Chapter Text
We met as Sparks – Diverging Flints
Sent various – scattered ways –
We parted as the Central Flint
Were cloven with an Adze –
Subsisting on the Light We bore
Before We felt the Dark –
A Flint unto this Day – perhaps –
But for that single Spark.
- Emily Dickinson, ‘Poem 958’
“What about you, Izzy? Anything to add?”
The corner of Izzy’s mouth curled up as his eyes sought Lucius’s across the circle. He found them glimmering mischievously back at him in the soft, wavering light.
At first, he’d barely even been listening – had just stared absently into the flames as the crew’s voices rose and fell in lazy waves around him, feeling the tension he’d accumulated throughout the day dissipating like mist at sunrise.
But their discussion of past flings was, frankly, pretty fucking difficult to ignore, and he’d spent the last ten minutes soaking in all the salacious details as he decided which of his own tales would draw the most gasps, just waiting for one of them to ask.
Sinking further into his soft, plump cushion, he arched an eyebrow at Lucius, then turned languidly back to the candles atop their crate in the middle of the deck.
“Not sure I’d tell you lot if there was.”
“Aw, come on, Izzy!”
“Yeah, you got to hear ours!”
“Now, now, no-one has to—"
“Oh, go on,” Lucius wheedled, cutting Stede off as if he hadn’t spoken. “I’ll bet you’ve got some great ones.”
“Do you now?”
“Mm. Handsome first mate like you? Bet guys were falling over each other to get you into bed.” As he spoke, Lucius raked his eyes down his body, slow and hungry, before retracing the path back up to meet his gaze.
Izzy just smiled back, narrowing his eyes. “You volunteering, Spriggs?”
“Can be.”
He huffed a laugh, glancing away.
“Come on, Izzy, there must’ve been someone.”
Memories flickered. His heart gave a strange little flutter.
“Ooh, is that a yes?”
He jumped.
“Oh, that’s definitely a yes.”
Fuck.
He turned away before Lucius could read anything else in his face, an aching silence dragging on out of his eyeline as he clawed for a lie he was willing to tell. None came to mind.
“Well?”
Fuck fuck fuck.
“It’s not what you’re looking for,” he finally managed, the words spat out through gritted teeth like the confession of a petulant cabin-boy.
“No?”
“No.”
“Try us.”
His eyes snapped up to meet Lucius’s, his teeth bared in a snarl, but the No, fuck off didn’t make it to his lips. Instead, he frowned, searching Lucius’s face warily.
“It’s ok, Izzy, you can tell us!”
He spun to face the other side of the circle, where Fang, smiling, raised his eyebrows and nodded encouragingly. A confusing rush of sensations pooled in his chest, an unpleasant mixture of fear, and fury, and regret, and—
Fuck, was that—?
He turned away with a jolt, his throat suddenly tight.
No. No, he couldn’t tell them that.
His pulse quickened as he scrambled to remember all the reasons why he hadn’t, why he couldn’t. There were so many, and they were all so blindingly fucking obvious, that he’d never needed to go looking for them before.
He didn’t find them.
It was like stepping out expecting to hit solid ground, and meeting only water. He brought a trembling hand down to clutch the edge of his seat as the world lurched on its axis, gasping for breath as Lucius’s words echoed in his mind.
There must’ve been someone.
He swallowed thickly, his wide eyes scanning the deck.
Could he?
More to the point, why the fuck did he want to? Why put himself, not to mention everyone else, through that, when he could tell them literally anything – or nothing, for that matter, could tell them to fuck off and mind their own business, and be left in peace for the rest of the evening?
It was fucking ridiculous.
Didn’t have to be now, anyway. There’d be plenty more chances. Might even talk himself out of it, if he put them off now.
The Fuck off still wouldn’t come.
He closed his eyes with a sigh.
It was ridiculous.
But then, so was so much of what he did these days. So much of what he enjoyed.
And it had all felt like this, to begin with. The first time he’d acted, the first time he’d sung for them, the first time he’d asked to sleep out on deck – fucking terrifying, all of it.
Lowering his defences like that went against every shred of common sense he possessed, and every time, every single fucking time, he’d expected them to throw it back in his face, to remind him that he didn’t belong here, that he wasn’t like them, that things like this weren’t for him.
And every time, they’d proved him wrong.
He glanced around the circle, into the wide, eager eyes of the crew, his crew, who’d fought by his side and cheered him when he sang and complimented his make-up and wrapped their arms around him as he slept.
Who had all that power over him, and who’d never once made him regret it.
Try us.
He took a breath, then gave a single brusque nod.
“Yeah, alright, there was someone.”
A chorus of excited voices struck up around the deck.
“Knew it.”
“Who was he?”
“Was he handsome?”
“When was this?”
He shifted his hoof into a more comfortable position as he waited for the barrage of questions to die down, looking everywhere but the crew and trying not to think too hard about what he was doing.
“Anyone I know?” Ed asked, clearly expecting a ‘yes’.
He shook his head, fear prickling at the back of his neck as he avoided Ed’s eyes. “No. No, he was— I haven’t mentioned him.”
“Oh.”
He looked up in time to see Ed glance at Stede, confusion etched deeply on his features, but by the time he turned back some of the furrows in his brow had smoothed out. He released the breath he’d been holding.
“Go on then, mate, who was he?”
“Yes, Izzy, we want to know everything,” said Lucius, leaning forward and resting his chin theatrically on his palm.
Izzy looked around, feeling the oppressive weight of the crew’s collective gaze.
Still time to back out.
He swallowed and closed his eyes, his heart beating so hard he struggled to get the words out.
“Back in ’98, I was serving as first mate on a ship called the Calliope, under a Captain Janssen. We’d stopped to restock on Saint Lucia, and we knew one of the crew was leaving us there, so Janssen had set out to recruit another sailor. I was—”
“Oh, is this the culprit?”
Izzy glowered. “Are you fucking listening to this or not?” It was going to be hard enough without interruptions.
Lucius made a zipping motion over his lips.
Izzy let his glare linger for a few seconds, then turned his gaze back to the candles.
“I was busy tracking down supplies at the time, so I didn’t get to meet him until we were back on the ship.”
Familiar memories surfaced in his mind like delicate oriental fish.
“Izzy – there you are. I’d like you to meet our new sailor.”
He scanned the man up and down as Janssen gave his name. He looked strong – maybe late-twenties, but with a lingering boyishness about him that made it hard to tell. His beard, if you could call it that, was too short to be untidy, but his red hair was almost falling in his eyes, and was looking windswept despite the reasonably still day. Usually made them look unreliable, that, but somehow didn’t with this one.
Janssen turned back to the new recruit. “…and this is our first mate, Israel Hands. Don’t you worry about him. He’s tough, but he’s fair. Stay out of trouble and you’ll get along just fine.”
“Yes, Captain – I’m sure that won’t be a problem.” He turned to him, smiling warmly. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Hands,” he said, stepping forward and extending a hand. His voice, which carried a strong Irish accent, was gentler than he’d expected, his tone perfectly balanced between friendly and respectful,
He took his hand, returning the smile. “Izzy.”
“You get a sense of people, in this job. I had a good feeling about him from the start.”
“Head over heels, were you?” Lucius teased.
Izzy shook his head. “Struck me as a good sailor, is all. Easy to work with.”
He should’ve known, though. Should’ve fucking known.
“Ok, and, was he handsome?”
He hesitated. “He was fucking stunning, but I didn’t notice that at the time, either. Wasn’t looking at him that way.
“I didn’t see all that much of him, for the first week or so. Janssen had us on different watches, so we only really crossed paths when the shift changed. But still, we spoke a few times – enough to discover that we got on well. Really well.
“Before long, we started meeting up intentionally. Sitting across from each other at meals. It was nice. Easy. It’d been years since I’d had something like that. First mates don’t usually have friends on the crew.”
He paused, brushing some stray dust off his leg.
“Within a few weeks, I found myself… thinking about him, when we weren’t together. Looking forward to seeing him. Replaying our conversations, sometimes, while I worked. Before I fell asleep.” He paused again, then smiled. “Took me ages to work out what was happening.”
He’d been lying in bed, grinning as he ran over the details of their interaction that evening, warmth curling in his chest as he remembered the curve of his friend’s smile, the sound of his laughter ringing across the deck like music, the way the breeze pulled at his hair.
And then, all at once, he’d known, the revelation as bright and sudden as a match-strike in the dark.
“What was his name?”
He glanced warily at Archie, beset by the irrational urge not to answer her – to keep the name, at least, to himself.
He swallowed, fighting past it.
“Thomas. Thomas Kirawan.”
He watched the crew closely as he said it. A few of them nodded politely, like he hadn’t just handed them the key to his soul.
He looked down, trying not to think about it.
“’Course, I knew I had to keep it to myself. I thought—"
“What, because he was a man? I thought that was ok out here?”
Even now, even in the middle of this, he rolled his eyes. “No, Bonnet, not because he was a man.”
Ed leaned over, bringing his head in close to Stede’s. “It’s ’cause Izzy was first mate.”
Stede’s frown deepened. “So? Why would that be a problem?”
Olu came to his rescue. “Relationships between first mates and crew are a big no-no on most ships.”
“Really? Why?”
“It can get like, super abusive,” said Jim.
Ed nodded. “Notorious for it. Loads of stories of first mates using their position to threaten or blackmail crewmembers into sleeping with them.”
“Or making life Hell for their actual lovers after a break-up,” Lucius added.
Izzy pulled at his glove. “Works the other way, as well. Sailors faking an interest in first mates. Nice little ruse, to get a warm bed at night. Maybe easier treatment on deck. Maybe even more influence with the captain, if that’s what they’re after. Plenty of hearts broken that way, too. And if the first mate ends things, all their secrets go straight to the crew. There’s a reason most captains just flat-out forbid it.”
“Really??” Stede’s eyes were wide with horror. He loved him for it. “So if you’d told Thomas—” Izzy flinched at hearing someone else say his name— “and he didn’t feel the same way – or your captain found out…?”
“Catching on, are we, Bonnet? There was no way to tell him safely. Only sensible thing to do was to suck it up and move on. Transfer to another ship, if I couldn’t get over it.”
“Oh, but you couldn’t do that, now, could you?”
Izzy paused, chewing the inside of his cheek.
He’d tried – fuck, had he tried. He’d been over the risks dozens of times, reminded himself again and again that it was impossible, that he could never have what he wanted, that nothing good was ever going to come of it.
But it was a battle he’d so badly wanted to lose, and all his efforts had only made the feelings stronger, made him cling to them more desperately.
He shook his head slowly.
“No, I couldn’t.”
He blushed furiously as childish ‘ooOOooh’s’ reverberated around the deck. Anyone else did that to him, he’d have them fucking keelhauled.
“Yes, alright, fine, I fancied the Hell out of him. Head over fucking heels. Happy now?”
The circle erupted in laughter, but it wasn’t unkind.
“Ex-tremely,” Lucius purred, wearing a smile of immense satisfaction.
Izzy just scowled and crossed his arms, still blushing. “Twats.”
“So, what, you just tried to hide it?” Fang asked, over the residual titters.
Before he could answer, Ed snorted. “Bet that went well.”
Izzy gritted his teeth.
He’d been fucking pathetic, and he knew it – lingering in doorways for a snatch of Thomas’s voice, searching desperately for a view of him across the deck, holding his gaze for a second too long when they talked. He’d told himself he was too old for it by half, too old for any of it, acting like a stupid lovestruck boy – but there he’d been, and there hadn’t been a single fucking thing he could do to stop himself.
“I hid it just fine. No-one said anything.” Not until afterwards.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Archie lean over to Jim, her head bent in an attempt to hide her mouth. “Bet the whole ship knew.”
Jim raised an eyebrow and nodded vigorously.
He pretended not to notice.
“Things went on like that for weeks. Would’ve been longer, if it had been left to me, but thankfully it didn’t come to that.”
“You mean he said something first?” Stede’s eyes were wide, the light catching them as he leant forward in his seat.
“What’re you thinking about?”
The question sounded stranger out loud than it had in his head, but it was the best he could do, given the circumstances. Thomas really did look thoughtful, his forearms resting on the starboard railings as he gazed out across the ocean – but they’d been silent for a while now, and there was a stray wisp of coppery hair beside Thomas’s ear, and if he didn’t find a way to distract himself soon something bad was going to happen.
Thomas, apparently oblivious to the struggle taking place beside him, glanced over to him, smiling, then turned back to the waves. “I’m not sure you’d be interested.”
“Won’t know until you try, will you?” he said, trying his best to make it sound casual. His wrists ached where he’d pinned them to the railings with his back.
Thomas turned to face him, his eyes twinkling playfully as his gaze flicked down and then back up again in a way that made his mouth turn to ash.
“Suppose I won’t,” he said, cocking an eyebrow. “You really want to know?”
Izzy nodded, his brow furrowing. There was a new note in Thomas’s voice, matched by something in his expression that he couldn’t quite place.
Thomas’s smile softened as he turned back to the water. “Actually, I was just thinking about how lovely the sea looks in the moonlight tonight.”
“Yeah?” he asked, his eyes fixed on that little strand of hair.
Thomas nodded, then turned and met his eyes again. “Hard not to, really. It’s almost the most beautiful thing out here.”
Izzy frowned, searching his gaze.
What did he—
His heart did something acrobatic behind his ribs.
No, that wasn’t— it couldn’t— he hadn’t been—
He turned away quickly, his skin flushing hot and then cold and then hot again.
He must’ve heard wrong, must’ve misunderstood, because he couldn’t possibly—Thomas couldn’t possibly—
His thoughts froze.
That’s what the look had been. Thomas was nervous.
Of course he was fucking nervous. Thomas wasn’t an idiot – he knew what saying that meant. How much of a risk he was taking. If it was him, he’d be in pieces.
He’d need someone to reassure him.
He opened his mouth, then abruptly closed it again, his eyes still fixed on the deck. He could feel Thomas’s eyes on him. Maybe he thought he was coming up with a way to reject him. Maybe he even thought he was angry.
He swallowed, trying to gain control of his voice as one disjointed thought after another slipped through his grasp.
Come on Hands, anything.
“That’s a pretty fucking stupid thing to think.”
Oh, fucking Hell.
“Thomas, that’s not— I didn’t—"
“I know you didn’t.”
Izzy exhaled a shaky breath, his pounding heart receding a few inches back down his throat. Miraculously, mercifully, Thomas didn’t sound angry, or hurt, or offended, or any of the ways he should sound after having his feelings stamped on by an insensitive twat who couldn’t take a compliment. He didn’t even sound relieved. More… amused.
“Anyway, not many people would argue if you did.”
Izzy didn’t raise his eyes from the deck. Thomas sounded remarkably relaxed. If he hadn’t had his voice running through his mind every day for weeks now, he might not have noticed how much effort it was taking him.
“I’ve spent a lot of time recently going over all the risks, all the reasons not to say something.” He made a sound that might’ve been a laugh. “Plenty enough of them. I wanted to know if it would change my mind. Convince me to keep it to myself.”
Izzy jumped at the sensation of fingernails digging into his biceps. He didn’t remember crossing his arms.
“Needless to say, it’s made precisely no fucking difference. It certainly hasn’t changed how I feel, but then I didn’t think it would. I didn’t want it to.” Thomas paused. Then, much more hesitantly, he added, “I think you might understand that.”
Izzy’s stomach dropped to somewhere in the vicinity of his boots.
Thomas knew.
Thomas fucking knew.
How the fuck did he—
How long?? How long had he—? And he hadn’t… he hadn’t tried to use it against him, hadn’t even tried to stop him, it was like he’d just—
Like he’d just been letting it happen.
Izzy’s frown deepened, his eyes flicking back and forth across the deck.
He wasn’t making Thomas sit across from him at mealtimes. He’d never asked him, in as many words, to meet him at the stern between their watches, but there he’d been, every morning and evening, like clockwork – even waiting for him there, sometimes, when he was late off his shift.
He’d thought that was just Thomas being friendly. Thought he’d be disgusted if he knew how he felt about it all – or at least politely disinterested. He’d never found a subtle way of finding out if Thomas even went for men – had assumed, for the sake of his own sanity, that he didn’t.
But it could’ve been something else, couldn’t it?
And all those little glances, the smiles, the casual touches – scraps he’d guiltily hoarded away, thinking they didn’t belong to him but needing them too much to care – were they all…?
Izzy huffed, shaking his head incredulously.
No – there was only one person here who’d been oblivious to what was going on, and it sure as fuck wasn’t Thomas.
He licked his lips, shifting his weight between his feet.
Did it matter?
It wasn’t like it changed anything. All the hundreds of reasons why it was completely fucking stupid for a crewmember and a first mate to attempt to have anything more than a professional relationship were still there.
But then, it did matter, it mattered more than anything else in the entire fucking world, because Thomas liked men, and for some inconceivable reason Thomas liked him, and he’d called him beautiful which meant there was something seriously fucking wrong with him and he just had to know what that was, and yes it was dangerous and yes it was stupid and yes it could go unbelievably, catastrophically wrong but who the fuck cared because Thomas knew all of that and he still thought it was worth the risk.
Izzy exhaled a shaky breath, then turned to meet Thomas’s eyes, his heart pounding like it was trying to carve its way out of his shirt.
“That bad at hiding it, am I?”
His voice trembled badly as he said it, and he didn’t even want to think about what his expression was doing. It felt like he was about to burst into tears, though whether from terror or relief he couldn’t say. He wasn’t entirely certain that he wasn’t crying already.
Still, it worked. Thomas grinned as he turned back towards the sea, the tension visibly ebbing from his shoulders. His hand shook when he adjusted it on the railing.
“Fucking terrible, Izzy. Fucking terrible.”
Izzy nodded, smiling. “Yes, he said something first.”
“And is that when you started sleeping together?”
He rolled his eyes, then brought them to rest on Jim. “Is that all you lot fucking think about?”
“Bet you and Thomas were thinking about it plenty back then,” they said, arching their eyebrows back at him.
Izzy looked down at the deck, gritting his teeth and sulkily twisting his hoof.
“It was too risky,” he finally muttered, earning a small, satisfied hum from Lucius, which he dutifully ignored. “We still had all the same problems as before – more, maybe, now that we had no reason to hide how we felt from each other.”
He hadn’t been able to forget the risk they were taking, but in those first weeks he’d been far too happy to be really afraid. Though he’d never admit it, there’d been something strangely thrilling about hiding in plain sight like that, keeping each other’s secret – knees touching under the table during meals; hands brushing as they passed in corridors; urgent, breathless kisses whenever they had a minute alone.
“Anyway, we were still on different watches, so we wouldn’t have had the time to chance it even if we’d wanted to. For a while, we just had to take what we could get. Could’ve fucking murdered that bell.
“Our plan, if you could call it that, was to wait it out and spend our next stop in port together. Naturally, like most plans, it went completely tits-up.”
“What happened?”
“Izzy!”
“Thomas, what’s—?”
“I need to talk to you.”
Thomas was as agitated as he’d ever seen him, his fingers trembling where they rested on his arm.
Izzy frowned, cold fear prickling across his neck. He glanced around, making sure they were alone, then dropped his voice. “Why, what’s—?”
Thomas shook his head. “Not here – quarterdeck’s empty.”
He barely had time to nod before Thomas swept past him, heading for the door leading out onto the deck. He hurried after him, following him into the open air and up the portside staircase. By the time he reached the top, Thomas had already turned to face him.
“What—?”
“Janssen knows.”
Izzy paused before answering, allowing the suspense to build.
“Captain found us out.”
He fought to suppress a smile as exclamations echoed around the deck.
“Oh shit, really??”
He nodded. “Janssen overheard us talking one evening when we thought we were alone. He called Thomas into his cabin the next morning.”
Ed leaned forward, his eyes as wide as if all this had happened yesterday, rather than twenty years ago. “Did you get in trouble?”
“No, no, Izzy, it’s good news, it’s— shit, sorry, I’m not—”
“Somehow, no.”
There was a collective exhale from the crew.
“In fact, all Janssen did was put us on the same watch. Said we should’ve told him sooner, though of course he understood why we hadn’t.”
“You know, there was one other thing Janssen wanted me to tell you.”
Izzy nodded without raising his eyes from the deck, barely listening. Janssen had caught them, and he didn’t mind, and he was going to let them have a relationship, on his ship, that they didn’t have to hide. He could order him to swab the deck single-handed every day for the next six months, for all he cared.
“He told me to let you know that there’s been a change of plan, and he doesn’t need you for the inventory tonight. Said you’ve got the evening off.”
At that he did look up, his brow furrowing as much at the strange information as at the change of topic. He and Janssen always went over the inventory together on Wednesdays, why would today be any—
Oh.
Oh.
His eyes widened, and it was only then that he noticed the kaleidoscopic mixture of emotions in Thomas’s expression – shyness and daring and excitement and uncertainty all mingled together.
He also saw the question there.
He licked his lips, his heart racing. “Did he really?”
Though he tried his best to make it sound casual – seductive, even – his throat was dry, and there was no hiding his nerves. Sure, they’d been looking forward to it – had been practically begging the days to go faster as they counted down to their next stop in port – but there was a colossal fucking difference between three weeks away and literally tonight.
Thomas nodded once, holding his gaze. He still looked unsure, like he was waiting to be told whether or not this was good news, but there was a hint of longing in his eyes that left no doubt about the answer he wanted.
Like fuck was he going to disappoint him.
Smiling, he let his gaze wander conspicuously down to Thomas’s mouth.
“S’pose I’ll just have to find another way to spend the time then, won’t I?”
His voice came out steadier this time, and it produced exactly the result he wanted. Thomas laughed and looked away, a rosy blush colouring his cheeks. A moment later he turned back, still smiling, his green eyes dark and playful.
“Any ideas?”
Izzy’s smile widened.
“One or two.”
And, with a cursory glance down at the main deck, he stepped forward, rolled onto his tip-toes, and pressed his lips to Thomas’s – only to pull back again a second later, just far enough to let Thomas see his grin turn mischievous.
“Get some sleep.”
Izzy smiled contentedly. “Great captain, was Janssen.”
Ed whistled. “You really dodged one there, mate.”
He nodded. “Too fucking right we did.” Didn’t bear thinking, how things could’ve been.
There was half a second’s pause.
“So I’m guessing things progressed a little faster for you guys after that, right?” Lucius teased, grinning wickedly.
“Like this?”
“Mmph— fuck— yes— like that, like that…”
Izzy shifted in his seat, then made a gesture somewhere between a shrug and a wriggle, his gaze fixed determinedly on the stars.
“S’pose you could say that, yeah.”
Again, warmth bloomed in his cheeks as the crew burst into hoots and cheers around him, but there was no hint of mockery in it. After a few seconds, the corner of his mouth curled up against his will.
“Oh, fuck off,” he muttered, but there was no heat behind it.
“Go on, Izzy,” Jim said over the dwindling celebrations, their eyes bright as they leant forward in their seat. “What happened then?”
A surge of memories flooded his mind, so many that he couldn’t possibly grasp hold of them himself, let alone share them with anyone else – snatches of conversation, peals of laughter, Thomas’s fingers drifting across lute strings, glances exchanged across bustling decks, passionate kisses and tangled limbs and soft embraces, all set like music to the steady echo of another blade, another voice, another heartbeat, every day, on and on, until at some point he’d forgotten they were echoes and had accepted them as his own.
What happened then? Everything. Too much. Not enough.
He blinked and shook his head, fighting his way back to the present.
“Things were great, after that. We were happy on the Calliope. The crew didn’t cause any problems when they found out, so it was a good place to figure out the dynamics.” He huffed a laugh. “Think we were all surprised by how easy it was.
“Janssen decided to take a break from piracy a few months later, but by that time there was nothing to discuss. Thomas and I stayed together when we left the ship.”
“So you were just like, a couple?”
He nodded.
“And you found captains that would hire you?” Ed’s eyebrows were halfway to his hairline.
Izzy shrugged. “Mostly, yeah.” The corner of his mouth twitched up. “Wasn’t always easy, though. Winter of ’99 was a right bugger. Got stuck in Canso, way up in Nova Scotia. Weather was brutal, food hard to come by – you can imagine. Plenty of ships passing through, just none looking for two sailors.”
It was late – very late. The half-empty inn, quiet enough during the day, was in the clutches of a thick, eerie silence. The intense cold outside loomed like a physical presence, its frosty tendrils creeping through gaps in the window-panes, caressing the walls, inching below the bedcovers…
Izzy shut his eyes with a shiver and snuggled back into Thomas’s chest, drawing the edge of the blanket even more tightly around them.
No point thinking like that. What he needed, what they both needed, was some fucking sleep, but it was much too cold for that. Even like this, fully dressed and huddled close beneath their thin covers, it would be halfway to dawn before they finally managed to drift off – just like it had been every night for over two whole fucking weeks now.
He sucked air between his teeth as he shivered again, every muscle in his body aching.
How the fuck Thomas still had the energy to be cheerful was beyond him.
Shifting cargo at the docks all day was hard work even in good weather – nothing like the cosy clerical shit he’d managed to pick up. ’Least he had a candle to warm his fingers, and walls to keep the wind out. Better pay, too, though he’d like to knock some fucking sense into whoever made that decision.
He wasn’t eating enough, either. Not that either of them were, but Thomas wasn’t doing much to help himself – refusing to take even a bite more than he did, despite working harder for it, despite needing it more. It would’ve been infuriating, if it wasn’t so completely fucking predictable.
Still, he must feel terrible. He should be complaining. He should be miserable, and bitter, and snappy. Hell, he should be halfway to the Caribbean on one of the ships he wasn’t being paid enough to load. Anyone else would be.
Instead, he was exactly the fucking same as always. Chirpy. Calm. Optimistic. If it weren’t for the things he couldn’t hide – the shivers, the dark circles, the hollow cheeks – it would be easy enough to imagine that he didn’t even feel it.
But he did. He knew he did.
And, at this point, it was all his fault.
No use fucking sugar-coating it. Sixteen days, and he still hadn’t tried to talk him into leaving. Didn’t get much more selfish than that.
He’d thought – though he couldn’t say ‘hoped’ – that at some point common sense or self-preservation or whatever the fuck it was would kick in, and Thomas would decide to leave without his input. Wasn’t like he’d blame him. Sticking together was one thing, but this was different. No-one owed anyone this.
He’d been braced for it for days now, but it still hadn’t come, and it didn’t look likely to, either. Thomas seemed eerily philosophical about it all – like he didn’t even realise that not suffering was an option here.
No, he couldn’t let it go on this way. He had to say something – had to make sure that Thomas knew he was free to go. Worse than that, he had to advise it.
And what if Thomas listened?
The thought made his blood curdle, but if he didn’t invite him to leave, he was asking him to stay, and he couldn’t do that. Not here. Not like this. Not for him.
He swallowed and took a breath.
“You don’t have to be here, Thomas.”
A beat passed.
“Where else would you suggest?”
Even now, he could hear Thomas smiling.
He clutched harder at the blankets, then lowered his voice almost to a whisper. “You could’ve been on that ship to Dominica yesterday.”
Thomas huffed a laugh. He felt him shiver. “Who’d t— trade this for Dominica?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe the kind of people who like eating food every now and then? The ones who like to sleep, occasionally?”
There was a hint of desperation behind the sarcasm, but Thomas didn’t acknowledge it.
“Yeah, ok, maybe those kinds of people.”
“Please, Thomas, I’m being serious.”
“So am I. Dominica’s nice and all, but right now Canso has something Dominica doesn’t. Something very important,” he added, tightening his arms around him and pressing a kiss to the back of his head. “Best place to be, I’d say.”
Izzy swallowed, welcome heat creeping into his cheeks.
He knew he should argue – should tell Thomas to stop being so fucking sentimental, to get himself somewhere warmer before something bad happened.
There was a long pause.
“Fucking romantic.”
Thomas hummed affirmatively, smiling against his hair. “Must be,” he said, his low voice laden with irony. “Only a real romantic would still be in Canso with his lover, when he could be in sunny Dominica alone.”
He opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again.
Thomas pressed another kiss to his hair.
“You first, Izzín.”
“Took us two months, in the end.” Izzy smiled, momentarily forgetting his audience. “Wouldn’t have cared if it was two years. I’d have done anything for him.”
“Cute.”
He bristled as Lucius’s voice dragged him back to the deck of the Revenge, but Archie cut in before he could reply.
“How long were you together?”
The air on deck seemed to thicken.
“Eight years.”
There were a few whistles from around the circle.
“Fuck, really?”
He nodded.
“Whew. Long time for pirates, that is.”
Archie opened her mouth as if to speak, but whatever she’d been about to say was cut off by a loud gasp from Lucius, who held out a hand to shush her as the other flew to cover his mouth, emphasising his wide eyes.
“Wait, wait, wait, hang on – your ring, was that…?”
Izzy smiled as he brought his hand up to the front of his cravat. “Knew you lot would get that out of me eventually. Yes, the ring was his.” He looked down at the deck, his smile softening as he ran his fingers over the green stone. “We swapped.”
“You were married??”
He glanced up again, taking care not to meet Ed’s eyes. The look on Lucius’s face was priceless.
“That’s how we thought of it, yeah.”
“What the fuck…”
He shot Lucius a glare. “You don’t have to sound so fucking shocked about it.”
“No, that’s not— I didn’t mean—”
He rolled his eyes. “Give it a rest, twatty. Can hardly believe it myself, sometimes.”
There was a brief, uncomfortable pause, as though he’d left the sentence unfinished.
“What happened, then? Why did you guys split up?”
Izzy kept his eyes fixed on his boot as he scuffed it against the deck, a cold, slimy feeling settling in his stomach.
You knew this was coming.
“We didn’t.”
He waited.
A beat passed in silence.
Then another.
And another.
“Oh no.”
Fuck.
A painful spasm wrenched through his chest. Without lifting his gaze from the deck, he crossed his arms tightly, the buttons of his waistcoat digging into his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt.
The excruciating silence continued.
“You don’t mean he…?”
He didn’t move.
“What happened?”
Black Pete delivered the question in a hushed whisper, his voice laden with a sickening mixture of sympathy and fear.
He already knew. They all already knew.
Izzy took a shaky breath. “He—” No.
He swallowed, then closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.
“He was killed. On a raid.”
He just barely got the words out before his throat closed completely, his vision blurring. He gasped and turned sharply away, his tongue pressed firmly to the roof of his mouth and his unblinking gaze locked on the starboard staircase.
You knew this was coming.
The deck was deathly silent. He could feel the weight of the crew’s eyes on the back of his head, could imagine the looks they’d be exchanging.
Don’t say anything. Please, don’t say anything.
“I’m so sorry, Izzy.”
It was Bonnet. Of course it was Bonnet.
Izzy squeezed his eyes shut, sending hot tears spilling down his cheeks. He pressed his gloved hand to his mouth, but it wasn’t enough to stifle his sobs.
For a few seconds, no-one spoke.
“Did you know about this, Ed?”
Despite his obvious efforts to whisper, Stede’s voice carried easily across the deck, its tone one of mingled sorrow and indignation.
“No, mate, I had no idea. Wait, when did you say this happened, Iz?”
“Ed, I’m really not sure he—”
Izzy yanked his glove away and gasped in a breath.
“It was— a year, ’bout a year before—”
“Before we met?”
He nodded.
“You mean when we— you were—? Fuck, Izzy, why didn’t you say something??”
Izzy just shook his head, still facing the staircase. He could hear the hurt in Ed’s voice, could imagine him fishing through his memories of their early days together, searching for clues that his new best friend had been grieving and probably finding them everywhere.
But how the fuck was he supposed to have told him?
Even after the very worst of it – those first awful, empty, aching months, when it had been all he could do to show up on deck every morning and keep himself together until he got back to his cabin at night – the only way he’d found to cope, to keep dragging himself from one day into the next, was to pretend that none of it had happened – to try to forget what he was missing.
So that’s exactly what he’d done. Every time memories had threatened to surface, he’d reached for a rope, or a sword, or a quill – anything, so long as he didn’t have to fucking think, because thinking meant remembering, and remembering meant losing him all over again.
Eventually, it had become instinctive. He’d learned to draw back from thoughts of his husband as readily as he drew his fingers back from flames.
Of course, he’d felt like absolute shit about it at the time, and there’d been a cruel, angry voice in his head telling him that there must be something wrong with him, that if he’d loved Thomas enough, if he’d loved him right, he’d want to do nothing but remember him – not be trying to shove all the happy memories away, just because he couldn’t handle the pain that came with them. What kind of heartless fucking coward did that?
Thankfully, though, there’d been another voice, too – softer, and kinder, and just as insistent – telling him that it was ok, that he should do whatever he needed to, whatever was going to get him through another day.
That voice had an Irish accent. He tried his best to listen to it.
But even though his tolerance had grown over the years – enough, at least, to permit him the occasional happy memory, a little nod and a quiet word up at the stars on their anniversary – there were still some days when it hurt too much to face.
Telling Ed, back then, had never been an option.
No-one else ventured any questions. Trying to ignore the sound of Fang’s muffled whimpers a few paces away, Izzy swallowed and took a deep, shuddering breath, then another, and another, each coming easier than the last as the pressure in his chest finally started to ease. Very slowly, he relaxed his grip on his chest, feeling for the first time the pain where his waistcoat-buttons had been digging into his arms.
At last, he huffed out a mirthless laugh. It sounded suspiciously like another sob.
“Bet you— wish you hadn’t fucking asked, now.”
There was an uncomfortable pause, as no-one denied it.
Lucius was the first to speak.
“I’m really sorry, Izzy, I never meant—”
Izzy shook his head. “Don’t. ’S ok. Feels good.”
“Good?”
He nodded.
“You like talking about him?”
It was as gentle as he’d ever heard Lucius sound. Izzy sniffed, then surprised himself with a shuddery laugh. “Think I do, yeah.” Thomas felt closer, realer tonight than he’d done for years. If this was the price he had to pay for that, it was more than worth it.
“Just— haven’t done it before. Not like this,” he said, turning back towards the circle. He met Ed’s gaze, then looked back down at the deck.
“It was too soon when we met, Ed. What I needed back then was a distraction, and you gave me that.” He looked up again, into Ed’s wide, dark eyes. “You don’t know what you did for me – how much you helped. I wanted to tell you, afterwards, but—” but by the time it stopped being too soon, it was too fucking late.
Ed nodded, his eyes shining. “Yeah. Yeah, Iz, I get it.”
Izzy’s shoulders relaxed a fraction.
There was a slight pause.
“Thank you for telling us all this, Izzy.”
He just nodded, suddenly exhausted. A dull, throbbing pain had settled behind his eyes, and Stede’s voice wasn’t what he needed to hear right now.
“You can talk to us about Thomas any time you like, you know.”
He looked up, his brow furrowing. The idea of talking about Thomas casually, just… mentioning him in conversation, had never even crossed his mind.
The rest of the crew nodded their assent.
“Oh, yeah, absolutely.”
“We’d love to hear more about him.”
“Yeah, ’c— ’course we would.”
His eyes flicked between each of them in turn.
That… that would involve remembering Thomas all the time.
The thought sent a twinge through his chest, but it wasn’t just pain.
Maybe it wasn’t like losing him again.
Maybe it was more like bringing him back.
He sniffed, then nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, ok. Think I’d like that.”
There was a miniscule pause, and he seized his opportunity.
“You lot done with me?
Jim frowned. “Aren’t you sleeping on deck tonight?”
He shook his head, wincing at the synchronised jolts of pain that ran down his thigh and through his head as he pushed himself up from his stool. “Not tonight.”
Slowly, he made his way over to the door, the clatter of his hoof resonating loudly on the boards.
“Hey, Iz?”
He turned back and met Ed’s gaze, his hand braced against the doorframe.
A beat passed.
“You sure you’re ok?”
Yes, I’m fine, fuck off.
He hesitated, glancing around the circle. They deserved better than that – deserved the truth, or as much of it as he could give them, even if it wasn’t what they wanted to hear.
He shrugged, smiling wryly.
“Made it this far, haven’t I?”
The crew just looked back at him – all of them pitying, some of them sceptical.
He just rolled his eyes.
“’Night, twats.”
His smile didn’t fade as he made his way to his cabin.
He’d been right.
He didn’t regret it.