Chapter Text
-Where the fuck was Eddy? Izzy considered letting them wander indefinitely. He was a few drinks deep and it was comfortably warm in the shitty bar that Blue Toby had discovered. But...it itched at him still, not knowing where she was. He slid out the door and down the street, scanning the sidewalks for her. He texted, then called. No dice. He started poking his head into other bars. She might’ve wandered into the wrong one and stayed.
-There was an eye by the front door, enormous and blooming with color. Eddy would fucking love that. They swarmed to bright colors like a bee. Izzy stepped inside. The place was nearly empty. It was still early evening, probably a late night spot. A quick scan said only the bartender was there, but Izzy twigged fast that the guy was scared as hell. Following his line of sight, Izzy saw a gun and a heap of a person on the floor.
-“I know there’s cash,” the gunman said shakily. “No one has to get hurt here.”
Sloppy. Pathetic. The place probably did have some cash, but not enough to make a stick up worth it. Izzy took a step backward. He could get out the door without alerting anyone to his presence and put the whole thing behind him.
“Kindly fuck off,” the person on the floor, who was wrestling with a lot of fabric, snapped out.
Izzy stopped moving. The gunman waved his gun around in an arc. What an asshole. “I’ve got a gun!”
“Congratulations to you! I’ve got a liquor license, heels and a sudden desire to kick you in the balls.”
Despite himself, Izzy felt a bubble of amusement rise in him. The gunman and his victim were equally idiotic, but points for bravery, he supposed.
It wasn’t particularly hard to cross the floor and take out the gunman, who fell unconscious at his feet. He considered the gun, which looked cheap as fuck, and wrinkled his nose, just palming the bullets and setting it down on the table behind him. The gunman shifted slightly and Izzy kicked him hard in the ribs. One definitely cracked.
“You’re an idiot,” he informed the person that was finally flipping back their skirts. And...shit, that was a man under all of that ridiculous fluff and paint.
“I will forgive the insult, all things considered,” was the grumbling response. “Thank you for disarming him. Are you going to offer me a hand?”
“Seems like you got it under control.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why don’t you have a bouncer?”
“We have several, but their shift doesn’t start until nine.”
“And you open at...?”
“Seven.”
“Yeah, you’re a dumbass,” Izzy determined.
Then the person stood up and up. A titan in a white dress, face in a parody of antique makeup with eyelashes tipped in pearls. What a fucking ridiculous mess of a human.
“Do you talk to everyone in such a charming manner, or am I special?”
“Everyone. What are you supposed to be?”
“I am a drag queen, you absolute asshole.” A gloved hand was shoved practically under his nose. “My name is Leda House, she/her in the dress. Stede Bonnet he/him out of it.”
“Izzy Hands, professional asshole in everything.” He shook the proffered hand out of sheer defense.
“I suppose I should call the police.”
“Why?” Izzy scoffed. “More trouble than it’s worth, and they’ll just throw this guy in jail. Toss him out and I doubt he’ll be back for round two.”
“I see.”
They both looked down at the would-be assailant, who was definitely out for the count. Leda’s heels were truly, gut-churningly high. Izzy glanced at the bartender. Tall guy, but not particularly strong looking. Still clutching at the bar rag like it might provide some kind of shielding.
Hopeless, both of them.
“Fuck, fine. I’ll roll him out the door for you.”
“There’ll be a free drink in it for you,” Leda offered.
“...Yeah, I could use one.”
The abrupt action had had the unfortunate side effect of sobering him up. He got his hands under the guy’s armpits and dragged him out into a dim, smelly alley. Seemed about right. Then he dropped him unceremoniously and went back inside.
“Garbage is taken out.”
Leda was giving the gun a disgusted look.
“Put it behind the bar. Give him something to wave right back if someone else comes in,” Izzy gestured at the bartender, who was still staring at him. “What?”
“I don’t like guns,” Leda wrinkled her nose. “And Lucius should definitely not be armed.”
“It’s true,” the man, who was apparently Lucius, said readily. “I’d probably manage to kill myself by accident.”
“It’s not loaded,” Izzy looked between them. “Do whatever you want with it.”
“Is it legal to dispose of them?”
“Who’s going to stop you?”
“Hm. All right. Lucius, pour the man a drink.”
“Are you a mobster?” Lucius demanded when Izzy turned to him.
“Do you think anyone in the mob is giving you an honest fucking answer to that?” Izzy stared at him.
“Maybe! I don’t know, your vest says biker, your button down says mob. The whole thing is reading leather daddy that got lost in a Hot Topic on the way home from Pride, if I’m being honest.”
“Start lying,” Izzy suggested. He’d understood exactly none of that. “Just a vodka tonic.”
“Make him the house special!” Leda corrected.
“I don’t-”
“One house special coming up!” Lucius pranced away and Izzy had a sinking certainty that he had wandered into some kind of new and special hell.
His phone buzzed.
Eddy: where the fuck are you people. i stop to get something to eat and you all disappear
Eddy: fuck where am i
Eddy: nm. figured it out. going home
Izzy: take a cab.
Eddy: fuck off
Izzy: night boss.
Eddy: night iz
The boys were probably rioting by now, but that wasn’t Izzy’s problem. His problem was the champagne glass full of nuclear waste that had just been served to him.
“What the fuck?” he demanded.
“Enjoy!” Lucius sing-songed and then disappeared down the bar to help another customer that had helpfully appeared.
Well. It was free. Izzy took a sip. It was sweet as hell and bubbly, but there was booze in there, so he'd drink it.
-The show just sort of happened, the same way getting hit by a car might happen (not that he would know what that was like, just a working theory). Izzy couldn’t look away, nor could he parse what was happening. Leda was a garish tacky mess of a performer, her troupe of performers increasingly making Izzy feel like he’d parted way from reality. When the chainsaw came out, he went to take a sip of his drink, found it empty, and set it back on the bar.
“What the fuck?” he asked the blond stick that had replaced Lucius behind the bar.
“What?” the stick blinked at him. “Would you like another?”
“Vodka tonic,” he demanded, then turned back to the stage because sparks were flying.
The stick returned with a glass that had tonic in it and possibly vodka, but was also green. Izzy made a face, but drank it anyway. Maybe it would at least anesthetize him enough that some of this would make sense.
It didn’t work.
Leda’s head came off her shoulders behind a curtain.
That was a party trick, but an interesting one. The costume after was clever.
Izzy finished his drink. The show ended.
He should leave.
-“Hey,” one of the performers came out from behind the curtain. On the smaller end, bald and blue-eyed. The juggler. “You the one that stopped the robbery?”
“Barely qualified as a robbery,” he snorted.
“Cool. Thanks for that. Leda said to stick around. She wants to make sure you had a good time.”
“What the fuck does she care?” he asked, but it was to open air. The performer was gone already, headed backstage.
He should leave. He was tipsy and tired and baffled.
But the barstool was comfortable as far as those things went, and what was he rushing home to? An empty apartment? Usually he’d be plastered by now, happy to go home and sleep the booze off and start his weekend routine. Maybe even duck into the office to get a few things done when it was quiet.
Time was that he would’ve been with Eddy, but those days were far in the rearview mirror now. He couldn’t remember the last time they’d spent a Saturday afternoon draped over Eddy’s couch, killing time.
With that thought lingering bitterly in his head, the bar moved on around him. It was packed and everyone seemed excited to sing terrible 80s songs as they got drunk.
“Aren’t you a storm cloud?” A man moved in next to Izzy.
He was blond and remarkably well-made. His face gave the overall impression of someone who worried a lot. He wore only an undershirt, soft looking pajama pants and a ridiculous bathrobe thing, embroidered within an inch of its life. It was like someone had wandered out of a Dickens novel into the bar.
“That make you Merry fucking Sunshine?” Izzy asked him.
“Some days,” the man sighed. “I prefer that to the alternative. Did you like the show?”
There was a trace of lipstick lingering on the edge of his bottom lip. It hit Izzy all at once that this was Leda. No. What had he said his name was? Steve?
“I have no fucking idea,” Izzy told him and to his surprise, there was just a tired laugh in return.
“That’s a nicer review than I’ve gotten from some first timers. Luc? Could I have a water, please?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Anything else for you, Iggy?”
Izzy huffed out an annoyed breath, “Izzy.”
“Whatever. You want something else?”
“...water,” he conceded. If he had another drink, he’d do something stupid like ask this fucking weirdo questions about his lifestyle.
Like he wanted to know.
They both got glasses of water, delivered with a judging look from the returned bartender.
“Where’d you find him?” Izzy asked as the water arrived sans ice or care for the future of the glass itself.
“Isn’t he lovely? Lucius is a multi-talented man.”
Izzy watched said multi-talented man lean so far over the bar that the patron he was serving was practically kissing him. That seemed like the goal, actually.
“I’ll bet.”
“You know, you seem a bit...judgemental for a man who came into a gay bar voluntarily.”
“This is a gay bar?”
“You shouldn’t go around calling people idiots if you missed that. Glass houses and rocks.”
Izzy hadn’t really been paying attention, but there were a great deal of rainbows strewn around. And most bartenders probably didn’t boop their male patrons gently on the nose with a saucy wink. There had also just been a very long drag show.
Ok, so it wasn’t his finest hour.
“I-” he started.
“It’s fine.” Stede, that was it, Stede. What a goddamn ridiculous name. “I think sometimes we show up where we’re meant to be.”
“I was not meant to be here,” he shoots back, but it falls flat.
Stede was giving him a speculative look. The kind of look that Izzy had seen leveled at Eddy more times than he could possibly count. An almost tangible consideration.
Izzy didn’t get looked at that way. Not since he was younger, and even then, his general demeanor had deterred most people after the first few glances. And it wasn’t like Izzy knew how to look back, even if he’d wanted to. Eddy had a knack for that, drawing people in. Izzy was far better at keeping them away. That’s why they worked well together. A venus fly trap of a partnership.
But Stede didn’t seem to know that. He was sipping his water very slowly. He was making a lot of eye contact.
And Izzy was so goddamn tired of his own company. He’d never been particularly lust-driven, but he wasn’t cut off from that part of himself entirely. Stede was doing it for him, the way people that riled him up sometimes could.
What was stopping him anyway? Eddy? She didn’t give a goddamn what he did. Years of waiting for...what?
Was he having an existential boner driven crisis in a gay bar that he hadn’t even meant to walk into? That seemed about right for his life. One goddamn joke after another.
There was no chance of them running into each other again. Izzy would never come back here. Maybe just one night wouldn’t be a bad thing. Something to take the edge off. Hadn’t he earned that?
“What?” he asked Stede, taking a long drink of water.
“Do you think that asshole from before has cleared out from my alley?”
“Definitely. Didn’t hit him hard enough to put him under for too long.”
“Good,” Stede set down his glass and started walking away from the bar. Had Izzy fucked it? That figured. But now, Stede looked over his shoulder, and for just a moment that was Eddy’s ‘aren’t I clever?’ look, the tilt to the lips almost exactly the same. “Are you coming?”
Izzy slid off the barstool and followed like a string had been tied around his dick and then pulled hard.
-It had been years and years since Izzy had put his hands on someone else, but he found some of it came back to him fast. Getting on his knees to suck cock wasn’t too far out of his experience, antique though it might be. Stede’s hands were softer, he didn’t pull, but he held firm.
And he looked pretty returning the favor. Only the booze stopped Izzy from embarrassing himself immediately. The man’s mouth was amazing and the hard grip on his hips was perfect.
Afterwards, they both zipped up, brushed the dirt off their pants.
“I meant what I said,” Stede said casually. “About winding up where you’re meant to. Come back some time. Try to be less of a dick, and who knows?”
“Looks like being a dick worked on you.”
Stede pulled a face, but had to admit, “I suppose it did. Don’t make a habit of it.”
“Whatever. Better get inside before your fans miss you.”
“You think I’ve got fans?” The smile was ridiculous. The man himself was utterly ridiculous. A parody of a person.
“What do I know about it?” he muttered.
“Mm.” Stede studied him and then reached out. With a tender flick of his fingers, he brushed a few strands of Izzy’s hair back in place. “Thanks, in any case. Have a good night, Izzy.”
Then he was going back inside, his robe flapping out behind him like a cape.
Izzy watched him and then stumbled back out of the alley and out into the street.
-That should’ve been the end of that.
-It wasn’t.
-There were a few jobs. He came home impossibly jet lagged and worn through. He tried to sleep and woke up in the early evening foggy and mealymouthed. Eddy had snarled at him when they landed to not even think about bothering them for work stuff for at least two days.
Itchy, out of sorts, and maybe having thought about it a few too many times, Izzy retraced his steps. The Revenge didn’t look any less ridiculous that night than it had before. He stepped inside, greeted by the glitter and the flags. The stick was behind the bar again, some version of the show he’d already seen unfolding all over again.
“Vodka. Tonic water.” He barked at the stick. “Nothing else in the glass.”
“Ice?” the stick asked timidly.
“...Yeah, ice. Fine.”
The drink was more ice than anything else and Izzy gave it a baleful once over as the stick vanished. He wondered if Lucius knew how to make a vodka tonic. Probably. 50-50 on whether he’d actually bother to do it, though. What a horrible bar. Possibly the worst in terms of drinks he’d ever been to.
But Leda came on stage and he forgot the drink. She wasn’t beautiful, just as Stede wasn’t handsome exactly. She just drew in the eye, in a pink beaded number shimmering around her and eating up all the light in the room as she crooned about jazz.
She couldn’t see him from the stage, but somehow as soon as the lights came up after the show, she was in his personal space. She wore perfume, something candied and floral that itched at his nose.
“You came back.” Her lips curled up in something like a smile. “Would you look at that?”
“Don’t read too much into it.”
Her hand landed on his thigh. There were fake nails, bright pink and long. When she gripped him, they bit into his skin even through his leathers.
“I think I’ll read just the right amount into it.”
“Yeah?”
“But I’m not that interested in alleyways. Come home with me.” It was imperious. Not a question. Just a demand.
Izzy should say no. Put this malignant creature in her place. Remind her that this was all illusion and Izzy was a man without a single ounce of imagination in his soul. He was proud of that, some days.
But it was a good illusion. Leda House was a woman in control of herself, in control of the room.
He didn’t have to say a word. Her smile deepened.
“I’ll be just a tick.” She leaned in and pressed her lips to his cheek, leaving a smear of lipstick behind. Then she was gone.
Lucius stopped before him, holding out a damp napkin. “You know, she doesn’t do this.”
“Doesn’t do what?” Izzy snatched the napkin from him. Their fingers brushed. Did everyone in this place touch so easily? Or did they just like to crack him apart specifically?
“She’s not a casual person. I like this job. I like the kind of boss she is. So don’t blow up my spot by being a dick, got it?”
“Or what? You’ll poison me?”
“Don’t underestimate me,” Lucius said coldly and Izzy sat up a little straighter. There was no way the man was any kind of real threat, but Izzy had only made it this long by not underestimating people. “Leda is...a lot. But she’s ours. Do you understand me, leather boy?”
“I could eat you for breakfast.”
“Do. You. Understand. Me?” Lucius bit off.
“Yes.” Izzy shook his head. “But I think you’re the one underestimating people.”
“Israel Hands, C.F.O. of Hornigold Security Group. The firm is listed as private security for hire,” Lucius rattled off, “but it doesn’t take a lot of following news stories to figure that it goes a little deeper than that.”
Izzy sucked in a breath, sucker-punched, but he’d never been one to go down from a low blow.
“Lucius Spriggs, graduated without distinction in Fine Arts two years ago. You live in a shit ass apartment with a low-level drug dealer. You should get out of that, by the way, he’s bit off more than he can chew. Sealed juvenile records, but probably shoplifting. Now you make a side hustle drawing porn.”
“You looked into me?” Lucius stared at him. “Why?”
“Why did you look into me?”
“Because you showed up with suspiciously good timing and got my finicky, tidy boss to blow you in a gross alley. You’re dangerous. Your turn, why’d you look into me?”
“I look into everyone if I’m...”
If he was going to be around. Shit. He didn’t really want to be here. Did he?
“Going to get laid?” Lucius wrinkled his nose. “I mean, overkill, I just ask for a STD panel if I’ve got a moment, but cool. You do you. I think we’ve got an understanding.”
“Does that mean I can get a vodka tonic?”
“Absolutely not. Bye!” Lucius turned his back on him and went back down the bar.
It took Stede a long ten minutes to reappear, and during that time Izzy almost left three times. This was nuts. He’d lost it. He needed to go.
“Coming?” Stede chimed like a bell.
“...yeah.”
-Stede’s apartment was cluttered and smelled like competing gardens. Its very existence seemed to want to push Izzy out of the way. He pushed back. Pressing Stede up against the doorway, ready to repeat their last go around.
It didn’t go that way. Sometime between the first kiss (why were they even kissing? Izzy hadn’t signed up for that) and the fifth, they wound up on the bed. It was a sinking mound, decadent and more than any one man could ever need in bedding. Felt good on his naked back, though.
They didn’t talk. They just set each other on fire and that was more than enough.
-“Stay,” Stede demanded when Izzy made to go. “Have another go in the morning.”
Izzy didn’t sleep well in other people’s beds. But he was still jet-lagged and Stede’s endurance had been impressive. Lulled, he fell under. In the morning, they did go again.
“Breakfast?” Stede suggested.
“No.” Izzy rolled out of the bed.
“Oh.” Stede watched him, mouth pinching up. “I see.”
Izzy doubted he did. What did it matter? Background checks or not, this wasn’t going to happen a third time. That would mean something. That would mean too much.
Three times was deliberate. Three times was a pattern.
He left.
-He went back.
-And back.
-“Dinner?” Stede asked hopefully.
“I’ve got food allergies,” Izzy told him, still naked and steamrolled. “Don’t trust your fucking kitchen even if I didn't. Some of your leftovers are old enough to vote. I don’t eat out.”
“Then we’ll have to do it at yours next time,” Stede said brightly. As if, of course, he was invited over. As if he owned the whole damn world.
“No.”
“Why not? Are you hiding something?”
“No.”
“Then what, Izzy?” Stede asked, exasperated. “I’ve put your cock in my mouth, what do you think I’ll eat in your vicinity that will be more intimate than that? You’re being ludicrous.”
“You’re being a bossy twat,” Izzy spat.
“You’re probably a terrible cook anyway.”
He wasn’t proud that that had worked. It was as if he was a teenager again around Stede, drenched in hormones and unable to resist a dare.
-“Ah. You’re a minimalist,” Stede determined upon entering his apartment.
“What?”
“The whole style. Very spare. Very...zen?”
“Just furniture.”
“Literally just furniture.”
“Not all of us can be pack rats.”
“My collections are very carefully curated, thank you very much.”
“You’re not fucking welcome. You want to see the bedroom or not?”
“With all of that charm, how could I say no?”
-Stede should say no. Izzy apparently had forgotten how, but Stede was probably still perfectly capable. Yet here they wound up over and over. Stede just kept saying yes and assuming Izzy was saying it too in his silences.
After a while, Izzy did just say yes. He might as well mouth along the words.
-“What’s with you?” Eddy asked, three months into all of it. They were sitting in a broom closet, waiting for the mark to show up so they could hopefully just ambush him and get him back to his overcontrolling father and be done with this bitch of a job.
“Got a cramp.”
“Not with your fucking leg. You. You’ve been...different.”
“Different how?” He didn’t like the sound of that. Eddy liked novelty, but not different.
“You’re not tense all the time. It’s weird.”
Izzy didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t feel any different.
“Less coffee,” he ventured.
“Shut up,” they kicked at him. “Don’t fucking lie to me.”
So he didn’t say anything else. Just got the job done. They got back and Izzy waited a few days before going down to the bar. He picked a Sunday afternoon, before bingo. Lucius wasn’t even pretending to work, just sitting at one of the tables sketching when Izzy came in through the backdoor.
“I locked that!” Lucius protested. “I know for a fact that I did.”
“Did you?” Izzy gave him a level look.
“You have got to teach me how to do that.”
“No, I don’t. Where’s Stede?”
“In his office. Don’t be forever about it, he’s on in an hour, stud,” Lucius winked at him.
It was best just to walk away, Izzy had found. In a battle of wits with Spriggs, Izzy found himself annoyingly unarmed.
Stede’s office was tucked away to the right of the stage, a little room compared to the lavish other spaces the man had carved for himself. The door was ajar, his voice filtering out as he spoke with someone over the phone.
“Yes...no...no. We didn’t order that is what I’m saying. Excuse me!” Stede gave an exasperated noise. Izzy slipped in through the door and closed it behind him. “Oh! Hello, my dear! Have a seat, would you? Just working this mistake out with a vendor.”
Izzy sat down hard in the chair. He wasn’t anyone’s ‘dear’. Certainly not Stede’s. He barely even called the other man his name. They weren’t even polite to each other most of the time. Though Izzy had misgendered him all of once and been so thoroughly dismantled over it that he’d set aside any thought of ever doing it again.
It wasn’t actually hard once he got used to it. He wasn’t sure he really understood, in his heart of hearts, but damned if he was going to ask. Questions would probably be all wrong anyway. If he offended Stede in a way that went outside their usual casual nastiness to each other, this would stop. Izzy would have to go, and even he had to admit that he didn’t want this to end now.
“Well...no...no...yes, well, I...” Stede started, then stopped, over and over. Then he snapped, “I will absolutely pull my business from you if this continues, and I will call everyone over your head and tell them personally why they’ve lost such a lucrative contract. I am not here for you to offload your surplus on, I’m a customer with a large budget and a thirsty audience. Do you understand me?”
No, Izzy wasn’t going anywhere. Not when Stede’s face was flushed and his hair was a little disheveled as he verbally dismantled the person on the other end of the phone. Hell, Lucius’ teasing aside, Izzy had only come in here to see if Stede wanted to come over later. Now, he was fully preparing to get down on his knees.
Stede glanced at him, eyes flashing.
Preparation over.
It probably seriously disrupted the phone call, but Izzy figured Stede could’ve pushed him off instead of holding him in place and using him in the slowest, most maddening way possible. In the end, the Revenge got their liquor for free that month and Izzy got bent over a desk like a cliche in a porno and liked it.
“Why don’t you stay here and collect yourself while I get ready?” Stede gave Izzy’s thigh a gentle pat. “You look done in, my dear.”
“Fuck off,” he muttered, but he did kind of want to stay there for a few minutes.
The bingo crowd was building up outside. Izzy pulled his pants back on, then sat in Stede’s leather office chair. It tilted fairly far back, so he leaned into that and stared sightless at the ceiling until he was all the way back in his body.
He left his vest unbuttoned over his shirt. No one out there would give a damn, and he was still too overheated for his whole getup. He’d go to his corner barstool and just get water tonight. Stede would be upset if he left, most likely.
Not that that mattered.
Except how it did.
My dear. He’d called him ‘my dear’. It had been meaningless. Thrown away. But it rattled around in Izzy’s head like a rock in his shoe.
-So of course, Izzy disheveled in a way he never was, still kind of high from the speed of his orgasm and longing for the darkness, came out to find Eddy was sitting at the bar. Their stool was turned to face the right side of the stage. Frenchie was setting up her table, flouncing around in a feather-edged nightie with little angel wings sewn into the back. Her wig brushed down to her waist. Eddy’s attention was on her and for a split second, Izzy thought he might just get out of there without being spotted.
No such luck. Their gaze fell on him and he was tractor-beamed in.
“How long have you been coming here?” Eddy asked.
“Few months.” Izzy sat down beside them.
“Why?”
He shrugged, “Somewhere to be.”
“This isn’t your kind of place.”
“I know.”
“So. What? A scam? A deal? A con?”
“Hey, tall, dark and broody, you want a drink or what?” Lucius snapped from behind Eddy.
“A whiskey,” Eddy ordered without looking behind her.
Izzy tried to tell Lucius with his eyes not to fuck around, but Lucius was busy trying to communicate something himself. He was tilting his head at Eddy and then made one of the gestures he’d invented to talk to the bouncers. Izzy had appreciated the man’s cleverness. The signs he'd worked out with Eddy twenty years ago weren't so different. Seeing Lucius come up with his own made him a little nostalgic usually.
Now...now it almost broke something in him.
You ok? Kick them out? the gestures asked.
The fool was trying to protect Izzy from Eddy.
“Just the whiskey,” Izzy told him, not risking gesturing back which would only provoke a million questions. Just trying to convey ‘back off’ as much as he could.
Lucius nodded once and went back down the bar.
“So?” Eddy pressed.
“None of that. Not a job. I don’t do side hustles.”
“I know, Iz,” Eddy shoulder-checked him. “But what the fuck, huh?”
“I just....I just like it here.” And that was the unvarnished truth, so help him.
He liked Stede’s soap bubble dream of a bar with its terrible service and surrealist show. None of it was for him, he didn’t understand half of it, but when he sat here on Friday nights in the dark, he felt comfortable.
Safe.
Shit. Stede would have a field day with that.
“Who’s ready for bingo?” Frenchie called out. “Last chance to get a card, dolls! Ten dollars a pop and we’ve got some gorgeous prizes today!”
“Might as well see why then, shouldn’t I?” Eddy asked, an edge of danger in it. She bought them both bingo cards, thrusting one into Izzy’s hands.
It was a good night for the performers too. Ethel and Roach were both in high spirits, playing off Frenchie’s number calling with their own cheers and jeers. They waded through the crowd with drink trays, setting down beverages and pulling up mountains of tips.
Leda emerged after the first winner claimed their gift certificate. She was doing something fifties today, puffed out skirt and tight bodice, her wig an impossibly high beehive. Her lips were painted hot pink, a match to her shoes, buttons and the trim on her skirt.
“Hello everyone, are you all having fun?” she asked over the mic. Many people yelled back in the negative, well used to this back and forth. “Well! Brats! All of you! Ungrateful! After all I do to put good prizes on the table. Do you know how hard I work?”
“How hard?” the crowd yelled back.
“I have to really put my back into it!” she shouted back.
Music started up. Leda held out a hand to Frenchie, who took it with a wild giggle and then they launched into Kesha’s ‘Woman’.
Eddy was transfixed. Izzy had seen it before, but he watched again as Frenchie back flipped up onto a table and Stede twirled like a drunk ballerina, then managed to be in the right spot for Frenchie to trust fall into on the beat of,
I’m a motherfucking woman! Baby that’s right
I don’t need a man holding me too tight
When Leda looked up and locked eyes with him, Izzy could see the train crash coming, but was powerless to stop it.
Leda stomped her way into his personal space, walked fingers up Izzy’s thigh, mouthing the words to tell Izzy inches from his lips.
I’m a motherfucker.
“I know,” Izzy told Leda helplessly. She grinned wickedly at him, then turned away with a flounce of her skirts and went back out into the crowd.
“Izzy.” Eddy grabbed his wrist. Izzy braced himself. “Who was that?”
“That’s Leda House. She/her in the dress. Stede Bonnet, he/him out of it,” he recited without emotion.
“You have to introduce me!”
“....what?”
“I can’t believe you know someone like that.”
“Yea, me either.”
So once bingo came to a close, Izzy was goaded to his feet and he reluctantly approached Leda as she chatted away with a patron.
“Oh, my dear, there you are. I didn’t notice you were with someone,” she said airily. A lie. Why a lie? Why bother? Then Leda’s eyes cut over to Eddy, assessing and...something else that he couldn’t place.
“This is Eddy Teach. Eddy, this is Leda House.”
“Nice to meet you, Eddy,” Stede said coolly. “How do you know Izzy?”
“I’m his boss. He didn’t say?”
“Oh, that Eddy,” Stede nodded. “He might’ve mentioned you once or twice.”
“That all? Guess he’s not much of a talker. That was a hell of a show. Really got a kick out of it.”
“Did you?” Leda glanced at Izzy. And it was like Lucius with his hand signals all over again. What did they want from him? “Did Izzy invite you along?”
“Sure he did. In his way. You know.”
“Yes,” Leda glanced over at Izzy. “I have a general idea.”
About what? Izzy wanted to demand, but the situation already felt like a grenade with the pin pulled, so he waited in silence.
“I like your dress,” Eddy said. “The whole outfit, really. How’d you dance in heels like that?”
“Oh, you get used to it.”
So Izzy had to bear witness as Leda thawed under Eddy’s heated charms. Eventually the three of them migrated back to the bar, Eddy and Leda talking so animatedly that Izzy figured he didn’t have to say a word. In fact, he waited until they were practically in each other’s laps and decided to leave. He had become surplus to the situation.
Only to be stopped by an iron grip on his bicep. His other hand clenched into a fist. If Eddy wanted a fight, then he’d give her one, even though it would curdle in his gut. But when he turned in the clench, his fist went slack. Not Eddy’s hand.
“My dear,” Leda said softly. “Would you get my purse from the changing room? Just give a good knock and a warning before going in. The girls should be done, but best to check. Then we’ll head out.”
“Going somewhere interesting?” Eddy asked.
“Just back to my place,” Leda said as if it hardly mattered.
“Why? Doing something fun?”
Leda released Izzy’s arm and he started toward the dressing room. But he didn’t get far enough away in time to miss Leda saying,
“Yes. Izzy can be when he’s in the right mood.”
He could practically hear Eddy’s teeth snap shut. Izzy moved across the floor like the hounds of hell were chasing him. His knock was ragged, but he got a cheery ‘everyone’s decent! Come in!” from Frenchie.
He got inside and for the first time he was grateful to be inside the horror show of a changing room. It smelled bizarre, the floor was covered in clothes and arcane detritus, but at least it wasn’t out there with whatever the hell was happening.
“You okay?” Frenchie was plucking off fake eyelashes.
“No,” he snapped and headed back to Leda’s station.
“Ooh, spill!” Roach demanded. “What’s going on out there with your leather friend and our Leda?”
“Luc said that’s your boss. Did you bring your boss to meet us?” Frenchie asked.
“They showed up all on their own.” Leda’s station was a wreck, but she probably had to get ready in a hurry, all things considered. Had that only been two hours ago?
“Izzy, you’re okay, right?” Frenchie asked, all humor gone. “Like, you won’t get fired or something, right?”
He picked up a tiny purse in the shape of a poodle. He opened it to check for wallet, phone and keys. There was a tube of chapstick sitting on the desk, so he stuffed that in there too. Stede always bitched about dry lips after he took off his lipstick.
“They couldn’t do it without me,” he meant to scoff. Fire him? What would Eddy do? Who would they replace him with? But it didn’t come out that way. It fell fractured and pathetic from his lips. A line too often repeated to have meaning.
“No one should get outed without their consent,” Frenchie said to his back. “That sucks.”
“I’m not-” he stopped. Well, what the fuck was he? He was standing here holding a purse for the person that was going to take him back to their place for sex. What did you think that meant, Hands? “It doesn’t matter. Eddy knew already.”
“Oh shit,” Roach said low. “Like...they figured it out or....”
He tensed.
“Fuuuuck, man,” Frenchie groaned. “Your boss?”
Izzy turned to face them, prepared to snarl, but neither Roach nor Frenchie were teasing him. They weren’t laughing. They both looked deadly serious.
“You know that’s not okay, right?” Frenchie pressed on. “Like, if you weren’t okay with it-”
“It was fine. A long time ago,” he bit off. “I don’t need pity.”
“Who’s offering it?” Roach snorted. “If I was pitying you, it’d be for your tragic taste or the way you can’t relax worth a damn or your limited vocabulary. Not that you got dicked down by your asshole stalking boss.”
“Eddy didn’t stalk me.”
“Did you invite them here?” Frenchie picked up a makeup wipe, rubbing it slowly over one eye, pulling away the black of eyeliner and mascara.
“No.”
“So?” Frenchie challenged.
“I would’ve done the same to them. Just how we work.”
“Then your machine,” Roach pointed the tip of makeup brush at him, “is fucking broken, my guy. I’d recommend quitting. Maybe getting a more relaxing job. Could be better for your jagged-ass karma.”
Izzy crossed his arms over his chest. He’d forgotten he was holding the purse and it slapped him resoundingly over one bicep.
“Or not,” Frenchie sighed. “Listen, storm cloud, you don’t have to go back out there is all we’re saying. Hang with us. Leda will come get you if you want.”
“I don’t need saving.”
“Lies, storm cloud, lies.”
Izzy went back out there. Eddy hadn’t left. They were still leaning all into Leda’s space, eyes bright and lips forming questions that Leda must be answering. One of Eddy’s hands brushed over Leda’s knee.
“There you are!” Leda turned to Izzy with a smile. “Thank you, my dear. Did the girls talk your ears off?”
“Fucking harpies,” he mumbled, the expected beat.
“Well, it’s been nice to meet you, Eddy.” Leda slipped off the barstool and out of Eddy’s reach. “Please stay. Enjoy a drink on me.”
“I think I will.” Eddy gave her a long, heated look. “See you at the office tomorrow, Iz.”
“...Yeah,” Izzy agreed. Dread flooded into his veins.
They walked out of the bar together. When Izzy realized he was still holding the purse, he considered hurling it into the gutter. It would be satisfying for all of a minute. Instead he held it out and Leda took it.
“Thank you. Interesting person, your boss.”
“Yeah, Eddy’s....” he looked for a word and found none. Nothing that felt right tonight.
“I assumed that you felt strongly about them, I didn’t realize it was returned. I had assumed not, considering how often you were with me. But they seem to care a great deal about you.”
Izzy shoved his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t wring her neck.
“No,” he said flatly.
“They came out with you, though. To meet me. You...you wanted them to meet me, didn’t you?”
“I fucking didn’t. Never.”
“Oh,” and there was that familiar, wounded tone. Stede (and it was Stede right now, makeup or not, Izzy was learning to tell) was so bruisable and usually Izzy didn’t mind landing a blow, but he was aching himself. He couldn’t deal with Stede’s ego tonight. “I just-”
“Eddy’s got her hands in every part of me. I just wanted...not. For fucking once. Didn’t even know that’s what I wanted until I had it.”
“I see,” Stede said in a way that made it clear he did not see at all.
“Twenty-three years. That’s how long we’ve known each other. And I’ve given all of it to them. I’d do it again. Wasn’t anything else to do with it, and at least I was- I am. Useful,” he stumbled out. Stede always wanted him to talk, he could deal with it not coming out nice and smooth. “So. Fuck me, I guess, for wanting something that they didn’t own too.”
“Oh, my dear.” Stede reached out and took Izzy’s hand. He started to pull away and the grip only tightened. Fine. Just..fine. He let it lie. “I had no idea.”
“Didn’t tell you, how would you?”
“Exactly! This is what I mean about communicating.”
That was about all of that that Izzy could take. They finished the walk back to Stede’s place in silence.
“Come with me.” Stede tugged Izzy into the bathroom.
Together they dismantled Leda. Izzy was good at this, now that he knew the way. He could remove hairpins and unclasp undergarments. He didn’t give Stede a chance to call him ‘rough’ or ‘rude’ or ‘careless’. He folded everything, ferried it back to its place. It was a routine, a ritual, and Izzy was good at picking up on those.
When Stede got into the shower, Izzy went with him. He washed away the remaining makeup, scrubbed over Stede’s pretty soft skin with the stuff that smelled like a garden. Washed Stede’s hair with shampoo that didn’t create suds and conditioner that ran like silk through his fingers.
Having sex felt like an afterthought with all of that. Not that they skipped it, but Izzy thought maybe they could’ve. He’d gone to a blank and quiet place.
-Izzy went to work. He didn’t go home and change. Didn’t bother washing away Stede’s perfumed products that clung to him. He just went in and readied himself.
Eddy wasn’t even there. Fucking figured. They didn’t saunter in until lunch and when they did, they didn’t talk to Izzy at all.
So it was going to be a freeze out. Fine. Izzy could deal with that. He’d hate every minute of it, of course. Did Eddy know that? She hated her own rage, he knew that deep down, even as he was trying to provoke it from her. But he infinitely preferred her anger to her shut down. The coldness meant not even a hint of the old ways. It was just robotic and disinterested. Izzy became nothing to her at all.
It was a little like death. Usually. But a curious thing happened this time around. Izzy had no idea what to make of it. He just...couldn’t bring himself to care. Oh, it was annoying, especially when she deliberately ignored him as he brought in things that needed doing. It even hurt a little. Yet, it didn’t consume him. It didn’t make him angry. It just made him tired.
-“Hiya, storm cloud,” Lucius greeted Izzy when he walked in that Friday.
“That better not stick,” he grumbled.
“Babydoll, there is no easier way to make a nickname stick than to be a bitch about it,” Lucius laughed. “You want a drink?”
“Vodka tonic.”
“Uh huh.”
He got a house special. It was probably not a metaphor that he’d come to enjoy the damn things.
“Hey,” Izzy said as Lucius set it down.
“No, I’m not making you something else. Take your medicine.”
“I-no,” he sucked in a breath and let it go. “The other day. You don’t- why did you check in on me?”
“Uh, cause you looked like you were going to hurl?” Lucius’ brows went up.
“But you don’t like me.”
“You don’t want to be liked. There’s a difference. You’re growing on me like a fungus. Or black mold. Probably the mold, I bet you'd give me a headache and some weird hallucinations if I huffed you in. Anyway, I don’t have to like you to want to make sure you’re alright.”
“I can handle myself.”
“Storm cloud, I don’t give a shit.” Lucius leaned in like he often did with customers. His breath was minty, a flutter of cool air caught between them. “I don’t let people get their hearts ripped out in front of me. Call it a personal creed.”
“My heart is just fine.”
“Hell, I’m not even sold on the idea that you have one,” Lucius snorted, but his lips were quivering with a smile. A real one.
“I traded it for a deadshot eye when I was eighteen. Devil got the worse end of the bargain,” he offered and to his surprise, Lucius laughed.
“Deal with Satan, makes total sense to me. Can you get Leda out of here early tonight? We’d all appreciate it. She’s been in a dictatorial mood all day.”
“No promises.”
It wasn’t actually that hard to get Leda to head home as soon as the show was over. Lucius gave Izzy an appreciative thumbs up and Frenchie mimed wiping sweat from her brow and did finger guns as they walked towards the door. Leda noticed neither. They were just for him.
-The freeze went on and on. The longest ever between them. Izzy was usually the one to climb up the glacier with offers of coffee and demands for them to get off their ass. This time, he waited too. Patience that he hadn’t known he had before settled over him. Or maybe it was numbness.
-He missed a Friday at the club, bogged down at a job that should’ve been cleaned up. It wasn’t the first time it had happened, but when he did manage to get in on Saturday, Leda scolded him like a child.
“You should’ve told me you wouldn’t make it.”
“I don’t owe you-”
“Owe! It’s not about being owed. I was worried!” Her hands flew up in the air and he took a step back reflexively.
“About what?”
“About you, you incredibly dense brick of a human being!”
“I miss nights all the time.”
“Not recently.”
No. Not recently. He’d been like clockwork recently.
“I can’t always tell you where I am.”
“Details are not required,” she said crossly. “A text would be nice.”
“I’m not nice.”
“I’m well aware.”
“But I can text.”
“See that you do.”
-It wasn’t until the show was over and Leda was in the back changing that Roach slouched by and informed him,
“Your boss was here last night. Just a heads up. Chatted Leda up for hours.”
“...fuck.”
“Yeah, might want to get that figured out, storm cloud.”
“Don’t fucking call me that.”
-Izzy didn’t ask Stede about it. Didn’t talk to Eddy at all. He didn’t want to know what they’d talked about. It didn’t matter.
-“Iz,” Eddy slid into his office on a regular day. It was hot as hell outside. Izzy had had to concede rolling up his shirt sleeves even indoors. Sometimes Eddy pulled her hair back on days like today, but now it wasn’t just back, it was piled up into a high ponytail, strands artfully arranged around her face. A purple ribbon held it up, pretty as anything.
Izzy knew that ribbon. It was usually threaded through the waist of a lavender dress cinching in Leda's waist.
“Yeah?”
“You going to the summer festival thingie that Stede does?”
Hearing that name at work, at his desk, was unpleasant. It didn’t belong here with his paperwork and knives.
“Why?”
Eddy tilted her head, studied him. Izzy didn’t shrink back only from long practice.
“Figured I’d go. See what the fuss is about.”
“Fine.”
Eddy went on hanging in the doorway. Izzy didn’t take the bait. They may have decided to talk to him, but it didn’t mean he had to give an inch.
“Stede said you were pissed at me.”
Izzy barked a laugh, “What?”
“Yeah, I mean we’ve been...you know we’ve been talking, right?”
Considering every gossip at the bar (all of them) had been scurrying up to tell him about it, it would be impossible not to know.
“Talk’s free.” He rubbed his palms against his thighs. What he wanted to do was close the door in Eddy’s face. He wasn’t ready to talk to them. He’d gotten too used to the silence.
“I like him. A lot.” Eddy tapped their fingers against the door frame. “I like the whole place. Still can’t figure out how you wound up there.”
“It’s just a bar,” he muttered. “Who cares?”
“Guess you don’t,” Eddy determined and pushed off, heading back to her office. “That’s what I figured.”
-Izzy hadn’t actually intended to go to the festival, but Lucius had cornered him.
“It means a lot to him.”
“So?”
“So. We need all the help we can get, storm cloud. Just show up and haul some amps. You’ll probably get laid, and I don’t have to throw my back out.”
“Fuck off.”
“Afraid you’ll have fun?”
Izzy had gone to the bathroom to avoid more of the wheedling, but that night, laid out in Stede’s honey trap of a bed, Stede said,
“You’re coming to the festival. I need someone to carry a clipboard and bark. You’re so good at that.”
“No,” he grumbled.
“I’ll let you yell as much as you want.”
“You don’t get to fucking decide that for me.”
“I do when it’s my event.” Fingers walked down his spine. “Besides, you might like it.”
“Bet I won’t.”
-He already knew when he was talking to Eddy that he was going. He stayed behind the scenes. No amps were hauled and no one gave him a clipboard. Yelling was a necessity because everything was so fucking loud, but it wasn’t actually hard to corral the crowds of queens. They all wanted to get where they were meant to be, and just having someone loud enough to be heard and point seemed to be good enough.
“Here,” Leda pressed a bottle of water into his hands and a lipstick kiss to his cheek. It was high up, a match to the unfinished star on the other one. “Thank you, my dear, truly. You’re doing a splendid job.”
“Just herding wigs.”
“A surprisingly difficult task sometimes.”
He didn’t wipe the lipstick off. It seemed to make the queens listen to him more, not less, and he didn’t want to dwell on that.
-“Come to the after party,” Leda wheedled.
“Beat,” he admitted. The sun had baked him out, sweating and a little delirious, helpful bottles of water aside.
“Oh, just go back to mine then,” Leda tucked the key into his palm. “I’ll try not to wake you.”
“How are you going to get in?”
“Leave it unlocked.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind? In this city?”
Leda laughed. “Just teasing, my dear. I’ve got a spare. You're very predictable, you know.”
He could’ve just gone back to his place. It wasn’t that far. But she was right down the road. It was odd to be in her place without her. Not lonely, not at all. Like she was still inhabiting it even from down the road.
Stripping down, he slid between her sheets on his own. No one coaxed or seduced him into it. There was something admitted there, but sleep took him before he could consider it.
-Eddy was in his office when he got in the next morning. He’d had to wiggle out of Stede’s death grip around him and had only managed not to wake him with an acrobatic move that might’ve pulled something in his shoulder.
There was glitter in Eddy’s beard, a shower of it with not even an attempt to wipe it away. She was sitting in Izzy’s chair, feet up on his desk. Like she owned the place. Which, of course, she did.
“Good morning!” she beamed at him.
“Morning.”
“Stede said you were there yesterday after all.”
“Never said I wouldn’t be.”
“Used to be you would’ve told me all about it,” Eddy regarded him solemnly. “When did that stop, huh?”
“What do you want?” he asked. His shoulder hurt. Stede had woken him up getting into bed last night and then since they were both awake, they’d done what they were best at. Patience, at last, gave way to anger. “What do you fucking want, huh? I’m right here, Eddy. I’ve been right here for twenty fucking years. What do you want from me?”
Eddy blinked, their feet came down and hit the ground with a thud.
“Woah, I was just asking-”
“What are you fucking asking?” he demanded. “I can’t have one thing? I can’t have time to just...decide what I’m trying to do here?”
“Decide what?”
“I’m...I don’t know what I am. Who I am. Anymore. It’s all a mess. And you’re not making it any goddamn easier. If you’re going to take him, take him.”
“Didn’t say I was going to do that,” there was menace thick in Eddy’s voice, but Izzy had a full head of steam, too much to read the warning signs.
“You don’t have to. You’re around all the time, always when I’m not there. You stopped fucking talking to me, so either it’s guilt or it’s anger or both or maybe it’s just that the sky is goddamn blue. I don’t know. I don’t...I don’t care either. Just stop dragging it out.”
“If I was-”
“No,” Izzy decided all at once. “No, I don’t want to talk it out. I don’t want you to talk me around either. I’m taking the rest of the day off.”
“You just got here.”
Izzy gave them the middle finger and put his back to them. “I’ve got more vacation time built up than there are days in the goddamn year.”
“It’s payroll! Today!”
“It’s already done! It’s always already done, you jackass!”
It felt good to slam the door. It felt good to stomp into the elevator. It was even good to get his car and tear down the street.
But then he was left with the day and the twist in his gut.
He got on the highway and drove. And drove. It would be easy to say he didn’t know where he was going, but in his heart of hearts, he knew. He went to the lake, memory dusty with age but still functional. It was overcast, but that was fine. He didn’t need the extra heat. Still fueled with anger, he went through the woods. When he emerged, he found the old dock still there. Someone had kept it up, though the wood was weathered. Walking to the edge, he found it sturdy and he sat down, letting his feet hang out over the water.
He looked out over the water for a long time. His phone buzzed in his pocket.
Stede. He accepted the call.
“What?” he asked.
“Eddy seems very upset. They called and said you made a scene.”
“A scene,” he repeated dully.
“My dear, what happened?”
“Why are you asking me? They probably told you everything already.”
“They told me their side, certainly. But it sounded a bit like you broke up with me to them, and that can’t be right.”
“There’s nothing to break up.” Izzy’s other hand was curled around the edge of the dock. The wood bit into his palm.
“There is,” Stede told him. His voice was thinner out here. Like it was coming from a long way away. “You know that there is. You can’t just give up.”
“Give up what? You jerk my string around, tell me where to go and how to fucking behave. And if I do it right, I get laid. That’s not a...it’s not whatever you think it is.”
“I didn’t know you saw it that way,” came the icy reply. “Honestly, why even continue at all if that’s how you look at it?”
Izzy closed his eyes. “Just...just don’t break each other’s hearts.”
“Izzy-”
He hung up on him. After a moment’s thought, he turned the phone off. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them.
It was very quiet out here. But she’d always been the quiet kind. If he closed his eyes, it was a little like she was sitting beside him. That wasn’t nothing.
-Days ticked by. He went to work and wasn't surprised to find Eddy absent. He didn’t go to the bar. Why bother?
-On Tuesday night, he was confronted by a very strange sight outside his apartment building. Lucius, Roach and Frenchie were standing outside the door, all in casual clothes, though Roach's skirt was covered in safety pins.
“Storm cloud!” Frenchie waved him over.
“Why do you know where I live?” he asked.
“Don’t worry, we’re not looking to invade the inner sanctum, even if your bulldog of a doorman would let us in.” Lucius was typing on his phone. “We’re here to abduct you.”
“Get the hell out of my way,” he brandished his keys at them.
“No,” Roach snorted. “Turn back around. We’re going out.”
“I’m not-”
“We’re going to do things your way: get you shit-faced and swear at things,” Frenchie said like it was obvious. “Then you’ll do our things our way. Probably. Either way, lots of drinks!”
“We gave you a few days to come to us.” Lucius shoved his phone in his pocket. “Then we remembered that you’re an emotional black hole and it probably didn’t occur to you that you could. So here we are.”
“I don’t need this,” he said tiredly. “I just want to sleep.”
“Breakups are like that.”
“There was nothing to break up.”
“Oooooh,” Frenchie wrinkled his nose. “This is bad.”
“I told you,” Lucius sighed. “Come on, storm cloud. Experiment with friendship. Who knows what could happen?”
They weren’t leaving. And Izzy did want a drink pretty desperately.
“Fucking fine.”
Frenchie clapped his hands together. “Great. We have the perfect place.”
To his surprise, it actually wasn’t bad. They found a bar in an area near to the Revenge, a rainbow flag prominent in the window, but far more low key otherwise. It could have been any mid-tier bar in the world, and there was even a game on the tv. Not that Izzy cared, but the familiarity of the background noise of presenters and greenery made all of it seem less weird.
“He’ll have a vodka tonic,” Lucius told the bartender, and Izzy got the first proper drink he’d had in six months.
Roach secured a table mostly by standing over people that might have been thinking about leaving until they were uncomfortable enough to go. Frenchie flopped down in a seat with an enormous margarita and raised it up with a ceremonial twist to his wrist.
“To exes.”
Lucius and Roach solemnly raised their glasses and then they all looked expectantly at Izzy until he gave in.
“Fuck ‘em.”
They all touched their glasses and they all drank.
Again. And again. Frenchie and Lucius carried the conversation, though Roach chimed in occasionally as they talked through some Revenge drama that Izzy didn’t feel up to following. They seemed content to talk amongst themselves, putting drink after drink in front of him. When things were pleasantly swimming and he was considering switching to water or maybe trying to refind his legs, Lucius went in for the kill.
“What happened, storm cloud?”
“Nothing.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “We were fucking. Stede met Eddy. They’re... whatever. I don’t know. I just got out of the way.”
“Wow, that is worse than my worst guess,” Lucius sighed.
“Did you break up with Stede because you thought he and Eddy were....” Frenchie made a hand motion that Izzy couldn’t follow.
“They’re probably in love,” Izzy said, finally putting words to the dread that had formed in his stomach the first time he’d seen them talking.
It wasn’t hard to miss. At the festival, when he had stood just out of sight behind the curtain, he had watched Leda peek out over and over, a little smile on her face until he’d followed her line of sight to Eddy in the front row. The few times he’d gone to the bar and caught Eddy already there, she had been sitting so close to Stede that their knees knocked together, so he’d just turned around and left like he’d never intended to go that night at all.
The way they said each other’s names to him had made it so obvious. It had been a relief that Eddy had barely been speaking to him with all the reverence that got poured into ‘Stede’.
Eddy had never said his name that way.
Stede never used Izzy’s name at all.
And maybe he said all that out loud, because they were all looking at him now with melted expressions.
“Stop it,” he groaned. “It’s fucking...fine. Who cares?”
“You care,” Roach said dryly. “I mean, not my scene, but clearly it’s yours, man.”
“ We care.” Lucius reached out and very slowly, like Izzy might bolt, covered Izzy’s hand with his own.
“Why? I’m not even nice to you.”
“Roach is an asshole most of the time, and he’s my best friend,” Frenchie shrugged. Roach snorted and swung his feet into Frenchie’s lap.
“Yeah, and Lucius isn’t nice to anyone,” Roach grinned. “But we like him anyway.”
“I am very nice to you, please and thank you,” Lucius sniffed. “You have no idea what I could be like if I felt like it.”
“He’d make a good point man,” Izzy said, grateful to seize on any other topic.
“What’s a point man do?” Roach glanced between them.
“You do the research on the job.” Izzy didn’t move his hand. Lucius’ fingers were warm and he suddenly felt very cold. “Make sure you know all the entrances, exits, points of weakness. You know all the people you might encounter. When the job goes down, you take the lead, put yourself first.”
“Point the way,” Lucius nodded a little. “Yeah, I can see it. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”
“I do the money.”
“Bullshit,” Roach laughed. “How do you even say that with a straight face?”
“Cause he does,” Frenchie decided. “You can do a lot of different things in a small business. Like how we all change light bulbs, wait tables and dance.”
“Problem with always being in front is that you’re the most exposed,” Lucius frowned. “Right? Like you’re the one the enemy aims at first.”
“Yeah.”
“So you really have to trust whoever you have at your back.”
“The commanding officer.” Izzy reached for his drink, swirled the ice in it mostly just to hear the sound.
“...Izzy, how the fuck are you going to do your job right now?”
“Wouldn’t. Drunk.”
“Yeah, obviously.” Lucius grabbed his hand more urgently. “But you can’t tell me you’re going to feel okay going out there with Eddy at your back right now.”
Izzy stopped swirling ice. He stopped breathing, maybe. Whatever else had happened between them, Izzy had always trusted Eddy to have his six. Yeah, she might sacrifice him to make a play, but she’d warn him. They were a team, ultimately. Of course that wouldn’t change. Would it?
“I was right about them, wasn’t I? They’re together now.” He glanced up and Frenchie hesitated, then nodded once. “Then it’ll be fine. Eddy has no reason to be pissed with me.”
“...You do realize you have reason to be angry with them, right?” Roach checked. “You’re mad about everything, why aren’t you mad at her?”
“Nothing to be angry about.”
“Oh, we are gonna need more booze,” Frenchie realized. “Several many more drinks.”
Izzy wasn’t sure what that would do, but he let them order another round. He even put down his credit card. There was money, might as well use it to find oblivion.
-There was a lot more talking. Around him, at him, and he had a dreadful certainty that some of it was coming out of him. That maybe he’d told them how he and Eddy had met, the way they’d been together and then not. He was fairly certain that at some point, Frenchie had started petting his hair. Lucius definitely still had his hand.
“It’s okay. If you’re angry.”
“I’m not,” he said to the voice, which could’ve been any of them really. “I’m tired. And I’m bleeding. Been bleeding forever.”
“C’mon, let’s get you horizontal, storm cloud.”
The city was lit neon and white when they stumbled outside.
“I love it here,” he told Roach, who was bearing him up for the moment. “Almost as much as I hate it.”
“Same.”
There was more blurriness. He stumbled against Lucius, who bore him up with remarkable strength.
It was hot as hell and Izzy leaned into it. Swept his fingers questioningly over Lucius’ back.
“Oh babe,” Lucius sighed, and there were lips on his temple. “I would fucking love to, trust me, but not like this.”
-Izzy was tumbled onto a couch, a blanket tossed over him, and he had no idea where he was, but that was hardly the first time. It was better than a bathtub.
Hours later, there was pounding and he woke with a stifled groan. His head hurt, his chest hurt. He curled tighter under the blanket, blotting out the creep of the sun. There were footsteps, the sound of a door opening.
“How’d you know?” Lucius asked.
“Deductive reasoning.”
Shit. That was Stede. Izzy considered his options, and the only viable one was just to stay there very still like he was a kid with a monster under his bed.
“You can’t have him today,” Lucius said firmly.
“You’re not his keeper.” That was Eddy.
What a fucking nightmare. He closed his eyes tighter. He needed to deal with this. With them. It was his job to face the scary shit head on. He sucked in a breath, ready to swing to his feet.
“I’m not,” Lucius agreed. “But right now, he’s here with me and not with you. You two need to go for a long walk and think about why that might be.”
“He broke up with me, Lucius,” Stede bit off.
“Yeah, sort of. I think he didn’t know that you didn’t want him to do it.”
“Of course I didn’t.”
Of course? Izzy frowned. He hadn’t? His head hurt so much, he could barely think.
“Hence the thinking on it,” Lucius said coolly.
“Just let us talk to him,” Eddy wheedled.
“No.”
“Lucius, really-”
“No, Stede. This isn’t a hard boundary to respect. Leave him alone for today. Or at least as long as he’s in my home. I will slam the door in your face if I have to, but I’d really rather not.”
“You think you’re his master?” Eddy’s voice went hard. Izzy flinched.
“I think that if I had wanted it, I could’ve had him in my bed last night,” Lucius returned, just as hard. “He’s exhausted and tired and sad as fuck and he would’ve crawled towards any kindness. But I’m not a shitty human, more's the pity because I’d love to have him. So you can say thank you for keeping your hands off, Lucius, and then you can very kindly get lost until he reaches out to you.”
“Now see here-”
The door slammed shut, Izzy gave a full body flinch away from that. Footsteps and then a creak of furniture and he could feel Lucius’ presence.
“Sorry. That was probably overstepping by a lot of a lot.” Lucius paused. “If you want me to go on pretending you're asleep, I can.”
“I’m not a child.” Izzy sat up reluctantly, the blanket falling away. He winced against the light. Lucius was sitting on the coffee table, a full two feet away, but it felt like the closest anyone had been to him in weeks.
“They didn’t show up here because they’re mad at you, you know.”
“Sounded like it.”
“Maybe a little mad. But I’d guess mostly confused.”
“They’re both idiots, then.”
“I think all three of you are dumb as rocks right now, but yeah, they’re winning the derby. You want coffee?”
“...yeah.”
-He drank Lucius’ coffee, which was better than any booze he’d ever given him and still pretty crappy. He ate a banana, safe enough and the potassium would help the hangover. Then he just...stayed. Pete ambled out eventually and gave him a slap on the back before going right out the front door, only to reappear ten minutes later with an actual newspaper and a breakfast sandwich for Lucius that looked like more grease than food.
“I’m just going to work on commissions today. Sweetie?”
“I’m going to go with John to do a consultation with Juniper Lee. She wants another ball gown. Frenchie said he’d finish up the pleats on that last piece, so he’ll be around.”
“Should be quiet enough,” Lucius turned to Izzy. “You should stay.”
He shouldn’t.
He did.
It was peaceful. He didn’t have his glasses, but he could manage the paper if he held it far enough away. Frenchie had music playing softly as he sat at a sewing machine, which had its own rhythm. Lucius brought in a lap desk and sat on the other end of the couch from Izzy, apparently entirely absorbed in his work. They didn’t ask him any questions. Didn’t even engage him at all or even talk much to each other. They both filled the space with quiet industry.
He decided to leave as the sun went down and it seemed like they were both starting to close out their work.
“I’m headed out.” He got to his feet.
“Kay,” Lucius stretched out his arms until his shoulder cracked. “But you can always come back, okay?”
“Yeah.” Frenchie didn’t look up, talking around a pin in his mouth. “You’re pretty good company when you shut the hell up.”
“Fuck you,” Izzy retorted, but it came out fond despite himself.
“Fuck you too, storm cloud.”
He got to the door before some long dead zombie of manners rose up in a shamble inside of him.
“Thanks. For last night. Today too.”
“You’re welcome,” Lucius smiled at him over the lip of his tablet. “Maybe you can return the favor someday.”
He hoped he wouldn’t have to. He didn’t like the idea of one of them brokenhearted. It seemed wrong. The night welcomed him and he found his direction eventually. It occurred to him his phone had been awfully quiet all day. Drawing it out, he found a post-it stuck to the screen. There was a small cartoon drawn on it of someone that he assumed was meant to be him, judging by the hair and the little vest. He was also drinking from a very large glass, larger than his tiny cartoon body. The symbols that used to mean swears in comic strips ranged over his head. There was lettering under his feet.
No one wants to drunk text and regret. Turned this off to save you from yourself. Kisses - L
-Izzy didn’t turn his phone on that night. He was still hungover and his chest still hurt. He slept in his own bed, which was better for his body, if not for his mind. In the morning, he went for a run and showered. Just like he intended to go into work.
Instead, he sat down at the counter and turned his phone back on. Texts pinged in rapidly, filling up the notifications.
Stede: I overheard Frenchie making plans and it seems like you might be going out with some of the queens? That seems unlikely, but I thought I’d ask.
Eddy: you seen the novak file?
Eddy: nm found it
Eddy: where are you? didnt see any messages that youd be out
Stede: I hope you enjoyed your evening. I’m glad that you’ve made some peace with the others even if you won’t talk to me.
Eddy: did you die? iz. text me back
Stede: Eddy says you didn’t come into work today. Are you all right?
Stede: We’re both worried. Please at least let us know you’re not dead.
Eddy: stede says you went out with some people last night. they leave you face down in a gutter or something?
There was a gap there. Probably when they’d started working together, figured out where he was and then tried to get past his accidental guard dog while he hid under the blanket. What the fuck was his life?
Then:
Stede: We need to talk. I think we all have a lot to say to each other. Whenever you’re ready. Eddy has agreed that you might be owed some time off. Please take it. Use it. Then come see us.
And worst of all after that,
Lucius: We talked about it last night, but I doubt you remember. I’m sending you contact information for a few therapists. You should call one. Make an appointment. Life won’t end if you talk to someone about your feelings that’s paid to help you deal with them, I promise.
He considered turning the phone back off. He could always just throw it into the river. Move away, get a new name. Start over. He’d always thought that would be an interesting challenge.
-He took a day off instead.
-Then another.
-Then he was bored as hell and he wanted his job back. Who knew what Eddy was doing to his office? To his files. Were they planning a job without him? The thought itched at him.
-He called the number Lucius had sent along. A woman picked up. She didn’t sound awful. Brisk. Clear.
“I don’t think I want to do this,” he told her.
“It’s work. Hard work,” she agreed. “It might hurt sometimes. It can help though, in the long run.”
He set up an appointment. The worst that could happen was that he canceled it. Or he hated it and didn’t do it again. Low stakes. He could handle pain, in any case.
Then he went to Stede’s place. He knew he should just text. They should probably meet in a neutral location, one at a time. Sort it out like adults.
Izzy didn’t know how to do that. He knew how to walk into the heart of enemy territory and walk out victorious. So that’s what he was going to do. Even if the victory conditions here were nebulous.
He knocked and waited.
The door opened.
Goddammit, Stede was still blond and well-made. He was still perpetually worried looking and he still made Izzy’s fingers itch to touch him. Why couldn’t he be ugly or undesirable? That’d make things much easier.
“Izzy!” he said with excitement, then halted, seemingly at a loss. “You came by to...”
Ugh. Fine. “Talk. To talk. Eddy’s here?”
“Oh, yes, they um, you know.”
“I’m shocked that you two fucked,” he said dryly.
“We might not have!” Stede protested.
“But you did.”
The pink flush spoke for him. Izzy went inside, brushing by Stede. Nothing had changed, but it hadn’t actually been that long since he’d been here.
Eddy was there, laying out on the couch, feet bare. She was in one of Stede’s robes, a gaudy pink thing that made her look infinitely elegant. Her beard was gone, which stopped him in his tracks for a second.
She looked naked in a new way.
“Iz!” She sat up. “You came.”
“Yeah.” He surveyed her. “What happened to you?”
“A lot,” she sighed. “Like a lot of a lot. And I’m really goddamn mad at you.”
“What the fuck else is new?”
They stared at each other over the loudly silent space until Stede clapped his hands together like a school teacher.
“Well! We should hash this all out. I’ll just run out and get us some coffee first, perhaps.”
“We had coffee already.” Eddy glanced over at him.
“So we did. Izzy?”
“No.”
“...Right. So. Talking.”
They both looked expectantly at him.
“You came looking for me,” he grumbled. “So. I’m here.”
“The thing is-” “I just thought-” Eddy and Stede started to say at the same time, then both stopped.
“You first,” Stede decided, still hovering awkwardly behind Izzy.
“Why don’t we sit at the table?” Eddy suggested.
They killed an awkward minute doing that and then they all were sitting down.
“I wasn’t looking to steal Stede from you,” Eddy finally said. “I thought you weren’t that interested. You’d never given a shit before about anyone else, so I figured you were just...dunno. Killing time.”
“And you broke up with me,” Stede added. “So that seemed to make it even more plausible.”
“You two clicked like magnets from minute one,” Izzy shook his head. “I can’t compete with that. I don’t want to. It was easier just to get out of the way after a while.”
“What on earth do you mean? Certainly Eddy and I have a certain...simpatico, but you weren’t in the way. We were dating, Izzy, I honored that even if you didn’t.”
“You never said,” Izzy frowned. “We barely said two sentences in a row to each other that weren’t about sex or taking potshots at each other. How the fuck was I supposed to know that was romantic?”
“Stede is...Stede!” Eddy waved a hand at the man. “He’s not a casual person!”
“I’m not a fucking mindreader!” Izzy snapped. “I saw the evidence, I drew conclusions. And no one was exactly rushing to change my mind, were they?”
“Because, and I can’t say this often enough, you broke up with me. Through Eddy!” Stede snapped right back. “I think I deserved more than to be bartered away in some...flim-flam conversation!”
“Flim-flam?” Eddy asked, amusement tugging at the edge of their voice. “No, right. Later. But yeah, that was pretty shitty as far as conversation went. Made a lot of assumptions there, Izzy.”
“I made-” He could feel his hands shaking. “You didn’t talk to me for Six. Fucking. Months. And I didn’t even know WHY this time.”
“You didn’t ask,” Eddy said as if that was very reasonable. They looked so reasonable with their shaven face and big brown eyes. Like they were a very normal, rational person and Izzy was acting out of order.
“We’re adults, Eddy! Jesus, Mary, Joseph and every last one of the fucking saints, what did you want me to do? Divine it in the goddamn water?” All the rage he hadn’t felt during that long silence seemed to well up all at once. “I didn’t know why you were so angry with me. I didn’t know what the hell Stede wanted with me. I’m just...I was just trying to keep my head above water. Trying to keep you from drowning, trying to keep this twat interested enough that it didn’t just- that I didn’t ruin it. And it all happened anyway.”
“...Iz,” Eddy huffed out a broken laugh. “I wasn’t mad at you.”
“No?” He slammed backwards in the chair. “Then what was that?”
“I was...” Eddy looked to Stede, who made a little ‘go on’ gesture. “I was freaked out, okay? You just changed on me. You don’t change. There’s death, taxes, and Izzy Hands. Then you were just...not. You went out and found something else. Someone else. You never even told me about him.”
“Because-”
“Of exactly what I wound up doing?” Eddy guessed.
Izzy gave a tight nod.
“How did you know that would happen?” Stede frowned. “You didn’t know we’d like each other.”
“Everyone likes Eddy. People fall in love with Eddy because they walk into a room. It’s not hard to figure.”
“That’s not true,” Eddy countered. “You just think that because- well, you know why.”
“I obviously don’t,” Izzy bit off.
“We tend to find the people we love, very...loveable?” Stede ventured.
Izzy’s heart, which he had not traded away even though he would very much have liked to, heaved behind his ribs.
“You always thought I was more than I am,” Eddy nodded slowly. “I’m just me, Iz. Not even the me that I thought I was, but we can...if there’s a later, then there’s that for that. But most people are scared of me. I have to work to get them to talk to me, let alone like me.“
“Stede loves danger.” Izzy ran a finger over the edge of the table. “We did it the first time because he got off on me beating that dude to a pulp.”
“I never said that!”
“You didn’t need to. It wasn’t my winning personality, was it?” he challenged. “So yeah. He wasn’t going to be afraid of you. And you’re just...more. So.”
“Eddy isn’t more than you,” Stede sighed. “I think I’m beginning to see how things went wrong here.”
“I’m not sure I do,” Izzy shrugged. “You’re together. Great. I’ll go back to work. You’ll go back to work. It’ll be just like it was before.”
“I like you, Izzy,” Stede said very slowly, like Izzy was very thick. “I always did. I liked you that first night. You were terrible, but your terribleness was fun. And you came back even though you were uncomfortable and confused. It was very brave. I was enjoying it, being with you. I liked it.”
“Okay,” he said dully, not sure where that could be headed.
“You weren’t a placeholder. I wasn’t having a dalliance or a fling. I wanted to spend more time with you.”
“All we did was fight and fuck.”
“Not true,” Stede said without hesitation. “We talked. You were interested in what I did, helped with it even when I didn’t ask for it. Told me what you could about your day when I asked. I know there was a lot you felt you couldn’t say, but you tried. We were building something together. And you gave up on it.”
“I-”
“No,” Eddy frowned. “He asked me. He said he needed time. Before he imploded and left and said all the other stuff. I kind of forgot.”
“That seems like an important detail, honey.”
“There was a lot of yelling.”
“We were...it was a relationship?” Izzy asked.
“Yes, my dear.” Stede’s eyes looked wet. Goddammit. “I thought so.”
“Oh.” Great. He’d failed at something he hadn’t even been sure he was doing.
“And I,” Eddy sucked in a breath and expelled it, “was jealous as hell.”
“...of me and Stede?” Izzy wrinkled his nose.
“Yeah, Iz. You were...I think you were happy. The closest to happiness I’d seen you in a long time, anyway. Just went to the Revenge at first because I thought maybe you were getting out. Starting your own branch like you threatened all the time.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” he admitted. “Was just a stupid thing to say.”
“And I did see. And I liked Stede right from the start, definitely. But I also hated him a little.”
“...You did?” Stede frowned.
“You made him happy,” Eddy gestured at Izzy. “I never did that. I think I only ever made him worse. And myself at the same time.”
“You made me happy,” Izzy had to correct that fast. “I- you did. You had to know that you did. Why else would I stay?”
“Dunno. I just knew that you did. Loyalty, maybe. Some stubbornness, probably. Not sure where else to go, the rest of it.”
“I was there because I wanted to be. And you could’ve had me any time you wanted.” It wasn’t so hard to admit it when everyone in the room already knew. “But you didn’t. So why were you jealous at all?”
“I don’t know,” Eddy pressed their lips together. “But I was. So I met Stede and tried to figure out what was different with him. Didn’t mean to fall in so deep with him. I really wasn’t looking to break you two apart. I got to like him and the Revenge. The whole thing.”
“And obviously I liked Eddy a great deal, but I wasn’t going to risk what we had for that. We only decided to pursue that when you took the nuclear option.”
“I walked away for a few hours.” Izzy wondered if he could start drinking before noon. It’d probably be a bad sign, but it felt like the last week, last six months, maybe just the last twenty years of his life had been a bad sign. “You haven’t seen nuclear.”
“That’s true,” Eddy told Stede.
“Fine, but my point stands. I only agreed to go further with Eddy because you closed off that avenue.”
“Congratulations, you want a medal?” he huffed. “We’ve talked it out, haven’t we? Everyone is sorry enough. You two can go back to banging and I’ll go home, go to work tomorrow, and we’ll just go back to that.”
“No,” Stede said. “I don’t want to be broken up with you. I want to figure out what we could have. I want you to have time to decide.”
“But you’re with Eddy now.”
“Apparently, the world changed while we were all busy not looking outside of heteronormativity,” Stede said serenely. “What do you know about polyamory?”
-What Izzy knew was fuck all, except Lucius’ weirdness, but after another painful half hour of discussion, he knew he’d landed in it. Eddy and Izzy were apparently going to timeshare Stede like a child of divorce, and the man seemed absolutely giddy about the prospect.
“I didn’t want to lose either of you!” He then got up from the table, fisted a hand into Izzy’s shirt and kissed him like he had the antidote to poison in his mouth.
So that was all right. Izzy did not look to Eddy for her reaction. He did watch Stede kiss Eddy.
It looked right. The way they fit together, Stede’s hands on Eddy’s freshly shaven cheeks. The way they parted slowly, Eddy going back for another small kiss as if they couldn’t bear for it to end.
Eddy had never kissed him like that.
-Izzy went to work the next day. Eddy arrived on time. They swanned in and deposited a coffee on his desk.
“Good morning, Iz!” And then flounced out. She was wearing a skirt. The coffee was lukewarm.
He drank the entire thing and spent the next five hours trying to drown himself in numbers.
-Stede apparently wanted them to go on dates now.
“Why?” Izzy asked warily.
“That’s...it’s just a thing you do in relationships,” Stede declared. “We’ll have fun.”
“Will we?”
“Of course! What do you do for fun?”
“You’ve seen it.”
“All we’ve done is spend time together at the bar.”
“Yep.”
“You have to give me something to work with, my dear.”
“I read,” he conceded.
“Oh!” Stede lit up like a jack o’lantern, which was exactly why Izzy had never mentioned it before. “What do you like to read?”
“Mysteries.”
“Ah, not a genre I spend much time with, but I believe we can manage something!”
Stede took him to a play about a murder. They sat in a theater and watched actors mime out horror. A few minutes in, Stede slid his hand into Izzy’s. He fought the instinct to pull away. The play wasn’t awful, but Stede’s hold on him was distracting. It was easily the longest time they’d touched without having sex, and it was doing things to his head.
“We could get...well. Something. Coffee?” Stede suggested afterwards.
“Can’t we just go back to your place?”
“You know what? We absolutely can. We made a good effort. A fortuitous beginning.”
Getting back into Stede’s bed should not have felt so good. Izzy wanted to hate it, to prove this was all for nothing. Instead, he let Stede take him apart and put him back together again.
-“Why don’t you come to the Revenge?” Eddy asked after a few weeks of the timesharing experiment.
They were sitting in front of a spread of blueprints. Eddy had one of their now-rare cigars lit, smoke billowing around her head.
“What do you mean?” He finished a notation about a stairwell that was inconveniently placed.
“You haven’t been to a show since we started all this, and I know you used to go all the time. So what gives?”
“You go,” Izzy shrugged. “So. Your time.”
“Leda’s on stage. It’s not anyone’s time. And you love it there.”
“Like hell I do.”
“You told me the first time I showed. Not in so many words, but I could tell. Lucius keeps looking at me like he’s trying to drill holes in my brain and the Swede won’t let anyone take your barstool. Just come back before someone there makes an attempt on my life, for fuck’s sake.”
Izzy pressed a thumb to a stray pencil mark, rubbing at it. It didn’t erase it, but it did make it fade a little.
“I’ll think about it.”
-He goes back. He figured Eddy was exaggerating, but his barstool really is empty even though the place is packed. The show had already started so the Swede was alone behind the bar, and he smiled when he saw Izzy.
“I will impress you tonight!” he declared. “Sit, sit.”
Izzy sat, warily. He should have kept an eye on the Swede, but instead, the stage drew him in. Leda was in her pirate outfit tonight, big hat with an even bigger feather, and she looked utterly ridiculous.
And beautiful. She was so goddamn beautiful.
“Ta-da!” The Swede set down a familiar blue disaster in front of him.
“Why am I supposed to be impressed?”
“Lucius taught me the secret!” The Swede beamed at him. “Now I can make your favorite!”
Izzy opened his mouth to tell the kid off, but the Swede’s wide smile caught the words in his throat. Who’d actually tried to make him his favorite anything in recent memory?
“...Thanks.” He picked it up and took a sip. Maybe it wasn’t his favorite, but it did taste like the Revenge. Tasted like Leda: sweet, secretly spicy and likely to scramble his brain.
“You’re welcome!” The Swede bounced off, clearly very pleased with himself.
-The last song of the show was hijacked by Lucius summoning the Kraken.
-Izzy watched Eddy ascend the stage, beautiful and re-made. She sang about freedom. She held Leda’s hand and told her that she loved her, right there in front of every regular in the building. In front of Izzy. And then she sought him out in the crowd, eyes landing unerringly on his face even though there was no way she could see in the dark.
Her free hand formed old signs.
Regroup. Checkin.
Izzy ran a hand through his hair, pushed the glass away. He’d never not met Eddy for a check-in, not even the time he’d been stabbed in the thigh and had to limp there, knife still in the wound. He wasn’t going to miss one now. Even if he’d rather be stabbed.
-They were waiting for him in the wings, titans in heels, silk and lace. Eddy waited for him. Her shoulders were squared and her stance fixed.
“Okay,” Izzy came to rest in front of her. “What?”
“My name is Eddy. She/her and they/them.” Eddy stared daggers into him. “Understood?”
“All the time or just in the dress?” he checked.
“All the time, Iz.”
He nodded, fixed it in his head. “Okay.”
“...Just ‘okay’?”
“You got lucky. Leda already broke me in like a fucking shoe,” he shrugged. “And Jim finished the job. So. I got it. You’re Eddy. She/her, they/them. You want me to tell the guys or are you going to do it?”
She looked away. “I’m done, Iz. With that.”
“....no.” He took a step back. “Eddy, come on.”
“I hate it. I’ve hated it for a long time.”
“You must know that,” Leda said softly. “My dear, you’re not oblivious.”
“Fuck the both of you,” he decided, turned on his heels and started walking away.
“Izzy!” Eddy cried out. “You can’t leave over that!”
He’d been exposed to a lot of musicals the last few months, but this one he was familiar with from a long time ago. Some long ago hotel viewing when there was nothing else on. He saw a man who bent and bent. But even Tevye broke.
“What am I allowed to leave over, then?” He turned around to face them. “What’s the step too far where it’s fucking permitted, Eddy? You want to change, change! You want to leave, leave! You want to love Leda, then love her! But don’t...fuck, don’t leave ME then tell me I can’t leave YOU.”
“You’re not the job, Iz!”
“I AM! It’s all I am. I’m a miserable dried up asshole, but I’m good at my goddamn job. And there’s no job without you.”
“Jackie-”
“I don’t want to work for Jackie! I don’t- I don’t love her, do I?” He laughed then, the broken wild laugh that hadn’t come out of him in too many years. “I love you, Eddy Teach, I didn’t suddenly stop years ago. And I would’ve followed you to my death if you’d just...let me!”
“I don’t want either of us to die.”
“News to me!”
“Yeah, that’s why the job has to stop, Iz. We’re not going to make it like this.”
“There’s no more we,” Izzy shook his head. “Sell the business. Fuck my boyfriend. But there’s no more we, Eddy. I’m going home. I’ll see you tomorrow night, Leda.”
“My dear-”
“Not tonight.”
He left out the back alley door. Lucius was out there and hurriedly stubbed out a cigarette before he spotted who it was.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“No,” he decided. “Got another one of those?”
“Want a joint instead?”
“Yes,” he said, desperate for it as soon as it was offered. “Please.”
“Oh shit, he says please. We’re all doomed.”
They got high in the alley. They didn’t talk. Izzy didn’t try to kiss Lucius again. He didn’t really want to kiss anyone right now.
But he did say thank you before he left. Mostly because it made Lucius giggle, and it felt good to make someone laugh after his entire being had been scooped out and left on the floor. He walked away lighter somehow.
Like he’d cut off a limb, but was still in shock.
-When he got home, he pulled up the resignation letter that he’d given to Eddy so many times that she’d stopped even pretending to read it. More of an old joke by now than a genuine attempt at leaving. He sent it to the trash. If the business was to be closed down, he would finish it off. Close out the financials and do what needed to be done to make sure everyone got their severance packets.
He talked to his therapist the next day. She scheduled him for another session before the end of the week.
Apparently he was not conveying a general sense of strong mental health.
-“My dear.” Stede came to him that night, probably worried that Izzy wouldn’t show otherwise.
“Hi.” Izzy had geared himself up for an argument, but instead he was pulled into a hard hug. “Don’t do that.”
“Why not?” Stede went on holding him. “You need it, don’t you?”
“I do not.”
But he hugged Stede back anyway. Just to make him feel better.
To Izzy’s surprise, Stede didn’t bring up Eddy at all. Izzy made them dinner and they ate it together, Stede doing his usual compliment sandwich like he thought Izzy wouldn't notice the criticism if he snuck it in between watery compliments. They watched a movie after some bickering over what it would be, but they both enjoyed it.
Afterwards, they got into bed and Stede pulled Izzy to him. They kissed for a long time. It didn’t seem to be going anywhere, which was unusual, but after a while, Izzy fell into the almost hypnotic rhythm of it. He wasn’t sure when he fell asleep.
-Eddy sent an email the next morning instead of coming in. An explanation of the next steps, mostly about Jackie acquiring the company. It was straightforward and clear. Izzy read it over a few times, then wrote back a few lines about preparing the finances for such a move. Then, almost on autopilot, he started to clean up the office.
He unearthed papers decades old. Most of them he handed off to Fang for shredding. The man had a weird affection for the shredder that Izzy chose not to know more about.
The things that needed keeping he consolidated down to a single filing cabinet.
In the layers of his desk, he found a photo. He’d probably meant to frame it when it was first taken, but time had buried it.
It was from their first job post-Hornigold. Eddy was standing in front of the office building, hair in their face, smoke billowing out from between their lips. Izzy was beside her, hands in his coat pockets. Neither of them were smiling, though Izzy remembered feeling good that day. Triumphant, even.
He put it in his wallet. He could throw it out later if he wanted.
-The sale went fine. Izzy oversaw everything and had the papers couriered to Eddy’s apartment, along with the few personal effects from her office since she apparently had no inclination of returning.
Izzy didn’t avoid the Revenge, but he didn’t go in on Fridays or Sundays anymore. He stuck to Mondays. Roach’s classes were usually entertaining in their own right and Lucius had more time to talk, though they mostly kept a companionable quiet. Lucius sketched in between bouts of drinking, leaning against the bar while Izzy drank his way through whatever mocktail Lucius had presented him with.
Donna had suggested Izzy cut back on the drinking and after a week of abstention, it was hard not to notice how much better he felt. So he’d stick with that for now.
“What’re you going to do?” Lucius asked on the third Monday after the sale. “Early retirement?”
“Not for me.” He twirled the glass of murky pink around in his hands. It tasted like sour cherries. Could be worse. “I applied for a P.I. license.”
“Ooooh, Detective Hands,” Lucius grinned. “Sounds like a porno.”
“Think that title is for cops, so they can fucking have it.”
“Good use of your skills, though. And has all the benefits of being legal.”
“Yay.”
Lucius laughed and Izzy ducked his head to hide a smile.
“You two seem tickled.” Stede stepped out of the backroom. “Thank you for the inventory, Lucius. Accurate as always.”
“I passed kindergarten,” Lucius rolled his eyes. “Counting was mandatory.”
“So were manners, I’m sure, and yet.”
“Manners are for the mannerly. I’m just a simple bitch trying to make my way in the world, your lordship.”
Izzy liked listening to them volley back and forth. They were funny with each other, and at ease. Frenchie and Roach were a little like that, but Frenchie seemed to demand gentler handling and Roach never teased him as hard as he might someone else. Izzy wasn’t sure when he’d started cataloging these things or why they were important. It just seemed to be the way his brain did things now.
“Izzy dear, would you like to come home with me after Roach finishes up?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
“Ooooh, it’s fine,” Lucius grinned. “Stede, how do you live with such sordid flirtations?”
“Generally by enjoying them, thanks very much.”
There was evidence of Eddy in the apartment. Discarded bits of clothing, a mug with a touch of red lipstick left on the counter. Izzy ignored them for the most part. He left no such marks behind as far as he could tell. Could Eddy read him there anyway?
“I’m going to have a cup of tea. Do you want a decaf, dear?”
If Stede was going to faff around with tea, they weren’t going to bed for at least another half hour and it had been cold outside.
“Yeah.” He headed to the coffee maker only to be shooed away.
“You’ve had a long week, I can make coffee. Did you want to continue with that thing on mushrooms we started watching?“
“That hippie shit?” Izzy turned on the television.
“I think it’s fascinating. All those trees talking to each other through fungi! All that happening just beneath our feet. It’s miraculous.”
“It’s creepy,” Izzy contended.
It was interesting though, so he got up Netflix. The recently watched revealed that Stede was halfway through something called Bridgerton. Judging by the thumbnail, it was probably something he was watching with Eddy. The documentary was right next to it in the ‘continue watching’ category. Symbolism of something, probably.
It was all right to sip something hot, pressed up against each other while the wind whistled by the windows. The kind of night that their ancient ancestors might’ve done almost the same around a fire instead of a screen. Stede stretched his arm around the back of the couch, caging Izzy in a little.
It had been a long week somehow, though Izzy hadn’t actually done much except apply for the license, deep cleaned his apartment and worked out to get rid of excess energy. He could fight Stede on it, tease him for the cheesy mood, or he could give into it. He gave into it, head lolling against Stede’s bicep, and let the lassitude of the moment seep into him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Stede try and fail to repress a grin.
What an idiot, Izzy thought affectionately, taking another sip of coffee. Huh. That tasted...different, now that he was concentrating on it.
Shit.
“Did you put milk in this?”
“A little. You always complain the decaf tastes burnt, so I thought that might help.”
“Dairy milk?”
“Yes, of course- oh. Possibly not?”
Izzy set down the coffee and reached into his pocket. “Soy or almond?”
“Soy! Oh no. I forgot it was in there entirely, I’m so sorry, my dear! The bottles do look so much alike and Alma was here- I’m sorry. What was I thinking?”
There went the breathing. Motherfucker, it was happening fast. He hadn’t ingested soy in a long time. He’d forgotten how hard it hit him. Pen in hand, he flipped the cap and jabbed himself in the thigh.
“Doesn’t that hurt?” Stede asked, hand closing around Izzy’s wrist as if he could prevent him from doing further damage.
“Hurts...worse...not...to breathe,” he got out.
“Of course, I...oh no. I’ll just call 911 then?”
Izzy just nodded, concentrating on breathing. The epinephrine would work. He would be fine. He closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, let it out slowly. Time dripped around him. He could breathe. He wasn’t alone. Stede was taking a mile a minute into the phone, clearly nervous as hell.
“They’ll be here soon,” Stede said eventually, hand landing on Izzy’s back now, rubbing in slow circles. “Those hives are really something.”
“Not the worst...” he said, but he wasn’t sure that was true. He’d drunk a good amount of the damn coffee. Everything felt hot and wrong-fitting. His head was already pounding, which was early for it.
“They say you should lay down,” Stede fretted. “Maybe elevate your legs?”
Izzy didn’t so much lay down as collapse backwards, but that seemed to satisfy whoever was offering directives. He lost track of things after that. There was a lot of light at some point and then he was definitely in the E.R., an I.V. getting inserted. Goddammit. Definitely bad.
Stede’s voice was beating around the room.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Stede was demanding, probably of some poor nurse, but when Izzy cracked open his eyes, there was no one in the room but the two of them. Stede was on his phone. “Really? Never?”
Whoever was on the other end said something that made Stede’s eyes go wide.
“What?” Izzy muttered.
“Well of course he came back fine, he probably waited until he was well enough to at least fake it,” Stede went on. He reached down to push hair back from Izzy’s forehead, then leaned down to kiss his cheek. “You’re going to be alright, my dear.”
“Course I am.” He relaxed under the touch.
“Well, I’m not going to legislate how the two of you managed things in the past. I was hoping for some tips, but I understand now that’s unlikely.....oh. That is helpful, thank you, honey. If you wouldn’t mind. I’m sure he’ll want to be in his own bed tonight. I’ll take him back to his, so stay after if you want.”
Oh. Eddy. Izzy closed his eyes.
“I love you too. I’ll see you tomorrow.” Stede paused, listening. “Yes...yes... Good night.”
“They ok?”
“Oh, Izzy, really,” Stede laughed tiredly, the bed dipping as he sat down beside him. “We’re here for you. They’ll be fine.”
“You were annoyed with her.”
“A little. But it’s not mine to be annoyed about. Did you really never let her go with you to the hospital?”
“No. She had better things to do. Didn’t offer, anyway. I wasn’t going to ask.”
“The two of you,” Stede tsked. “How are you feeling?”
“Like someone poisoned me.”
“I’m so-”
“Don’t.” He cracked one eye just enough to find Stede’s leg, then shifted so he could rest his head on his thigh. It was a better pillow than the sad excuse the hospital offered. “Accident.”
“You’re a very strange man. Furious at me with the way I put away my toothbrush, entirely fine with me almost killing you.”
“You didn’t. Almost kill me. Your stupid toothpaste container is definitely going to get moldy though.”
“I think I nearly did. The EMTs were very concerned.”
“Did they do CPR?”
“No.”
“Not that concerned, then.”
“Has that happened?” Stede’s voice rose up several octaves.
Izzy shrugged. Or tried to. The angle was awkward.
“Izzy!”
“What?” he mumbled.
“How many times have you been near death?”
“From the allergies, or in general?”
“Oh my god.”
“Eddy and me were tied for a while,” he recalled. “But I’m ahead now.”
“Congratulations. Would you like me to tell her that?”
“Sure.”
“...Wait, truly? Because I thought there was an information stoppage.”
“Don’t care.” He really didn’t. His world had narrowed down to the muscle under tan slacks and the thud of his own heart in his ears.
Fingers carded through his hair after a beat. He didn’t quite fall asleep, but he didn’t stay awake for much longer either.
It was hours later before he was dumped onto his own bed.
”There we are.” Stede began stripping him.
“I can take off my clothes.”
“But where’s the fun in that?” Stede teased. He tugged off Izzy’s pants and tossed them in the general direction of the hamper. Then he slid hands up under Izzy’s shirt. “Up we go.”
“I’m not one of your children,” he grumbled, even as he let him tug it away.
“You are very much not,” Stede agreed, kissing him on the lips. “But you are unwell and tired, so you should get under the covers and stop fighting me.”
Someone knocked on the front door.
“Who’s that?” Izzy frowned, moving to get up.
“You’re nearly naked. Stay down,” Stede warned him. “It’s probably Lucius. I texted him about what happened, maybe he decided to bring something by.”
Except Lucius’ name wasn’t on the list downstairs. There was no way he’d get in without at least calling up first. Izzy fumbled under his nightstand, already imagining a thousand possible bad outcomes.
“Honey!” Stede cooed. “What are you doing here?”
Izzy’s hand dropped away from his gun. Fuck, why couldn’t it be someone coming to kill him? That would be easier to deal with. Of course Eddy could get in. Izzy had put her on the list when he bought the place and never thought to take her off.
“I brought a few things over for you,” Eddy’s voice carried through the apartment. “But really I...think he’d let me see him? Got me worried, the way you were talking.”
“I don’t know,” Stede said gently. “Let me ask him, if he’s still awake.”
There wasn’t enough time to think before Stede popped his head around the door.
“Would you like to see Eddy? I could help you get your shirt back on.”
“Yeah, fine.”
Stede did hand him back his shirt, but Izzy drew it back on himself, needing the second to armor himself before Eddy was stepping into his bedroom. Stede had never really looked right in here, bright colors at odds with the starkness, but somehow Eddy looked even wronger. She was too alive for the dead flat white paint, too vivid for his plain black cotton sheets.
“Got to admit, not what I pictured,” she said. There was a brief hesitation, then she sat down on the edge of the bed, hiking up her good knee so she could turn to face him. “You look like shit.”
“Feel like it, so we match.”
“Stede poisoned you, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Amazing,” she laughed quietly. “All these years of people trying to take you out, that one time I nearly killed you, and the one that gets the closest is your boyfriend.”
Izzy shook his head. “Be fair. If he was trying, he would’ve done a less effective job.”
“True,” Eddy grinned.
“I can hear you!” Stede called from the other room.
“Sorry, golden boy!” Eddy called back merrily. Then she turned back to Izzy and said more seriously, “When he called, I freaked out a little.”
“Why?” Izzy tried not to pick at the blanket or fidget at all. He used to be good at being still.
“Because you’re my friend, you ass.”
“Don’t think I am.” Izzy was too tired to get angry again. “Maybe a long time ago. But things changed along the way.”
“I’m not sorry about leaving the company.”
“You shouldn’t be,” Izzy admitted, taking advantage of that numbness. “You were miserable the last few years. I was trying not to see it.”
“Not what you were saying a few weeks ago.”
“Because I was mad as hell. You didn’t just decide for you, you had to know you were deciding for me too.”
“Yeah,” Eddy allowed, “I know. But maybe it’s good. Can’t keep making choices for the both of us now. Anything you do now, that’s what you decided, right?”
“Yeah, drinking poisoned coffee and all.”
“Come back to the Revenge. On Friday nights. I put on a good show, you know. I’ve got nothing left to ambush you with. It’s just a place to be.”
The loop had come around again, apparently. But this time Stede was in the other room, pointedly listening to a podcast loudly on his phone by the sound of it. Whatever was left here was between them. No more compromises. No more secrets.
“Yeah,” he said roughly.
“Yeah?” Eddy’s smile was broad and bright. It had always made Izzy feel like he won something. It still worked. “Awesome.”
-He went that Friday. What was the point of dragging it out? The show was good. His drink was good. Leda came to him after the show and made a point of kissing him up against the bar. She’d go home with the Kraken tonight, but he’d have the party favor of lipstick and her approval.
The Kraken sought him out too, and laughed hysterically when he produced a dollar to slide into the top of her bodice where a bouquet of other wilted bills had gathered. Worth it.
-“It’s Frenchie’s birthday,” Lucius’ voice greeted him when he picked up the phone a few days later. “Come out with us. You’ll like the music.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Ok, you won’t, but he’ll be happy you came.”
“...fine.”
And Frenchie was happy.
“Storm cloud!” He grinned. “We got such good seats! This is going to be so much fun. Don’t frown so hard, babe, you’ll get wrinkles.”
“I have wrinkles.”
“Yeah, the good kind. Frown ones would screw up your symmetry.”
The concert was awful. Roach, luckily, agreed, and the two of them bitched in competing scathing commentary while Lucius laughed at them both and Frenchie danced with John, entirely oblivious.
Izzy didn’t drink a lick, yet when he got home, he felt a little drunk. The good kind.
-After the first success, Izzy made it a point to bring a single crisp dollar to every Friday show he made it to. He had work now and sometimes he was just tired or had something to do, but he tried to go most weeks. The Kraken came around him every time, eyes bright. The bills slipped away into her dresses, corsets, and once the top of a knee high.
A single moment became a conversation. The Swede started making two house specials, one for Izzy to nurse through the show (his now lone drink of the week, heaven help him), the other for the Kraken to throw back while she joked with him.
A conversation became Izzy staying after closing one time, Lucius keeping him there with a series of increasingly unlikely stories about recent hookups that Izzy both did not want to hear and couldn’t walk away from.
So he was still sitting there when Eddy and Stede emerged from the back room.
“Oh!” Stede beamed at him. “You’re up late, early bird.”
“Fuck off,” he snorted and tilted up his face to accept the kiss that Stede was angling for.
“Not tonight, dear.” Stede held his face in both hands as he kissed him. He still smelled like Leda’s perfume. “We’re going to play cards, I’ve been informed. Want to play with us?”
“Poker?” Izzy asked hopefully.
“Want to?” Eddy winked.
“Sure,” he said casually.
It would’ve been cruel and far too easy to run the entire table. Jim was good, and they were clearly eyeing up the chips for some purchase. Eddy kept folding whenever Jim had a decent chance. Lucius was able to lose all on his own, the rules apparently sliding away from him as soon as they were taught.
No, Eddy and Izzy had one shared goal.
“I can’t win a single hand tonight!” Stede threw down his cards with a pout. “What terrible luck.”
“Sorry, my love.” Eddy swept up the chips. “How things go sometimes.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t bet your fortune,” Izzy advised. “Unless you want to become Eddy’s kept man.”
“Or yours. Your pile is growing too.”
“Is it?” Izzy glanced down. “Buy myself something lux then.”
“With your tens of dollars?” Jim asked dryly. “Are you dealing or what?”
It took another three hands before Stede glanced between Eddy and Izzy and declared, “You two are cheating!”
“No, we’re not,” they denied in chorus.
“I can’t believe I didn’t notice before.”
“You didn’t?” Jim shook their head.
“Neither did I,” Lucius groaned. “That makes sense, though. I can't win either.”
“You keep folding, no one needs to cheat with you,” Izzy told him.
“You don’t ever NEED to cheat,” Stede protested. “Certainly not against me.”
“Aw, just for fun,” Eddy assured him. “I’ll just buy you dinner with the winnings anyway.”
“How did you do it?” Stede demanded. “That’s what I want, as your punishment. C’mon. Fess up.”
Izzy set down his cards, glanced up at Eddy. For the first time in a long time, Izzy felt like they were talking without speaking and actually understanding each other. The tilt of her head, the roll of his eyes and the sigh of agreement.
What good were their secrets anymore?
“Got a bunch of hand signals,” Izzy said first. “Worked it out a long time ago.”
“And a few sleight of hand tricks. I’m better at those than Iz, but he’s better at stacking the deck when he’s dealing.”
“Like our hand signals?” Lucius set his cards down, suddenly zeroed in.
“Told you,” Izzy shrugged. “You’d make a good point man.”
“Oh, shit,” Eddy turned to Lucius like she was seeing him for the first time. “He really would. Can you imagine?”
“He’s my point man, of course he’s good,” Stede said impatiently. “Show me a sleight of hand trick.”
Jim leaned in. “I want to see too.”
So with no other stakes than to amuse their compatriots, Eddy and Izzy showed them signs and tricks that had once been such deep secrets, Izzy had imagined taking them to his grave.
That night was a good drunk-without-a-drink night too.
-“Eddy and I were going to take a drive. Get out of the city. Would you like to come?”
“Where and who’s driving?”
“Down to one of the little oceanside towns. Eddy knows a nice one, apparently. Just to go for a walk somewhere different, really. I’ll be driving.”
“Yeah, when?”
“Really, my dear? I thought I’d have to argue with you.”
“Nah. Sick of the walls in here.”
“You need an office,” Stede chided. “I keep saying it and you keep not listening.”
“Those two things are related.”
“You’re awful. We’ll pick you up in an hour.”
He’d been imagining getting into the backseat and witnessing their particular brand of overblown affection, but when he got to the street, it was to see Eddy already stretched out in the back.
“Knee?” he guessed as he got into the passenger seat. It was a luxury rental, of course it was.
“Yep,” Eddy popped the ‘p’. “Should be fine by the time we get there. Just needs a rest.”
“Dancing last night,” Stede explained.
“Figures.”
They drove with the windows down, unseasonable warmth brushing over their faces. Eddy started giving directions when the exit names got beachier. They got off, went down a winding route and wound up in a clapboard kind of town. It wasn’t touristy at all, signs of industry marking up the beach until they drew further down.
“Should still be- there!” Eddy pointed. “Good spot to park, and there’s a kind of walkway near the beach.”
It wasn’t a fancy boardwalk, but it was a serviceable and kept up path of wood planks and they all followed it as it rambled parallel to the water. Izzy spotted an oil tanker far out, drawing further away.
A suspicion nagged at him. He let Stede and Eddy get ahead of him a little, then he turned to look back at the town. It had gotten a facelift in the last twenty years, he bet. The kind of place where the tide had carried out fishing boats and brought in city dwellers looking for summer homes on the cheap. It would turn over slowly but surely. The signs were already there.
But before, say in the eighties, it would’ve been very different. Izzy had to jog to catch up, but they weren’t moving fast.
“All right?” Stede asked.
“Fine.”
He waited until Stede got a notion about putting his feet in the water. He wouldn’t be deterred no matter how much Eddy and Izzy told him it’d be freezing. Apparently he couldn’t ‘be around nature and not sample the goods’. When he was out of hearing range, Izzy nudged Eddy gently with his elbow.
“This is it, isn’t it? The place you’re from.”
Eddy crossed her arms over her chest, then nodded once, eyes on Stede walking down the pebbled shore.
“Haven’t been back in years.”
“Why today?”
“My mom’s birthday,” Eddy said, the words almost lost in the waves on the shore. “I forget it most years, but it was in my head for this one. So much has changed since last year. I can’t...there’s no home to bring him to. I met his kids, his ex-wife. What do I have to show him? There was just you and he found you first anyway.”
“Same for me.” Izzy watched Stede step into the water, his whole body going rigid. But the stubborn fool didn’t stop. He went right up to his shins. “He doesn’t seem to care, though.”
“He doesn’t,” Eddy agreed.
“You going to tell him?”
“Yeah, just wanted to get a feel for the place first.” Eddy shook her head. “I hated it here. I think I still hate it.”
“I know the feeling.”
Eddy’s arms dropped. Her hand brushed his. “We were always more alike than not, I think.”
It was an invitation.
Practice made perfect. Izzy had gotten good at accepting invitations. He took her hand in his.
When Stede turned back, he waved at them with a grin. Eddy waved back. Izzy just held on.
-“Storm cloud!” Lucius yelled from the stage. “Come lift a heavy thing for me.”
“What’s the magic word!” he yelled back.
The Revenge was humming with pre-show excitement. There were a lot of people tonight, as a local news channel filming the junior drag show had packed in extra bodies. Everyone was running around in all directions while Izzy stayed tucked in his corner, ostensibly ‘keeping Charlie out of trouble’, but considering Charlie hadn’t looked up from his book once since Izzy had arrived, it was mostly ‘drink your seltzer and push pretzels at him occasionally so he doesn’t starve to death while reading’.
“Get your ass up here!” Lucius barked.
And that must be magic because Izzy was moving.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he told Charlie, who nodded vaguely and crushed a pretzel into his mouth. Great.
Izzy moved the amp where Lucius wanted it and then there were suddenly a lot of other things that needed to be rearranged to accommodate the cameraman, and by the time he’d set down the fifth heavy box, he was aware of a small audience. Including Leda.
“...Jesus fuck.” Izzy straightened. “You all have arms!”
“Yeah,” Roach grinned, “but not like you, storm cloud.”
It was about then that Izzy recalled taking off his button down because the place was sweltering. He was in his undershirt, far more exposed then he’d probably ever been here. Not that Leda hadn't seen it before. He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Thank you, storm cloud,” Lucius said with a leer. “That was very...helpful of you.”
“You letting him get away with that?” Izzy asked Leda.
“Hmm?” Leda’s eyelashes carried their pearls up and down a few times.
The Kraken mounted the stage. “What’re we all doing?”
“Objectifying Izzy,” Roach told her.
“What? No.” Leda came out of her reverie. “WE are not doing that. WE are all getting off the stage and going to do our jobs. Aren’t we?”
“WE would prefer not to,” Lucius rejoined, but he did exit, and Roach followed.
“I’m sorry about them, my dear.” Leda crossed to him and her hand landed on his bicep.
“Are you?” He lifted his eyebrows. “Didn’t seem like it.”
“I think I’m allowed to look, all things considered.” She leaned in and brushed her lips very lightly against his, a bare touch so lipstick stayed where it belonged. “And touch sometime soon, I hope. Once I return the children to Mary tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I’m free.”
Then she was walking offstage too, directing a stray teen in a lot of tulle to the backstage area set up for the young performers.
Before Izzy could follow, the Kraken took Leda’s place.
“You do look good working with your hands.”
Then, as if they’d been doing it all along, as if it had never stopped at all, Eddy’s hand slid over Izzy’s throat and their lips covered his. She wasn’t in full makeup yet, her lips clean. They were exactly how Izzy remembered them, like sinking into lava and being grateful for the burn.
“Let’s put a pin in that, huh?” Eddy straightened. “Gotta go herd cats.”
Izzy stumbled off the stage and back to his barstool. Charlie hadn’t moved. All the chaos continued apace. It was like nothing had changed.
As if the earth hadn’t moved under Izzy’s feet.
-The pin came out the second the last patron left the bar.
Stede sought Izzy out. “Eddy told me.”
“I-”
“It’s fine,” he said evenly. “It’s more than fine. I’ve hoped for it, really.”
“Why?”
“Because I think you two are good together. Because I want to watch it happen,” Stede admitted. “I want us to be happy together.”
“That’s not how we work.”
“Not how you used to work,” Stede corrected. “I have the kids tonight anyway. You two should spend some time together."
Izzy didn’t wait for Eddy to find him. He went to her.
“Stede is setting us up for a date," he told her.
“Fuck that. Come over to my place.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
-They may have remembered how to kiss, but the sex was brand new. Their bodies had changed, the way they treated each other had changed. Stede was right, which would make him unbearably smug. The old ways didn’t work anymore.
Most of them, anyway. They were still rough on each other, but they, fuck Izzy’s whole life, talked about it first. They had to arrange it. No one bled that night, and after they’d both come, sticky and sweat-covered, Eddy said,
“You’re staying, right?” Like it had always been on the table.
So for the first time, Izzy stayed in Eddy’s bed and didn’t wake up until they did.
“Too early.” Eddy rolled over and threw an arm around him, drawing him in close. “You’re really warm. Fucking love that. Stede’s always freezing.”
“Man is an ice cube,” Izzy agreed, and let Eddy curl around him like a snake on a rock.
His face hurt. He reached up to touch it, looking for bruises, but just found a smile that must’ve been there all damn night.
-Stede made them both tell him how it had gone as soon as he got home. They went over and, casual as anything, Eddy pulled Izzy into her lap while she told Stede everything. Sometimes using Izzy like a demonstration dummy. It was one of the most bizarrely sexy things that had ever happened to him and it ended with them all piled into Stede’s bed.
-Stede bought a bigger bed. Then he started planning a renovation. It was overambitious, overoptimistic, and Izzy didn’t say a damn word. If anything, he might’ve helped with the plans.
-“We’re going to have to change your nickname,” Lucius declared. "You've been so sunshiney."
“Really?”
“No. You’ll always be our little harbinger of rain, Izzy Knish.”
“Knish?”
“Shut up, I’m hungry and I’ve got such a craving. I’ll do better next time.”
Izzy might’ve gone out after that and bought Lucius a potato knish. A hungry bartender would probably just put too much fruit in the drinks anyway, a problem that the Revenge already suffered from.
“You know,” Leda rested her chin on Izzy’s shoulder, sliding an arm around his waist, “we wouldn’t stop you. If you wanted to.”
“If I wanted to what?” Izzy frowned.
“Well. You know.” Leda gestured at Lucius, who was happily devouring his unexpected snack while chatting with the Kraken and Pete.
“I don’t.”
“He’s interested. You’re interested...” Leda shrugged. “We don’t own each other.”
“You think I want to juggle three of you?”
“Not juggle. But you and Eddy hung on so hard for so long. Look how much happier you are now that you don't dig in.”
“But you’ll be jealous,” Izzy frowned. “You get jealous.”
“My cross to bear, my dear, not yours.”
Izzy considered that. Watched Lucius lean over to snap his teeth mockingly at the Kraken, then dance away when she faked at swiping at him with her nails.
“How do you know he’d say yes? He didn’t last time.”
“Oh, my dear,” Leda laughed and hugged him to her. “It’s obvious. You’re very popular.”
Izzy Hands burst out laughing right along with her. That drew Lucius’ attention, sure as an arrow. He caught Izzy’s gaze and gave him a wink.
Izzy winked back.
Eddy looked between them and gave an old sign. One that Leda could catch as easy as Izzy could now.
Yes. Yes. Checkin after.
And a new one that still made Izzy flush dark.
I love you.
He made it back, Leda’s fingers flying right beside his.