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“Of course Stede could track down Blackbeard in the middle of the Caribbean,” Frenchie explained. “It’s ‘cause of their soul-bond. When an alpha and omega love each other enough, there’s a special link that’s formed. Lets them have all kinds of magic powers.”
Frenchie smiled at the “oohs” and “aahs” from the other nitwits at the table. There were a good half-dozen of them loafing about there, many of them having long finished their lunch. Not that Bonnet’s band of imbeciles needed the excuse to shirk their work, given how things worked around the ship nowadays.
“What kind of magic powers?” The Swede asked, seemingly convinced that the bard knew fuck-all about what he was blathering about.
“Like I said,” Frenchie continued, as confident as the fools on the docks that swindlers sold treasure maps to, “they can sense the direction of their partner. But they can also feel each other’s emotions, and sometimes even get telepathy. But only if they’ve been in love for long enough.”
“I bet Blackbeard can shoot lasers from his eyes,” Black Pete interjected. “And set things on fire with his mind.” With all the rubbish he seemed to think up, he might’ve even been aware that he was full of shit. Maybe.
“Ooh, nice. I wish I could be an omega,” Feeney said dreamily, his large size obviously not having done anything to prevent the severe brain damage he must have received as a child.
“Slow down there, babe,” Frenchie cautioned. “Having a soul-mate is tricky business. Like, if they get hurt, you’d feel the pain too. And once you’re bonded, you’d get withdrawal if your mate was away for too long. Me? I’m happy being a beta.” That was possibly the first reasonable thing he’d said all day.
“But it’s so romantic though, yah?” the Swede enthused. “Having true love like that?”
“Yeah,” Pete agreed. “Huge bummer though if you ever date anyone else. ‘Cause it would never work out. Like, if you were a beta who fell in love with an A or an O, you’d never be able to—OUCH!”
“Get back to work, all of you!” Izzy yelled, suddenly standing up from the adjacent table and thwacking Pete in the head as he got up to leave. He wasn’t done eating yet, not really, but he could finish in the privacy of his own cabin. He caught several murmurs of “asshole” as he started walking away, but it seemed like the little group was otherwise happy to get right back to ignoring his presence entirely. Not that he expected much else at this point.
“So,” Spriggs said, resuming the conversation, “I love a good piece of romance fiction as much as the next guy. Well, more, probably. But we should remember that real relationships—”
But Izzy was out of the room before hear anything more of what the boy said. It wasn’t a conversation he could bear to listen to any longer.
—-
“BONNET!” Izzy shouted, storming into the captain’s cabin to see the man in question reading some kind of stupid poncy book. “You need to tell your lazy crewmen to—”
“Shhhh!” Bonnet interrupted him, pointing frantically downwards. Izzy stepped further into the room and looked past the arm of the sofa Bonnet was sitting on. Oh.
Edward was lying on the sofa, curled up with his hands beneath his chin and his head on Bonnet’s lap. His eyes were closed, and while Izzy couldn’t tell for sure if he was asleep, he looked incredibly… peaceful. He was wearing some kind of deep purple pajamas—a pair so fluffy and soft that it looked like he was practically drowning in the fabric. Though it still irked Izzy to see his captain looking like this, another part of him was struck by how Edward looked so… how right now… how he was just incredibly…
“Adorable, isn’t he?” Bonnet whispered, immediately causing Izzy to halt his thoughts and throw them overboard. “Ah, I must be the most fortunate man in the world, to have such a beautiful, gorgeous boyfr—”
“You don’t know him at all, do you?” Izzy sneered, whispering back angrily. “You don’t know the first fucking thing about what a brilliant tactician he is. You’ve never seen him swordfight, at least where he’s trying to win. And how could you ever appreciate his seamanship if you don’t know how to sail? Do you think you deserve a cookie, Bonnet? For noticing the bloody obvious? No! Blackbeard isn’t like one of your frilly little omegas at home, needing to dress up and be told how pretty he is.”
“It’s not an exclusive deal, Izzy,” Bonnet frowned, gently stroking Edward’s hair. “People can be smart, talented and pretty. And I think that Ed here is the absolute prettiest of them all.” He cooed the last bit softly right into Edward’s ear. As if that was the type of thing that anyone should say out loud. As if Edward was some kind of idiot who didn’t know how to use a mirror. And yet somehow, Bonnet’s words caused Edward to slowly stretch, half-open his eyes, reposition right back to a different place on Bonnet’s lap… and start purring.
“Oh, my goodness!” Bonnet exclaimed, quietly but excitedly. “Speaking of good fortune! Do you know what a momentous occasion this is?”
“It’s just fucking purring, Bonnet.”
“But do you understand how special this is? Omegas only purr when they’re around someone they love, you know.”
“That’s bullshit,” Izzy snorted, glad to be able to rain on Bonnet’s little parade. “Edward’s purred around me dozens of times. You’re not that special, Bonnet.”
“Oh. That’s…”
“Anyway,” Izzy continued, less concerned about volume now that Edward was already awake, “apparently you let the crew have some kind of ‘water fight’, where a bunch of seawater was brought up just so everyone could splash each other?”
“Yes? It seemed like good fun.”
“Well, the buffoons doused the cannons with it. Gonna need to drain them out and get them rewicked at this point. Not that it’s urgent or anything. God forbid we ever actually do any actual raids around here.”
“Well, I’m sure Wee John will be happy to get the cannons fixed up, if you ask him nicely. I’ll tell everyone to be more careful next time.”
“You do that then.”
As Izzy walked away, he considered that under normal circumstances, Bonnet would have sniped back at him more. But now, he had some kind of ponderous look, like he was reassessing something he’d taken for granted earlier. Probably some stupid new fashion choice or something. Unlikely to be relevant to Izzy himself.
—-
It was another one of those days where Izzy couldn’t stand to be around people. He’d left the mess hall again, this time after overhearing some kind of conversation about how Blackbeard could be his “honest and true self” now. Normally, he would have found it infuriating, but today it was just… sad. He’d gone up to eat on the main deck this time, but with how Boodhari was approaching him now, Izzy was starting to think he’d made a mistake.
“Hey,” Oluwande said.
“Fuck off,” Izzy replied.
“You’re welcome to sit with the rest of us, if you want.”
“I know how the fucking mess hall works, yeah.”
“I mean, I just want you to know that even with the whole thing when you were captain—”
“The thing where you mutinied and tried to kill me, you mean?”
“People here were going to mutiny on Stede too. Jim’s tried to kill Lucius repeatedly. I’m pretty sure Buttons would still eat any of us, if he could get away with it. Lots of people have tried to kill each other around here.”
“Ooh, good to know I’m not special then.”
“I mean to say that it doesn’t mean that we all hate you, or anything.”
“Like you twats wouldn’t take the first fucking opportunity to toss me overboard if Blackbeard left again.”
“I wouldn’t, no. Not since Jim told me what it was like here while I was gone.”
Izzy looked up, noticing that at some point, Jim had walked up as if they were going to join the conversation, only to start silently eating their lunch. He respected that about them, the way they didn’t need to yap about all the time like the rest of Bonnet’s fools. Not to mention the fact that they were actually competent in a fight. Probably Izzy’s favorite crewman for that alone.
If it happened to be the case that Jim was the only one of their lot that hadn’t mutinied on him, that was merely a fortunate coincidence.
“It’s tough, isn’t it?” Oluwande continued, unfortunately not yet following his partner’s example. “Adjusting to Blackbeard being open about the whole omega thing, right?”
“Like you’d know anything about it.”
“Maybe I would. I spent months helping to keep Jim in disguise.”
“That’s not the same thing and you bloody well know it.”
“I didn’t do it for as long as you, sure. But after the Spanish ripped Jim’s nose and beard off, I didn’t just feel worried for Jim. I felt… like I had worked so hard and been so careful, covering for all the risks they took and making excuses to the rest of the crew, and it had all been for nothing. But I was wrong. The crew ended up accepting Jim for who they were, which wouldn’t have been possible without all that time they spent in disguise. People got to know Jim without all their biases and preconceptions. Putting on the beard was worth it because now they can be their real self.”
“Blackbeard is Edward’s real self,” Izzy snapped. More than Edward’s secret being out, it was this , the way that the crew would talk about Edward now, which infuriated Izzy the most. “Bonnet keeps acting like he’s the only one who knows how to make Edward happy, but he was happy. For over a decade. He likes all the looting and pillaging. He likes being a terrifying pirate. He likes… being my captain.” Izzy said the last words so softly they were almost a whisper.
But was he really right about what he was saying, or was it just what he told himself? For all that he mocked Bonnet’s storybook view of piracy, was Izzy the one living in a fantasy world? There was no way. Was there? Had the Edward he’d known all his life really been fake?
He glanced over at Jim. They were a decent sort, not soft or poisoned by Bonnet’s incorrigible urging that everyone “talk about their feelings”. But indeed, they must have had to overcome many of the same biological disadvantages that Edward did. Piracy was a harsh business, and being smaller and slower to put on muscle mass would make most jobs you took on all the more difficult—and worse, it would make you a target. Hiding it was the natural strategy. But Jim, even more than Edward, never seemed interested in girly stuff. Was it really so bad, to conceal those parts of oneself? If it meant you weren’t mistaken for being weak?
“You’re not wrong,” Jim declared, deciding to finally talk. “Yeah, it was annoying to pretend to be a man, but mierda, there’s a reason I still go by Jim. Thinking that Blackbeard’s just an omega—it’s like seeing me and thinking I’m actually just a woman. Both boxes were wrong but… honestly, there were a lot of times that I really liked being a man, especially after having been seen as a woman for so long. It was the living in disguise part that was annoying, and having to pretend I didn’t like things like talking.”
“You don’t like talking, babe,” Oluwande argued. “This is the most talkative I’ve seen you in ages.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just saying that you can’t fake some of the shit that Blackbeard did. Definitely not for that long. And for what was fake?” Jim turned to Izzy. “He was probably already pretending before you met, wasn’t he?”
“He was,” Izzy nodded. Edward had already been part of Hornigold’s crew, acting no different than any beta.
“So it was a role he chose, at least in some way. Running from Jackie, I didn’t have many options—but I still could have done something else. And I’m glad I picked the way I did.”
“Me too, babe,” Oluwande added, earning him a quick smile.
“Anyway,” Jim continued. “Blackbeard’s probably happy to get to enjoy the things he denied himself for so long, but long-term? No way that cabrón is willing to idle and sit away from danger.”
“And Stede isn’t either,” Olu pointed out. “He loves adventures and fuckeries. And he once said that Blackbeard showing him how to properly threaten an eye-gouging was one of his fondest memories together. Plus, he literally had a housewife before, and he ran away from it all. He doesn’t want that for Ed any more than you do.” And that was certainly a perspective Izzy hadn’t considered.
“Huh,” Izzy said, pondering the implications.