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“Well, then…”
It looks like a tornado swept across the deck of the Revenge, destroying everything in its wake. The barrels they’d turned into a makeshift table have been upended, with several splintered to the point where they could hardly be considered ‘barrels’ anymore. The chessboard is—miraculously—undamaged (in fact, it appears to have caused more damage to the deck than anything else), but the chess pieces… The initial impact had caused them to go flying, with several sailing clean over the rail and into the choppy waters below, while others landed in various nooks and crannies along the deck, likely to never be seen again, and others still ended up broken beyond recognition.
And, in the midst of all the chaos… stand Wee John and Izzy.
Amazingly enough, this destruction wasn’t Izzy’s doing. Well… not directly, at least. (Ed wouldn’t have believed it either, if he hadn’t seen the disaster unfold with his own two eyes). What’d started as a… ‘friendly’ (he uses this term incredibly loosely) game of chess had quickly devolved into an all-out-war after Izzy had made an innocuous (by Izzy standards) comment that’d gotten blown way out of proportion.
Because Wee John is ordinarily so even-tempered, to say that the remaining crew had been surprised to see him snap like that would be the understatement of the century. Izzy looks like he’s been struck (he hadn’t—Ed absolutely would’ve intervened before things came to blows (Izzy would shit a brick if Ed were to take a blow that was meant for him, but... Ed knew that the only one Izzy would stomach a blow from was Ed himself—it’d been months since he’d last hit him; he was working on healthy outlets for his anger, and had even gotten Izzy to work through a couple of exercises with him—anyone else was liable to end up face-down in a pool of their own blood)). Wee John looks like he’s about to explode.
Frenchie is the first to act—the musician is the only one foolish enough to place himself directly into the line of fire (once again, Ed is pretty sure that the immediate threat has passed… but one can never be too careful, especially where Izzy is concerned—if Wee John were to actually land a punch, his feral little first mate was liable to go straight for the jugular). He talks Wee John down from the brink, pretty words tumbling over his lips so quickly, they’re scarcely comprehensible. He gets Wee John to take one step back, then two… a second later, he huffs, dramatic as ever, and storms off below-deck, leaving everyone standing around in stunned silence.
Ed chooses that moment to check on Izzy… which turns out to be the exact wrong thing to do.
He lays a hand on Izzy’s shoulder, only for Izzy to jerk away like Ed had burned him. “What the fuck?” Izzy seethes, “Now you fucking care? Where were you ten minutes ago, when he was going fucking apeshit?” He’s yelling—each word cuts Ed open like a knife, leaving him painfully raw and exposed. He hadn’t intervened because it was important for Izzy to be allowed to fight his own battles, but he would’ve if—
(There’s a little voice in the back of his head that says that, if Izzy had been the one to start this mess, Ed wouldn’t have hesitated to intervene).
“There’s no reason to be yelling at me, mate.” Ed says, “I’m not the one you’re mad at.” But he is, in a way. Even if he could never actually admit it, because being angry—well and truly angry—with Ed was tantamount to sacrilege, as far as Izzy was concerned.
And suddenly, Izzy is in his face. Or… as much in his face as he can be, considering their height differential. “Make an effort, you said. Make them see your fucking humanity, you said.” He’s jabbing a finger into Ed’s chest, much the same as he had when he was telling him off for fucking around with Stede. “I did exactly what you asked, and look where it fucking got me!”
Ed swallows hard, trying—and failing—to avoid taking the bait. He doesn’t want to fight him, not now. But it’s hard to prevent it when Izzy is jabbing at his personal bubble with a blunt-edged tool, trying to pop it and make it hurt, all at once. “C’mon, Iz… don’t be like that. Things were going well, until…” He bites his lip, realizing his mistake a second too late to do anything about it.
“Until I opened my mouth, right?” The smaller man sneers, “Fuck you, you absolute fucking twat.”
“Izzy…” Ed’s still figuring out how to deal with him when he’s like this. He’s used to letting Izzy wind himself up and up and up until he blows, and then leaving him to his own devices, so that he might pick-up all of his broken pieces. That, or he’d beat him until he shut the fuck up about whatever it was that was bothering him. Clearly, one option was… decidedly healthier than the other.
But Izzy isn’t paying attention. Instead, he’s picking a random member of the assembled crew—which just so happens to be Lucius—to “Clean this mess up—now. Any backtalk, and you’ll be scraping barnacles until your fingers bleed.”
“Aww… what’s the matter, Izzy? You can dish it, but you can’t take it?” Lucius retorts. It’s like the words take on physical form, burrowing deep underneath Izzy’s skin and festering, opening up old wounds and exposing them to the salty, bitter air.
“Uh… babe?” Black Pete interjects, sounding oddly unsure of himself. He’s usually among the first people to want to give Izzy shit (because, nine times out of ten, Izzy is giving Lucius shit first), but now… it sounds like he’s trying to figure out how to defend Izzy, which is… well, it’s certainly something. “Maybe you should just… do what he asked? Just the once? ‘Cause that… was kind of rough.”
Izzy takes his words in the exact wrong way, “I don’t need your pity—”
“It’s not…” He rolls his eyes heavenward—like Ed, he realizes that yelling at Izzy is the exact wrong thing to do right now, , but is still having a hard time refraining from doing so. “I’m trying to say I’m on your side, man—but you’re making it awfully difficult to not want to throttle you right now.”
“Fuck off.” And then Izzy is storming off, too—presumably headed to the captain’s quarters.
For a long moment, the crew just kind of... stands there, unsure of what to do. Some cast nervous glances in the direction Wee John and Izzy had stormed off in, like they’re worried that they might accidentally summon them back and restart all of that calamity by speaking. Others look to Ed like he’ll magically be able to fix this clusterfuck. Ed... Ed just stares at the place where Izzy had once stood, like he can bring the other man back through the power of his will alone. ...Maybe he could, once upon a time. But things were different, now. His and Izzy’s relationship was healthier, and part of that meant getting away from using the strange power he had over Izzy to bully him into doing what he wanted.
Now would be the time for Ed to step-up and make sure that the crew is following Izzy’s instructions—or, rather, the one member of the crew that Izzy had instructed to do anything was actually doing as they’d been told. But all he seems capable of doing is standing there—just as he’d done when Wee John had flipped his shit. And he hates himself for it.
Izzy doesn’t need his protection... but he should be protecting him, nevertheless. It’s his job as his captain.
Hell, even if he wasn’t his captain... he should be protecting him simply because he’s his lover.
Thankfully, Fang and Ivan step up, catching the ball that Ed’d dropped and keeping it moving. Fang grabs Black Pete and Frenchie, and together they begin collecting broken pieces of barrel—deciding what can potentially be salvaged and what definitely needs to be disposed of. Ivan, meanwhile, is on Lucius like a second skin, following him around deck to make sure that he finds all of the little game pieces that’d gotten scattered to the wind. For one brief, fleeting moment, Ed thinks about Stede’s face, and the look he’ll make upon realizing that his expensive chess set had been ruined. At the end of the day, the loss will sting... but Ed knows it won’t sting nearly as much as the knowledge that Izzy had gotten hurt because of their idea.
He's torn from his thoughts by Frenchie popping back up in his periphery, a strange look on his face. “I, uh... I don’t know what the fuck happened back there, but I’ll talk to him... see if I can get him to apologize, at least.”
Ed swallows hard, “Yeah, that... that’d be good.” Honestly, he can’t see how Wee John and Izzy being together in the same space at any point in the near future would be a good thing, but... he also acknowledges that the sooner an apology is made, the sooner they can all begin to move on. Things had started to get better between him and Iz once he’d apologized, after all.
Granted, his relationship with Izzy was... different—always had been, always would be.
He licks his lips, “I’mma go check on him—make sure he hasn’t started a fight with Stede.” He says this, but he makes no move to actually do it. He’s ill-prepared to handle the fall-out of his plan because, well… of all the people he would expect to get into a fight with Izzy, Wee John did not rank very highly on the list… if he made it on the list at all. He should’ve had a contingency plan in place for when things went to shit—that was on him.
Lucius tosses him something that looks suspiciously like a cup, “You, uh… might want to keep this on hand… or in your pants. Just in case.”
“Ah…” Izzy was more likely to tear out his jugular, but… it’s the thought that counts, and all that jazz. “Thanks, mate.”
In the end, he doesn’t put the cup on—he just… holds it, like that’s a perfectly normal thing to do, as he heads below deck, intent on reaching the captain’s quarters. He can hear Stede and Izzy talking long before he reaches the door—he tries not to eavesdrop on their conversation, but it’s hard to avoid listening in (and besides, if he can hear them, surely they can hear his heavy footfalls approaching… if there was something that he wasn’t meant to hear, then they’d stop talking about it). Izzy is relaying what’d happened on deck to Stede, who is sleepily humming along—doing his best to be an ‘active listener’ even while he’s struggling to keep his eyes open.
(Stede had been injured in their last raid. It was nowhere near as bad as the time he’d been stabbed (and then hung) aboard the Spanish naval vessel, or the time that Izzy had pinned him to the mast, but… the wound wasn’t healing as quickly as they would like, and the healing process was taking a whole lot out of him. He’d spent most of the last several days sleeping—which was why he hadn’t been on-deck when the fight had occurred).
When Ed lets himself into the cabin, he finds them in pretty much the exact position he’d been expecting—
They’re cuddled up together on the bed, with Izzy tucked away in the protective cradle of Stede’s arms. Izzy is usually a bit fussy when it comes to cuddling, but now that Stede’s been injured, things are… different. He lets Stede hold him and stroke his hair, a dark flush staining his cheeks—Ed can see the barest hint of his face where it’s hidden in Stede’s chest, their bodies so close it’s any wonder the first mate can breathe—as he desperately tries to pretend like he doesn’t like this… like he doesn’t want this. But Stede knows better—has learned how to read Izzy like a book, carefully unfurling his crumpled pages with a reverence he’s still not entirely certain he deserves.
Stede is the first to acknowledge him, offering him a smile that’s bright as the noonday sun despite the way it droops ever-so-slightly with exhaustion. “I hear there was a bit of an incident… is everyone alright?”
“It was more of a… a verbal thing, than anything else.” Ed says, “Those involved took a couple of bruises to their pride, but… nothing life-threatening.”
Stede hums. Slowly, carefully, he runs his fingers through Izzy’s sweat-slick hair. “Putting yourself out there like that… it took a great deal of courage.” He says. Ed’s not sure how it’s possible, but Stede’s gentle words have Izzy’s face glowing near radioactive red. “These endeavors do not always work out the way we might wish… but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t made all the better for putting ourselves out there and trying.”
Now that Izzy seems to have calmed down—at least a little—Ed feels safer mentioning, “You had an extremely antagonistic relationship with the crew for a long, long time, mate. It… It can be hard to break yourself out of that ‘shit was bad once, and it could be bad again’ mindset.’” He sounds like he’s speaking from personal experience, here—“That’s not to say that what happened out there was okay, just…”
“Anger is many things… chief among them a weapon and a defense mechanism.” Stede chimes in. Ed offers him a small smile, happy to take the out before he digs himself into a hole he has no hope of climbing back out of. “Sometimes, in defending ourselves, we hurt others.”
Izzy makes a small sound of discontent, “You’re making this sound like it’s my fault.”
Stede’s fingers never cease moving in Izzy’s hair, “I don’t like the word fault. Personally, I think this whole mess was just an unfortunate misunderstanding… but you’re hurt, and so is Wee John, and I don’t think either of you are of a mind to try and be the ‘bigger person’ and move on, as it were.” He says, without judgment. “If we must assign fault, honestly… I think you’re both a little bit to blame—”
“All I fucking did was speak—” Izzy interjects, face hot for an entirely different reason. “He and Frenchie were the ones who took it upon themselves to repair all the bibs and bobs we have lying around the ship. It’s not a job they were assigned—they fucking volunteered! So, why is it suddenly my fault when I comment about a missing piece of the fucking game we were currently playing?!”
“I, uh… I think it might’ve been your tone, mate.” Ed says. And oh, if looks could kill, “Listen! You just… have this way of talking, sometimes… that can make it sound like you’re putting someone down—”
Izzy sniffs, “Did you really come all the way down here just to make me feel worse?”
Ed cringes, “That wasn’t the intention, no.” But then, he uses Izzy’s comment as a pivot point—turning it right around to help emphasize the point he’d been trying to make originally. “B-But—I bet you didn’t intend to make Wee John feel bad with your comment, either. You can’t control how other people perceive what you do and say—but you can acknowledge their feelings on the matter—”
“You sound exactly like Stede right now and I fucking hate it.”
Stede offers Ed a placating smile. It seems as though there’s nothing they can do or say that’ll make Izzy feel better about all this… they’ve said their piece, presenting the opposing point-of-view for Izzy’s consideration, and now… now, all they can do is wait. The waiting, however, is cut short by a sudden knocking on the door. The knock itself is extremely heavy-handed, like the person who’s knocking has no desire to be there—but doesn’t have a choice in the matter, one way or another. They don’t wait to be invited inside—the second they’re finished knocking, the door swings open, revealing a red-faced Wee John and a slightly panicky Frenchie.
Wee John doesn’t address Izzy directly. He doesn’t even really look at him—and Izzy is too busy glaring into Stede’s chest and definitely not crying to bother looking at him, in turn. When he speaks, he addresses the room at large, barking out an agitated, “Sorry for my outburst,” before storming off back in the direction he’d came.
Frenchie cringes… and then tries for a smile, “It’s better than nothing, right?”
Stede’s not sure about all that, but… an effort was made. Now, it was just a matter of getting Izzy to reciprocate in kind.
Which… is probably definitely easier said than done.
But Stede is up for the challenge (and, with a bit of cajoling, he’s sure that Ed will be, too). After all—progress requires setbacks; the only sure way to avoid failure is not to try,