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bowieandqueen11 · 8 months

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Love For You / Izzy Hands Imagine

Request: I just found your ao3 account a few days ago and your writing style is excellent! Legitimately some of the most visual and evocative writing I've seen on that website, and I've been devouring your izzy hands fics since I caught up on season two! Can I request another izzy x reader post-amputation and just the reader caring for him while he's pining hard? Maybe the reader has some medical experience so they've been able to help him a little better than the rest of the crew, making sure he's taking time to heal in a difficult moment (physically as well as emotionally, god knows he needs that.) Letting him know he's loved and him realizing he hasn't...heard someone say that to him or treat him this gently in a long time

Thank you so much that's so kind of you to say, it's so lovely people finding me from AO3!! Honestly one of the best feelings, and goodness knows Izzy needs this :)

Okay so I haven't been able to watch the new season so all my knowledge is coming from Tumblr gifs and posts, so I really hope this isn't too ooc my lovely!! Anyway let's get this man some comfort!

I spent all day writing this, so all comments are much appreciated! Thank you! :)

Warning: mentions of blood/injury, mentions of physical abuse, mention of smoking, kissing and some strong language!

(I do not own OFMD or its characters, all rights go to creators. Gif credit goes to @goodsirs.)

☆.。.:・°☆.。.:・°

Something monstrous seemed to be creeping up the shuddering walls.

No, it wasn't the stifling silence that had seemed to envelop those of Blackbeard's crew still left, hiding their heads between their legs and closing their eyes as they felt the quicksand drain out through the fingers. Nor was it the creaking organ snore of Wee John thrumming up the timber; the rest of your usually upbeat crew grew despondent as they wracked their brains together and came up with a way to save you all from imminent demise, having flopped onto their sides and fallen into fitful sleeps just before sunset. Sadly it wasn't even the feel of Lucius' finger stroking yours through the cold grates of your jail, his smile lost and forlorn as he thumped his head back against the wall and closed his eyes as well, feeling even more entrapped in himself than you did.

It was, in fact, the hard glare Izzy Hands was shooting into the side of your face. He hadn't spoken a word since Stede had left, choosing instead to let out the odd sniffle from his corner bucket and busy himself by watching you like a man possessed: like something wild, something smothering itself in the shadows to stop its howling heart from devouring the light around itself. From tearing his dagger out of his scabbard and devouring his heart himself with clawed hooks. He looked ghastly, and he looked gargantuan as the life seemed to convulse within him, leeching out and darting its tongue around the creaking wood until it filled up the room and began to fill your heart up with a hope you thought had been lost weeks ago.

He looked beautiful and proud and defeated and assured in spite of it all, and you were finally beginning to understand why Zheng Yi Sao had locked him away in this cage.

And in a way, it terrified you that this cataclysmic, lucent shadow was creeping its merry way straight for you.

The tenebrosity was quickly broken by Izzy's shining eyes gliding across the bridge of your nose to land instead on your top lip. He wasn't entirely sure why exactly he was feeling so timid. It wasn't as if Frenchie was still awake, as he was too busy hugging his free arm around the remaining muscle of Izzy's thigh and burying his head into the muscle with a soft murmur of contentment. Yet the idea of being caught leering at you like a dopey boy was enough to make him judder with embarrassment, and enough to send Frenchie's head keeling sideways so his lips were rammed up against his trousers.

Thankfully, it was exactly Frenchie's floppy head that gave away the fact that he was fast asleep, and allowed you to steal Izzy away for yourself. With a gentle lift, you were quick to replace your friend's cheek with your own hand, giving the side of Izzy's thigh a reassuring squeeze.

'You look like you're bearing the weight of the world on your shoulders', you sighed as you took in Izzy's harrowing form. It wasn't his paleness that worried you, or the redness that cracked and splintered around his irises. It was the way he was watching you, eyes trained steadily on your face for the last hour and a half, as if he were doing his best to memorise everything he could before he ran out of time. As if he would never have the chance to look at you again.

The edges of his lips curled up, and he thumped his head back against the wall. 'Me? I'm feeling fucking fantastic. Never been better. Why do you ask?'

'Well', you began as softly as you could, straining to reach the vials in your hip knapsack to retrieve some salve for the scarring that had begun to pucker around his skin. 'We are about to be executed. I guess I just wanted you to know this is a safe space to let it all out before we are. A confessional of sorts, if a little makeshift.'

He wet his bottom lip as his eyes darted down to you, confused.

You pointedly looked him in the eyes, before unscrewing the vial and dipping your pointer finger in. Making sure he didn't seem too uncomfortable, you leant forwards as innocuously as you could, trying not to startle him anymore than he already had been. With a swipe, you began to rub the herb mixture around the sore looking welts left around his cut leg, making a point to run your fingertips soothingly over the goose-bumps that began to rise at the feel of you against him.

'I wanted you to know- to know that you're always safe around your crew.' You did your best not to let your voice tremble, no matter how much your throat tried to choke you. You turned your head back down to his leg, trying to hide the fact that your mouth was crumpling in on itself.

He winced as your hand brushed against a tender point, and you ran the back of your knuckles over his skin in apology. He felt like he was burning alive: a fire blazing so furiously in the pit of his stomach he was sure it was gushing out, swinging around the room and warning everyone of his impending falter as he fell upon the crags of your fingers below. He had no idea how, in all the seas, you couldn't possibly see how ecstatically devastated he was to be sitting here with you.

He didn't mind dying. He wasn't scared of it. As long as you were there to enhalo his misty light in the end. As long as you were there to love him until his last breath. As long as, no matter what form he took, you were still enclosed around his heart.

'Who says I have anything to confess?', he glanced at you with heavy eyelashes, eyes bleary but sharp as he started straight into your soul. I don't have to confess it, he thought, it's so fucking painfully obvious.

How could he confess something so inexplicable? Something that wrapped around all of his bones, that wormed its way into parts of himself he thought long numb: long lost. How could someone ever articulate the feeling of life itself? It was insurmountable, far too transcendent, too impetuous for mortals to to unsnarl into words.

'Oh Izzy', you said, mouth falling into a frown at the way his hips reflexively bucked up at the feel of a new cream being slathered around his leg to try and numb the pain. He moaned, trying to mask the sound by clenching his fist into his mouth and biting desperately into his knuckles. One more touch, and he was about to fall apart. 'Your eyes are drowning in so many regrets I can barely see the stars in them anymore.'

He huffed out a laugh, looking at you with incredulous, wild eyes. He willed his hand to stop shaking as he let it rest, still clenched, by his quivering chin. 'Not in my eyes. You never could. That's not possible. Not me.'

'I could.' You were quick to reply. 'I always could. You're our guiding light, Israel Hands.'

Oh boy, if he wasn't devastated before he sure was now. His face fell immediately, and for a moment you felt your heart ache with a sore regret at the silvery tears that began to cloud in the crinkles of his eyes. But then he does something that surprised even you.

The way he opened his legs up was almost miniscule: too small for anyone who didn't know this man's quirks and intricacies and giveaways to notice, but a well aimed shot that sent a rush of heat prickling up your cheeks. Before he changed his mind and retreated into himself again, you were quick to scoot your backside over and come to rest far too intimately between the tightening leather of his inner thighs.

'You can't be surprised that we care about you', he started after a moment of comfortable silence, leaning the side of your head to rest gingerly on his intact leg. 'That the whole crew has always cared about you. Look, someone even got you a mop-', you gestured to his side, trying to make him laugh before the sun rises, and thankfully you succeeded.

He shook his head out as if trying to refocus himself as his chuckle died out in his chest. He didn't want to laugh right now. He wanted to focus on the weight on his leg: on the feel of your nose brushing on the length of seam running up to his groin. He blinked back heavy tears that spread along his lashes, sniffling coarsely. He probably should laugh, he thought. He should be fucking howling, spitting, going rabid at the irony that the one thing he had been yearning his whole life was lying right there on his lap, and he only had a few hours left in his pathetic life to savour it.

'How are you doing, by the way? Seriously', you jolt your head up to watch him quizzically. He did his best not to meet your eye, choosing instead to stare at the black grains above Jim's slumped head. 'After, you know, everything that happened with Ed-'

'You don't need to worry about me', he sniffed, but his hand twitched as he lifted it up to rest on his thigh, just above the top of your head. 'It's my job to worry about all of you. Not the other way round.'

'When are you going to get it through your thick skull that we want to worry about you. This isn't some kind of weird mandate or self-preservation tactic on our part Izzy. You may be a fucking idiot, but you're our fucking idiot. Let us take care of you too, like you've been looking out for us.'

He squeezed his eyes shut, his head beginning to shake furiously enough to send his stray silver locks clambering over his eyes. He was glad for their cover, so he wouldn't have to see the way you had lurched forward: the way you were pleading with him with your eyes, as you rose onto your knees and pressed your hands firmly around his waist, just where the joint of his legs met the soft squish of his tummy.

'Don't you shake your head at me. We all know you've been trying to direct Blackbeard's anger your way. We do!' You cocked your head, trying to follow his face as he squirmed in your grasp. Losing your patience, you gripped his jaw with your thumb and pointer finger, directing Izzy's widening eyes back your way. 'We do, Izzy. We know what you've been doing for us. What you've been sacrificing. And I'm sorry - I'm sorry that none of this is fair. I'm sorry that any of this happened at all.'

One. Two. You tapped your finger a third time, your fingernail swirling over the fine nuances of the holster running over his sawed leg.

It had always been your little secret: a shared confidence, between you and Izzy. One tap. Two. Three on each other's arms after battles, three taps there on your shoulder before you went down to your bunk, three fleeting touches burning at the back of his spine to let him know that you were alright: to let him know that he was alright.

You only stopped when you heard a brisk inhale: a sharp whistle that broke through your indulgent repose and made Roach roll over. Thankfully, a moment later, the cook's arm was splayed out across the floor again, and his leg kicked out backwards with a swift jolt up poor Button's behind. Izzy, though. Izzy, despite the surprising tenderness of the moment, was almost smouldering. The muscle by the side of his femur began to writhe underneath just the point of your fingertip, the feeling of just your warmth making him feel too feeble. Too needy to even control the rest of his body; he desperately tried to reach out a hand to shove your shoulder back and push you away, but his mind was too busy swimming with the concentration of trying to remember how to inhale.

The sharp breaths he dragged in painfully were starting to worry you, as were the wracks of his spine as he seemed to writhe backwards and forwards, back arching off the wall before collapsing back down on itself painfully again.

He felt your hand clench around his back, guiding him to sit still again. You were close, far too close - your noses almost touching, as you took a risk and used your free hand to slowly.... god, so fucking slowly he felt like he was going to split in half. He looked like a wounded animal: something terrified of being hurt as his eyes stayed trained on your approaching fingers, face wary until your fingertips touched his hair and tucked it behind his ear.

And then he felt that warmth. That warmth against the shell of his ear. He bit down hard enough on his lip to draw blood, and for once, he was glad for the taste. It was comforting. Familiar. Deserved. He wasn't one for the fucking heartache of tenderness. And god, how his heart ached.

'Come on,' you nestled yourself between his legs again and perched your elbow up on his left leg. 'People must have cared about you before. Might as well get it all out in the open. Be honest with each other now.'

He paused, before the stubbornness wormed its way in again. 'No, they haven't-'

'Well, what about your parents? Your parents must have been kind. Besides, the crew obviously cares about you. I obviously care about you. Stop being so pig-headed.''

He startled you with a laugh: he seemed to choke on it, his teeth baring as he barked it out, yet he still couldn't seem to look at you quite yet. That's alright. You had an eternity left in these few hours.

Kindness?

He couldn't remember a time before joining Stede's crew that he had ever felt such a thing, let alone let it fester in the crevices of his ribcage until he felt the dreaded thing was going to claw its way out. Perhaps, if he let himself fester in the silence for a moment, an image of his mother would squirm its way out of his long repressed memories. Clawing and scratching and digging her pointed nails to dig her way out. No, his mother had never offered him a jot of comfort. She could stay buried in that coffin he had stuffed her down into, instead of rotting inside of him. He had enough barnacles to scrape off his body as it was.

It wasn't as if he had any surprisingly sweet memories of his life before. His mother had never been one for grace: her words always bit at his brain like a frenzied tempest, his actions never good enough. Once, when he was six years old, he had tottered up before the sun rose and followed his older brother down to the docks, trying to please his mother. Even so young, he had spent most of his years yearning to be seen as anything but the 'nuisance' or 'pest' his mother used to spit at his feet, and yearned to return with a line full of fish to please her. To help her with the chores that she always yammered his father had left her to rot with. Had left him. That he rotted away her youth. When he came slinking into the doorway, a nervous smile twitching at his ruddy cheeks, his mother had taken one look at the muddy, damp fringes of his trousers and had slapped him clean across the face for his troubles.

Another part of him remembered her warmth. The same that radiated off your palm as you spread your fingers across his knee; the way she would sometimes scutter into his bed at night, and he could smell the harsh sting of alcohol on her breath as she curled up and hugged him close against her chest. Of the way she would sometimes let him sit on her knee once the three of them had returned home after service, and she would brush back his growing hair and he would curl himself up to chase the stray ray of sunlight that glowed against her neck.

It had left him a Gordian mess of a man. Simultaneously spending his life seeking any kind of validation, any kind of affection, while his stubborn self-preservation did its best to push everyone away.And yet here you came, watching him with those sweet, sad eyes. Swinging the sword to undo him.

'I don't remember much about them', he replied curtly, but not unkindly. 'My father left us when I was young. I was... mainly left to my own devices.'

You nod slowly, letting his words thinking in. Letting the misery drenching every seething heave of his tongue wash over your head. 'Well', you began to rub your thumb in circles against his trousers, 'at least you have us here now. One good thing to add to the pile.'

There we go. The knot's slowly being undone.

You tried to smile, but the intensity of his gaze falling on you again unsettled you.

'You're right.' His voice was far too earnest for his own good. 'I have had one good thing in my life. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me.'

You nearly jolted when you felt his hand smack down on top of yours. He had closed his eyes to try and hide himself from his discomfort, but his gloved fingers still slid between yours and squeezed despite himself. Once he was assured they were firmly intertwined: his own grasping tight enough to bust the leather at the stitching, he dared himself to finish his train of thought before he lost his nerve.

'I do... I do care about the crew. None of this was their fault, and they shouldn't have been fucking blamed for it. But I- I, I care about someone else far more than all of this twatty lot put together.'

It's a whisper into the darkness. A despairing yell of defiance against the solitude. A smothered light, long lingering and far longer forgotten. A spark of hope against the threat of ruination. It was a silver tear, glinting like starlight against his iris and falling with a content plop onto the back of your hand.

'I-I-', he stuttered out, clenching his teeth as he wills himself not to cry. 'I-'

The words refused to unlatch from his throat. Luckily, you were adept enough to notice the longing that drew a sad ache across his face.

'Izzy, I-'

'Let me finish', he stumbled out, his whole face now contorting as he struggled with the weight of it all. His bottom lip began to wobble against his will, face falling in on itself.

'I have-I have... love. For you. 'What I'm trying to say is'-, he shakes his head, chiding himself.

'Izzy, I know, it's alright. I know. I understand.' You grabbed tighter onto the back of your hand, enveloping it with your free one until his stopped shaking, begging him to realise you could see him.

'No-. No. If I don't say it now, I'm worried I never will.'

'Take your time, take your time. We have all the time in the world'. A sob finally gasped out from Izzy, chest heaving as he felt you draw his hands up towards your mouth. Still safe. Still warm. Still firmly cupped between your own, but the feel of your lips brushing against his knuckles was enough to send him reeling. The gentle peck that followed, though, was enough to finally let him break free.

A tentative finger reached out, checking for any signs of repulsion before landing awkwardly to point into the blade of your shoulder. He seemed to freeze: immobile marble frozen in fear as he seemed unaware as to what to next. After a few wary blinks, he clumsily spent a few seconds trying to manoeuvre the rest of his arm to cross across your back, before tugging your torso to lean closer towards him.

For a moment, it finally seems as if the world has skittered upright on his axis again. It felt normal. It felt right, feeling him grow comfortable with affection again as he melted, for the second time that week, into your hug. For his sake, as he burrowed his head into the pulse point of your neck until his stubble began to tickle your collar bone, you pretended not to hear the maimed whimpers that struggled past his closed lips.

The only time he moved was to raise his head up towards your nose, bumping it playfully against the tip of your own. Then another graze. A rub, and then another one, his eyes the whole time languidly drawn down to stare at your cupid's bow, until he slowly brought himself down to breathe unsteadily against your mouth. After a final moment of contemplation, he blinked placidly before closing his eyes and tilting his head to close the miniscule distance between the two of you.

His jaw was tense as you ran your finger down it, so busy trying to commit to his memory the pressure of your lips against his bottom one that he was forgetting to breath. But he didn't pull away. In fact, his hand clamped around your neck, digging almost painfully into your back as he stumblingly latched onto you, forcing himself further against your opening mouth. His hand found solace by cupping the back of your skull, chest squeezed against your breasts as he opened his lips and almost devoured you whole.

A loud 'awww!' erupted from your side, making the two of you jolt apart. The only problem was, Izzy's bottom lip had been rather firmly attached to yours. This meant that as you drew back, Izzy, in his stubborn unwillingness to let you go, let his bottom lip drag down along your inner mouth until a line of saliva connected your bottom lips, which only made the person the other side of the brig giggle even louder.

'You guys are cute', Black Pete yawned with a wakening stretch.

'Yes!', Roach chimed in as he teddy bear rolled his lanky legs round in front of him. 'I swear!', he continues, ostentatiously wiping his finger underneath his eye, 'I must be crying! I'm two seconds away from going up there and commencing our escape myself.'

With a tilt of your head that hit Izzy's chin, you looked at the cook incredulously. Izzy only gazed down at you past the crook of his nose, wonderstruck as the he let the words wash over his head.

'You. You really think you can take on all those very competent pirates up there.'

'Of course!'

'You cried for twenty minutes earlier about soup!'

Roach waved his hand unconvincingly in front of his face. 'Broth, it was broth! But I'm great with knives, remember! I have one hidden in my underwear right now!'

'Why... why is it in your underwear?', Oluwande piped in as he rested his head on the side of a barrel.

'Yeah, you weren't captured', Archie added, shuffling her own head off Jim's shoulder to look out past the bars. 'Why isn't it, I don't know, in your pocket or something.'

Even though Roach has opened his mouth to answer, his train of thought is broken by the tired grumble of another one of your friends. 'I hate to admit it, but that was actually very sweet', Lucius chimed in, twisting his lips into a shit-eating grin as he eyed the both of you up, another cigarette now firmly tucked in and freshly lit between his fingers as he took a drag.

'Is everyone on this fucking boat awake?!', Izzy cried, wrapping a hand protectively around your shoulder joint.

You snorted, burying your head protectively against the soft skin of his bellybutton. The sound of the crew beginning to argue with an increasingly impatient Izzy was like music to your ears; the monster was beginning to retreat.

No longer did it hang and shake and pierce the walls with its talons until it bled umbras. It retreated: chased away by the comely love of your crew. Of your family. Of the man who held you protectively against him, blinding you with his tender love.

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amuseoffyre · 7 months

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Finding it interesting that Ed can read other pirates like a book, but Stede is like a locked and sealed volume hidden in a chest under the floor to him.

Ed says of Ned "it's usually a family thing" and yet never once sees that in Stede. Likewise, with Mary and Anne, "I can see what they're doing. This is a game to them".

I suspect part of it is that he doesn't think it's possible Stede could be like them, that he also has some kind of trauma. "You've got it all figured out", he says, never noticing how Stede flinches. A lot of it comes from Stede making very conscious decisions to bottle things up and stiff-upper-lip his way through a lot of stuff.

What Ed sees as whimsical lunacy is actually Stede's desperate need for acceptance and approval as himself. His eccentric behaviour seems more like a charming quirk than a sign of some deeper trauma there. He literally runs headlong into dangerous situations, including piracy itself, because whatever he left behind was so much worse for him.

It's very clear Ed didn't hear him when Stede said he very much knew what it felt like, treading water, waiting to drown, because Ed was too caught up in venting about his life being boring to the first person who showed an interest.

In S1, Stede actively never voiced his concerns - the one time he did briefly lose his temper (after Jack pissed on his shoes), the next thing he knows, Ed is leaving him with that same man. The minute a figure from his past points out all his sins, his self-assurance cracks like glass.

In S2, that fear is still there: the fear of not being enough and that Ed will have a better and happier life without him.

His wife moved on in his absence and found a better life without him. Now, the first time he's been able to stand his ground, do what his father always told him was "a man's work", and slept with the man he loves, he's being told it was "a mistake". Which isn't what Ed is saying, but no doubt it's what Stede hears because it's the lesson beaten and stoned and snarled into him his entire life.

The fact that Ed does have these blank spots about Stede's past is causing a lot of the trouble in their miscommunication. Ed needs to know him if they're going to get anywhere, just as he needs to know Ed and I'm so curious about how they're going to do it.

#ofmd s2 #ofmd meta #stede bonnet #ed teach

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ladyluscinia · 7 months

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Izzy, Bottles, and Apologies

Izzy's arc in S2 has been a wild ride.

The S1 Izzy enjoyers are feeling vindicated as hell, many people are fully revising their opinion of him, and the people still hating him have a new criticism or off the wall theory daily. David Jenkins LOVES Izzy and is having the time of his life trying to make sure everyone else does too. They had Con O'Neill sing in drag!

And naturally I have thoughts.

This is gonna be a two part post, I think. First, as much as people are celebrating Izzy having realized his arc and come into his own - from the singing to the apparent BlackBonnet shipping - there are some threads they could pull on that might reveal more arc to come. And I am really hoping they pull them, so I'm gonna tell you why you should too!

And second, I have some minor points I dislike and concerns that this might be the end of the arc. Which would be disappointing but I think I get why, so I'm gonna discuss that too.

To start...

---

"How are you handling all this so well?"

Here's the thing about S2 Izzy - while I need to be clear his behavior is not OOC or inconsistent with S1, it is happening rather fast. I'm pretty sure that has a lot to do with out of universe reasons I'll get into later, but in-universe it stands out. Now, he's hardly the only one operating on an accelerated schedule - the timeline for this season is an insanely fast not-even-two-weeks - but Izzy's defining struggle in S1 was fear of change. That was the cause of his friction with Edward, and what made him an antagonist in the first place.

In S2 he's gone through a lot of trauma, yes, but that fear is noticeably less present than I would expect.

Izzy in 2x06 has been cleaned up from his sobbing mess phase for just over 48 hours and he faces Edward with a joke, and then that night sings a moving French serenade to the crew. The next morning he's teasing them about finally hooking up and spends the day offering both Stede and Edward relationship advice.

He's a newly realized man... shedding repression and embracing who he could be. Accepting his breakup with Edward and trying to openly support the relationship that's better for him.

It's fun!

It's also, potentially, a bit of a flag. Maybe not a red one, not yet, but... pink-ish? A bit orange?

Let's look a little closer at those frayed edges.

---

"Well, you see, I have a system..."

There's an exchange from right at the start of the Pilot episode that has echoed through the entire series so far:

"Bottle it up?" -> "No, Frenchie! No, that's the worst thing you could do!"

Not talking to other people, not addressing your traumas... that's the kind of shit that just builds and builds inside you. When the cork eventually pops, the resulting damage can be a lot. Look at the finale of S1, where all of Stede's bottled up guilt and insecurities laid waste to his relationship with Edward, and then inadvertently became the first domino in the Kraken.

S2 is quick to bring this scene back into the forefront. The first time we see the Breakup Boat crew talking in 2x01, Frenchie reveals that "Bottle it up?" wasn't just a random comment he made, but a philosophy of his:

"Ah - well, you see, I have a system for dealing with all the terrible things I've seen. There's a box, in my mind, and I put the things in the box, I lock the box, and then I don't open it again. Works like a charm."

Apparently, Frenchie is the only one it actually seems to be working for.

Now, the show has been drawing some interesting lines between Frenchie and Izzy. From both serving as Blackbeard's First Mate to being frequently shown as a duo - tormenting Navy guys together on Sunday's raid, Frenchie holding Izzy's hand, Frenchie leaning on Izzy's leg in the cell, Frenchie behind him raising the flag in 2x05 - it's fitting that Izzy echoes Frenchie's preferred coping method. First he frames the non-acknowledgement of harm from Edward as just... part of piracy. He's a pirate, so he's fine with it.

And then we get Izzy's little whittled shark reveal and the conversation with Lucius about his leg:

"I don't know what you're talking about. Shark did this... dangling my legs over the side of the ship. Served me right, too."

Lucius calls him out on the unhealthy behavior, and Izzy concedes his point:

"O-kay, that seems healthy. Using a bit of fiction to help cover up your trauma." -> "Yeah, well... not moving on is worse. Twatty."

And to give him credit, he's right in his advice to Lucius. Filling his sketchbook with pages and pages of Blackbeard trauma is Lucius's form of bottling it up - thinking in endless recursive circles about his tumble off the ship and everything that followed. We already know chasing revenge instead of living is bad - Jim and Spanish Jackie established it last season, and Pete just echoed them. When Izzy advises Lucius to move on, that's what Lucius does.

But what Izzy is doing with the shark? That's not the same thing at all. He's lost a leg, grazed a bullet off his own head, and was snarling drunken accusations at himself in the mirror... he's not moving on from that. He's bottling it up with a nice dose of self-blame.

Cutting the legs off the unicorn for not doing it's job right and saying "served me right" about his fictional shark? There's a real dark knot of emotions there.

(Recall, too, that Edward deflected his hurt from Stede's abandonment into a "fictional character" during his chats with Lucius, and that delayed the explosion but couldn't stop it.)

So... Izzy's definitely coping with trauma in a way the show does not advise and often circles back to. Can we see any signs in 2x06 and 2x07?

---

The Weight of Things Unsaid

At the very start of 2x06, Izzy gets the thing he spent all of 2x05 mentally bracing himself to never hear - an apology from Edward for his leg. He walks up to initiate conversation and begins talking like nothing has changed. Edward is back in his leathers. Appropriate, given that his penance onesie was nothing genuine, just "how long do I have to wear this fucking thing for?" And Izzy is ready for them not to address the obvious hurt, to just smooth over a few jabs and go back to normal... but even Edward's mumbled little "Sorry about your leg" is so significant and difficult he flees as soon as he gets it out, leaving Izzy to sit, incredulous, with the acknowledgement.

It's still almost definitely not enough.

There was so much between them in 2x01 - 2x03. The writers literally did BlackHands love confessions on both sides. An apology from Edward Teach - a man who historically does not apologize - is a huge first step but still only the first step. The real things unsaid are so much bigger than a leg.

We get something else, too... Edward commenting on Izzy's drinking.

"Jesus. Really putting that away, aren't ya?"

Izzy has had booze a lot this season. He lost a leg and pain meds aren't really an option, so not surprising, but notable. Edward, advocating for substance abuse to deal with bad feelings, calls him a lightweight in 2x01. When they are found with the dead seabird in 2x03, Izzy takes a pointed drink from his bottle, and then 2x04 he spends the entire episode completely plastered. He seemingly sobered up for 2x05 - probably to focus on sword training and his whittling project - but now the bottle is back again before Izzy disappears for several hours.

And a little liquid courage might explain his going all in for the Calypso's Birthday performance.

I do appreciate that the performance on it's face is something completely unexpected for Izzy, but when thinking about it... it does make sense.

We already know music and performance were available on Blackbeard's ship even before Stede. Edward learned to play shanties on the piano somewhere, and singing is a common and encouraged part of sailing culture. Izzy's choice of song to perform is something a lot more emotional, but this is probably not his first performance for a crew.

Makeup, too, is in fashion for men and women at this time, and OFMD has shown it as such before. Izzy has never worn fashion makeup, or tried to be beautiful, but the concept wouldn't be alien to him. Wee John's description of a dramatic party look might even have intrigued him specifically because Izzy has actually done "looks" before - of the terrifying "theatre of fear" kind. The Kraken did have his whole crew in makeup for their raids. Taking the opportunity to embody something a bit more vulnerable and try to bring joy to this crew that took care of him is meaningful as fuck.

And it's still a drag performance!

It's a good pair of moments - before and after Ned. Proof that all this isn't just coping method - that's not what I'm arguing here - and even if Izzy's still bottling up a lot of feelings he's not doing the same full pressure bomb thing as he did in S1. There's been growth!

(This is why the flags are only pink-ish / orange-ish right now.)

Episode 2x07 though... I'm not so sure he's doing good as much as pretending it's all good.

Showing up to make his joke in the morning is a fun moment. I especially enjoy Edward's little "fuck off" with no bite to it 🤣🤣🤣 Reminder they do live together on a ship, so this is likely not even close to the first morning-after that Izzy has gotten front row seats to. But, at least to me, there's also a very performative feeling about it. Izzy being very Look how normal I can be about you fucking your boyfriend, Ed - and Edward picks up on it too. That's why he turns to Stede and whispers "He's jealous" as Izzy walks away.

Izzy continues to make jokes and give advice through the day to our main couple, but he's... subdued. I think his fake chill also disguises that he and Edward aren't on the same page about what they discuss at the docks, hence his poor advice to "listen to it" when the "it" in question is Edward's immediate desire to run away from Stede and become a fisherman. They are talking again, but haven't resumed communicating.

I also think it's relevant that Izzy goes to try and support Stede after Edward dumps him, because we're still waiting for Stede to stop bottling things up. He doesn't talk about Badminton or feelings of inadequacy or even the babiest little olive branch to Edward about "hey my dad kinda sucked too." Edward's two exes are sitting in the bar corner together, thinking about all the shit they won't talk to him about until it kills all three of them. Exciting!

The pressure is building. It has to circle back to Stede in S3. I'm hoping at the same time, it circles back to Izzy, too.

Hoping we get to explore some of his anxiety, and his internalizing negative self-image and blame. At the moment, I think Izzy might have less gotten over his anxieties and more just let go of the wheel of his life entirely, and fortunately had people around to steer him in okay directions. It would be really interesting to explore that more.

(Even if I have some concerns they may not.)

---

Subtle as a Cannonball to the Face

Izzy's character arc was always going to be a long journey - not because he was somehow morally worse than everyone else, or required particularly painstaking growth, or even because there was going to be some great need to "hold him accountable" for S1. No, it was going to be a long journey from an antagonist start for the same reason I mentioned earlier: Izzy's core struggle is fear of change.

OFMD opens with two protagonists recklessly pursuing change in ways that harm themselves, their relationships, and others, and a primary onscreen antagonist resisting change in a way that harms himself, his relationships, and others. There's no easy morality here - they all fuck up. And they all require the entire show to actually figure out the correct balance of change and growth and facing the past.

"I think the three of them are on an arc together that's pretty inseparable." - David Jenkins (Source, 9 Oct 2023)

So... why is there a chance that everything I've mentioned above is going absolutely nowhere and Izzy's arc has been wrapped up with a bow in S2?

Well.

It's late March 2022, the fandom's age is still only countable in weeks, I personally haven't even watched the pilot yet, had only even heard of the show 3 days before... and one of David Jenkins first post-finale statements is telling people to pay attention to Izzy's POV and his and Edward's love story on rewatches (Source, 25 Mar 2022), and then soon after comparing Stede to a homewrecker in Edward and Izzy's toxic marriage (Source, 15 Apr 2022). Lots of links because this stuff was available to the fandom from the start.

By the first half of May 2022 (while poor Mr. Jenkins is still anxiously trying to get his series renewed for S2, since the confirmation won't come until June 1) the takes on Izzy have soured a lot. It's not a "homophobic gay" joke anymore. Now it's "Izzy is the embodiment of colonialism who enforces a racist and homophobic ideal of Blackbeard on Edward" and "pretending Izzy could be canonically gay is homophobic" and "Izzy bought Edward as a slave from the British". Harassing anons have already started on tumblr. No first hand experience with Twitter but I've heard horror stories. These takes are spreading like wildfire through the fandom, with a heavy backing of white fans accepting and spreading anything that sounds vaguely racially-conscious as something they just missed in their privilege and need to listen to POC about. Or listen to other white fans that say they've been listening to POC.

The anchor hoist in 1x09 (that was a complete directing coincidence, as the crew confirmed in late May) is being taken as incontrovertible proof that Izzy is a violent racist, and the relatively small Izzy fandom pushing back against any of these reads is being likened to toxic fangirls declaring Kylo Ren a poor widdle victim because they think violent white guys are so hot their brains fall out. This is happening loudly and in the public forums of social media.

Can you imagine being David Jenkins right then?

This is one of your favorite little guys, who you wrote a silly little homoerotic pirate jealousy arc for. He's kinda cringefail and tends to be a dick, but you cast a guy who you think embodies him with so much sympathy and genuine emotion. You're so excited to explore his direct relationship to the main couple of your series even more. Unfortunately, you and a lot of the cast and crew are also engaging maybe a bit too much in fandom spaces, which very few of you have much familiarity with navigating as creators. AND there's still renewal stress!

If I were him, I too would consider that perhaps my intended Izzy arc was a bit too nuanced and drawn out, and maybe I needed to clear up some misconceptions as soon as I got the opportunity.

Enter S2.

MAX reduced the budget for the season significantly and it shows - particularly in the whole thing having to squeeze into 8 episodes - and I wouldn't be surprised at all if worries over a S3 renewal / S3 budget impacted S2 writing as well. Character arcs got pinched, goals had to be prioritized... and from the looks of the season, "make sure everyone knows Izzy is not a homophobic villain tormenting Edward as fast as possible" came out as a big goal.

I mean they open with a dream sequence that literally mocks the idea of a heroic Stede rescuing Edward from the dastardly Izzy. It's not subtle.

And the lack of subtlety is kind of what's concerning me.

Izzy's arc is (I think) leaving enough threads that they can extend it into S3 with the reveal he's not actually fine and done developing, but they also seem to want his S2 arc to end in a place where maybe he is. Lots of giant signs pointing to him and saying "Look! Everyone likes him!" or "Look! He's also gay!" at the expense of some of his cringefail or dickish charm. My guy had anxiety he dealt with poorly in S1, and I do think they are trying to frontload or adjust the arc so he's basically (or at least seemingly) over that before the next hiatus.

The best way I've seen it described is that the show no longer trusts the audience to pick up what they are putting down, and so they feel the need to really hammer it in. Not necessarily OOC, but definitely de-emphasizing any of his rough edges that were originally just written to not be any worse than the other characters.

This is why Izzy gets shot by Edward in the very first episode for a bunch of complicated reasons that are really good character work and not super hard to discern, but then later they have Izzy point out to Stede why he got shot twice. It's all very "look into the camera and say the themes", because to some degree they are afraid everyone is going to get easily convinced Edward shot him for calling him a namby-pamby that one time.

It makes me worried they are too afraid of misinterpretation to commit to the arc they originally conceived of, even with the finish line in sight in S3.

And, again, I get it, Mr. Jenkins. In October 2022 he made a funny quip and a boner joke on a tweet about Edward's blanket fort and the hordes descended to scream victoriously about how he was cutting down the Izzy stans for their racist infantilization crimes of thinking Izzy would *checks notes* help hold up a blanket. It's a very reasonable conclusion that this fandom cannot read and needs to be spoonfed Izzy's arc.

It just sucks that a toxic section of fandom's misinterpretations appear to have undercut a strong - and, honestly, not that complicated - character arc so much that S2's BlackBonnet arc can be about fuck ups and backsliding, but Izzy needs at least the illusion of having no flaws left come hiatus time.

#our flag means death #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #ofmd meta #my meta #izzy hands ofmd #izzy hands #character arcs #ofmd 2x06 #ofmd 2x07 #and here's my associated izzy meta because i love to talk about both my blorbos lol #ladyluscinia #david jenkins

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wolfnight2012 · 2 years

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I honestly find it sweet that Stede came up with the nickname "Olu" independently of Jim (when he first refers to Oluwande by that nickname Jim is still pretending to be mute)

The same with his open door policy. If Stede's door has a lock then he never uses it, because we see Lucius barge in (1x04), Izzy barge in (1x06) and Buttons wake Stede up (1x06)

In Lucius' case we clearly see he doesn't even bother to knock, he just lets himself in, already talking, until he realizes Blackbeard is in the room.

(side note, this would have been the easiest mutiny in history if Stede didnt even bother to lock his cabin door as he slept)

Oluwande is a polite young man who does knock & waits just outside the threshold until he's invited in, only for Stede to offer him (and Jim) a seat on his couch.

Like, when Oluwande is essentially grieving Jim's absence, it's Stede who he finds some companionship with. Idk if he asked anyone else after Frenchie & John, but if he did, they all clearly said no except for Stede, who once again offered his couch

He calls the library his pride & joy and he has no reservations about sharing it with his crew.

Like, this bizarre little man might be bitchy & selfish, but he does care about his crew. I don't think he was being entirely hyperbolic when he called them his family at the end of ep1.

I wanna see more of Stede's relationship to his crew in s2. We know they care about him (to the point that none of them could be bear to witness his execution)

And we know he cares about them enough to share his library, make an effort to listen to their suggestions, hold story time & make himself as available as possible to the point that Lucius & Buttons have no qualms over barging in on his sleep

Now I want to see him actually interact more with the members of his crew that aren't Lucius or Oluwande /=

Give me more Stede & Frenchie and Stede & Roach specifically

#and some jim & stede interactions would be nice ))=#but more roach fr #give samba more sceentime!#ofmd #ofmd meta #stede bonnet #revenge crew #yes stede can care about his crew & also not care the swede is losing his teeth #he contains multitudes #(more seriously i genuinely think he was so hyperfocused on [the threat of] ed leaving that the lack of oranges couldnt take roost #an 'out of sight out of mind' situation)#wolf's posts #never you mind

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batsarebetterthanpeople · 8 months

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Also based on reactions to Ed's Kraken Era I'm going to guess:

Archie- has worked for a series of pirate captains she knows what's up.

Fang- Fang has worked for other pirate captains but he's been with Ed for so long he's gotten used to Ed's "yeah whatever I don't care" style and now that Ed's acting crazy and Ivan is dead Fang is coping very poorly

Frenchie- Frenchie has worked for both racist rich people AND for shitty pirate captains before there's a lot of stuff in that lock box in his mind.

Izzy- has been working for Ed for his entire pirate career. I'll bet his pirate career hasn't been more than like 10 years maybe he was in the navy or something before that but he has not served under a different captain, and he didn't really realize what being a pirate was actually like because of that which is why he keeps going "be a real pirate be blackbeard like this caricature of you and then when Ed does he's like "the vibe is fucked" this man doesn't know the first thing about being a pirate I'll die on that hill

Jim- Jim has only ever worked for Stede and Spanish Jackie. Those are the employers that Jim is familiar with. And while Jackie may be a bit of a dictator I'm guessing how Jim was treated is roughly equivalent to how The crew is treated in s2e1. And Jim could compartmentalize whatever they experienced better because they were on a mission then.

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perpetualcontrolleddrowning · 6 months

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Blackbonnet Soulmate AU - Part 18

The Nettles in the Garden Don’t Go Away

JRaylin441

Summary: Stede goes back to Barbados

Ed goes back to The Revenge

Content Warnings: dissociation (as always), panic, alcohol use as a way to manage emotions, one scene where a character is drunk, a mention of a character being high

Read on AO3 (x)

Read Part Seventeen Here (x)

Stede spends the entire trip back home alternating between shaking panic that locks his limbs like a puppet and blank, raging snowstorms. Blizzards that white out sight completely and dampen any and every noise.

He’s back in Barbados. How did he get here? He doesn’t know. Can’t remember. His eyes are scratchy and aching from all the time he was supposed to be sleeping and instead spent crying.

He’s on the stoop of his old house. How did he get here? Impossible to know. Time doesn’t exist. He is using muscle memory to step over the creaking board on the porch. He is a completely different man than the one who left here a century ago. A few months. A single breath. A thousand lifetimes. The snow is silent, but so loudly silent that it dampens every sensation of the world around him.

He is standing in the entryway, staring down Mary. How did he get here? Well that’s simple. All he had to do was run as fast as he could away from every single thing that ever made him feel alive, before he could do what he always does and ruin everything.

Better to go back to where everyone else thinks he should be. Stede has tried trusting himself and following after his own desires and whims and it has led to this nightmare. An abandoned family, a ruined legend, arrests and a shaved beard and a crew left alone after being boarded by the English.

He must not have tried hard enough, before. If this truly is what everyone else has been saying he needs, what everyone else agrees is right for him, then Stede is done watching the aftershocks of his attempts to fight it. He’s back. He’s going to coat himself in ice and shove all the too-much parts of himself into that tiny little box, and he’s going to do it fucking right this time. There’s nothing else for him to do.

“I’m home,” he says, at the loudest volume he can muster up, which really isn’t much of anything, is it, Baby Bonnet?

Mary stares at him, trembling, until the teacup falls from her hand and shatters, wet and jagged, across the sitting room floor.

Me too, thinks Stede.

And then he goes upstairs, washes himself, shaves off several days’ travel’s worth of stubble. He goes to the closet, still packed with the endless clothing he wasn’t able to take with him. It’s been moved to the back of the closet, behind all of Mary’s things.

He puts on the old clothing. The soft fabrics cut his hands. He is picking up the pieces of himself and trying to put them back together into an old shape. His hands are wet and bleeding.

Stede Bonnet. The full name, always. The family name, always.

*~*~*

Ed’s been upset before, okay? He’s done this shit a thousand times for a thousand different reasons. Something about this is different. Instead of the whip-crack shatter and fight-back, it feels like some part of him crumpled in on itself. The supports collapsed and lost all structural fucking integrity. There’s nowhere to lean, not even long enough to get the leverage to throw a punch.

He keeps stepping, trying to catch his balance, but the floor is never quite where he’s expecting it to be, and he has to adjust before anything else can happen.

He makes it back to the ship.

Izzy is there. Sure.

He makes his way to the old cabins. Stede’s cabins. Their cabins. Ed’s now, really, if you think about it.

Ed goes into Stede’s cabins and sits quietly down on the couch.

He loses time, for a little bit, there. Probably forgets to blink. Not sure he thinks of anything. He realizes, after some unknown wait, that Izzy must have come and gone, because there is a bottle of rum on the coffee table next to a cold cup of tea.

Ed realizes that he is waiting for something. His whole body is an empty cavern, every muscle tense.

It’s the beast. That’s what he’s waiting for. In every situation even mildly similar to this, any time Ed feels even remotely hurt or threatened, all he has to do is step away from the controls of his body and trust himself to rain down violence and rage until he’s forgotten every reason he was upset in the first place. Until he’s chased everyone so far away that they’re not within line of sight when he breaks down.

But.

The beast isn’t here. There is just some young, crumpled-child part of Ed. An open wound, sitting vulnerable and visible on the couch in the room of a man who left him.

The paranoia strikes, blindsiding and white-hot. If the violence and rage aren’t here, then what’s protecting Blackbeard from people seeing him? If the beast won’t come to drive anyone away, then they could see him. They could see him. They could see him like this.

And that would be. That would be bad. That can’t happen.

This grasping, child part of Ed wants something soft. Wants to hide under beds and beneath blankets. And sure, what the fuck. Anything to quiet this raw-nerve panic.

Ed builds a space, using the books to weigh down blankets and the curving walls as structural supports. A blanket fort. Something close and warm and soft. Something that will hide this strange new version of him from sight.

Fuck, but what the fuck is happening to him. What did Stede Bonnet do to him? It was just a month or two, and that fancy, rich fucking white man came in and ripped away every defense Ed has ever had. What is he supposed to do now? Now that even the life he had before Stede Bonnet is so far out of reach?

Ed doesn’t know. He doesn’t know the fucking answer to any one of those fucking questions. His muscle memory calls for him to smash the bottle of rum against the wall, but he forgot to grab it when he climbed into his blanket fort and he doesn’t want to leave and risk the exposure it would take to get it.

Instead.

Instead, Ed turns his face into the pillow he’s laying on.

Instead, Ed finds himself crying for the first time in. The first time in? Fuck, but he has no idea if he’s ever fucking cried in his fucking life. He must have when he was little and shit, but he can’t think of a single fucking reason he would have.

It’s not a pleasant feeling. The tears are sneaky little fuckers. They slip out one at a time at first, foot in the door. There’s a gasping, awful feeling in his throat, like someone reached right through the skin of his neck and started to wrap their fist directly around his windpipe. His breath is coming in strangled and panting. Exhaled into the pillow, it’s hard to get enough oxygen, and the fabric just reflects it back to him, body-warm, so that now his face is hot and now he’s sweating or are those fucking tears because the motherfuckers have been intensifying their assault on his eyes while he wasn’t paying attention, and now his whole face is wet and his nose is dripping and his body is all twisted and curled up on itself, wrapping around the broken-animal-bone center of him while horrible, choking noises wrack through him.

And it’s about Stede. Of course it’s about Stede. He keeps raking his claws through all the old memories: laughing on deck, hearing the stupid ridiculous voices he put on while reading stories, the agonizing joy of Stede shoving him up against a wall and holding him there, the soft touch of his hand to Ed’s cheek while laying in a bathtub (and oh, fuck, he’d kind of been crying then, hadn’t he, but it wasn’t like this wasn’t like this wasn’t anything like this why is it always Stede and crying), the firm guidance of Stede’s body against his while he taught Ed to waltz in this very room.

The memories cut with agonizing sharpness, but it doesn’t fucking stop there. Just like the sneaky motherfucking tears, it’s like every awful thing that ever happened has just been waiting there, under lock and key, waiting for Ed to show the slightest hint of vulnerability. Because it’s about Stede, obviously, but it’s also about bleeding almost to death on the beach of Blind Man’s Cove while watching Jack walk away. It’s about the sound of a plate smashing against the wall of his childhood home. It’s Hornigold stabbing him in the gut and chucking him over the side of the ship. It’s the feeling of a salt-wet rope burning against his hands and the look his mother gave him when she realized.

It’s about Stede Bonnet and also about everything else, obviously. It’s about the fact that Ed can’t remember the last time he cried. It’s about the fact that his face is too hot and the pillow is wet with snot and sweat and tears. It’s about the fact that he had to build this blanket fort all alone, and that no one else is going to be here beside him.

*~*~*

Stede Bonnet, landed gentry, makes his way down to a lovely dinner. He sits up straight at the head of the dining room table. He smiles and remains calm and unruffled while his children yell at him, forget him, leave. Mary is furious, clearly, but they’re all here at this table. They are all playing their parts. They’re all going to keep playing their parts if Stede has to drag them through it day after day after day after day after day after day after day after-

It’s night. Stede stands up from the table and goes to his office to check on the estate. He drinks a finger of whiskey from a cut-crystal glass (this really is the perfect brandystop) and looks over the state of things. After an hour or so, he stands up, lights a candle, and goes to complete his evening toilette.

Mary is getting ready for bed too, and they bump into each other a few times while trying to remember the ways they used to move in this routine.

They climb into bed together. Both of them are out of practice sleeping next to another person. There is more bumping and kicking. Neither one of them speaks.

Stede rests his head on the pillow. His jaw is clenched tight, he realizes, to the point of a radiating ache through his entire head. He relaxes it consciously, and then again a few minutes later.

Eventually, he sleeps.

*~*~*

Ed must fall asleep. He wakes up feeling blasted clean like the hull of a barnacle-scrubbed ship. Empty and floaty again. His eyes are crusty and his head aches like a hangover without any of the alcohol for explanation.

He’s waiting for the beast to arrive, give him some reason to emerge from his safe blanket fort, but it’s still absent. It’s just Ed, alone and open-wound raw, laying on a pillow gone cold and damp over the course of his sleep.

How long was he out? Was this a nap or a whole-night sleep? Or even longer? It’s been days and days since Ed actually properly slept through the night, and there’s no one he trusts enough to let in on the fact that he is completely out of touch with time now. Can’t even see if the sun is up through all the thick cushions and blankets.

Maybe it’s better that way. Maybe he just needs his little candle in here and something to eat. There is something pure, in the wake of all that crying and sleeping. Ed still feels the broken-animal-bone parts of him on display, but it’s less terrifying, for some reason. Like he purged all the fear with the tears last night.

He needs to get a hold of his thoughts, but they’re all jumbled up and smeared from his crying. Out of reach and still pressing against him. He needs to get them out. He’ll die before he gets up off the floor.

There’s a rustle. The sound of a plate being set down outside the blue cushion and a deep sighing exhale that can only belong to his first mate.

“Izzy,” Ed hisses. He doesn’t mean to hiss it, but his vocal chords are ravaged by tears and dehydration and sleep, so it comes out that way anyway.

A cough, clearing of the throat, then “Ye-, yes, captain?” It’s Hesitant Izzy, come to visit, not sure which version of Blackbeard he’s going to be met with and ready for anything. Defaulting to obedience until Ed gives him a signal otherwise.

“Bring me the boy, the one who can write. And some marmalade, from the kitchen. There’s huge jars of it. Orange stuff.”

And Izzy does, because Ed can always count on Izzy to follow instructions while he waits to figure out the lay of the land. The marmalade is sweet and tangy on Ed’s tongue and the candle he brought in smells faintly of lavender. It feels like that first morning after the lighthouse, wiped clean in the morning sun, the radiance beaming off of Stede, the warmth of bread and orange marmalade on his tongue.

And it hurts, of course it still hurts. But it’s all hidden behind that buzzing layer of cottony dehydration that he woke up with. So Ed is left turning over rocks in his mind, unearthing new layers of memory and things that he’ll never be able to experience again without thinking of him.

The boy arrives, with that damned notebook that landed them in so much trouble and that saved Stede’s life. And now it’s still here and Ed’s still here, both of them chronicles of Stede Bonnet, left behind and pointless.

Lucius talks, and then Ed talks, and somehow this all ends up with Ed crying again, raw nerve exposed, while a member of the beautiful crew that Stede built listens. It should hurt, it should be terrifying, and it is, it feels like falling, like dying, but

But

But this is all so different. There is something so fucking different about this ship, and the way it has always made space for Blackbeard to just be Ed, from the moment he met Stede. The way that every single pirate on this ship is so incredibly fucking awful at piracy and somehow they’re all still alive anyway. And Ed is hurting, he’s flayed open, he took a risk and was left behind again. He’s left behind every time. People will leave when Ed shows them his true self, and the world proves it to him over and over. People will leave and people did leave, that did happen.

But

The crew is still here. Luicus sits with Ed on the floor of the blanket fort and works to tweak the lyrics and come up with a melody for hours. He leaves and brings Frenchie back and Ed’s still flopped on his pillow, eating marmalade by hand out of the jar, and they all work together to put the lyrics to music and no one is laughing and Frenchie is clearly on edge and so is Lucius

But

Ed can remember the isolation of his first weeks on Hornigold’s crew. He remembers laying in his cabin, staring at the stars through a porthole and making up constellations alone because no one else could see the world the way he could see it.

And maybe it’s a long fucking shot, but it seems like a lot of the people on this ship have been through the same thing. And that they all are kind of just letting each other exist while they’re here. And yeah, Stede was batshit for a whole lot of the fancy shit, but this was the craziest part of it all. This crew that he insisted be family and come together and support each other and the way that they did.

Ed’s not a part of that group. He hasn’t let himself be. He hasn’t wanted to be, too focused on doing everything he can to catch and hold Stede’s attention. But he’s been here, nearby, and maybe

Maybe

Fucking maybe

He could reach out and take it. Maybe he’s going to keep waiting for the beast to arrive and take over but it never will and he can just be Ed, just Ed, an open nerve full of broken-animal-bone parts. Maye he doesn’t have to lug around the fucking keelhauling weight of Blackbeard.

Maybe

*~*~*

It’s harder than he thought it would be, fitting back into a box after giving himself so much time outside of it. Stede hadn’t noticed, before, just how much effort it took. Mainly because he had never had a single moment of his life when he wasn’t exerting that effort.

It’s a muscle that atrophied with disuse.

Mary and the children have a schedule now. They operate as a self-contained system. Stede wakes up, falls on the ground, doesn’t have his land legs. Makes his way downstairs anyway. Eats breakfast while Mary, Louis, and Alma all sit on the other end and debate what the best game to play later today would be.

Stede sits silently. His father was always silent too. It is fine for the children and mother to speak while the father remains distant.

They depart for their days. Louis and Alma off to a playgroup Mary apparently put them in. Mary to? Do something? Stede wasn’t listening, if there was anything she said. He lost his focus when he realized there was no marmalade with his breakfast. He took it all with him when he left, and they must not have ordered any more after his departure. He can’t eat the dry toasted bread without it.

None of them are talking to him. Not that they did before. Not that anyone has ever actually taken the time to listen to him when he wants to speak (Edward didstop).

Stede walks to the office again, but he already discovered last night that Mary, or someone she may have hired, has been staying quite on top of all the management of the estate. Doing a better than Stede ever did, certainly.

Stede is left at loose ends. The family is running without him. There’s a painting in the hall with him removed. Painted over and blacked out. His favorite decorations have been taken down and replaced with tasteful pieces, probably chosen by Mary. Stede realizes that he doesn’t have a good enough sense of her decorating taste to know for sure if she picked them or had someone else do it for her.

There is a wall in the living room that is entirely decorated by sheets of paper, covered in paint and graphite and wax and colored pencil. Clearly made by some combination of three or four individuals, each with their own style and varying levels of fine motor control.

It’s beautiful. It’s more color than Stede has ever seen in this house.

It is nothing that ever would have been here before. Because this isn’t Stede’s house anymore. He has been carefully and efficiently edited out of the building. Every touch of Stede Bonnet has been removed. All that remains is Mary and the children. Potentially even this mysterious Doug character.

This isn’t Stede’s house anymore.

But that won’t stand. This is what everyone wants from him. He’s been screaming for years that this is all wrong, but no one ever backed down. Just that endless, unrelenting pressure to fit himself into this role.

This isn’t Stede’s house anymore. And that’s too bad. Because it means he’s got quite a bit of work ahead of him.

Stede Bonnet is back. He is going to be the husband, father, and landowner that everyone always tried to turn him into. That is what they all asked for. That is what they are going to get.

*~*~*

It’s fucking terrifying. It’s genuinely so fucking scary to put on that soft red robe, to stand in front of the crew of The Revenge with no beard at all and sing the song he wrote. To actually fucking stand there, yelling out his open wound, and trust that Stede Bonne built something that would be kind to him.

And, fuck him sideways with a rusty fucking hook, but it actually goes well. Everyone listens, and they clap. They’re kind, and Ed was vulnerable, just Ed, and they seemed to like it. They’re listening to him. He wants to have a talent show and that’s the kind of shit that Izzy would have shot down before a sniff of it ever made it to the crew, but they’re all bouncing around like it’s just as exciting to them as it is to Ed.

Fuck. Fuck. Maybe Stede left. Well, Stede did leave, that definitely did happen. And maybe Ed will never know why. Or what chased him away (as if it isn’t obvious). But he left this behind, this group of people that actually fucking like each other. That actually fucking like Ed, and it’s fucking his head in. What the fuck. This shouldn’t be possible but it is.

Ed feels…lit up inside. Like there’s something warm and bright behind his breastbone. Like he wants to chase this feeling chase this feeling chase this feeling. There is still something good here. There is something salvageable here. Fuck, but who knew the world was actually capable of being like this.

Stede Bonnet, that’s who. That’s the man who stood up and made it like this. And just because he’s gone now doesn’t mean that they can’t take what he built and run with it. Maybe that’s the point of soulmates. Not to stick around, but to change things. Make life more liveable when they inevitably leave.

All of them, a crew still captained by Stede Bonnet, even when he’s gone and moved on to bigger and better things.

*~*~*

It would be easier, all of it would be so much easier, if Mary would just go along with it.

Stede is here. He’s here, isn’t he? He’s back. He came back to this coffin everyone wants him to live inside. He’s going to be a lighthouse for his family. He’s going to sleep in the same bed as Mary every night until one day he dies from old age and is buried under that headstone he already has waiting in storage.

He’s here. Every muscle is locked down tight, straining to keep himself contained within this tiny, restricted box. He is smothering any chance of light or fire inside him. The coals have gone damp and white-crusted. He is playing the part.

So why is Mary making it so difficult? Sticking to her new schedule, painting her pictures, calling herself the Widow Bonnet, having the art show. She is furious, spitting mad, telling him that he chose to un-abandon his family on a whim, as if Stede hasn’t been agonizing over it and building to it and running from it from the moment he left.

And Doug. Doug. Oh, Doug. The thorn in his side. The rock in his fucking shoe. This man, this painting teacher, who shows up one day while he’s gone and simply? Seduces his wife? As if it would ever be proper to do something like that so soon after the supposed death of a husband. Mary might have been grieving! The children could have been confused.

Doug, who smiles so nicely and compliments Mary’s paintings and plays with the children. Every time Stede looks at him, he can hear Louis in his head. Isn’t Doug my father? As if it were that easy to forget Stede.

No one wants to hear about his travels. His trips. He gets the schedule wrong and ends up the only one at dinner. Just him sitting alone at an empty table, staring down at his food, refusing to think about or look at any of the emotions screaming within him for too long. Struggling to eat at all when the things that make food easier for him are left out at sea, along with every other good thing.

In a moment of weakness, he imagines Ed at the other end of the table. Eagerly eating the food, practicing his table manners, laughing when Stede does or says something improper. Ed, who would listen when he spoke of his day and who would have all kinds of wonderful stories to share in return. Ed, who always listened. Ed, who was his soulmate. Ed, who kissed himNO

No. He can’t think about that. Back in the box. He has to take all his memories of Ed and bury them out in the snow or this will never end. It’s dangerous, in a life like this, to be holding onto things that make you seem out of place.

Instead, Stede is going to eat his dinner. He is going to spend time in the office, reacquainting himself with the estate and preparing to take it back over. He is going to make Mary talk to him at breakfast and he is going to learn what the children’s new schedules are.

He is Stede Bonnet. Wealthy landowner with a head caked in snow. This is not his home, but he is going to live here anyway. He is going to break himself down smaller and smaller until there is nothing more he can infect with his existence.

And he’s going to drag Mary with him. It’s not as though he can ruin things between them any more than he already has.

*~*~*

It was only a matter of time, really. Ed stood there, in the red robe, with his wounds on display, and he sang a song. He left Blackbeard behind. He took one strong, solid step toward trying to figure out what it would mean to keep being Ed, one of Blackbeard’s crew but free from all the everlasting pressure.

It was only a matter of time.

Because here is how it works: Blackbeard is a two-man show. Sure, Ed’s Blackbeard. He’s got the black fucking beard (or at least, had it) and he’s got the leather and the swagger and the chaotic temper that sets ships aflame. But it’s Izzy, too. They built this legend together, brick by brick after Ed scooped him up off a nothing fucking island, hijacked his boat, and commandeered his fucking life.

Ed’s the face of Blackbeard. But Izzy’s the driving force. Izzy’s what gets him out of bed and on the deck, making an appearance when every part of Ed’s body feels weighed down by bricks for no good reason. Izzy’s the one that makes sure he remembers to fucking eat and who sewed up almost every stab wound he’d gotten in the past two decades. He’s the reason Ed’s still walking around and he’s the one that grabs Ed by the hair and drags him into the next responsibility before it all falls to hell in a handbasket.

It was only a matter of time.

Because Ed stood on the deck of that ship and tried to throw away Blackbeard. This is not the first time Ed has tried to do something like this. This is not the first time he’s made some dumbass choice to try and run and leave it all behind. It’s Ed’s job to bring the unpredictable violence, emphasis on the unpredictable.

But it’s always been Izzy’s job to tailor that crazy into a legend.

He’s got a drawing in his hand, that ridiculous pirate-vampire-viking fucking bullshit, but he’s waving it around, because that’s the legend they fucking built their lives around. It’s Izzy, and he’s red-faced and spitting mad. He’s talking, and every word is ripping away at that washed-clean cotton protecting Ed from himself. Every word is showing him just how flimsy an effort this all fucking was.

It’s all noise, it’s all destructive noise, and then it’s some namby-pamby in a silk gown pining for his boyfriend and there it fucking is. There’s the fucking beast that Ed had almost stopped waiting for. There it is, roaring to life with blood between its teeth. Ed has been an open wound, an exposed nerve, and people have been letting him be until Izzy just walked up and stabbed a knife in the center and twisted and this is what the beast was fucking made for. This is what Ed was made for. Izzy jabs and Ed snarls and the beast lunges for the throat and Blackbeard is slamming Izzy up against the wall.

There it is.

There he is.

“Blackbeard is my captain. I. Serve. Blackbeard. Not Edward. Edward better watch his fucking step.”

*~*~*

It was only a matter of time.

Stede goes and gets a drink. Why not? There’s nothing else for him to be doing right now. This is what wealthy landowners can do during the day. His estate is running itself. His children and wife are happier without any of his involvement.

He gets a drink, and he runs into some of the other wealthy landowners with nothing to do during the day. God, but is this what it will be forever? There’s no life. No joy. No adventure.

And it’s fine. It’s all fine. Take that emotion and choke it in the snow until it learns to leave you alone.

They want to hear about his adventures. It’s nice until it isn’t, because they don’t actually want to hear about the adventures, do they? They’re not interested in Stede’s life or his experiences. What they want is a good story. They want to think about what life could have been, if everything was nice and happy and going according to plan. They want Stede to tell them that he had a grand old time, much like a vacation, drank and fought and sailed, and then returned home. Refreshed and rested and ready to live out the rest of his days with a newly discovered appreciation.

They buy him drinks. They buy him lots of drinks, and the drinking works better even than the snow, and Stede has played this game before. He knows what it is to have a group ask about you while rejecting any true answer you could give.

Stede wedges himself into the box. He takes his drunken, loosened tongue, and tells them a story like a vacation, and everyone laughs and no one was hurt and Stede is going to reach down his throat and rip his heart out, bloody and beating. He’ll set it on the table and let them pick it apart next. Let them tell him which parts to trim and change and alter. He’ll do it. He’ll do whatever it’s going to take to fit back into this box he never managed to fit into in the first place.

They buy him even more drinks. Stede lies and lies and slips up and watches the table go silent because Baby Bonnet went too far again. And then he lies some more until they are all smiling again and buying him more drinks.

It was only a matter of time.

He makes his stumbling, hiccupping way over to Mary’s art show. There is a part of him that knows he probably shouldn’t go in this state, but he is her husband and she is his wife and so he is going to go to her art show.

He’s not sure how it happens. Stede’s been talking about piracy all night, and he’s been carefully editing around all the crass bits, which really ended up being almost all of it, and now he’s brimming with it. All the unsaid parts. All the parts he can’t say out loud here. The crying panic after a kill and the desperate breathlessness of a raid and the feeling of holding every single bit of Blackbeard’s attention. The brush of a beard against your skin. The burning sting of a sunburn that slowly fades into the leather of well-tanned skin.

And Ed. Ed, not Blackbeard. Absolutely lovely. With stars in his eyes and hair and beard and battle-roughened hands so soft around Stede’s as they taught him to defend himself. As they danced together. As they drank and laughed and read late into the night. The way you could see his smile better from the crinkles at the corners of his eyes rather than from watching his mouth. The way that Stede had watched both his eyes and mouth closely enough to determine that for sure. The way that Ed had smiled often enough to determine that for sure.

It’s all boiling up inside him, but no one wants to hear that part of things, and it’s fine, because he’s drunk as a skunk and snowy on top of that. It’s fine it’s fine it’s fine.

And then Doug walks up behind him. Touches his shoulder. And then Doug isn’t touching him, because Stede has him pinned on the table with a cheese knife to his throat.

He’s trying to fit in the box. He really is. You wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at him, but, then, you never could, could you?

He pins Doug to the table and everyone is staring and he lets him go and tries to cover it up but most of the damage is already done.

It was only a matter of time.

He tries to explain some parts of it to Mary as they get ready for bed. How he drank too much. How it’s all spilling out. How he’s furious with her for not pausing time while he was away. For making it so hard for him to come back when he’s already had to burn every good thing he had and salt the earth behind him. How he forgives her, for sleeping with Doug.

He probably doesn’t do a very good job of it. He’s apologizing but he’s snowy and drunk and spiraling over how terribly this has all gone and reminiscing about how much easier this all was before he’d ever had a taste of anything better and-

It was only a matter of time.

When he wakes up to Mary crouched over him, trying to kill him, he really can’t even blame her.

*~*~*

It’s all fucking Stede fucking Bonnet’s fucking fault. It’s the breakdown that’s been waiting in the background. He’s cried, sure, but here is the fucking noise, finally. The rage and the boiling fury and the black-out pounding of his blood in his ears.

Because, what? Did he think he was going to build a new life on the sea with a bunch of failure pirates? In a world that looks at people like them and kills them the instant they let their guard down?

That is what would happen, if he kept down this road. Without a doubt. Ed could live as an open wound for a few days, but the whole point of Blackbeard is that he’s what Ed needs to survive. Stede Bonnet built this happy fucking fantasy of a boat and even he didn’t stick around to see how it all played out.

He didn’t even stick around to say why he was fucking leaving. Just. Fucking. Cut. And. Run. Leaving Blackbeard standing on that motherfucking pier with his dick in his fucking hand, just waiting like the idiot he was turning into.

Fuck that.

Fuck that but he’s not fucking falling for this shit again. Never a-fucking-gain. Blackbeard killed his father and disgusted his mother, was kicked out of every crew he tried to be a part of until he built his own fucking crew from the ground up. Fuck Stede Bonnet for trying to come in and comment on any of it. Trying to change any of this shit, as if that was ever something that would work. As if he wouldn’t have died a thousand times over if Blackbeard hadn’t been right fucking behind him and protecting him with all the violence he refused to fucking see.

He needs to move. He needs to get up and fucking move, just to let some of this snarling fury out.

Blackbeard stomps his way down to the figurehead in his big fuckoff boots, just to rile the beast up that little bit more. It doesn’t need the help. The beast is a rabid, livid pulse of fury that is gnawing on the bones of Blckbeard’s chest just to have something to destroy.

Something to destroy. Something to fucking destroy. That’s a fucking idea. Blackbeard’s got a few things on him to destroy. A few things to ruin in his wake.

Did Stede think he could just walk away from all of this and it would all be okay? Everyone could still keep playing happy family without him? He can leave the crew and all his beautiful fucking things and they’ll all just sit here waiting patiently for him to come fucking back?

Well fuck that. Fuck every motherfucking part of that. Blackbeard’s not fucking playing. He wants to tear the skin off his own body. He wants to burn this red fucking gown he’s wearing. He wants to take the fucking handkerchief and shove it down Stede’s throat until he chokes. See if he can make it beautiful then. See if he can do anything but choke on the unwanted fucking albatross of a soul gift that started it fucking all.

Blackbeard reaches into the inner pocket of the gown, where he’s been keeping the silk handkerchief body-warm and soft against his breast. Rips it out into the open, so it can flap in the wind like the pathetic, tattered and ragged thing that it is. Stronger than it fucking looks. Bull fucking shit. Blackbeard would rip it to shreds with his teeth, if he could.

He wants to give it back. He wants Stede to take the stupid fucking thing back, along with all his other fucking useless soulmate fucking gifts. He doesn’t want to think about Stede ever again, and he wants Stede, wherever he fucking is, to have to haul the weight of all of it around for the rest of his fucking life.

He’s going to throw the damn thing over the side of the ship. He wants to give it fucking back, but letting it be destroyed by the ocean could be a close second. Let it rot in the sea water, stain and spoil. Silk should have known better than to be so fragile and breakable.

He wants to give it back. If Stede were here, he would throw it in his fucking face and walk away without a fucking word. He would give it back, give it back, give it-

The silk, clinging on the very tip of his fingers before slipping into the ocean below, vanishes.

It doesn’t blow away so quickly, or fall so that Blackbeard can no longer see it. It vanishes. One moment, there is a red silk handkerchief clinging to the end of his fingers, and then it disappears.

Which.

Oh fuck that.

Fuuuuuuck that.

Blackbeard stares, dead, at the space where he tried to throw away the silk. Where he tried to get rid of the silk and instead ended up sending it to motherfucking Stede Bonnet. Because why not. Why shouldn’t he rob Blackbeard of even this catharsis. Why the fuck not. It’s unfinished. It’s jarring.

It’s the last fucking straw.

The beast rears up within him, and it’s too big, it’s too big for his fucking chest, and then it isn’t in his chest anymore. It’s ripped a gory hole right through him and emerged into the world.

Ed is no longer in control. He’s deep within himself, leaning exhausted and stricken against his own ribs, and the beast, the Kraken, stands victorious in the sea wind.

Ed rests.

The Kraken, on the other hand, is just getting started. It wanted to throw something over the side of the ship, and Stede Bonnet took away the option to throw the fucking silk.

So it throws Lucius instead.

*~*~*

Stede wakes screaming. Those same automatic fight or flight reflexes that got him into so much trouble this evening try to make an appearance, but he’s all tangled up in blankets and nightgowns and sheets and fabric that he instead manages a horrible strangled wiggle that ends with him spilled out of the bed and collapsed on the floor. The whole time, Mary kneels patiently on the bed, the skewer clasped in her hands and resting on her lap. She is seemingly unconcerned about Stede’s wellbeing as he thrashes up to his feet.

Which, well, it does make sense. Considering the murder attempt and all.

They take a moment for Stede to stand there, panting, staring at Mary while she looks calmly back. When Stede does not seem to be settling down quickly, Mary heaves a laborious sigh and stands. She presses the skewer into Stede’s hand and guides him to sit at the foot of the bed while she paces before the fire.

And finally, slowly, his brain comes back online long enough to gasp out “You were going to stab me!”

Mary is unapologetic. Of course. He’s been an ass since the moment he came home. If he’s being completely honest about things, he’s been an ass from the moment she met him.

They have it out for a bit, but the steam runs out of Stede’s arguments fast. He’s been pushing down all his feelings since the moment he returned, with varying levels of success. But this, waking to his wife trying to murder him, facing the actual true intensity with which he is not wanted here, it strips him bare of all the protective numbness.

And underneath all that snow, it’s not the pain that he was expecting. It’s not the aching sting of rejection that he’s felt his whole life. There’s something warm. What is that? He can’t quite put his finger on what he’s feeling and Mary is speaking again before he can properly examine it.

“We just can’t seem to stop hurting each other, can we?” she asks, as she sits down next to him on the bed. And it should hurt. It should be the same as his conversation with Chauncey, the agonizing terror of someone saying out loud the exact same thing that he’s always been afraid was true.

But it’s not. What is that? It’s boiling up in him and he can’t find a word for it.

“I don’t fit here anymore, do I?” This isn’t Stede’s house anymore, and that fact doesn’t hurt. He doesn’t want the house. “You’ve got your life. Your art. Doug.”

“I am sorry about Doug,” she tries to apologize, as if she ever should for falling in love with someone who actually treats her well while her husband was off playing pirates. As if Stede has any room to judge.

And she is in love. That much is clear to anyone that looks at Mary and Doug in the same room. It doesn’t matter that Mary still has that string tied around her pinky finger and stretching off into nowhere or that Doug has a constantly-morphing mark on the back of his neck. How strange, to have been married to this woman for decades and only now learn what she looks like when she is in love. To only now see the levels of joy and contentment she’s capable of feeling.

“How does it feel? To be in love?”

Mary describes it, but it takes three words before Stede realizes that he didn’t need her to. Love. Mary is in love with Doug. It’s obvious just looking at her. And Stede.

Oh.

Stede is in love with Ed.

Of course he is. Gasoline on faintly-glowing coals.

Of course he’s in love with Ed. How could it be anything other than that, with the way that Ed touches him? Fire roaring to life. With the way that Ed looks at him? Flames against his breastbone. With the way that Ed listens to him? The fire never went out, it just slept and all it took was this. God, of course he’s in love with Ed. How long has that been there? How long has that been the word for what he’s feeling?

Ed. Edward Teach. He is in love with Ed. A bonfire. He is in love with Edward. A radiating heat. He is in love with Captain Blackbeard.

Stede! Stede Bonnet! A soulmate! That can’t be right! Except it is and it’s Ed because there is no one else on the face of the planet that it could possibly be. Because there is no one else Stede could ever want there to be.

“I hope you find that,” Mary says.

“I think I have.”

“Really?” And she’s so happy for him. She really is beautiful, all lit in the firelight like this. Smiling with joy for their individual happinesses. “What’s her name?”

“Ed,” Stede says, and it doesn’t even feel like the leap of faith he was afraid it might, because it doesn’t matter to him how Mary responds to this. He’s not justifying himself or trying to explain or excuse anything. He’s just telling the world about the man he loves. Just telling his wife about the man he is in love with.

Mary hugs him, and even if he wasn’t nervous about her reaction, it’s wonderful to feel that he can talk about this and be met with love and joy. Stede hugs back, holds on tightly, holds her closer than he ever did when they were still pretending to be proper husband and wife.

He holds her and, now, with this deeper understanding of himself, it’s so much easier to look back at that feeling within him and name it. He is not feeling the sting of rejection because he wants to go. He’s not sad or angry or upset. The feeling is burning determination. Because if this is true, if everyone on earth can see that he doesn’t belong here, if he’s in love with Ed and Ed is his soulmate, then what the fuck was he thinking, coming back? Why would he ever bother to even try, when there is the potential for something more?

Ed kissed him and probably waited for him. And Stede ran away. Ed may never want him again. He might think he’s better off without Stede Bonnet in his life. He’s probably right about that. He would definitely be justified to think it.

But Stede isn’t going to let any of this be thrown away until Ed says it to his face.

If there’s a chance, even a snowball’s chance in hell, that Ed might take him back, that he might be able to try this again and do it right, then how could Stede ever make any choice other than to go back?

He’s holding tight to Mary while his head fills with fantasies of swashbuckling his way back to Ed’s side. And then he sees-

Huh.

He sees something red on the bed, where he had flailed his way out of the blankets and crashed to the floor.

And he would assume it was Mary’s if not for the way that his heart thunders in his chest at the sight of it.

“Stede?” Mary questions, because she must have felt his attention wander. Stede could not give less of a shit right now. He lets go, leans as far as he can, stretching over the vast expanse of the white blankets to grasp hold of. Of red silk. Of a red silk handkerchief.

“This is Ed’s,” he says, because it’s the only thought in his head.

“Oh,” Mary says, and she has that same smile she always wore when she was trying to engage in something uninteresting but that Stede was excited about. “Thank you for showing me?”

“No, Mary.” And how can he explain this? How can he put this into words? “This is Ed’s.”

“Yes, you said. I’m glad you brought a keepsake back with you.”

“I didn’t!” And he can’t help it, but his hand is clenched so tight in the silk that its fibers strain and creak. “This, he wouldn’t have given this up easily.” Standing on the deck of The Revenge. The blown-open look of vulnerability while Stede handled the handkerchief. “Something’s wrong.”

“What?” And Mary’s voice is sharp again, the way it always gets when she’s worried Stede might have fucked up in a way that will bother the children.

“Not like that.” Stede slides to the floor, kneels in front of her, grabs her hands. “You’re safe. The children are safe. It’s Ed who might be in trouble. He wouldn’t have sent this if something weren’t wrong.”

“Sent it? Stede, I need you to explain if you want me to understand any of this.”

He presses his forehead to her hands, holds himself there. Somehow, this is worse than confessing his love. Maybe because he still hasn’t figured out where this part of it all fits. Still. She’ll need to know this, to understand everything.

“Ed, Edward, he’s my soulmate.” A quiet gasp above him, but he needs to finish this or he might never say it at all. “He’s my soulmate and I left him to come back here. But I think he’s in trouble and I need to leave. I need to go.”

Mary is silent for a moment before she takes her hands back.

“Well, I knew there would have to be some drama before this was all over. I thought it would be murder, but soulmates work just as well.” Stede can’t help the baffled glance he sends her, and Mary rolls her eyes in response. “Of course you have to leave. That’s all both of us have wanted since you came back.” She stands up, pulls Stede with her. “Go start some coffee and I’ll get Doug. Apparently, we have to make a plan to reunite you and Ed.”

And it’s whiplash, to see this caring, focused side of her. He’s seen it around the children, but never directed at him. How many other ways have they been stifling each other, all these years, trying to play house?

“Really?” he can’t help but ask, because he doesn’t think he’s ever felt like he and Mary were on the same team before.

“Go!” She snaps. “It’s going to be so much easier to make plans to fix your terrible approach to romance now that I’m out of it.”

And so, Stede goes. He brews coffee. And Mary sends for Doug.

*~*~*

Ed is gone. It’s Blackbeard now. It’s the fucking Kraken. Back and better than ever. More than ever before.

It’s easy, like this, to destroy everything he and Stede had built.

He throws away every trusting thing that could have been between him and Izzy. Cuts a fucking toe off. Masochistic freak probably likes it.

Throws the books and trinkets and summer fucking linens overboard. Doesn’t even have to be present for that shit. Let everyone else clear out the main areas. Blackbeard goes right for the secret fucking closet, throwing the clothes out through the little porthole in the private room.

Throws the fucking crew overboard too. Keeps the ones who can cut it and drops everyone too soft to make it through a proper raid. The Kraken doesn’t have time for crewmates that can’t fucking contribute. Because they’re about to raise a lot of hell.

See if anyone can stop them.

*~*~*

Between Mary, Doug, and Stede, they come up with a proper fuckery. There are daring escapes, fights with wild animals, falling instruments, and dramatic apologies. It’s good. It’s really fucking good, and the fire inside Stede is strong, stronger, strongest. It’s too much to hold inside. It’s spilling out of him, out his eyes, out every pore. Because this could work. This could work and, more than anything else before, it’s looking like Stede is going to get to do something he wants without hurting anyone. He might even get to leave it better.

Imagine. Imagine a world where Stede Bonnet gets to run off and be a pirate and not have to carry around an anchor of the guilt of what he’s done to his family. A world where there are others out there who think of him fondly, when they remember him, and are better off for having known him.

He’s beaming, he’s glowing, the fire is raging and burning his innards to a crisp with all this excitement. He gets to have what he wants, and he doesn’t have to hurt anyone to do it. He’s been in freefall his whole life and now, suddenly, there’s the solid thump of his heart landing on its feet.

This is right. This is how he should have left the first time, back when he hadn’t even looked for the possibility, because he didn’t know how to live in a world where embracing his needs as Stede Bonnet wouldn’t leave others hurt.

That’s not to say that others aren’t hurt. Ed’s still out there. His soulmate. The man Stede loves (the man he loves the man he loves the man he loves can you even fucking believe). There is more to be done. More to be fixed, but it seems so much more possible now. With his feet planted firmly on the ground, solid in their location, and this light beaming out from every piece of him.

He could find anyone. He could, maybe, still fix this. If Ed wants it too.

But first:

“It’s like we’re playing pretend,” Alma says, ripping and staining the blue silk beneath her hands.

“That’s right,” Stede adds, feeling like he’s fully present in a conversation with his daughter for the first time in his life. “It’s a secret we have to keep. We’re all going to play pretend that I’ve died, so that I can run away and return to a life of piracy!”

“Are you actually a pirate, though?” Louis interrupts. “Or is that a play pretend too?”

“That part is true,” Stede says, leaning forward to catch the excited sparkle that always came into Louis and Alma’s eyes when they would play pirates. “Out on the sea, they call me the Gentleman Pirate! I have a whole crew that sails with me, on The Revenge!” He puts a little growl on it, just like he always did, back when they were all playing in the living room. There is a sudden feeling of vertigo as Stede realizes that he is actually going to miss this part of family life. Not enough to keep him here, but enough to come back and visit. Enough to think of it fondly.

“And you have a whole crew of scallywags!” Alma adds, in an excited shout that spills some of the pigs blood.

“With swords and eye patches and knives!” Louis jumps in too and Stede is starting to realize the impact he had on these children, and some of the difficult conversations he may have set Mary up to have in the future.

“Knives especially,” Stede emphasizes, and he leans in like he’s telling a secret. Louis and Alma lean in too, eager to share in the secret just like they used to be, and Stede is glowing and God he thought he’d lost this. “In fact, I have one crew member that can hit a fly in the air with a knife without even looking!”

And Stede is planning to leave it at that, except. Except. It might be nothing. It might not mean anything at all, but there are suddenly several memories flashing behind his eyes at once. Stede is split into parts and

One part is looking into the eager glowing eyes of his children and shining with joy at their interest and

One part is looking down at James’s letter, all that time ago, when he was still just a child and didn’t know what he was doing with anything and was suddenly hearing tales of a woman who ran away from her fiance to live on a pirate ship with women who loved women and

One part is thinking about young Stede Bonnet who read romance novels in secret and was chased through the woods by other boys and pelted with rocks and mocked for crying and

One part of him is holding a crying Louis in his lap in a carriage, kicked out of the playdate because he put on makeup and wanted to play dress up and maybe it’s nothing but maybe it isn’t and

One part of him is staring at the place where his escape bag was hidden in the closet, the night of his wedding, panicked and looking for escape and convinced that his father had been the one to find it and take it when in reality it had been his soulmate and he hadn’t even thought of that as an option and

One part of him is thinking of Alma getting kicked out of that same playdate for punching the boy that bullied Louis and maybe it’s nothing at all but

But

“Their name is Jim and they’re the scariest person a villain on the high seas could ever meet! But they’re also kind, and they care a lot about the people that are important to them.” And then, because Stede is good at storytelling but not particularly good at subtlety, he adds “They go by Jim, and they aren’t a man or a woman. They’re just Jim, and they’re a wonderful part of the crew.”

Louis and Alma look a little confused, but they’re still listening, and they’re so young. Maybe it’s nothing. But maybe it’s not. And on that note:

“And I’m not just running away to see my crew, even though I like them very much. I’m also going because I met my soulmate out there.” A woman to fall in love with or a man to befriend. “His name is Ed, and I love him very much, but I think I might have hurt his feelings, and I want to apologize and maybe give him a kiss.”

“Wait, what?” Louis butts in, and Stede worries for a moment that he is going to have all sorts of questions about what it means for a man to love another man and that is the conversation Stede just signed up to have but he’s not sure he’s actually prepared to have it or that he will have any answers for him, seeing as this is all new territory for Stede too.

But no. “You fell in love and you didn’t tell us?” His precious Lois, his heir, the one who cried in his arms so many times. He is accepting this in the way young children sometimes do, when they learn something new and assume it’s because someone just hadn’t explained it to them yet and not because it’s something utterly unheard of. Louis isn’t shocked at the idea of his father with a man. He is shocked at the idea of his father with someone else, and he has thousands of questions about this Ed person.

Alma joins in after just a few, the questions drawing her away from her destruction of clothing. And then it becomes clear that Louis has somehow settled on the idea that, if two people who are married decide not to be married anymore, then they both have to go off and marry a man. So, now Stede and Alma are wrapped up in a conversation about how that’s not quite right, and how some people might never get married again, and some could fall in love with a woman and some a man and some with someone who isn’t either of those things, just like we talked about earlier, with Jim, remember?

And somewhere in the middle of this confusion, Stede realizes that he’s laughing, and the fire has grown out of control (he feels like he’s burning but instead it’s just mirrors upon mirrors inside of him, reflecting and brightening the light back on itself and beaming it out into the darkness and it doesn’t even feel like a candle or a fire anymore. It feels, ha, if feels like a lighthouse), and he looks up and sees Mary, backlit against the entrance to the painting studio. She’s smiling softly and listening quietly as Stede shares all these stories about the different ways he’s learning you can live your life and, when he looks up at her, Mary catches his eye.

She smiles.

And she nods.

*~*~*

Sometimes, at night, Ed manages to creep his way out. The Kraken is drunk and high and exhausted twenty four fucking seven and, when it’s well past midnight and there’s no one around, there’s no point in working so hard to hold it all back.

The Kraken lets Ed escape so he can give a voice to all the emotion he’s choking on and hopefully exhaust himself enough to keep fucking quiet tomorrow.

Ed curls up in the nook by the window, just like he learned to when he was younger. Hidden away, out of anyone’s line of sight or notice. Unobtrusive.

And then he stares at the lighthouse painting, thinks of that first night and the red of the sun on Stede’s hair the next morning. Red sky at morning. And Ed cries until he throws up.

The Kraken shoves him back down. They drink more until they throw up again.

And then they do it all over again.

Beautiful fucking things.

#ofmd #our flag means death #blackbonnet #ofmd ed #edward teach #blackbeard #gentlebeard #stede bonnet #blackbeard x stede #stedward #edward x stede #ofmd fic #soulmate au #my writing #nettles

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queerspacepunk · 1 year

Text

set your sights a little higher - #02

ofmd | ed/stede | heist!au

> #01 (inconvenient timing)

i did another one!

#02 (a cask of utter bullshit)

Ed stares at the reinforced glass door set into the kitchen floor, and the staircase spiralling down beneath it and thinks – not for the first time – that one of the worst parts of this job is how often he has to bear witness to the evidence of people having way too much money.

Fucking thing's not even locked.

To be fair, the mansion itself had had pretty decent security. Beefy enough that they'd ended up going in while it was occupied (not Ed's favourite and the reason Izzy's on perimeter for this one) just for the slight relaxation of the measures that brings.

He's even had to tie a black bandana over his face just as a reminder not to mutter away to himself and risk setting off the billionaire-owned smart home software.

The stairs down to the wine cellar are alarmed, or they would be if the owner had remembered to reset it after heading down for a bottle earlier that day, but Ed still skips the step that would trip it off.

Below, he finds more wine than any one household can be expected to drink, and a lot it looks like isn't even intended for drinking, given the way it's displayed.

Gaudy, ostentatious, and wanky. Helpful though, because it means Ed doesn't have to do much looking to find the bottle he's after, set up as it is as the centrepiece of the back wall.

This is, perhaps, the only actually tricky part of the whole thing. The case is locked, which is no real issue. The keypad takes four digits where the others in the house take six, and it doesn't take the fucking kraken to figure out what those'll be. But it's also alarmed, and given the owners dont seem to plan on drinking it, there wasn't a way to get them to leave it unlocked.

Finally, a fucking challenge.

Ed pulls out the thoroughly coded index card he's got dangling from a lanyard around his neck. Makes him look like a fucking nerd, but it's better than dropping the damn thing and leaving evidence behind.

If he unlocks the case without opening it, and disconnects the cable at the right moment while holding down the keys to reset the code, opens the door and reconnects it within 2.7 seconds then theoretically the main security system it's linked to won't register the disconnection.

He puts in the code and waits for the indicator light to flash green, but it just gives him an angry beep. Ed tries again, slowly, making sure he's putting the right number in.

Two angry beeps.

He checks the keypad over. It doesn't get enough use for wear, but when he shines the bluelight torch over it there's a faint pattern of oil on the keys matching the wear pattern of all the other keypads in the house.

"Try '1234'."

Ed nearly bangs his head on the case as he jolts at the voice, spinning on his heel to find the Gentleman-fucking-Robber perched on what must be an entirely decorative barrel in the corner, sipping delicately from a wine glass.

"Even these fuckers aren't stupid enough to pick 1234 as the lock code for an $80,000 bottle of wine."

"Oh, they didn't," Stede says brightly, "but you have to actually reset the code after you've tricked the alarm or it'll go off when you shut the case and I couldn't be bothered to think of anything clever."

Given Ed hadn't been planning on closing the door after himself, that part of things hadn't been much of a concern.

Ed rolls his eyes, "so you got in here, tricked the alarm, got the case open and closed it again without taking anything, just for the drama."

"Heavens no," Stede says, and holds out a bottle, "swapped it for a fake first."

Ed turns back to the display case. It's a fairly good fake. Not good enough that it'll pass muster when it's taken out and inspected - it's hard to replicate aging like that, but it's good enough.

Stede drains his glass and then hooks it into what is apparently a fucking custom-made wineglass holster and hops off the barrel.

"Shall we?"

Ed just stares at him.

"Honestly, you can have it," Stede assures him, "it's not a trap. I wasn't lying in wait down here to brick you in or anything. I just happened to get here first and thought I'd save you the trouble."

Growling under his breath, Ed turns back the the case and punches 1234 into the keypad. At least he knows the alarm trick will work.

The indicator light finally goes green and Ed gets the alarm connection arranged in one hand so he disconnect it while the other is plugging in the reset sequence.

The keypad gives a trill and Ed pulls the cable, flicks the door open and uses two hands to click the cables back together, and waits.

He has no idea how long ago Stede got here, and two code resets that close together might trip the main system anyway, but he hears nothing, and there's no warning message in his earpiece from Fang, so Ed lets out a breath and grabs the fake out of the case.

"Here," he says shoving the fake at Stede so he has both hands free to pull his glove off before grabbing the real bottle with his greasepaint coated palm.

"They might notice that," Stede says with a wince.

"Yeah," Ed says, pulling out his corkscrew, "they're supposed to."

"Ed-"

"That's Kraken to you, Bonnet."

Stede sighs. "What exactly are you doing?'

"What I got hired to do." Ed snaps as the cork pops out, "Client doesn't want the wine. Hates the stuff. Just doesn't want this guy to have it."

He upends the bottle and starts pouring it onto the flagstones.

"If you want a taste, now's your chance," he mutters, and Stede seems to be arguing with himself for all of a second before he's drawing his glass and holding it under the stream.

The wine trickles to a stop and Ed leans over the puddle carefully to place the smeared, empty bottle back in the open case.

"My," Stede says beside him, "that really is quite good. Want a taste?"

"Fuck off."

–-

The wine does actually taste really fucking good.

Ed's furious.

#bing bong #ofmd #our flag means death #fix it in post #set your sights #the writing is sloooooow rn team

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brigdh · 7 months

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WIP meme: Blackbeard Wife! I just discovered lay me down… and I *devoured* it. The character writing got me like a spike through the head (and the sex writing like a spike through the [redacted]). I would love to see any more that you're willing to post. Thank you <3 <3

The WIP meme!

Thank you so much, anon! :D I'm really pleased that you like it!

This is a bit from much later in the story, plot-wise. One of the reasons I haven't been updating lately is that I have a lot of individual scenes but not the structure to connect them, which is definitely the case here.

This is Stede meeting Calico Jack for the first time, who of course has shown up to cause trouble. (Also I might end up rewriting this because I'm not sure if these are the vibes I want for past Ed/Jack; I might end up going for a more of a Jack->Ed emphasis instead of this scene's Ed-> Jack.)

Stede’s left alone on his side of the table now, as Ed seems content to stay where he is even after the play-wrestling works its way to an end or, more likely, a temporary break. There’s something similar about Ed and Jack, Stede thinks as he watches them side by side, practically in one another’s lap. It’s not exactly physical, despite some similar tattoos and mannerisms; one’s light and one’s dark, and Jack doesn’t have Ed’s easy grace and dancer-like movements. If Ed is a big cat, Jack is a weasel, sly and tawdry and cruel. But they’re so in tune. Two predators, and Stede feels like an awkward, useless mouse, not even interesting enough to be prey.

Though Jack does keep glancing at him out of the corner of his eyes, too frequently for someone who otherwise is vocally disinterested in everything about Stede. He throws his own arm around Ed’s shoulders, pulls him close to talk directly into his ear. He doesn’t lower his voice, though, so Stede can hear every word.

“Hey, man, you wanna get out of here?”

For an instant, Ed keeps grinning, even tips his head closer to Jack’s so that his hair spills across his shoulder and mingles with Jack’s paler strands. Stede’s mind goes entirely blank. He feels frozen; literally there seems to be ice in his stomach, in his veins, freezing his thoughts in place so that reacting is a physical impossibility. Then Ed’s gaze slides across Stede’s, and Ed’s grin slips away. He removes his arm from Jack’s shoulders and pats his knee instead. “Nah, mate, I’m good.”

Jack glances at Stede again. “What, the wife won’t let you out to play? Never thought you’d put up with a ball and chain, Blackie.”

“It’s not like that, c’mon.”

“Sure.” Jack shifts, putting more space between him and Ed. Stede feels like he can breathe again, but Jack has his eyes fixed on Stede now. He leans forward, elbows on the table. “You know, Steve, Blackie here proposed to me one time.”

“Oh?” Stede is surprised into saying; it’s out before he sees Ed grimace and shake his head.

“Jack. Don’t.”

“Wanted to captain together. Stupid idea, how was that supposed to work – two captains on one ship?”

“I was drunk. I didn’t mean it,” Ed says, still mild, but he isn’t looking at Jack and even avoids Stede’s eyes when he tries to catch him.

“Hell, man, I was drunk too, and I still knew it was a terrible idea!” Jack laughs loudly, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, which are cold and still locked on Stede. “Told him if he wanted my dick that bad, he could come be first mate on my ship, but he didn’t go for that idea.”

“Fuck off.” The good humor is gone from Ed’s voice, replaced by something tight and brittle. It’s not mere embarrassment, and it’s not anger either, though that’s closer. Stede isn’t sure he recognizes what the emotion is, but he doesn’t like it on Ed.

“Nah, Blackie, remember, you told me some whole story about – what was it? Hood and Beavis and their consortship. The fuck sort of word’s consortship, anyway?”

“I’m not surprised you don’t know it,” Stede says, lifting his chin and putting his palms flat on the table. “Given that you’re clearly an idiot.”

“What?” Jack glances at Ed, like he might come to his defense.

“You turned down an offer to sail with Blackbeard, history’s most infamous pirate? That was the only opportunity you’ll ever get at greatness, Jack, and you were too stupid to take it. Hope you have a nice life, picking at the scraps Ed leaves behind.”

“Fuck you,” Jack spits, leaning over the table.

“No, fuck you,” Stede returns just as quickly. “You’re an illiterate, ignorant gutter-rat, and you’re too proud of your own petty meanness to realize it. You’re worse than a dog, because at least a dog knows how to be grateful to its betters.”

Jack’s right hand goes for the knife at his hip, and he plants the other on the table, ready to launch himself over it at Stede. Stede has just enough time to flinch backwards, wishing that maybe he had let Ed teach him a bit more about knife work, when Ed’s hand locks around Jack’s forearm and wrenches him back into his seat.

“No,” Ed says. He’s gone cool and still, eyes dark, the way he gets sometimes when Stede suddenly understands how one man can keep seven hundred islands in terror. Jack must know it too, because he stops struggling almost immediately.

“C’mon, Blackie,” he says, almost whining. “You gonna let him talk to me that way?”

Ed slides his gaze to Stede, studies him for a moment, then looks back to Jack. “Yeah,” he says, voice deceptively calm, as though he’s answering nothing more than a slightly curious question. “Looks like I am.”

He jerks his head and Stede stands up from the table, mouth dry and heartbeat rabbit-fast. Ed releases Jack’s arm, and Jack shrugs it back toward himself, reaching up to straighten his hair. Ed stands too, and puts a hand on Stede’s shoulder, turning him away to leave.

“Hey, man,” Jack calls after them. “You don’t gotta go! C’mon, don’t be like this.”

Stede glances over his shoulder, but Ed doesn’t, his hand a broad, solid weight between Stede’s shoulderblades as he continues leading him out of the tavern. Ed lifts a hand without looking back. “See you around, Jack.”

#meme

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dragonmuse · 2 years

Note

If inspiration strikes, I'd enjoy reading something with Jim, Frenchie, & Lucius (the possible S2 trio!) or something with Frenchie, Roach, & Pete (the RoP trio!). (I don't recall whether I already submitted this, as this would have been one of my initial ideas from months ago. So if I have, please dismiss this.)

(hahahahah *nervously stuffs unanswered asks behind them in pile* never worry about re-sending. I uh... look I'm trying my best, but things have gotten a little out of hand back here, so if you want to re-float something that's been sitting for more than six weeks or so, by all means. I do go digging in the back catalog sometimes, but you know. Things fall behind metaphorical filing cabinets etc)

“I’m going to end her entire life,” Lucius tried the door again, fruitlessly.

“It was an accident,” Frenchie reminded him. “...probably.”

“It was,” Jim was eying up the door with a determined look. “She was distracted.”

“Why does the lock even work this way?” Luicus groused, taking out his phone. “Who’s closest and has keys? She’s got to be halfway across town already. Asshole.”

The three of them had gone down to the basement that morning to start pulling out summer festival decorations. A good-natured squabble between Frenchie and Lucius over who was carrying what meant that they missed the sound of Eddy’s boots until they were right on top of them and then there had been the very distinctive sound of a propped door closing and a ‘snick’ of a lock. Then tread away and the backdoor closing. They hadn’t thought much about it because obviously no one would put a lock on the basement door that one couldn’t open from the other side.

The door (the basement as a whole) was a relatively new concept, so it wasn’t until a half-hour later that they had discovered that apparently that was a decision that had been made at some point.

So Eddy had locked them in together. There were worse places to be stuck. There was a bathroom and there were snacks in the kitchenette, but Lucius had had plans for the evening that involved being very far from the bar seeing as it was, for once, closed on Sunday. Because Eddy and Stede were taking a little trip and decided to gift everyone with a few days off. So cute. So sweet.

So fucking inconvenient right now because they were the closest key holders and were definitely on their way to gone.

“Does Pete have a set?” Frenchie asked doubtfully.

“No. love the man, but no one trusts him with security. What about Read?”

“She and Anne already left for upstate,” Jim frowned.

“Oh! Fang!” Lucius said hopefully and dialed his number. It ran a few times before giving over to voicemail. “Dear heart, if you get this in the next hour or so, please call back. Minor emergency, kisses!”

“That does not convey distress,” Jim rolled their eyes.

“I don’t want to worry him.”

“I’m worried,” Frenchie groaned. “At least a little.”

“Someone would come looking for us,” Lucius said staunchly.

“Yeah, but no one with keys,” Jim pointed out.

“Did you call Oluwande?”

“Doesn’t have keys. Turns his phone off when he’s volunteering.”

“Why?” Frenchie wrinkled his nose.

“Sets a good example for the kids not to be on the phone,” Jim repeated dutifully.

“Damn his good heart,” Frenchie laughed. “Well fuck. Roach doesn’t have keys either. Why does no one have keys?”

“I told you all I’d make copies years ago and none of you wanted them,” Lucius sat down on the stairs. “Fuck. Okay. I’ll text Pete so at least someone knows where we are.”

“Ask him to tell John if he’s up?” Frenchie sighed. “He’s still tanked from that bad shrimp last night, I bet.”

“Oh yeah,” Lucius’ nose wrinkled. “Yikes.”

Pete didn’t respond immediately and that left them just staring at each other.

“You know, I saw some board games in the back of the cupboard when we were pulling stuff out,” Frenchie mused. “Want to play?”

“We should be working on getting out of here,” Jim frowned.

“Okay, cool. Any ideas?” Frenchie lifted his eyebrows. “Cause I’d love to hear it.”

Lucius dropped his face into his hands. Jim sighed.

“Yeah, fine.”

The games must’ve been purchased by Stede for the kids then never made it to his place. They were brand new in the plastic. After some debate, they settled on Monopoly. Lucius took the top hat, Jim took the car and Frenchie was pleased with the thimble.

“So look,” Frenchie paid $200 to get out of jail. “I’m just saying Jim could probably fit through the window.”

“Maybe,” Jim frowned. “It’s locked too though.”

“What if we break it?” Lucius casually purchased another purple property. He kept his cards in a stack so it was hard to tell how many he had.

“The alarm will go off,” Frenchie pointed out.

“So?” Jim snorted. “Who cares?”

“I’d care more about you trying to skim through jagged glass.”

“No big deal.”

“Very big deal,” Lucius contended. “You’ll get bloody, I’ll faint and you still won’t have a key to get us out. We’re better off waiting for Pete to figure out a lockpick, if he ever gets back to me. What the hell is he even doing today anyway?”

Jim scooted the car down a few spaces. “I’ll buy the railroad.”

“Already own it,” Lucius held his hand out for cash. “Did we hit up the group text?”

“First thing. No one’s responded,” Frenchie sighed. “It’s not like that’s going to get any more attention than reaching out individually anyway. Maybe I could figure out a distress flat and hang it in the window.”

“So the alley rats can see?” Jim frowned and forked over cash.

“I’m going to have a snack,” Frenchie decided, landing on his own property. “Anyone else?”

They all ate hot cheetos in varying degrees of despondency, their silver pieces moving around the board. Lucius’ cash pile grew.

“You can’t own that,” Frenchie challenged, then deflated when Luicus showed him the card. “How?!”

“I kept buying stuff while the two of you were debating the window idea for the third time.”

“I think you’re cheating,” Jim decided.

“I mean, I’m not, but go off, I guess.”

“Any one want some music?” Frenchie asked.

“No,” Lucius and Jim said simultaneously.

“I’m going to kick your ass,” Jim informed Lucius.

“Good luck.”

Things got tenser after that. For a while, Jim rallied, but then Lucius reached a tipping point and houses started cascading down on properties. Frenchie was down to his last ten dollars and Jim was starting to try bargains with him about his mortgaged properties.

That’s when they heard voices and then some scraping noise.

“We’re down here!” Frenchie yelled getting to his feet. “For the love of all things holy, save me!”

“Save us,” Lucius amended.

“Fuck you two, I want out of this situation yesterday,” Frenchie undermined his vitriol by handing Jim his ten dollars and then vaulting up the stairs. “Hello!”

“Hey!” That was Pete, Lucius groaned with relief and got to his feet.

“Hey, your man came through,” Jim said approvingly.

“Yeah, would’ve been nice if he let me know that,” Lucius checked his still quiet phone. “....my battery died.”

“How are you so smart and so dumb at the same time?” Jim asked exasperated.

“It got knocked into the sink last week. Eddy again, actually. Battery hasn’t been right since,” he frowned. “Did I piss her off more than usual recently?”

“Nah, just distracted about the trip, I bet. She was excited to get away,”Jim reassured him, already packing up the bits of paper. After a pause, Lucius helped them, between of the two of them getting all tucked away just as the door finally yawned open.

“Luc?”

“Izzy?” Lucius head flew up, then just to Jim. “...hide me.”

“No. Why?”

“He’s gonna be annoyed that I didn’t call him.”

“...why didn’t you call him? He’s a great lockpick.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because you’re both as dumb as each other,” Izzy concluded for them, already at the bottom of the stairs. “You enjoying it down here or can we go? I set off the alarm.”

“I have the code, it’s okay,” Lucius sighed. “Thanks for coming.”

“Pete was worried you’d all resort to cannibalism before an actual locksmith showed up,” Izzy glanced at Jim. “I wasn’t sure he was most worried about, but I figured it was 50/50.”

“Could’ve been me!” Frenchie called from the top of the stairs.

Lucius and Jim exchanged a look, then headed silently back up after him.

“It could!” Frenchie protested. “I’m the most stringy anyway. Lucius has the most meat.”

“See, that’s the kind of statement that gets you eaten first,” Lucius said dryly, then beamed at Pete. “Thanks for calling the calvary, babe!”

“Yeah, of course,” Pete hugged him. “You okay?”

“He’s a cheating cheater,” Jim informed him.

“Monopoly,” Lucius explained.

“Oh yeah, no,” Pete pulled a face. “That’s on our banned games list.”

“You have a list?” Izzy did something to the lock (it would never really work right again, but Lucius wasn’t going to rat him out when Stede demanded to know who had broken it).

“Oh yeah,” Frenchie nodded.

“Wait, you knew he cheated at it?” Jim demanded.

“He doesn’t cheat! He’s just really good at it and a sore winner.”

“I can’t help if you suck,” Lucius mimed tossing his hair, before going to disarm the alarm and call the security company.

“I’m going to lock him back down there,” Jim decided.

“Not today,” Izzy gave them a look. “I have tickets.”

“I’ll wait until he least expects it,” they said darkly. Pete and Izzy exchanged a look, then shrugged. Sometimes you had to let people try their luck with Lucius. They even won sometimes.

“What other games are the list?” Izzy asked.

“Risk,” Frenchie and Pete said at the same time.

“Who plays fucking Risk anyway?”

“How can he good at that when he can’t even learn poker?”

“Mystery for the ages,” Pete agreed. “I took John’s car over, you want a ride home Frenchie? Jim?”

“Please,” Frenchie beamed.

“Yeah, okay.” Jim sighed. “Why am I tired?”

“Stressful stuff,” Pete shrugged.

“All set!” Lucius chirped from the backdoor. “Iz, are we going?”

“Yes, pup.”

Lucius locked up behind them. Just as he was closing it, his phone jumped back to life with a ring.

“Possessed battery,” he grumbled and answered.

“Lucius! The alarm is going off!” Stede cried over the phone. “Can you go down and take a look at it?”

“Already handled,” he rolled his eyes. “Maybe ask your asshole spouse why they didn’t check no one was home before they locked the door.”

“You’re on speaker,” Eddy drawled.

“Good,” Lucius bit back. “What is wrong with you? I told Stede we’d be there.”

“Oh. I may have forgotten to mention?” Stede was probably grimacing.

“And what happened to ‘I hear all’?” Lucius pushed on. “I thought you never missed a trick, Eddy?”

“Dunno,” they said untroubled. “Ooops?”

The phone disappeared from Lucius’ hand. Jim hit speaker. “Eddy.”

“Oh no,” Eddy said, suddenly very subdue.

“Oh yes,” they hissed.

“I’m sorry?”

“You will be.” Jim’s grin was very disconcerting and you could definitely hear it in their voice. “Enjoy your vacation.”

“My love, what do you think about extending our trip indefinitely?”

“Sorry, honey, I do actually want to continue living in the city.”

“....fine.”

“Bye.” Jim hung up and handed the phone back to Lucius before stalking off down the alley.

“That was hot!” He yelled after them, then giggled when they flipped him off.

He felt better already.

#leda house and the kraken verse #ficlet #jim jimenez #lucius black #frenchie chery

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