ninetoes | Noctium Inbox

An apology from Edward Teach. As rare as cut sapphires and far more priceless. If only it weren't like this. If it weren't happening like this. If it didn't feel like some...hail mary.

He casts Stede a forlorn look, feeling more confused and helpless than ever. It doesn't stop the anger, but confusion becomes the stronger emotion as he watches Edward retreat and take his place by the piano.

And his violin.

The violin he'd come to collect. God knows he doesn't own anything else important. But that.. that one single thing was important enough to come back for and risk this very encounter. It's too nice an item to let it be cast into the water, even if he might deserve it.

Izzy swallows hard and thinks for a moment on who they used to be. Those young, stupid boys working like dogs while they cast their great dreams to the stars. Who knew they could knuckle through for a little longer, just a little bit longer, until the time was right and they'd know freedom of their own. For real. Together.

They've done terrible things. For each other. To each other. Especially to each other.

But he wouldn't change a thing if it meant losing everything. He'd do it all again.

Maybe that's what's really wrong with him. Maybe that's why he doesn't deserve this change. Why he can't trust it's validity.

"You could have told me." he says and hates the breathless note in which it comes out. "Had it occurred to you, that I meant it too? That I have always meant it?"

It's more than that, though, isn't it. There is so much more. So many things and he can barely articulate anything as they all shoot forward to be counted.

"When did we stop being them?" He asks and glances to the instruments. When did it all go wrong?

That's just the thing: for the first time in their entire lives, they are offered that freedom. For real. They don't have to work for it any longer. They don't have to run. They don't have to scrape by and pretend to be the things they're not. That's what Ed has been trying to tell Izzy this whole time, and just failing again and again to get his point across.

"Iz..." he answers, shaking his head. He couldn't have told him. He couldn't have ever told him before now. He knows that as a fact and refuses to go down that rabbit hole of thought, of what-ifs and regrets. There’s no point, now. The longer they linger on the past, the more they'll be hurt by it. Edward isn't naive enough to think that they'll never have to talk through things but he knows they're not going to tackle it all in one night.

His fingers slip under the bow, tucked in the case beside the violin. He flicks it about idly like he might a sword as he moves back across the room to where Izzy is stood, then presses the tip of it to his chest.

"Dunno. But I'd like to learn who you are now, if you're willing enough to learn who I am in return."

It's impossible not to follow the motions of the bow in Ed's hand, half scared he might break it, half scared he might lob it across the room.

Even more scary is the question that comes posed.

Not so much the learning Edward part, though that does come with a whole new set of challenges. Difficult ones. Ones he has been actively fighting against for ages now... but the other part.

Izzy wets his lips and swallows hard. The flames lapping between his fingers dull and extinguish before he folds his arms over his chest. This is pathetic and he knows it. He feels small and he knows it. But since they're here...

"I don't know-" his voice creaks. He doesn't mean it. It's embarrassing. All of this is embarrassing, especially with a witness.

"I don't know who I'm meant I'm meant to be, anymore. When so much of who I am was who you were."

He'll take it. At least Izzy isn't spitting venom anymore, and that was half the battle.

The bow remains trained on him as Edward closes the gap between them. He wants Izzy to take it. A sort of symbolic acceptance, and so his positioning of it changes as he approaches, an offering instead of a threat. The olive branch, let's say.

"Still him, Iz. Still did all the work that got us to this point. That ain't going away. I just don't wanna be locked into a box anymore, you know?" he replies casually, "Still need a first mate if I'm gonna make this ocean mine. But I'd much rather make it ours." He looks at Stede through the side of his eyes for a moment, a hopeful little smirk on his lips. "Right?"

Stede's open hand, offered up a second time, curls back in on itself, and he can only watch, tortured, as Ed and Izzy trade barbs, as the temperature gets measurably hotter in the room in a way that only feels partly due to the heat licking at Izzy's fingertips. At first, it's like watching a particularly high-stakes badminton match; eventually, mercifully, things seem to come to a head, and he can only give the pair of them his most encouraging glances and smiles when they seek him out for support. Ed says the word love and Stede tenses visibly, knowing how Izzy will react, knowing it might break him—

His smile grows a touch morose when Ed retreats to the piano, but when he comes back toward Izzy, holding out that bow like a peace offering, hope stirs in his chest, and this time he's ready. He gives Ed a slow, fond smile, and then looks back at Izzy, tense and creaky with his arms folded tight over his chest. He doesn't offer his hand a third time.

"That's right, my darling." Darlings, he wants to say, but holds himself back. This could all fall apart so easily, delicate, like a jam tart. "Be whoever you like, just...be. With us."

Izzy would feel like a broken record if he knew what that was.

Be whoever he wants to be, well he has been and that hasn't worked out so fucking well for him, has it. Be someone new? He hasn't got the first fucking clue who that guy is. What if he sucks? Rotten things can't heal, they're rotten. What if, Izzy Hands, without Blackbeard and duty and all the intricate ritual he requires to function, is no one at all. What if he isn't someone worth keeping around?

It's too dangerous. The stakes are too high. The cruelest walls are made of glass.

And yet, like an idiot, he takes the bow when offered.

Still a broken record as his mind circles in on itself. Why? Why, why, why?

If he isn't needed to fill the role he has been, if that role is gone, if that life is gone, then why want him at all? Why take to the seas again, why keep doing what they've been doing, isn't that was Edward wants to get away from? Are those promises they made before still valid? Ed says he wants him. Stede says he wants him. But why?!

It just doesn't make sense. They don't love him. No one does, no one could. He isn't the sort you'd waste that on.

It doesn't make sense and he doesn't know where to go from here. Yield or lose everything. Yield or die. It's tempting...but he isn't ready to die. Not quite yet. Not like this, a beggar out in the cold on the streets of a foreign city.

Izzy considers the bow in his hand. All of this, his entire thought process, is fairly visible on his face as he works through it. things need to change but change is so...terrifying.

He swallows again, not feeling entirely inside himself. In himself. Like he's standing just behind as an observer, instead. This isn't defined enough. This whole...thing. What does it mean? What are the rules? How is he supposed to just...be a part of this when he doesn't know what this is or how it applies. How to take that this vague shape of a concept and execute it. But then, if this is what Edward wants. If this will make him happy..

"Yeah," finally. Still creaking. Voice wet. Stede is correct in his assessment, Izzy might just break at any moment.

"Okay."

"Okay?" Ed replies, his own voice cracking, taking on a level of excitement. An okay from Izzy Hands might as well be a resounding yes. "Yes? Okay??"

His hand reaches out, freed of the burden of holding the bow, and thumbs over the mark on Izzy’s cheekbone again. "There he is..." he whispers, leaning in until his lips are pressing to it, his hands falling instead to pull his First Mate in. It's the sort of affection Edward might have given him when they were younger but has long forgotten how, but he's so fucking excited to have Izzy back that it's second nature. "There's my Izzy..."

As Izzy’s pulled close, Edward looks to Stede over his shoulder, eyes wet and lips mouthing a silent 'Thank you'.

That's the difference between Stede and Izzy. Izzy has to know why. Stede doesn't particularly care why, only that he wants it. That any of them should have what they want, because life's far too short to be offered it and choose to be miserable, instead.

He watches Izzy take that bow, watches it all play over his face, and only realizes he's holding his breath when his lungs begin to ache. But he doesn't say anything else, giving Izzy the space to make up his mind, his fingers clenched tight into the hems of his dressing gown sleeves.

Okay. Not so long ago, he'd said the same words to Ed, shell-shocked and nervous and uncertain. His thudding heart aches for Izzy, for the wet sound of his voice, but above all he feels relieved. 'Yeah, okay,' is a damn sight better than the 'fuck you both and the ship you sailed in on' he'd expected. He watches with warmth blooming in his chest as Ed pulls Izzy in for an embrace, gives Ed a misty-eyed smile and a nod in return. He almost wants to leave, wants to give them their moment, but first...

He takes a tentative step toward the pair of them, and lays a gentle hand over the small of Izzy's back, over the gap between his waistcoat and trousers covered only by the worn weave of his shirt. Just as Izzy had done to him, weeks ago. A reminder of his presence, that the feelings he'd expressed up on deck remain steadfast. After a moment, the touch falls away, and he steps back toward the door.

"I'll just...leave you two to it, shall I?"

Izzy nods, but only slightly as he pushes his face into Edward's touch. He holds the bow down at his side, other hand finally raising to his captain- oldest friend- matelot's hip where it rests.

Really, who was he kidding. How could he ever tell Ed no like this?

There had been a brief hum of energy when Stede touched him. That same hum is lacking still in this embrace. He doesn't know why. It's driving him mad. Izzy has submitted, is that not good enough to heal the rift? Apparently not. It sits sourly in the back of his mouth.

The difference is, perhaps, that Stede asked Izzy what he wants. Edward hasn't. Not about this. Not about anything in a long time. They are exhausted. They are ragged. they are running out of rope and fast. there's just enough left to hang and...god that sounds like the worst use of it.

Izzy waits until he hears Stede leave, until the door closes behind him and it's just them. Alone. He isn't sure if that's safer or not. Historically, not. Should he offer sex? Would that even help or would it just point out how broken they are even more?

"If you met me now for the first time," he asks quietly, unwilling to pull away. Unable to speak eye to eye, "would you even look twice?"

Edward doesn't feel it either, and it's troubling, but he hasn't used all his tricks, yet. Stede and he had discussed the possibility of it not coming back just yet, and Edward promised not to get discouraged... he hasn't, yet. He refuses to.

Stede leaves and if Edward is honest with himself, he's afraid too. Not necessarily of Izzy, moreso himself. He had practiced everything up to now with Stede's help. This is uncharted territory. He could screw this up, yet.

Izzy’s question makes Ed think. He doesn't know the answer. He thinks he would, he knows Yes is likely the answer that Izzy would want to hear, but he can't say. Ed doesn't know that his fascination with men is physical at first, but given he's also recently slept with a man that looks like a sentient testicle, it's probably not.

"Think so..." he muses. "Depends."

Ed pulls back, head dipping to the side to look Izzy in the eye. He's worried he's answering this too casually, but hopefully Izzy sees it's authenticity for what it is.

"Do you buy me a drink or get feisty with me? Call me a twat?" he asks with a smirk, "I like a guy with a fire in his belly but..." Ed scoffs, "I'd get a drink for sure. You've got great tits."

Izzy groans and opens his eyes just enough to roll them, even if Ed can't see. There's a moment where he very seriously considers giving him a slap, but Izzy has never and likely will never raise his hand against this man.

What he does do, however, is swat the broad flat of Ed's ass with the back of his violin bow. Not in anger. Honestly, what the fuck else was he expecting.

A joke is so much easier than saying the words Izzy, I fucking care about you. I'm still attracted to you. Don't silence me, I love you, fucking idiot.

So in a way, it's a relief. At least he knows Ed is listening. Engaging. Thinking. Might not be a language Izzy has ever fully learned to speak, but it's something.

"You are a twat," he says and turns his face to press into the other's neck. Bare his teeth against soft, warm skin and press against the scar he put there only recently.

"If they're so nice, then the drinks are on you."

Ed's expecting as much, but the swat of the bow pulls a brief little gasp and chuckle from him anyway, and he gives Izzy a cheeky little grin in return. Bad boy. This is supposed to be emotional. Don't turn him on.

"Yeah, alright." he purrs under those teeth, hands petting at the other's back for the moment. "Was wondering if you might wanna do something else, tonight, though..." he murmurs at Izzy’s ear, expression fading into that nostalgic sorta look again. "You in the mood for music? I mean... like we used to play. I thought we might give it a shot, again."

A beat and then Edward adds, "Still make you a drink if you want one."

Izzy takes a breath, luxuriating in Ed's neck for a moment before reluctantly pulling back. There are so many things unsaid between them. So many years. So much violence, for and against each other. It's hard to talk about. He wouldn't know where to start.

Doesn't have to, thankfully, because Edward's suggestion is good, and he takes it.

"I do."

To both, he means, and finally draws back to consider the bow in his hand. It's bittersweet, in a way, nostalgic in every other, and he smooths his bare fingers along the wooden shaft with reverence. It's something to look at that isn't Edward. Izzy's eyes are stinging and if he looks then he's sure he'll do something stupid and embarrassing.

"I don't like that we stopped." Playing, but again, he knows that Ed knows. Something they don't even have to say. Some things they really should, anyway. Communication has never been their forte, but it's still worked. Mostly. Usually. If only because one of them yields and tries not to fester about it too much. Never really had the time to hold on to that shit.

Edward knows that this conversation doesn't fix everything. What he hopes, what he and Stede had talked about, is that it opens the door between them to talk more often. That slowly they can unpack the pain and the misunderstanding. It's too much for one night. It will take ages... but he promised he'd do the work.

A deep breath, and he pulls himself away from Izzy even though he doesn't quite want to yet, afraid he'll run away again. He pats him on the shoulder with a weak smile before padding over to the small bar in the corner where there are several decanters of liquor. Two glasses are pulled from the cabinet. If Izzy’s having a drink, so is Edward.

"Yeah?" he asks, "You always seemed stressed out... Didn't wanna waste your time." He responds, pulling one of the decanters off of the shelf. "We could play more often, you know... Brandy good? I'm having some..." he pours his own but waits before recorking it. "I'd like to. Reckon I still know a song or three."

Izzy nods in answer to the drink. Brandy will suit him just fine, thank you, nice and rich and sweet. It’s such an indulgence and so very Edward. It’s nice to be brought into that.

“For the record you’re a stressful man to work for. Playing might’ve helped that.”

More a musing than anything as he crosses to the piano, admiring it lightly as he takes his violin out of its case and checks the pegs haven’t slacked in their disuse.

Of course he’s been stressed out, look at the colour of his fucking hair. A colour he blames, almost entirely, on Ed by the way. Not that he’d change their past for anything.

Maybe a little bit. Just the bad times. In a way, Izzy feels he’s earned his silver, and who wants to live forever, anyway.

Satisfied with the condition of his instrument, he pulls it into position and plucks a few strings. They sound perfect. Good.

“Which song’s our favourite tonight, then?”

Like they don't have the same fucking color hair, at this point. Ed can't take all of the blame, but at least he won't argue anymore. He's sick of it.

"So I've heard." he mutters, pouring Izzy a glass and then putting the decanter away. He roams over to the piano and sets both glasses atop it, where he can still reach one once he takes his seat, and does so, one finger sliding down the length of the keys. It's not the same as the much smaller clavichords found in their era, but it has the same sort of key formations. Edward is not a masterful player by any means, but he'll live.

"Hmm... what about..." Ed tickles lightly at the keys, slowly playing something folky that he certainly recalls playing a drunken night or three in his youth, and surprised that the muscle memory is still there.

"Remember that night we got shit faced in the cabin after running from that Spanish vessel while trying to sneak past Barbados undetected?" Ed asks, pressing at the keys one by one, "We were headed west and Hornigold was fuckin pissed because we convinced the crew to head off-course. I thought he was gonna beat us half to death that night. And then I asked you if you regretted coming aboard with me. You said no..." he plays on, "You still feel that way?"

Izzy recognizes the song immediately and does his best to keep from smiling, but only out of some weirdly formed self hatred he doesn't understand and isn't ready to address head on.

He redirects, in stead, by shifting to free a hand and takes a sip of brandy. It's very nice, but, of course it is. Brandy in the Captain's quarters ought to be nothing less.

"Mm, I do."

Again, in answer to both questions. That night comes flooding back. He'd been absolutely fucking terrified of what might come of them. He has been, off an on, still terrified of what might come of them. But fear is a powerful motivator, and they're still alive, so it must have been worth something in the grand scheme of things.

Izzy sets down his glass and perches on the corner of the piano, just watching. Even bare as he is, even sad as he is, Edward is fucking beautiful. He always has been, and it isn't that hard a stretch to see the young man still there just under his skin.

"I don't regret anything. I'd do it all again, every second of it."

Edward’s playing slows as he hears Izzy speak, his eyes no longer watching what his hands are doing to watch Izzy instead. He'd risked everything for Izzy once, some time ago, and he knows he'd do it again. If this isn't proof... what? He smiles with a slight huff, reaching for his drink, his eyes only leaving Izzy’s to find it.

"Be thankful you don't have to." he says into his glass. He is. A lot of it was hell... but he feels the same as Izzy, in a way. Setting his glass back down, his hand rejoins the other on the keys. He's silent for a moment, thinking about the sorts of things he'd like to do, instead. To explore the oceans of Marilla is only one of those things, certainly this world has other opportunities for the three of them to take advantage of. And if not, he and Izzy certainly deserve the break. Of course, Izzy’s always been about the work. He suspects that hasn't changed... unless...

"What would you have us do, instead?" he asks, eventually, looking back to his First Mate curiously. "We can do anything..." he clarifies, his eyes trailing across the lounge to the large glass windows that look out over the deck to the waters. "The fuck is stopping us."

“Nothing,” Izzy answers. Nothing and no one can stop them but themselves.

Where he would chase Edward’s gaze to the ocean, Izzy finds himself still watching the man instead. Still drinking him in, tender but strong, draped in Izzy’s dressing gown.

With the light the way it is, and maybe because of the state of his emotions, he thinks Ed looks something like a painting. Like a Turner made human, balancing light and shadow and romance. Still every bit as inspiring, every bit as moving, as the young man who bewitched him decades ago. Whose ring he still wears and couldn’t imagine not.

Wait—Edward had asked him something. What? Izzy pulls himself back from waxing poetic and tries to think. It’s hard when Ed is existing next to him in this capacity. Asking his opinion on important things.

Makes him wish he had a good answer when, in truth, if Ed said he wanted to pack it all in and be a potato farmer, Izzy would go out tomorrow and buy them a shovel.

“I suppose…” then, finally, he follows to look towards dawn. They’re a long time out. “I’ve never really thought about it.”

Never been asked. Never considered a world in which they would do something else.

“I like what we do, and we’re good at it, even if it can be boring. I can’t see myself giving up the sea, I’m too old and too…” he gestures to himself. Fucked up. Male. Obsessed with Edward. “…for a family.”

Speak plainly, Izzy. Be honest, this is that moment.

“I just want to be with you.”

Ed scoffs; no shit he hasn't thought about it. All he's thought about was the next scheme and the next. Edward shakes his head, "Reckon we've never had the pleasure to think about it." he answers, but he has. Frequently. Just not realistically.

"Is that really what you want?" he asks Izzy then, and his fingers stop playing the keys entirely. He can feel the dead half of his own heart, the half of it that belongs to Izzy, fluttering just a bit in his chest. Unbelievable. "You're with me." he adds, looking back to Izzy for the moment. "And Stede-" he adds again, head nodding behind them to the door he left through, "And that little bugger below deck, despite my attempts to be rid of him."

Some might call that a family.

Edited (bloop) 2022-11-19 01:17 (UTC)

It is, in its own way. Imagine that.

Izzy wets his lips and knows he can’t say what he’s about to say without looking his captain in the eye. So he does, knowing he’s showing all his cards. Knowing he is surrendering in full.

He doesn’t care what they do, not really. He thrives on the work, he does, but what he really needs is purpose. Without that, he is lost entirely. And his purpose is sitting right here in front of him.

“You are all I have ever wanted, Edward.”

Edward’s eyes feel wet. He doesn't know when that happened, but they do. Even though he told himself that he wouldn't shed a tear during this. Wouldn't give Izzy the satisfaction. It's not the same. This is different.

He feels a lot of things. Pain is still there. Guilt as well. Relief in some measure. Happiness? Of course. Fear? Absolutely. The stakes have never been higher. But love feels like a stronger emotion than all of them, and that breaks him the most, somehow. Just the realization that he really does love Izzy, which is something he'd always denied himself, always suppressed when he could, and suddenly his cheeks feel wet, too.

Edward turns, so that his entire body is facing Izzy, now. He tries to speak so many times and each time he fails. "Izzy, I--" A sharp intake of breath, a slow exhale. He can do this.

"I love you."

He is poetry in motion, Edward Teach. Soaring highs and devastating lows, searing and soothing, but impossible to deny.

And yet.

Israel Hands has made it an art.

He may be, Stede unaccounted for, the only person capable of telling Ed no, meaning it, and then enforcing that no through to the bitter, bloody end. Doing all of that and telling the both of them that he does it for their own good. That he’s pulled and polished the ugliest, most jagged parts of them in the name of survival, and kicked the soft scraps under the bed to be forgotten because that’s where they were safest. Acts of love, all of them, as rough and jagged as they.

But love… Three times someone has tried to say that word tonight. That horrible, wonderful word that can not be applied to him. But this time it bursts it’s way out of Ed like blunt force trauma and Izzy doesn’t stop him.

It hangs there, in the teary air, and Izzy can’t breathe. He has wanted this without allowing himself to want it for so long, that finally hearing the words and- what’s worse, believing them- feels wrong. Guilty. Twisted. Sullied. These are the words reserved for others, he doesn’t— how—

His eyes sting and suddenly time catches up with itself in the real world, having slowed like honey off the spoon with nothing and no one in his vision but Edward and their life.

The violin falls aside, set down somewhere, isn’t thinking, just moving. Izzy threads one hand into Ed’s hair and straddles the end of the piano bench in one quick, efficient motion. He presses right into the other’s space and reconnects their lips, deep and desperate, other hand to cup Ed’s jaw. Like he’d press himself under Ed’s skin if he could. Make a home in his chest and stay there forever.

Vulnerability is not something Edward is fond of. It hadn't been easy for him to begin with, harder after he thought he'd lost Stede, and has been diligently working on embracing it for the past however many months now, all leading to this point perhaps. Who knows. And so when Izzy doesn't answer right away, Edward is terrified.

Just as quickly, Izzy is moving on him, in his lap and on his lips, fingers in his hair, chests together. Ed drinks it all in, warm arms wrapping around him and pulling him tightly against himself, eyes fluttering closed and lips open and pliant. In this moment he is Izzy's, open and bare, to do anything he wants with.

He isn't thinking about their fight. He isn't thinking about the fear he feels of his heart being handled by another again. He isn't thinking about anything other than the present, Izzy against him, so focused on him that he hardly notices the slow creep of Synchrony from his Sapphire; weak, but not absent.

Weak but present. Weak but alive. It's enough.

Izzy notices immediately, and it's almost startling as the familiar feeling sparks in his ruby. He doesn't pull away or acknowledge it except by sinking in deeper. If they were to stop now he might crumble, already reeling from, well, fucking everything.

Add hope to that? Add choosing to believe Edward's beautiful words? It's too much.

He holds on like a lifeline. Like he needs the kiss to breathe. Like they're underwater again, always under the waves, but maybe not anymore. (Though in a very real sense he would left Edward drag him down without question.) Izzy hasn't forgotten about their fight, but he has forgotten about Dean for the time being, so there's that. He wishes it were easy to let go of everything, but he has a long memory and a chip on his shoulder so deep it's barely a shoulder anymore. Break him down. Build him back. Anything, he is begging, so long as they're together.

When the kiss breaks naturally, Izzy takes a breath, forehead to forehead, noses side by side. He doesn't dare pull back. Doesn't dare open his eyes. Can he trust this? Can he trust any of this? He doesn't know, but he wants to.

"Say it again."

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