’s crying. He remembers when he first arrived, holding on to Izzy like a lifeline because he had no idea what else to do. He lets CJ tangle his fingers in his hair as Izzy grumbles and the three of them slowly fall back to sleep.
+
They end up in Stede’s cabin.
Since Sam arrived Stede has been nothing but polite to him, despite the fact the first time they met Sam was waving a gun in his boyfriend's face. They’re becoming what Sam would tentatively consider to be friends, helped along by their shared love of fine things and Stede’s rather charming tendency to over romanticise piracy and therefore hang on Sam’s every word each time he tells a good story.
His reaction to Jack is considerably more frosty.
“I’ve told you you’re not welcome on my ship.” Stede tells Jack.
“You’d think my death would circumvent that.” Jack complains, but Stede’s not budging.
Sam gets it. CJ is abrasive, he’s what some would call an acquired taste, and others would call a complete dick and, from what Sam can gather, he very much played up to this last time he met Stede.
He listens as Stede complains about property damage and crew endangerment and wilful murder and finds himself agreeing that yes, in these circumstances Jack should not be allowed on the ship.
He is, in fact, on Stede’s side right up until the point he learns that Karl was a seagull.
Which is when he both changes his mind and decides he’s done with this entire conversation.
“Look, none of this has anything to do with me.” He tells the assembled pirates.
He’s tired, having been woken up by yelling - twice - and then expected to sleep crushed between Izzy and Jack, and now it looks like the yelling is about to start up again.
Weirdly, this time, it’s directed at him.
“You can’t fucking leave.” Jack shouts, “you’re the expert at all this.”
“I’m not the expert, I have no fucking clue what’s going on.” Sam protests.
“You have more of a clue than I do. You’ve adjusted to all this.”
Sam had forgotten how annoying it is to have CJ shout at you, especially when he’s so convinced he’s right and so unwilling to listen to anyone who might tell him that he’s wrong.
He doesn't want to be the expert in resurrection, he isn’t the fucking expert, he has no idea about any of this and he’s actually rather fucked up about that fact.
“No, I haven’t.” Sam tells him. “I don’t know how I got here; I don’t know why I’m here; I keep having to deal with Ed treating me like I’m a fucking kid even though I’m fucking older than him and I’m terrified every day that I’m just going to suddenly be dead again because what’s to stop that from happening?”
He realises the moment the words are out of his mouth that this last thought isn’t one he’s shared with anyone, not even Izzy.
This thing they have is so fragile. It never used to be but now Izzy looks at him like he’s not sure he’s real. Now Izzy tries to hide parts of himself away when he never had before and Sam feels a little like he’s trying to hold on to water, like there’s nothing to stop it all being torn away from him because that’s exactly what happened last time.
The look Izzy is giving him right now might just about break his heart, because the look Izzy is giving him tells him he is just as terrified as Sam is about the exact same thing.
“And -” Sam continues, anything to get everyone to stop staring at him and get that look off Izzy’s face, “all my fucking money’s gone.”
In the grand scheme of things this is nothing. He’s been on The Revenge long enough to start earning a wage and Izzy is more than happy to be the one treating him for once. But he was rich, richer than all these fuckers, probably richer than all these fuckers put together and now all he has to his name is the gold he managed to put on when he realised his ship was sinking. You can’t be the Prince of Pirates when you’re fucking broke. You can’t be anything when you’re meant to be dead.
This does not stop everyone from staring at him, in fact, Stede is now making a face like he’s looking at a kicked puppy.
“Shit Sammy.” Jack says.
Izzy takes his hand, Sam squeezes it back a bit too hard.
“You tried wallowing about it?” Jack asks.
“What’s wallowing?” Stede asks, pulling a face at the fact that he’s actually engaging with Jack, “I suppose it’s like whippies or yardies or some other puerile activity.”
“You still do that shit?” Sam asks, noting that Jack's yes comes at the exact same time as Ed’s no.
“It’s something we did back in the day.” Izzy explains.
“Bit like your talking it through as a crew thing babe.”
Jack grimaces, “Yeah but not lame.”
Sam has not tried wallowing it about it. He’d forgotten they’d called it that. Those times where they’d find somewhere dark and safe on a ship, crowd in together and say things they didn’t feel like they could say in the light. He wonders when they all grew out of it. Did things really get better, or did they just start hurting less once they’d grown thicker skins?
“You’re telling me that Sam - Sam -” Jack prods his chest for emphasis, “turned up alive after thirty years and you two fucks didn’t think maybe you should get him drunk and let him cry about it?”
Sam has cried about it. He’s cried with Izzy more than once. He cried at Ed that first day. Never with the three of them together though. Ed and Izzy are weird now, not weird like they used to be but strange and grating, like they don’t quite fit together anymore, like something broke in a way that couldn’t be fixed (and, when Sam realised that, he cried to Stede about it).
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jack asks.
Jack’s solution to most problems is getting drunk about them. He says either it will solve things, or cause a bigger problem that distracts you from your initial problem. It must have stopped working for him at some point, he wouldn’t be joining Sam as a member of the previously deceased if it hadn't, but Sam can’t help but admit that his logic is solid.
He looks over at Izzy, and then to Ed. He thinks, perhaps, that if they do do this, he’ll end up saying things he doesn’t want to say, and hearing things he doesn’t want to hear. But then didn’t want to tell Izzy he’s terrified he’ll drop dead any second and he managed to do that without alcohol.
“Do you want to?” He asks, anyone really, but it’s CJ who answers.
“Hell yeah I do.”
And that's convincing enough for Sam.