Chapter Text
Stede always used to be a heavy sleeper.
He still is, compared to Edward and his men. (He doesn’t like to call them Edward’s crew, because that suggests that they aren’t all part of the same crew, but he has to call them something, because even settling in as well as they are, they’re still so very different from the men - and otherwise - that he’d chosen for himself).
Edward can go from sleeping to waking in a heartbeat, and from what he’s seen, Fang and Ivan are much the same.
Izzy... Well, Stede has decided that perhaps discretion really is the better part of valour, and he’s been keeping out of Izzy’s way as much as he can. But he can’t imagine the man has ever had a lie-in in his entire life. He’d probably sneer at the very concept.
So yes, Stede is aware that the concept is entirely relative, but compared to how he’d been on land, he sleeps a lot lighter, wakes a lot easier, than he used to.
It’s strange; once upon a time, he’d have thought that a mark of unhappiness, but really it has nothing to do with his emotional state at all. Whether he falls asleep in the first place, that is dependent on how he feels, but waking easily is just an adjustment he’s had to make to the different rhythms of life on the ocean wave.
So when Edward slips out of his arms before the sun is even half up, of course it wakes him. He’s not going to actually get up unless he’s needed, but he opens his eyes a little, just to check everything is alright.
Edward is pacing, almost silent on his bare feet but still with all the restless energy of a caged tiger, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, as though he were thinking of hitting something.
He doesn’t look like himself. Or possibly he looks too much like himself. He doesn’t look like the gentle smiling man Stede loves, the one who’s endlessly fascinated with the world, wants to learn everything and anything Stede can think to show him.
He looks like the man who burned a ship with all hands still on board and sat and watched the flames.
Stede’s not as stupid as people always seem to think he is. He knows that the Edward he loves, the Edward the crew gets to see, can’t be the Edward he presented to the world before. That can’t be the man who earned Blackbeard’s terrifying reputation. But that knowledge has mostly been... well, academic, he supposes. A fact he knew but rarely gave any thought to.
He’s giving it thought now.
He’s nauseatingly certain that the man prowling up and down his cabin, the man who keeps shooting quick furtive glances at the pistols hanging up in their holsters on the little hook Stede had had Frenchie put up for them, answers to the name of Blackbeard, and Blackbeard alone.
He’d thought he understood. Ed had all but told him that Blackbeard was just a persona, a role he played when it was convenient to do so, and he’d accepted it without question. Now he finds himself wondering, is any man that good of an actor? Is any man capable of spending more than half his life playing a role without it becoming at least a little bit real?
And, less philosophical and more immediately worrying, what happens if, instead of taking the time to separate from that role slowly and completely, the man in question were instead to up and decide to just squash that part of himself down and not talk about it.
He doesn’t know the answer for sure, of course, he’s never been in that position himself, but he suspects the answer would be...
It would wound him deeply, because Blackbeard is a truth made of violence and sharp edges. And then those wounds would sit untreated in the warm damp of his new life, until they began to fester.
He clears his throat, something small and deniable in case Edward - Blackbeard - doesn’t want to be interrupted, but the effect is immediate.
Edward stops pacing. His fists unclench. The muscles of his neck and arms relax, but his shoulders come up like he’s bracing for a blow.
“Stede! Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you, mate. Just... Just the knee, you know, needed to stretch it out a bit.”
It’s not the first time Ed’s lied to him, but it feels especially important this time.
“Ed...”
“I’ll just, er, I’ll just go take a turn around the deck, yeah? Save me keeping you up with my pacing. You go back to sleep.”
“Ed, what’s-“
“Nothing’s wrong! Nothing, just my knee, you know. I’ll be back in a bit, yeah?”
He sounds almost desperate, like he thinks Stede will keep him here against his will, but more importantly, he sounds, more or less, like Edward, rather than Blackbeard.
Like he’s desperately fighting to be Edward.
Stede doesn’t know what else he can do, so he just nods, and tries not to think too much about the fact that Ed picks up his knife from the little table by the door on his way out.
The whole incident is troubling, and raises questions he’d rather not think about, but he tells himself that it had been a flight of fancy.
It had probably been the pain from his bad leg that had made Edward look so uncharacteristically dark and dangerous.
He isn’t used to sharing a bed with someone, he’d admitted as much in that first week after they’d reunited. He’d probably just fled because he didn’t know that interrupting one another’s sleep sometimes was just part and parcel of... well, not married life, obviously, but something like it.
He’d probably picked up his knife out of long habit, not out of any kind of violent impulse.
Stede doesn’t have any actual evidence that there is something wrong, after all, only his own gut instinct, and however much he loves him, he hasn’t actually known Ed all that long. It’s entirely possible his gut instinct is just wrong.
Except it happens again a week later, and again a few days after that, and it keeps happening, until Stede’s treasuring the mornings when he wakes up next to Edward even more than he already did, because they’re so few and far between. It keeps happening until Ed has dark circles under his eyes from spending his nights pacing instead of sleeping. Until Stede’s making plans to have a proper case made for Edward’s pistols, so they’ll be out of sight, because the way Blackbeard’s eyes linger on them terrifies him.
Eventually, after nearly 2 months, it gets so bad that Stede does the one thing he never thought he’d do. The one thing that hurts his pride more than almost anything else could.
He asks Israel Hands for help.
Edward’s up in the rigging. He’s been spending more and more time up there, despite his bad leg. As far as Stede can tell, he’s not actually doing anything useful, just avoiding people, but for once, he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t think Ed would approve of what Stede is planning.
Lucius minds, extremely vocally, but he reluctantly agrees to pass the message on to Izzy.
If he was trying to be really diplomatic, Stede probably ought to approach Izzy himself, preferably on neutral ground, but he has the feeling he’s going to need every advantage he can get.
Besides which, Izzy is definitely more comfortable with formal lines of command, and maybe if he presents this in a way Izzy doesn’t hate, they’ll get through this with 0 ears cut off, and without Izzy trying to leave again.
If it were up to Stede, Izzy choosing to leave and finding a ship of his own would be a definite win, but he knows Edward would be completely horrified at the very idea of it.
Edward almost never disagrees with Stede, not really. They’ll discuss things sometimes - what to have for tea, what book to read to the crew for their next bedtime story, that sort of thing - but not real disagreements. But when Stede had tentatively suggested that, given everything that had happened over the last few months, maybe someone else should be named first mate, Edward hadn’t even considered the idea.
“Either Izzy’s my first mate, or he’s dead,” Edward had said, a hard note in his voice that Stede had never heard directed at him before, not even when he’d first caught back up to the Revenge. “You prepared to kill him, Stede?”
Stede had admitted that no, he was not prepared to kill the man in cold blood, and that had been that. Stede hadn’t dared to bring the subject up again.
Mostly, it works quite well. Izzy takes charge of all the complicated nautical parts of sailing that Stede isn’t entirely au fait with (yet) and Edward doesn’t seem especially interested in, and despite his lack of people-management skills, he manages to keep the ship moving. But Stede is uncomfortably aware that it works, in large part, because Stede and Izzy avoid one another whenever possible, and avoid ever making eye contact when it isn’t.
Now here he is, sitting in his cabin pretending that there’s nothing noteworthy about the fact that he’s waiting to have an emotionally fraught conversation with an incredibly angry, impressively heavily armed, man who hates him.
There must be something they have in common. For all things have gone badly between them lately, Edward clearly likes and respects Izzy, and since he likes and respects Stede as well, there must be some point where the Venn diagram of their personalities overlap, although Stede can’t begin to imagine what it might be.
Either Izzy doesn’t know which Captain has sent for him, or his natural sense of decorum is strong enough to overcome even his lack of respect for Stede. The rap at the door, when it comes, is sharp and military, and the “You wanted to see me, Captain?” could almost be called respectful.
Getting up to answer the door seems, to Stede, the polite thing to do. But perhaps not quite the thing for setting a man like Israel Hands, who is such a stickler for things like clearly delineated hierarchies, at his ease. “Come in.”
Izzy does, closing the door behind him. He takes exactly two steps into the room before stopping at a sort of parade rest, cane held rigidly at his side and eyes fixed on a point of wall somewhere above Stede’s head, and says, “What do you want, Bonnet?”
Well, he’d called Stede Captain out where the others might hear him. That was an improvement, at least.
“I...” Stede had been intending to say ‘I need your help’, but now he’s faced with the intensely angry reality of the man, the words won’t come. They feel too much like admitting weakness. “There is a matter upon which I would appreciate you casting your more experienced eye, Mr Hands,” he says instead, which isn’t much better, really.
Izzy says nothing, but he doesn’t immediately turn and leave, so Stede decides to take that as acquiescence, and plunges on into the deeper waters. “It’s about Edward. He’s been... not quite himself, lately.”
“He’s not been himself since the day he first heard your name,” Izzy says bitterly, and then adds almost as an afterthought, “worms take you.”
Stede decides that letting that go is the only way they’re going to make progress, and says carefully, “that’s not exactly what I meant. He’s not sleeping. I’m sure he’s not eating enough. He’s been spending more and more time up in the rigging or the crow’s nest, avoiding people. And he’s been... He gets up in the night, when he thinks I’m asleep, and he paces about like a caged animal.”
“That’ll happen when you force the greatest pirate who ever lived to pretend to be a namby-pamby milksop fucking aristocrat.” Izzy says aristocrat like it’s the worst insult he can think of, which is almost impressive, given some of the invective Stede has heard come out of his mouth.
“I’m not forcing-!” He stops, takes a breath. “I am fully aware that you think me a fool, Mr Hands, but I hope that you do not make the mistake of thinking me callous. You may dislike me, you may dislike my relationship with Edward, but never for one moment doubt that I... That I care. For him.”
He’s never said that out loud before, at least not to anyone except Ed himself and Mary, and even if they’d made a pretty poor hash of marriage, admitting the truth to his wife (widow) was still an entirely different prospect than admitting it to Israel Hands.
Does the man disapprove of men who- who love other men? It would explain why he’s been quite so adamantly against Bonnet’s place in Edward’s life from the first, and his dislike for Lucius. But this is hardly the first time Edward has, well, taken up with a man, so to speak, and Izzy had stuck with him through all of that.
“I love him, Israel. I know you wish I wouldn’t, but I do, and he has made it quite clear that he loves me in return. I am going to be a part of his life, however much you might wish otherwise. That has been proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, I would hope. Right now, it is time to put away your feelings on the matter and concentrate on Edward. You may dislike that it was me who brought this to your attention, but I do not believe you to be the sort of man who would see a mate hurting and do nothing to help.”
“I don’t have mates,” Izzy spat. “This is a pirate ship, not a fucking dame school, you ignorant fop.”
“Well, really, that’s hardly—“
“I can fix him.”
“Ah—What?”
“I can fix him. Blackbeard. I know what it is he needs. But he won’t accept it unless he thinks you’re okay with it.”
“Alright, well, what is it you think he needs?”
“I don’t think. I know. And it’s none of your concern. I just need you to say you authorise me to fix him, so when Edward asks, I don’t have to lie to him. I’ll do it either way, because he’s my Captain and unlike some cunts around here I know what the fuck loyalty means, but you’ll send him into a tack if he figures out I lied, and best case then is he only feeds me another body part.”
“Another...?! And what does tacking have to do with anything?!”
For the first time, possibly in their entire acquaintance, Izzy Hands looks genuinely discomforted. “Edward, he has... moods. First mate’s job is anticipating their captain’s needs, and that’s easier if’n I know what mood he’s in.”
“So you named them?”
Izzy shrugs, a startlingly casual gesture coming from such a tightly buttoned up man, and says nothing.
“A tack is bad?”
“Better’n a wear, but not by much,” Izzy admits, grudgingly, like Stede is forcing the truth out of him. “Tack is down, wear is up, run is normal. Or as normal as he ever gets.”
“Surely a wear should be good, then? If it means he’s feeling good, and...”
“A wear is going to be what kills him, when death finally catches up to the bastard.” Izzy sounds more fatalistic than saddened by the thought. “A wear means a dozen ideas a day, all of them stupider and riskier than the last, and no way of making him listen when you tell him no. When he’s tacking, he’s fucking useless, but at least he’s not actively trying to get anyone killed. Only thing worse than him wearing ship is when he’s in irons, and you have to worry about him throwing himself overboard.”
“Which is this, then?”
“Oh.” Izzy startles a little and then shakes his head. “None of them. This is... something else. But it’ll send him into a wear if I don’t do anything, and into a tack if he finds out I’ve done it without your say so.”
“But what...”
“I told you, Bonnet, that’s none of your concern. All you’ve got to do is say “see too it, Mr Hands,” and keep your mouth shut if Edward asks you about it. Understand?”
He doesn’t, not even slightly, but he... Well, despite everything, even despite Izzy selling them out to the British, he trusts Izzy to have what he believes to be Ed’s best interests at heart. “I’d be much more comfortable with all this if you’d actually tell me what’s going on,” he says, and sighs when Izzy doesn’t even look at him, eyes still fixed on a point a few inches above Stede’s head. “Very well. See to it, Mr Hands.”
Ed doesn’t even bother getting into bed that night. As soon as Stede starts to undress, he mutters something about his leg and disappears out of the door. Stede hears his footsteps, distinctive because of the unevenness caused by the brace, heading out onto the deck.
Stede lies alone in bed and tries to tell himself he’s not worried. It doesn’t work.
There’s no one else there to see him, no one to tell him he’s being a [“namby-pamby milksop fucking aristocrat”] so he allows himself to hug one of the pillows to his chest for comfort.
It smells of the coconut oil Ed likes to rub into his beard, which somehow both helps and makes everything ten times worse simultaneously.
He falls into a fitful sleep at some point around dawn, wakes up what feels like only a few minutes later to Ed pressing whiskery kisses to the sliver of his chest left exposed by the open neck of his nightshirt. It would be an extremely pleasant way to wake up, if the whole idea of waking up at all after so short a time asleep wasn’t quite so horrible.
He forces himself to open one bleary eye, takes in the softeness of Ed’s expression, the way he’s making eye contact without even a hint of a wince, the lack of restless twitching, and lets out a breath.
Whatever else he might be, clearly Izzy is a man of his word, on the subject of Ed, if no other.
“You look better,” he manages, the words coming out soft and a little slurred.
“I feel better,” Ed admits, smiling down at him. “I really... Thank you. Iz told me you’d talked to him. I didn’t think you’d—Well. Thank you.”
The question of what, exactly, Izzy had done to bring Ed back to an even keel is suddenly a lot more pressing than it had seemed yesterday. He knows that smile on Ed’s face, knows it intimately, has had the honour of being the cause of it on a great many occasions. Normally it’s one of his favourite things, but right now it’s making him feel like the bottom has dropped out of his stomach. “Did you...” He doesn’t have the words for this, make-love is too emotionally charged, and bugger sounds too much like he’s revolted, even though he is, a bit. “Did you fuck him?”
“What? No, course not.” The way he says it sounds more like a ‘not this time’ than a ‘I’d never do that’.
“Have you ever?”
Ed looks at him thoughtfully for a long time and then puts his hand on Stede’s hip and squeezes gently. “Don’t think he’d want me to answer that.”
That’s not a no. That’s very definitely not a no, oh God. Ed and Izzy have... He has the sudden nauseating thought that he’s what the town gossips back home would have called ‘the other woman’. Christ alive. No wonder Izzy hates him so much.
“Oh. Oh God, Ed, I didn’t—And you—You and him were—and we-“
“Woah, hey, no, slow down. It’s not like that. He wasn’t my... It’s not like we were married or anything. It’s never been romantic between us. We don’t... Just when I need it, you know? Like the last couple of weeks. Maybe sometimes when he needs it, too. Nothing... regular.”
If Stede wasn’t a coward, he’d ask him what exactly they did. But if he does, he’ll have to admit that he just told Izzy to take care of it without even bothering to find out what that meant, and if it does mean what he thinks it means then... He doesn’t think they’ve been back together long enough for that conversation, so he just nods and tries to look like he’s not panicking about it on the inside.
He will admit, cornering Izzy on the stairs down to the hold and demanding, “did you fuck Edward?!” might not have been his finest moment.
He’s still not sure it warrants Izzy laughing at him quite this much, though.
He’s never actually seen Izzy laugh before. He wonders how many people have, or at least, how many people have and lived to tell the tale. The answer probably isn’t zero, but he suspects it’s depressingly close.
It’s real laughter, too, not just a mean spirited chuckle, this is leaning on the wall, face going red, can’t draw a full breath because he’s laughing too hard, belly laughter.
It’s the most normal thing he’s ever seen Izzy Hands do, and it’s absolutely terrifying, so wildly out of character that he has no idea how he’s supposed to react. Does he wait him out? Join in, even though he doesn’t know what the joke is? Just turn on his heel and walk away?
Just as he decides that perhaps a strategic retreat is the only safe option, Izzy hiccups something like a full breath, wipes his eyes on the back of his hand, and says, “Fucking hell, Bonnet.”
“I don’t... well, I don’t see why that was so funny, actually.”
“No, of course you fucking don’t.” How does a man go from laughing to angry that quickly? It cannot possibly be healthy. “If you did, Ed wouldn’t be so...”
“So what?”
“Doesn’t matter. None of my business.”
“And here I thought everything that happened on this ship was your personal business, Mr Hands,” Stede snaps, rather sharper than he intends, but the implication, however quickly cut off, that Ed’s... that Ed being so out of sorts might have been his fault cuts deeper than the worst insult could have. “You’ve certainly never held back from sticking your nose into our relationship before.”
He doesn’t actually see Izzy draw the knife, which is impressive, but doesn’t seem particularly important compared to the fact that the tip of it is pressing into his skin, under his eye.
He has the absurd thought that it’s the exact same spot as Izzy’s tattoo, that if he leaves a scar there, they’ll match. It’s almost certainly just the panic talking, trying to distract him, that old well-worn instinct that tells him if he pretends everything is fine, that will somehow make it true.
It’s never worked, not once in his entire life, but old habits are hard to break.
“I’ve always wondered about that tattoo,” he says, his voice coming out too loud and too bright. “The one under your eye, I mean. Why just a cross and not...” In his mind he sees the Act of Grace, his own signature, and next to it- “Oh. Oh God, is that... Is it his...?”
“If you didn’t belong to him, I’d gut you right here,” Izzy growls. “Leave you to die slow and messy. You understand me?”
“Ah, yes, yes I understand, but I’m not, I mean, it’s not about belonging. I’m not his pet. I suppose it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that we belong together, but it’s really not… well, love isn’t about ownership.”
“Everything’s about ownership in the end,” Izzy says, and finally pulls his knife away from Stede’s face. “Only reason you think otherwise is you’ve been the one doing the owning.”
“Is that why— it is Ed’s mark, isn’t it? Under your eye?”
Izzy looks at him, slow and thoughtful, and then smiles like he’s just thought of a really nasty joke. “You want to see the brand as well?”
Stede can feel his eyes getting very wide, knows he probably looks every bit as naïve and out of his depth as Izzy thinks him, but honestly, how the hell else is he supposed to react? “Have you really...”
“Ask your precious Edward,” Izzy says, and shoulders past him to the ladder, leaving Stede feeling even more confused and worried than he had been to start with.
A Captain should endeavour to never appear less than fully in control before his crew, but if a man can’t be honest with his chronicler, who can he? That’s what Stede wants to know.
He finds Lucius sitting on the forecastle, leaning on the rail and watching Fang and Jim arm-wrestling over a crate on the deck below with, if Stede is any judge, a certain amount of prurient interest.
Not so much interest that he does more than grumble when Stede tells him he needs him in his cabin.
Ed, at the wheel discussing something with Buttons, looks down and catches Stede’s eye, silently asking if he’s needed, but when Stede shakes his head, he shrugs easily and goes back to his conversation.
Lucius shuts the door of the Captains’ cabin behind him with a certain air of finality, and then leans back against it, and says “are you alright, Captain?” in a tone of voice that tells Stede he must look every bit as shaken as he feels.
“I... I really don’t know,” he admits.
“Okay. Going to need a bit more information than that to work with. What’s going on?”
“Do you want a port?” Stede’s not sure drinking in his current state is a terribly good idea, but it’s definitely better than being sober.
“Oh God, that bad? Yes, yes, definitely give me alcohol before you tell me whatever’s got you so spooked.”
Stede nods helplessly and pours out two glasses of port. He’d take something stronger, if he had it, but he and Ed had finished off the last of the good brandy, and Roach had used the less good stuff in a sauce.
The sauce had been delicious, but Stede’s regretting it now.
“Edward can’t write,” he begins, and then stops, and says, “I don’t know if I should be telling you this.”
“Who the hell else are you going to tell?” Lucius says, practically. “It’s me or Olu, and you know it.”
That’s really not the way a seaman should be talking to his captain, but Stede lets it slide because he’s having a very strange day. And because it’s true. He likes all of his crew, of course, a fine body of men - and otherwise - but they’re not necessarily the chaps one would think of first when in need of sound advice. Especially not of the... romantic variety.
“Edward can’t write,” he starts again, taking a mouthful of port to steady his nerves. “When we were captured by the British, he signed his name with an x. And just now I had reason to speak to Iz- to First Mate Hands. And... Well, you tell me. Have you ever noticed the tattoo on his face? The one just under his right eye?”
“Oh, you mean the little... x... Oh my God. You think it’s Blackbeard’s...? Oh wow. Did you, um, ask Blackbeard about it?”
“No, I, ah, I asked Mr Hands, actually.”
“And he let you live?! Wow. Okay, well, don’t leave me in suspense here! What did he say?”
“He... You know, I’m not sure I can actually say it out loud.”
“Okay, well now I absolutely have to know. Have some more port, it’ll help.”
He tops off Stede’s glass, and despite it being good enough to be worth savouring, Stede downs the entire thing in one go, and says in a rush, “he asked if I wanted to see the brand as well.”
“For real? Wow, that is... really kinky. I can’t believe he was getting down on me for having sex with Pete when he’s been letting his lover tattoo their name on his face. Um.” He goes pale, like the words he’s said have only just registers and adds quickly, “not lover, obviously, I didn’t mean lover, I just... Ex-lover?”
“They did... something last night,” Stede says. He feels like he’s drowning, which is ridiculous when he’s on a boat, but how else to describe the way he suddenly can’t draw a breath?
He doesn’t realise he’s crying, until Lucius says, “oh you poor thing,” and pulls him into a hug.
He’s always thought of Lucius as rather a hard-edged sort of person, prickly and not much inclined to honest emotion, but he hugs Stede like he really means it, warm and comforting, one hand stroking Stede’s back, and Stede feels everything that’s been wound tight inside him unravel and melt into tears.
He’s always been a believer in putting a brave face on things, but it feels good to cry.
“I’m going to skin him,” Lucius says, viciously, against his hair. “Both of them. I’m going to skin both of them. Jim and Roach will definitely help, if I tell them...”
“No, no,” Stede forces himself to sit up, even though he’d really much rather have stayed in Lucius’s arms. “No, it wasn’t like that. They, well, Ed at least, think I told them to.”
Lucius raises a single, disbelieving eyebrow. “Blackbeard thinks you told him to fuck his ex, the same ex who has Blackbeard’s signature tattooed on his face?!”
“I didn’t know about that then! I didn’t know... I’m explaining this very badly.”
“Well, you’re understandably upset,” Lucius says. “I think you’d better start from the beginning, don’t you?”
“Yes. Yes, you’re right, of course. None of this must ever leave this room though, you understand that?”
“Captain, if I started talking about Blackbeard’s sex life behind his back, Izzy would literally murder me. I might be a gossip, but I’m not suicidal."
He’d have been more comfortable if Lucius had said he wouldn’t do it because it would be wrong, but that will have to do, he supposes. “Right, yes. Well, Edward has been... not himself, lately.”
“Out of sorts not himself, or feeding people their toes not himself?”
“The first one. I think.” Lucius really does have an impressively violent imagination, even for a pirate. Feeding someone their own toes, of all things.
“Not the reassuring answer I was hoping for. Go on.”
“Well, he’s been... sort of restless, I supposed. Started spending half the night pacing around the cabin instead of sleeping. Sometimes more than half. He’d pretend he was alright when I asked, but, well, I mean a man can tell when his...”
“Main squeeze?”
“When his lover is lying to him.”
“Okay, and that’s when you told him to have sex with Izzy?”
“No! No, I just, well, I thought since Mr Hands has known him longer than any of us, he might have some insight. And he did, of a sort. He told me that unless the problem was dealt with, it would get worse, and that he knew how to fix it, but when I asked him how, he refused to tell me. But I, well, I didn’t know what else to do. He said he needed my permission, that Ed would only accept his help if he believed I had approved it, and I didn’t have any other options, so I said yes.”
“Not to cast aspersions, Captain, but what the hell did you think he was going to do, exactly?”
“I don’t know! Talk some sense into him, I suppose. I thought maybe he felt my name would make it carry more weight. I didn’t think I was giving them permission to... But when Ed came back to the cabin, it seemed like he’d been— He has a, a very particular smile, one he only wears after... And I couldn’t just tell him I’d said yes without finding out what I was agreeing to! I did say yes, and I don’t want him to feel like he’s done something wrong, but...
“I asked him if he and Izzy had... If they had committed certain- certain carnal acts. He said no, and I believe him, but from the way he said it, I think they have in the past. So then I tried to talk to Izzy, to Mr Hands, I mean, about it, and...”
“He threatened to kill you?”
“Yes, but first he, well, he laughed. Harder than I’ve ever seen him laugh.”
“I’ve literally never seen him laugh.”
“Well, no, now that you mention it, nor had I before today. He laughed till he nearly cried, and when I said I didn’t understand what was so funny, he said that— that me not knowing was the reason Ed was out of sorts in the first place. I don’t even know what that means! I just... Oh God, Lucius, I made a complete hash of my marriage, and I’m afraid I’m doing it again, and I don’t know what to do!”
“Hey, hey, calm down. We’ll figure this out, okay? Trust me, this isn’t even close to the most complicated relationship drama I’ve had to deal with in my life. Seems to me there’s three things you need to know. Firstly, what was wrong with Blackbeard, secondly, what the hell is going on with him and Izzy, and thirdly, what they did last night. Does that sound about right?”
There’s something rather reassuring about hearing the whole messy business broken down into simple questions like that. “Yes.”
“Okay, well, the last one you’re going to have to get out of either Blackbeard or Izzy, because there’s no way either of them will tell anyone else, but the first two I can help with. Fang and Ivan have been with him for years, not so long as Izzy maybe, but they must know something.”
“They can’t know why—“
“Don’t worry. They won’t have any idea it’s you I’m asking for, I promise.”
“Cross your heart?”
Lucius doesn’t laugh at him, and Stede thinks to himself that he’s really rather a dear, underneath all the sarcasm. "Cross my heart and hope to die.”
“Thank you.”
“Any time. I mean that. This is the most interesting thing that’s happened in months. But Captain, while I’m doing that, there’s something I need you to do.”
“Talk to Ed?”
“What? Oh no, not yet. You definitely need more information before you tackle that minefield. No, I need you to think about whether you want your relationship to be monogamous.”
“You want me to ask whether I... Of course I do! I love him!”
“Yeah, and that’s totally fine if that’s your answer. I just think you should think about it a bit before jumping to any conclusions. No harm in thinking, yeah? If you want him all to yourself, that’s totally cool, but it’s also fine if you don’t. It doesn’t mean you love him any less if you decide you’re okay with sharing, or if you decide that you’d be open to finding a second person for yourself. It’s just thinking, you don’t have to make any decisions. You shouldn’t, in fact, not until you’ve talked it over with him. But I think maybe we know his answer, so it seems like you should spend some time figuring out your own, yeah?”
“But doesn’t that... I mean, if I were to— or if I let him— doesn’t that mean that we, you know, don’t...”
“Doesn’t mean anything, Captain. Everyone’s relationship is different. Me and Pete aren’t exclusive. I love that man, but for me, that doesn’t mean I stop looking at other people, and it doesn’t mean that he does either, and that works for us. But if you decide that doesn’t work for you, that’s cool too. I just think you should take the time to make sure it’s actually what you want, and not just what you think you’re supposed to want.”
“And that’s... allowed?”
“Welcome to the wonderful world of queer,” Lucius tells him with a grin. “Where anything’s allowed, so long as it’s not hurting someone else. You can shack up with another man, I can sleep with everyone I want, Jim can be themself, Oluwande can be in love with someone who’s not a man or a woman, Izzy can do... whatever the hell his thing turns out to be. We’re pirates, for God’s sake! If we can steal and murder and kidnap people, why the hell shouldn’t we also get to be our favourite selves?”
“Don’t you mean best selves?”
“No, I don’t. My whole life I’ve been told some variant of ‘be your best self’ and what they meant, every time, was pretend you’re not attracted to men, was get married, have kids, settle down, get a serious job. It was ‘do all the things that’ll make you fucking miserable because who you really are makes me uncomfortable’. So no, fuck that. Fuck other people’s ideas of what’s best. I’m going to be my favourite self, and you should too.”