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To Izzy’s endless (and loud) annoyance, they won’t let him do any actual, physical work while he’s still healing. Instead, after a quick leadership meeting with the ranking crew, it’s decided that they’ll take a few weeks to run drills and conduct some much needed training.
The idea, as he understands it, is to make sure the crew are as up to speed as possible before they make an attempt at rounding up what’s left of Zheng’s fleet and going after the British. To that end they’ve made their way to a somewhat treacherous, and therefore unlikely to be disturbed, cove on the far side of the uncharted island of Deus Ex Marina and dropped anchor to conduct a number of training sessions on topics ranging from sailing to combat to personal fucking hygiene, and to give Izzy time to limp around pathetically without getting them all killed while his insides knit themselves back together again.
The training is something they should’ve been doing from the start, in Izzy’s opinion; many of the crew have yet to learn the sort of basic sailing and combat stuff Izzy had known back to front by the time he was fourteen years of age.
The secondary benefit of all this, of course, is that it gives them time to plan their next steps. The pirate queen’s got Edward’s brilliant mind for strategy without his distractibility, and the new captain’s got a surprising flair for thinking on his feet. For the first time in - fuck, years probably - Izzy’s feeling pretty confident that, between them, they’ll come up with something that’ll both work and keep the crew as safe as possible.
Which is all he’s ever asked for, really.
Who exactly constitutes ranking crew now aboard this ship isn’t quite what he’d expected, but it works. And, anyway, the rest voted on it, which is as it should be, as it is on a proper pirate ship, so that’s that.
Captain Frenchie’s currently working under a sort of temporary mentorship under Zheng Yi Sao, just until they can reunite with any of her surviving crew and get her settled on a ship of her own. She’s an impressive pirate. In the privacy of his own mind, Izzy can admit she’s perhaps even more impressive than Blackbeard himself, at the height of his strength. Frenchie might be new to captaincy but he’ll have the benefit of one of the best teachers it’s possible for a pirate captain to have, and that’s nothing to sniff at. Besides, she knows how to come at it from a different perspective than most of the big, tough, murderous men who find themselves taking on the job in Izzy’s experience, knows how to use her apparent weaknesses to her advantage, how to be clever with it, and that’s more suited to Frenchie’s style.
It’s easy to underestimate Frenchie, Izzy’s come to find. Even Edward made that mistake. And Frenchie lets himself be underestimated, does it intentionally so no one knows what he’s capable of. After watching him for a while, Izzy’s decided that Frenchie trips over his own feet like Calico Jack gets roaring drunk; not fake, exactly, but most definitely exaggerated to his own advantage, so that those around him let their guard down.
It’s… interesting. Exciting, maybe, for the first time in years. There’s potential here with this captain, this crew. There’s a future that might be worth sticking around to see.
While the captains are doing their thing, Zheng’s second– an eminently sensible woman who wants to be known only as Aunty –is working with Izzy to get the crew into shape. And Spanish Jackie… Izzy’s not exactly sure what her official role is, or why she’s sticking around, but she seems to be acting in a sort of freelance consultant capacity, sitting in on all the leadership councils and walking the deck glaring at crewmen who look like they’re not pulling their weight, her little husband following attentively behind her when she’s not loaning him out to Roach to help in the kitchen.
Privately, Izzy thinks she might be shopping around for new spouses before she heads off to whatever her next business venture’s going to be. A woman like Jackie’s not built for monogamy, and he’s seen the way she is with Jimenez - and the way Jimenez is with her, the two of them glaring at each other across the deck in a way that might at any moment spill over into fighting or fucking. Or both.
He’s not sure how successful Jackie’s efforts are likely to be, though. Jim’s got their hands pretty full these days. Izzy’s not even sure how they all fit in that cabin they share, Jimenez and Boodhari and Archie, and even Zheng, too, when she’s not in the great cabin working through the night with the captain or bunking in with Aunty. Still, time was that Izzy shared a smaller berth than that with Edward and Jack, back on the Ranger, and Lord knows the two of them had plenty of company.
The biggest surprise of the management restructure they’d done after leaving Edward and Bonnet to that godforsaken DIY nightmare they planned to turn into some kind of outsider artist retreat slash haunted bed and breakfast, had been that the crew had voted Izzy First Mate again.
Last time these idiots had had any sort of vote about him, it’d been to mutiny and throw him overboard. And since then he’s lost a leg, been captured by the British and been shot in the gut - albeit on the left side, so he’s almost back to normal already after only a couple of weeks rest and a good laugh at Edward’s melodramatics.
Still, not exactly officer material.
But they’d insisted. Said Izzy was the one with the most pirating experience out of anyone planning to remain with the crew long term, and pointed out how that would be useful - what with having a fairly novice captain. And, well. Izzy could hardly argue with that.
Because the bottom line is that, against his better judgement, he likes Frenchie. Likes the whole bloody lot of them, for his sins. He doesn’t want to leave, and he doesn’t want to see them fail or put themselves in danger with their inexperience. So he’d agreed to stay and be first mate if that’s what they all really insisted on, and now here he is. About to run through a lesson on the basics of navigation with Feeney, Jimenez, Fang and Spriggs, god help him.
Pete Spriggs, that is. Man apparently took his husband’s last name after the ceremony Izzy had been too out of it on poppy and pain to remember, which is ridiculous. Izzy’s tried to explain any number of times that that’s not how matelotage works, the last name thing, but Lucius just fixes him with an unimpressed look and says “it is now, bitch.” And when Izzy cattily calls Pete Mrs Spriggs the man only laughs and says “joke’s on you, I actually love that.”
So he’s given up. Pete Spriggs it is. Izzy changed the details in the ship’s articles himself, so it’s all done proper and official.
Feeney, Jimenez, Fang and Mrs Spriggs make up one of the two messes they’ve divided the junior crew into. Aunty’s got the other, comprised of the other Mrs Spriggs, Boodhari, Archie and Ivan, who had surprised everyone by emerging from the secret passageways built into the walls, where apparently he’d been hiding since Fang helped him fake his own death during Blackbeard’s reign of terror. (“That’s a really good idea,” Lucius had said, at the time. “I wish I’d thought of that.”)
Each mess works and eats together, taking opposite watches. But that’s only on days where they aren’t anchored up in a hidden cove, training, as they are now.
Aunty’s got her group running through basic and intermediate sailing manoeuvres, and good luck to her. Izzy’s not sure half of these so called sailors know the difference between a square sail and a fore-and-aft, let alone how to actually manipulate any of them as instructed.
He can already feel a headache coming on at the mere thought of it.
“Excuse me, First Mate Hands, sir? Why doesn’t Roach have to do pirate school with the rest of us?”
“Because, Mrs Spriggs, the ship’s cook and the surgeon are both exempt from watch, due to their other duties taking up so much of their time and being of such importance to the wellbeing of the crew. And since Mr Roach fulfils both of those roles, I think we can safely say he’s earned his exemption. Now.” He gestures to the heavy, hard backed notebook that sits, temporarily, on the barrel in front of them, where they can hopefully all see it. “This right here is the ship’s log book. On most ships it lives in the quartermaster’s office. Does anyone know why it’s important to keep a log? Fang, don’t answer, I know you know.”
Fang grins and mimes sewing his mouth shut.
Wee John squints at the book. “Is a log like a diary? Where you write about your day and what you’re thinking about and stuff?”
“No, Mr Feeney.”
Jimenez crosses their arms. “I keep a diary. But it’s in Spanish. And I’ll stab anyone who touches it.”
The headache is beginning to make itself known. Izzy rubs at his forehead, then forces his hand back down to his side.
“If I had a diary I'd be like “Pete Spriggs, Ship's Log Sea-date 1717.””
“Firstly, there's no such thing as sea-date, what does that even mean? Shut up, I'm not asking. Secondly, the ship’s log isn’t a diary, that’s not… It’s a record of the ship’s speed, position and bearing, alright, we use it to keep track of where we are.”
Wee John raises a hand, and Izzy takes a slow breath and starts mentally counting back from ten.
“Yes, Mr Feeney?”
“If it’s kept in the quartermaster’s office, does that mean Olu has it, or Aunty? And if Olu has it, does that mean he’s getting an office?”
“The log is usually kept in the quartermaster’s office, because usually the quartermaster is the highest ranking officer below the captain. On this particular pirate ship, it lives with the first mate - if you ever get to the stage where you find yourself needing the ship’s log, you come to me.”
“Well then how come Blackbeard’s highest ranking officer was you, if most pirate ships don’t work like that?”
Because Edward’s a grandstanding eccentric who liked to mock the British Navy by pretending he was better than them, Izzy thinks. Because he made promises to me when we were boys, and some of them he actually kept. Because…
“Who knows why Blackbeard did anything, the man was a lunatic. Now if we’re all quite ready to return to the topic of navigation? You know, the thing keeping us from getting lost in the middle of the vast and fucking unforgiving ocean until we all starve to death-”
“Si, si, keep your leather pants on hombrecito. We’ll pay attention. Won’t we.” Jim nudges the others pointedly with a sharp elbow to the ribs, and there’s a general murmur of agreement. They give Izzy a little nod, something in their eyes that’s softer than it needs to be.
Jim’s grown… fond of Izzy, somehow, since surviving Edward’s bad breakup and its aftermath together. After he was shot, the most recent time he was shot, they’d spent two days and nights at his bedside until Roach threatened to hit them with a meat cleaver if they didn’t go get some sleep in their own room.
They’ve all grown fond of him, he thinks. Even the ones who didn’t live through… what they went through in the bad times with Edward. Izzy doesn’t really understand why. God knows he’s not a likeable man.
“Right. So if we open the log, we’ll see it’s not been completed in a while, since I’ve been out of action and I’m the only one on this ship who actually - oh.” When he flips to the current page of the book, it’s filled in and up to date. Their direction, their speed in knots, even their latitude when it could be measured - it’s all set down in a fancy cursive hand that Izzy doesn’t recognise. Aunty, he knows, keeps her own log, and Izzy had just assumed that Frenchie and Zheng had been relying on that while Izzy was recovering. “Who’s been messing with this?”
They all peer at the neatly inked numbers in Izzy’s meticulously ruled columns.
“Yeah,” says Pete. “That’s Lucius.”
“Lucius Spriggs?” Izzy asks, stupidly.
Pete smirks. “Oh, you’ve heard of him?”
Everyone on this ship fancies themselves a fucking comedian.
“Enough cheek from you. What’s he been doing messing with my log?”
“Um, I can’t actually read, so… But I think just - keeping it up to date? It looks like he’s done a great job, too, look how neat that is.”
Fang coos over it. “He’s got such lovely penmanship.”
“Hasn’t he just?”
“Enough! The bloody penmanship has nothing to do with it, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. There’s no way these figures’ll be correct, he’ll have pulled them out of his arse. He doesn’t have the first clue about how any of this works.”
“Wow, okay. Rude. Lucius knows loads of things.”
Jim seems unconvinced by Pete’s faith in his husband. “I don’t know, man. Do you really think Lucius understands how all this navigation stuff works?”
“He’s really clever. And maybe Aunty helped him?”
Izzy grabs at his crutch and waves off the hands that appear around him offering help as he eases himself to his feet and manages the few steps forward to the rail. His gut still hurts with strenuous activity, but it isn’t too bad at this point. A few more days and he’ll bother Roach into clearing him for fencing drills, so he can get himself properly moving again.
“Spriggs!” he calls down to where the other group are scattered across the main deck and forecastle.
Aunty gives him a questioning frown, but nods over to the mainmast, where Lucius seems to be showing the Swede, who has temporarily been released from both kitchen and husband duties, how to clew up the mainsail. What the fuck.
“Lucius,” Aunty yells, hands cupped to her mouth and, god, she’s got a good strong voice on her. Izzy would give his other leg to have her join the crew permanently. “First mate wants you. Go, Ivan can take over.”
While Lucius is making his way aft, Izzy asks the others, incredulously, “Since when does he know how to sail?”
He gets nothing but shrugs in return.
“No, seriously, come on. Last time I saw him doing anything resembling work on this ship he was waving a little carpenter’s hammer around like it was a hairbrush. What’s going on?”
He directs this last question at Pete, specifically, because if anyone knows shouldn’t it be the man’s husband?
“Beats me,” Pete says. “It’s hot though, right? My man is talented.”
“Hell yeah,” agrees Wee John enthusiastically, and they high five.
Izzy pretends not to see it.
“Hey babe,” Lucius says, as he arrives on the quarterdeck, and he kisses his husband’s cheek.
“Hey sweetie.”
“Aunty said you needed me, Iz?”
Would it kill him, Izzy wonders, to show the slightest bit of professional respect? To act like this was an actual place of work, instead of some sort of unusually bitchy knitting circle? Just one little sir every now and again, sprinkled in amongst the babes and sweeties and Izzy’s first fucking name?
“What’ve you been doing to my log book, Spriggs?”
“I thought it was the ship’s log book.”
“It is. And I’m her first mate.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t exactly in any state to be getting out the log line and a quadrant the last couple of weeks, were you? And I know you’re anal about keeping stuff like that up to date. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“No I am not welcome,” Izzy says, and instantly realises he has no idea what that means. Best to push on, and hope none of them notice. “Are you telling me you suddenly know how to navigate?”
Spriggs looks bemused. “No?”
“Right. So why-”
“No, I mean it’s not sudden.”
“What?”
“I’ve known how to navigate for ages. Since…” A shadow of a look crosses his face for a second, then is gone. “For a while now. It’s not that difficult, once you get the hang of it.”
Izzy Hands can count the number of times he’s been rendered speechless in his life by anyone other than Lucius Spriggs on one hand. So why does it seem to happen so fucking often with him?
“But. Why didn’t you say anything about it?”
“You never asked.” He seems almost offended at not being asked. “Plus, if you knew I could, you’d be asking me to do it allll the time and, yeah. No thanks. No one’s got time for that.”
“It is quite literally your job to have time for things like that.”
“Yeah, it is now. But it wasn’t before; I was hired as a scribe, my job was to write down Stede’s self absorbed and largely fabricated memoirs, remember?”
“I…” Izzy wants, badly, to argue. Arguing with Lucius Spriggs is one of his favourite pastimes. But the lad has a point. “I suppose that’s true.” He ignores the way Pete Spriggs’ mouth falls open in shock at that admission of defeat, and looks back down at the log instead. “So you can navigate, at least a little. And you can sail?”
He pulls a face. “Ugh, yeah. If I have to.”
“And you learned that in the same place as you learnt to keep the log?”
“Something like that.”
It’s clear he doesn’t want to talk about it, so Izzy doesn’t push. A man’s entitled to his fucking privacy if he wants it.
“Any other tricks you’re hiding up your sleeves?”
“Oh, plenty,” he says, with a shit eating grin. “But none that I can talk about in a work environment, I’m pretty sure.” There’s a few good natured jeers at that from the crew, and even a wolf whistle - from Pete, as it turns out. Jesus Christ.
“Like you’ve ever let that stop you,” Izzy mutters.
Later, he talks it over with Aunty. She’s bunking in his old room while she and Zheng are aboard; he’d insisted on it. He has a lot of respect for Aunty. She’s one of the very few people he’s ever met that he didn’t instantly want to strangle, and the feeling seems to be mutual. He’d not see her bedding down on deck with the young ones, not with her rank and experience.
Of course, that had left Izzy without a bed, and with a fairly serious gut injury to boot. Bizarrely, he’d had offers from several of the crew to take their beds - from Jiminez’s cot in their crowded little room to the Captain’s own ridiculous, curtained alcove in the great cabin, where he sleeps with Wee John Feeney as his bed warmer (though he insists on calling him a “room mate” for some unfathomable reason).
None of these options had held very much appeal, as unsettlingly kind as the offers were, until Roach had laid a warm hand on Izzy’s shoulder, given him a smile and a wink, and led him through the galley to one of the larger store rooms beside the kitchen that he’d emptied and fitted with a remarkably decently sized bed - apparently with help from Ivan and Pete, who had both turned out to be somewhat competent carpenters.
The room, he’d informed Izzy, had previously been used for marmalade storage. One of Frenchie’s first acts as captain had been to sell the lot of it, and use the money to stock up on more sensible provisions, such as food staples and medical supplies.
He’d been adamant about the medical supplies, Izzy remembers. Insisted on checking them over himself, assembling a box of emergency stuff that he called a “first aid kit.” Whatever the hell that meant. He’d looked a little haunted, at the time, so Izzy had wisely decided it wasn’t the best time to ask.
“He’s not your strongest crewman, physically speaking,” Aunty’s saying. She and Izzy are sat side by side on her bunk, passing a pipe back and forth between them. “That’s probably Feeney, or Kevin. But he’s no weakling either. He can haul line as well as any on my old ship, and he knows what he’s about. I ran through pretty much every manoeuvre you’re likely to use on one of these ships and he was familiar with all of them, knew just what to do before I even had to say it out loud.”
“Hmm,” says Izzy, and smoke flows from his mouth with the sound. He passes the pipe back to Aunty. “He can use navigational instruments, too. And keep the log. I made him show me.”
“Ha. I bet he loved that.”
“Whined like a bloody kicked dog, but he could do it.”
They lapse into companionable silence for a while, and the light outside the porthole grows pink and dusky and low.
Eventually, Aunty speaks again. “He didn’t learn it while he was with us, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“No?”
She shakes her head. “No. It’s probably a bit problematic of me to admit this, but with him being a man I just sort of assumed he was useless and put him to work folding towels. No offence.”
Izzy considers this in light of the male pirates he’s known. Calico Jack Rackham’s face swims rapidly and somewhat nauseatingly to mind. “That’s… probably fair.”
“Yeah.” She takes a slow drag from the pipe and looks at Izzy sideways out of the corner of her eyes. “And he was in a bit of a bad way when he first arrived. I don’t know how much he’s told you about that.”
Izzy shrugs. “Not very much. Enough.”
“Hm. Are you sure about that?” She holds the pipe out for Izzy to take. “He could probably still use a sympathetic ear for some of it. I've never been any good at that emotional stuff, he probably didn’t get much support when we first brought him aboard.”
“He’s got himself a husband for that.”
“True.”
The stem of the pipe, when he takes it and puts it between his lips, is warm. A little damp at the tip where they’ve been using it. It smells pleasantly of rosewood and madak and flint, smokey and familiar.
“Quartermaster?” Aunty asks, like she’s mulling the word over. “Or maybe boatswain?”
Izzy shakes his head. “Quartermaster’s appointed by popular vote. Your man Boodhari won it fair and square, Spriggs won’t stand against him. And he’s the right man for the job.”
Aunty seems satisfied with this answer. “He’s a quick study, that one, when he’s not distracted by my captain. I underestimated him.”
“He’s got more sense and a better work ethic than the rest of them put together.”
“Mm. And you already have a boatswain.”
“Fang’s more than earned it. You can’t say otherwise.”
“I wouldn’t. You know I’m fond of Kevin.” Izzy does know. Sees them walking the deck together some mornings before the changing of the watch, drinking tea. “He could be Boatswain’s Mate.”
“Could be.” He gives her a calculating look then says, as casually as he can, “Could be Second Mate.”
She raises an eyebrow. “You’re not planning on training up a replacement, are you, Hands?”
He shrugs. “I’m not planning on going anywhere, if that’s what you mean. Retirement’s for the fucking birds; fuck that.”
She nods approvingly.
“He’d be good at it, though,” Izzy says. “Spriggs. He’d make a good first mate, some day.” She looks dubious, so he tries to explain. “He’s already got a lot of the…” What did Bonnet call it? “The soft skills you need in this job.” He lists them off on his fingers. “He can handle a narcissistic captain and even, occasionally, talk him out of being an idiot when he’s set his mind to it. He can persuade a crew to a new way of thinking or an unpopular course of action - and, more than that, he can read a crew, knows which way the wind’s blowing and uses it to his advantage. He can read and write, he’s good with numbers. He’s got enough education to know the value of different sorts of cargo, and he’s a charismatic enough salesman that he could probably fence them for a decent price without much trouble.”
“And he can sail, and navigate,” Aunty chimes in. She seems pretty convinced, Izzy thinks.
“Exactly.”
She holds up a warning finger in front of Izzy’s face. “He’s a lazy bugger, though, when he’s bored or he thinks he can get away with it. And he’s definitely one of your weakest in combat.”
“Right.” Far be it from Izzy to deny either of those things. “So those are the areas we work on.”
She takes the pipe back out of his hands one last time, and taps the bowl out into the tin cup she’s got resting on the cedar chest at the end of the bed.
“Alright,” she says. “He’s in your hands, then. Just make sure you run it by the captain first.”
*
Frenchie has no objections when Izzy brings it up the next day. He rarely objects to anything Izzy asks for. It’s weird, after… Izzy’s last two captains. Different. Izzy finds himself thinking more carefully about any request he goes to the captain with, feeling responsible for not taking advantage of Frenchie’s inexperience and his. Well. His weird, trauma-induced fondness for Izzy.
“By all means, mate,” he says, now, eyes all warm and crinkly at the edges where he’s smiling up at Izzy from across a sea chart that’s spread open on what used to be the formal dining table. Zheng and Spanish Jackie are at each side of him, and it looks like the three of them are plotting a potential course - though, as far as Izzy’s aware, they aren’t planning on sailing away from this place for a while yet. “Give him some one-on-one mentoring, see how he does. We’ll call it a trial period for now, though, yeah, rather than an official promotion.”
Izzy can’t disagree with that. It’s a good call, less likely to cause unrest if it doesn’t work out than promoting him outright. “Yes sir.”
“Keep me up to speed with how it goes.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Oh, and Iz?”
“Sir?”
Frenchie grins and winks. “Try not to kill him, alright?”
Izzy crosses his arms over his chest. He’s not using his crutch today, for the first time since he got out of bed after his injury, and he’s enjoying having both hands free for exactly these moments, where his feelings can only be communicated via stroppy body language. “I’m making no promises.”
Frenchie, unfortunately, is having none of it. He’s still smiling at Izzy, easy and warm, but there’s a glint in his eyes that brooks no argument. “That’s an order, babe.”
“Ugh. Fine.”
“Even if he really deserves it.”
“He’s deserved it since the day I met him, and I’ve managed not to stab him so far.”
“Admirable restraint,” says the pirate queen, and her eyes are shining with amusement, but Jackie only snorts a laugh.
“If Hands couldn’t stop himself from stabbing people who annoyed him then Edward Teach would’ve died before he was old enough to grow a black fucking beard.”
“Ooohhh,” says Frenchie, eyes wide with delight. “Just came right out and said it. Kudos.” He high fives her wooden hand, and Izzy decides it’s time to take his leave.
*
He goes straight from the great cabin to the ball room. It’s not far, but by the time he gets there he’s feeling the lack of his crutch. It’s strange how the pain travels; he’d have thought he’d feel it in the amputated leg, the tension in the knee and the rub of the prosthetic that he feels after a while even through the padding, but almost worse than that is the ache he gets in his hips and lower spine, presumably from holding them differently than his body’s used to. That’s the thing he keeps forgetting to plan for, the thing that creeps up on him as the day progresses even if it starts out fine.
He’s not even brought his old cane with him this morning, foolishly optimistic in thinking he wouldn’t need any aid whatsoever this early in the day. He considers going back to his room for it, but by then he’s already most of the way to the ball room and there hardly seems to be any point.
He pulls the door open unceremoniously, not bothering to knock, and steps back out of the way just in time to avoid the two Spriggs who tumble out onto the floor where he was just standing.
“Do you mind?” says Spriggs, Lucius. He’s remarkably indignant for a man with his trousers round his knees.
“This is not what it looks like,” says Spriggs, Pete, whose dignity is somewhat spared by virtue of the fact that he’s underneath and therefore mostly covered by his husband.
“Really? Cos it looks to me like a pair of newlywed idiots skiving off the morning watch for a shag in the munitions storage.”
Pete, at least, has the grace to look embarrassed. “Huh,” he says. “Okay, this is exactly what it looks like.”
“Jealous?” Lucius batts his eyelashes, and Izzy does not stab him. He wishes the captain was around to witness it; he's not sure he’ll ever be able to replicate such a feat of personal restraint.
“I’m not going to dignify that with a fucking answer. Get up.” He waits for the two of them to scramble to their feet and adjust their clothing. “Spriggs,” he says, and is instantly interrupted by Pete.
“Which Spriggs? Because there’s two of us now.” He gives Lucius a little, soft grin, and it’s so disgustingly adorable that Izzy feels immediately nauseous.
“The original Spriggs. Lucius.” It feels weird calling him by his first name. Too familiar, but at the same time perfectly natural. Like Izzy’s ridiculous for not using it sooner, with all they’ve been through since they started sailing together, and all they’ve helped each other with lately. “Captain sent me to tell you you’re to start some new one on one training. With me. Now.”
“What training?” Lucius asks, at almost exactly the same time as Pete asks, “How did you know where to find us?”
“You’re here every bloody morning,” Izzy informs him. “Doing exactly the same bloody thing. It’s not exactly a closely fucking guarded secret.”
Pete laughs, seemingly delighted with the news that his marital activities are so well known. “Nice.”
“What training?” Lucius asks again, a little louder and slower.
Izzy levels him with a look. “Advanced training,” he says, and Pete looks as impressed and proud as he always does when it comes to Lucius. “I put my neck out for you saying you could handle it, so you’d better not prove me wrong.”
*
They spend the next week together, him and Spriggs, from dawn until dusk. Izzy doesn’t think he’s spent this much time with one other person since the early days with Ed.
He’s begged one of the spare charts from the captain, and he and Spriggs go over battle tactics, strategies for finding and overpowering quarry, how to identify good spots to lay low and hide like they’re doing now, and good places to fence stolen goods.
The lad’s decent at it. Of course he is. He takes to this sort of knowledge like a duck to water; all the clever and conniving bits, the cerebral side of piracy. The stuff that makes it significantly more likely you’ll survive on any given day in the job, or even thrive. Profit. And he doesn't kick up too much of a fuss about doing it, because it gets him out of sailing practice, or fishing with Fang, or trips to the island for freshwater.
Izzy has him continue keeping the log, too, though he checks it over himself afterwards each time to be sure it's accurate, and gets a fucking smug told you so smirk every time it is.
It’s not what Spriggs most needs to learn. Every pirate worth his salt needs to know how to fight, and not just from a distance. But Izzy’s body is still broken, the damaged pieces of himself still getting in the way. He does what he can to help it along, stretching out the tired muscles and keeping up his strength in what’s left of the rest of his body.
Eventually, though, Roach snips out his stitches. They’re small and neatly done - the scar will be nothing compared to some of the others he’s collected over the years.
“Okay, you’re officially cleared for slightly more physical work,” Roach informs him, careful to put the emphasis on slightly. “But take it easy, little man.” The words are deceptively kind in tone. “If I hear you’ve been overdoing things I’ll make you wish you’d never been born.”
“You threatening to hit me over the head with a meat cleaver?”
“Worse,” Roach promises. “I’ll tell Spanish Jackie you’ve been thinking of settling down on land and getting married, but you’re too shy to say anything about it.”
Izzy’s jaw drops. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
From then on, he looks at Roach with a new and grudging respect.
He doesn’t know what counts as overdoing things as far as the surgeon’s concerned, but he gives himself a few days of running through drills and building up his rusty stamina before he summons Spriggs for a new training session.
*
It’s pitch dark in the hold, despite it being the middle of a clear, hot day above deck. For obvious reasons there are no portholes below the water line, and barely any light filters through the gratings between decks at this level, so Izzy has once again commandeered as many candles as he can find to supplement the lantern light. He’s also cleared a rough circle of floor space in the centre of the room. He’s just finishing stacking up the spare sail canvas against the wall furthest from the lit flames when he hears Spriggs coming down the steps.
“Bitch why do I have to do all this extra work. I’m traumatised, I’ve literally got a wooden finger.”
Izzy crosses his arms over his chest and glares, tapping his prosthetic leg sharply, once on the wooden deck. It makes a very satisfying noise, and even more satisfying is the way Spriggs’ eyes go a little guilty and self conscious as he looks away.
“It’s not a punishment. It’s a fucking opportunity for promotion, if you play your cards right.”
Lucius takes a moment to digest this. Izzy wonders what he’d thought all this training was about, up to now. He’s a clever little shit, he must’ve had some idea.
“Right, but when you say “promotion” does that mean more responsibility and more work in exchange for a slightly fancier job description on my CV, or does it actually mean more money? Because you should know that I lie on my CV anyway.”
Izzy doesn’t know what a CV is, so he ignores most of that. “Second mate gets a share and a quarter. First mate gets a share and a half, if you ever make it that far. Plus you get to boss people about - don’t even try to pretend that doesn’t do it for you.”
“Rude.”
“I’m not wrong though, am I.”
He sighs an exaggerated, melodramatic sigh, with one hip cocked out to the side and much eye rolling. “Ugh. Fine. What are we doing today, then?”
Izzy feels a slightly maniacal grin start to appear on his face. He is, unfortunately, going to enjoy this entirely too much.
“Unarmed hand to hand combat.”
Spriggs looks around the candlelit hold like he’s expecting all his mates to jump out and laugh at any moment, telling him what a good prank this has been.
“Are you serious?”
“Deadly.” Izzy smirks and begins to unbutton his waistcoat.
“Uh, I actually see myself in more of a leadership role. You know, managerial.”
“What the fuck do you think leaders do on a pirate ship? They fight. They lead the fight.”
“Stede didn’t do that!”
“Oh and he’s your example of a good pirate is he? Or a good leader?”
“Ugh, okay, point. But still-”
Waistcoat off, Izzy lays it neatly on a crate along with his cravat and starts on his shirt.
“Oh my god why are you taking your clothes off. Do we have to be naked for this? Is it some kind of naked wrestling?”
“Jesus Christ, Spriggs. Even the gutter would be a step up in the world for your mind, wouldn’t it?”
“I’m not the one taking my top off!”
“Well hurry up and get to it, man. Unless you want sweat stains on your only decent shirt.”
There’s a non-zero chance of blood, too, but Izzy wisely decides to keep this to himself. Anything’s going to show up vividly on white linen and be impossible to fully scrub out. This is why Izzy only wears dark colours. (The fact that they suit him rather well is merely a bonus.)
Spriggs makes a noise like a wounded narwhal when Izzy lets his shirt slip from his shoulders and sets it beside the rest of his things. For a moment Izzy’s confused about it, but then he realises - his back. The scars. Of course, it must be a lot for the lad to take in. Traumatic, maybe, especially after all-
“Holy shit you are so ripped. I’m, like, physically affected by this knowledge. And that chest hair, fuck me. Has anyone ever told you you have massive DILF energy?”
“I-” Izzy frowns. How does the little bugger know? “Yes, actually,” he says, voice full of suspicion. “Spanish Jackie said something very similar once when I started wearing reading glasses. Do you know what it means? She wouldn’t tell me.”
He nods. “Right, yeah, makes sense. But no, sorry, I’m not touching that one with a ten foot barge pole.”
Izzy sighs. “Whatever. Shirt? Off.”
“Fine,” he says. “Fine.” His fingers are trembling, though, when he plucks at the fastenings, so Izzy turns away to give him his privacy and starts winding long strips of cotton bandaging around his wrist and hand in slow circles.
“You don’t wear your glove any more,” Spriggs observes, quietly.
“Mm,” Izzy agrees, and fastens off the end of the bandage. He starts again with his other hand. “I gave it to Jimenez.”
“To Jim? Why?”
“Because they fucking asked.”
“That is fascinating,” he says, like Izzy’s an unusual zoo exhibit, or a specimen in a jar. “And you just said yes?”
“Wasn’t sure I’d ever need it again at that point, honestly.”
It's something he tries not to think about too much; like the inevitability of death, or Edward leaving for a retirement on land with Stede fucking Bonnet. The way Jimenez had been… well. There's no other word for it than distraught at how close Izzy had come to succumbing to his wounds. The way they'd clung to him, holding his hand tight. And if they were crying, well… that's something Izzy'll take to his grave, rather than embarrassing them by telling anyone about it.
He'd raised his other arm, weakly, to fumble his leather glove off so they could clasp his hand skin to skin in their own, feel him alive and warm and breathing and be reassured by it. Then he must've passed out for a bit - the memories are fuzzy. When he'd woken properly again the glove was gone, and so was Jimenez.
A few days later, when they'd come sheepishly to his room to return it to him, scrubbed clean of blood, Jim confessed that they'd been wearing it. For good luck, they said. Keeping it warm for him.
Izzy had considered this a moment, let it sink in. “I bet it suits you,” he finally said.
They shrugged. “It’s good for handling the knives.”
“Huh. That's why I started wearing one. Protect my sword hand.”
“I was thinking…” Their eyes had been shifty, not quite meeting Izzy's gaze. Like Ivan whenever he tried to cheat at cards. “I might get one like it myself. If that's not, like, weird or something.”
Izzy had never thought he'd have kids. A man like him wasn't built for it - he'd never had any inclination towards women, for a start, not even enough to father an illegitimate child by mistake in some port or other (he was certain there must be dozens of little Calico Jacks running around the Caribbean, and wasn't that a nightmare of a thought).
He knew Jim’s own father had died when they were young, and he would never insult them by claiming any right to have stepped into his shoes.
Still, the way he'd felt as he'd tossed the glove back to them, watched them pluck it out of the air and the look on their face when he’d told them, gruffly, that they might as well keep it… maybe it was something close to what a father might feel.
Maybe.
“Should I wrap my hands, too?” Lucius enquires, bringing Izzy’s attention back to the present once again.
He's stripped down to his undershirt, a white cotton vest that he seems uneasy about taking off. It's interesting. For all his bravado about his body and its many uses, he's as self conscious as anyone else when push comes to shove.
“Do you know how?”
“Not really. Doesn’t seem like rocket science, though.”
“What the hell's a rocket?”
“No idea, but Pete overheard Spanish Jackie talking about something called a jackhammer once and ever since then we've been making up words just for fun.” He’s grinning like he’s just delighted with himself about this.
Izzy rolls his eyes. “Idiots, the pair of you.”
“Don’t pretend you're not charmed by it.”
“Idiot,” Izzy repeats, but he can't help the way his voice comes out quieter, fonder, the way the corner of his mouth twitches like it wants to smile.
Lucius gives him an answering almost-smile and then, like he's gathered up his courage from somewhere, he yanks his undershirt up and off over his head, and lets it drop.
Izzy looks.
He’s soft, though not as soft as he had been when they’d first met. The weeks away from the Revenge have left their mark, for good or ill, and there’s a breadth to his shoulders and a solidity to his core that, Izzy’s fairly sure, are new. Still, that new muscle is overlaid with a puppyish lushness that speaks of a living mostly earned through intellectual work rather than physical, and the pale, unblemished pink of him shows how little harsh sun his body’s seen.
No wonder he’s uneasy being bare chested, then, if he’s used to being covered up all prim and proper like a good little scribe.
Izzy beckons him over, holding up the folded strips of cotton bandaging. “Come here, twatty. I'll show you how to do it.”
He steps closer, and suddenly Izzy’s very aware of how much skin they're both baring. Izzy’s still got Roach’s bandages tight around his abdomen, more for support than anything else, since the wound itself has just about completely healed at this point, but otherwise they’re both nude from the waist up in a way that Izzy hasn’t fully thought through until this moment.
He tries to quiet his own breathing, the tremble that’s appeared in his hands. Perhaps it's the height disparity - Izzy finds himself face to tit with the lad. Jesus, was he always this tall? His nipples are small and puffy, almost obnoxiously pink.
Lucius plucks at the cotton Izzy’s holding. “I just feel like it doesn't bode well that we're preemptively bandaging ourselves. A bit pessimistic, really.”
Izzy snatches the cotton back out of reach. “Shut it, you. You wrap your fists when you're sparring to prevent them getting hurt.”
Then, moving slowly to steady himself, he takes one of Lucius’s hands in his own, and hears his almost imperceptible indrawn breath at the touch. The left - the one with the prosthetic finger.
“Start here,” he says, turning it over. “At the base of the thumb.” He touches where he means, tracing a callused finger across the soft pad of flesh where thumb meets palm. “Christ your hands are soft. Never done a day's hard work in your life, have you?”
“There’s more than one kind of work.” Lucius’s voice has gone breathy, as if the thought that Izzy was a man of flesh and blood who could take him by the hand and touch him gently had quite literally never occurred to him.
“Hm. I suppose that's true.”
Izzy catches the loose end of the bandage around the base of the thumb, then wraps it three times round the wrist.
“Not too tight,” he murmurs. “Can damage your hand if you're not careful.”
“I'll bear that in mind.”
He spreads the fingers gently, fanning them out like a starfish.
“Big hands.”
“Yeah?” Lucius giggles and flutters his eyelashes in Izzy’s direction. “Well you know what they say about big hands.”
“No, I don't.”
“They say-”
“I wasn't asking,” Izzy interrupts decisively.
“Ugh. Has anyone ever told you you're no fun?”
“Yes, you have. Daily. Now pay attention; you want to bring the cotton through between these two fingers, here, and these two fingers here, in an x shape.”
“Why?”
Because I bloody well told you to, Izzy wants to snap. But because he's a man of extraordinary patience (and because snapping at Lucius has, historically, gone rather badly for him) he grits his teeth and, instead, attempts to explain.
“Hands are delicate things. Fingers too. They’re capable of precise work, intricate movements. I don't have to tell you that.” Lucius winks lewdly in affirmation, moving the fingers of his free hand in a somewhat graphic gesture to demonstrate. “Oh for fuck's sake. I meant the writing and drawing stuff, tart.”
“Course you did,” Lucius purrs.
Izzy pointedly ignores him.
“Today I'm going to teach you how to throw a punch. Properly. Make a fist.”
Lucius does, and the still-mostly-unwrapped bandages trail down below. It's not a terrible attempt, but-
“See, here?” Izzy runs a fingertip slowly along the uneven bumps of Lucius’s knuckles and notices how he shivers. “Your ring finger's overlapping its neighbour, and the wooden one's sticking out and over the middle.”
“I- I can take it off.”
Izzy’s gaze flicks up to Lucius’s face for a moment, searching. He's never known him to take off the finger since it happened, not when he's around other people. He's not sure if that’s because he doesn't like to or just because it’s impractical.
“Leave it on for now,” Izzy settles on. “Having a wooden fucking finger could come in handy when you're trying to throw a decent punch - it's harder than flesh and it's not going to hurt you if you put too much force into it.”
“Oh yeah.” He holds up his hand with the fingers starfished again, looking at it as if he’s admiring his own fingernails. “I hadn't really thought of it like that.”
“It's easy to dismiss this stuff-” Izzy taps the prosthetic finger, “-as a weakness. You think you'll never be as strong as you were, or as someone whole and unscathed - trust me, I know.” He pauses and waits for Lucius to make eye contact. Because this? This is important. He needs to say it, needs to be sure it's heard. “But we know that's bullshit. Right? You’ve got the advantage over any fucker who doesn't have the first clue what he's capable of surviving yet. Haven’t you.”
“What, with a wooden finger?”
“Why not? Any part of your body that can't bleed or feel pain can be used to your advantage, if you're clever about it. And I know you’re a clever bastard, so I'm expecting to be impressed.”
“Oh god. No pressure then.”
Izzy laughs. It catches him by surprise; the sound escapes him before he can claw it back, and for a moment Spriggs looks about as taken aback by it as Izzy feels.
By unspoken consensus, neither of them mention it out loud.
There's an awkward silence for a moment, until: “Anyway,” Izzy continues, perhaps a little too loudly. “These bandages are going to put your fingers into a better, more stable position and hold them there. Like this…”
He passes the strip of cotton between each pair of fingers in turn in a series of ever decreasing x shapes, then around the knuckles twice. Lucius’s hands are bigger than his own, enough so that the bandage runs out at this point without having to be wrapped a few extra times around the wrist to finish it. Instead he simply folds the end under the already wrapped area on the palm.
“Now make a fist again.”
This time none of the fingers are overlapping, and the shape is better, more stable. The prosthetic still rests at a slightly odd angle compared to the other digits, but it's a big improvement.
“Good.” Izzy nods his approval. “We'll wrap them every time, until your hands hold this position instinctively. And even after that, for sparring. Pointless to fuck up your hands just for practice.”
“Right, and when you say sparring you mean…”
Izzy’s grin, he’s been told, is a terrifying thing to witness. He turns it on Lucius now. “Hit me, Spriggs.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Izzy crosses to the centre of the room, away from the candles around the edges of their makeshift ring, and stands there with his stance open, ready.
“You heard me,” he says. “Come on, I'll let you have this first one for free.”
“You really want me to hit you?”
“Don’t make me repeat myself.”
“Where should I hit you? Not the face.”
“Can hit me in the face if you like. It doesn’t matter where you hit me, just hit me.”
Lucius drags his feet over to Izzy like a schoolboy who’s been sent to the headmaster’s study.
“Why do you look so terrified when I’m the one getting hit?”
“Most of us don’t actually enjoy hurting our friends, Iggy.”
“And since when have we been friends?”
The punch that follows has a surprising amount of force behind it, Izzy thinks, when he’s able to think again. Pain swells along his right cheekbone, hot and familiar, and the dull pressure of it is almost soothing after the sick-wrong sharpness of his gut wound and the prickle of the stitches that came out nearly a week ago.
He touches the newly bruising tenderness gently with his fingertips, feeling the scope of it. “Not bad,” he concedes.
“Oh my god,” Lucius says, sounding like he’s about to faint. “I am so sorry.”
“Why the fuck are you apologising? I told you to hit me.”
“So that was…” He swallows, and looks for a second like he’s re-evaluating some things. “That was what you were after, was it?”
“What I was after was getting your first hit out of the way. You were always going to be a little bitch about it, the quicker we get it done the quicker you can get over yourself.”
“Did you know that you’re a very rude little man?”
“No, you’re the first to ever comment on it. Hit me again.”
He makes less of a fuss over it this time. He uses his left hand again, and this time Izzy’s better prepared for it so he’s able to watch it happen, watch him tuck his fingers into a slightly-too-tight fist, pull it back a bit, then slam it into the meat of Izzy’s pec.
It forces the air out of him in a grunt.
“Good,” he manages, rubbing at the ache. “Move your feet a bit further apart and bend your knees a little - not that much, Christ. There, like that. Feel how you’re a lot more solid on your feet now?”
Lucius makes a considering face. “Yeah, okay, I think so.”
“And don’t always use your dominant hand, it’s predictable.”
“Are we going to fight now?”
“Depends.”
“Oh what?”
“Oh whether you’re going to run crying to your friends the first time I hit you back.”
“You think I can’t handle it?” Lucius’s laugh is slightly wild, almost manic. “You have no idea what I’ve been through.”
“Does anyone?”
This time when Lucius swings, Izzy lets himself block it. He deflects it with his forearm, sends the blow glancing away and Lucius spinning to the side.
“Fuck,” Lucius gasps when Izzy returns the favour, using Lucius’s momentum and distraction to deliver a hit to the back of his shoulder that rocks his bigger frame. Izzy clasps that same shoulder almost instantly, squeezing and giving Lucius a little reassuring shake, turning him back around so they’re facing each other but not letting go.
“Doing okay, twatty?”
For a moment, they make eye contact again. Izzy asks a silent question with his eyebrows, and Lucius answers with a nod. “Yeah. No problem.”
“Keep going?”
Another nod, and they’re off.
It’s not what anyone would call elegant. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Lucius has no idea of form, of the very basics of a fight like this, but that’s not important. It’s not what this is about.
Slowly, matching the lad’s speed and ability as best he can so as not to discourage or harm him too badly, Izzy coaxes him into loosening his stance. Moving about a little on his feet, instead of staying fixed to one spot, moving around within the circle. Lucius tires quick, unused to this sort of activity, but then so does Izzy these days after all his body’s been through in the last few weeks.
After a while he barely seems to notice the punches Izzy lands, though Izzy imagines it’ll be a different story later when his blood’s cooled down and all those bruises start to make themselves known - particularly the one at the corner of his mouth that had split the lip. A mistake, that one. Izzy had been aiming for the jaw, but Lucius had turned at the last minute. It’s the only one that’s bleeding, at least.
He lands plenty of his own on Izzy in return, and they’re not half bad for the most part - especially after Izzy had taken hold of one of his fists and unclenched it, shown him how to furl it less tightly.
“Like this,” he’d breathed, a bit punch drunk, holding Lucius’s fist like that, just like that, and bringing it to his own face, the tattooed cheek, showing him exactly where to hit next.
Afterwards, after god knows how long, they sprawl side by side on the wooden floor, backs to a couple of barrels of wine cheap enough that it had made more sense to keep it than to sell it when they were re-supplying, and split a cigarette.
The vibe is, somehow, almost post-coital. Izzy stretches and feels the delicious ache all through his body. Lucius’s shoulder touches his own, warm and damp with sweat.
“You know what,” Lucius says, consideringly, testing the split in his lower lip with the point of his tongue, “I think I needed that.”
“No fucking shit.” Izzy takes back the cigarette and has a good drag. “You’ve been wound tighter than a bloody clock since we escaped Zheng’s ship.”
“That must be why everyone’s tiptoeing around me, then. They’re waiting for me to explode.”
It’s probably just that he’s still a bit giddy from his first decent fist fight in far too long, but Izzy finds this bloody hilarious. He laughs as he’s exhaling, the smoke making him cough in a way that he can only imagine is pretty sodding unattractive.
Spriggs doesn’t seem to mind. He’s giggling too. “No seriously,” he says, between chuckles that make his bare shoulders quiver. “What was all that even about? With the clocks?”
“Fucked if I know.”
“How did Ricky get them all to go off at the same time? And how did he set the gunpowder alight without a fuse and someone to light it? Or, like, a few dozen fuses, one for each ship?”
“It was rigged to the-” Izzy gestures in the air between them, lazy spirals of the hand holding the cigarette. “The clocks. The mechanism.”
“But how? I thought pendulum clocks don’t work on ships? That’s why you’re always yelling at us about the hourglass, and the bells - why would we dick around with all that if we could just have a normal clock onboard. And besides, it just seems like a timed explosive with that level of power and accuracy isn’t something that’ll be invented for quite some time yet. Centuries, maybe. Who knows. Like if we had that sort of technology, why would we be going round fighting with swords and those big cannons we have to pour powder and cannonballs into one at a time then light with a taper?”
Izzy shoves the cigarette back into Lucius’s mouth to shut him up, and shakes his head. “No, here’s the thing. What you have to remember is that nothing has made a lick of sense in my life since you lot showed up,” he says. Lucius’s eyes twinkle with amusement. It’s very distracting. “I’ve learned not to question it.”
There’s a moment, then, when they’re looking at each other, all worn out and physically sated, sweat cooling on their bare skin, when Izzy feels like no one has ever understood him quite like this man has, like he could almost…
The sudden, heavy bang of the hatch opening makes both of them jump. He supposes they’re both more easily startled than they used to be.
Footsteps on the stairs turn into the sound of a familiar voice.
“Luce, babe? Izzy? You’ve been down here for hours.”
“Your wife,” Izzy needlessly informs Lucius, and his head drops onto Lucius’s shoulder before he can think to stop it. “He’ll have dinner on the table.”
“God I hope not,” Lucius replies, quietly, like he’s sharing a scandalous secret. “I love that man but he cannot cook for shi- hi babe!”
Pete turns the corner at that moment and catches sight of them, and his smile falters into a look of almost comical confusion.
“Woah. What the heck happened to you two?”
Izzy lifts his head again and looks down at himself, then at Lucius. He supposes it doesn’t look great. They’re both covered in bruises - violently red, a few just starting to purple. Lucius’s chest is particularly vivid with them, as he doesn’t quite have as thick a carpet of hair there as Izzy does. His split lip has stopped bleeding, thank fuck, but Izzy can feel the swelling under his own right eye and the little dried up red trail from his collarbone to the bandages round his middle.
Pete’s still waiting for an answer.
“We fought the plot and lost,” Izzy informs him. The look of confusion only deepens.
“Training,” Lucius says, taking pity on him. “Izzy’s been showing me some combat stuff.”
“Oh really? That’s so cool! I mean.” Pete schools his face from the look of schoolgirl excitement to something, Izzy imagines, he thinks makes him seem cool and unbothered. “I could have showed you that kinda stuff, too, if you wanted.”
“Course you could, babe.” Lucius hauls himself to his feet with a groan of protest, then extends a hand down to Izzy. “Come on. Dunno about you but I’m starving after all that. And if we’re late for dinner Roach’ll have our guts for garters.”
It’s not that Izzy hasn’t been eating. It’s that he’s not been eating enough, according to Roach. He does try, but between the stress of these past few months and that bullet to the gut, he’s somehow lost his appetite. He sits in front of a plate of food now and it just feels like an insurmountable challenge. He wonders if Spriggs knows this, or if he’s just being friendly.
Izzy clasps the offered hand and pretends it doesn’t make it considerably easier to get back on his feet again. He puts his weight on the prosthetic gingerly, and winces. He’s been a bit too hard on it today.
“How’s your leg, Izzy?” Pete asks, with that little frown that he gets when he’s worrying about something. And Izzy doesn’t want to look too closely at the fact that he’s gotten to know this bunch of idiots well enough at this point that he recognises stuff like that. “Does the prosthetic need adjusting? Roach said it might, after a while.”
Izzy takes an experimental step towards him. It holds up fine. It does hurt, there’s no getting away from it, but it still feels like it fits okay. He’s just not used to being on his feet all day any more, since he’s spent so long convalescing. “It’s fine. You had a lot to do with making it, didn’t you?”
The man blushes, demures. “Well, I mean. We all did. I’m just into woodwork and stuff, you know. It’s like. My hobby.” He pulls a face like that’s an embarrassing thing to admit. Which, coming from a man who gets caught in store cupboards with his husband on his knees and his trousers round his ankles every other day, demonstrates a strange set of social priorities.
“It’s like your fucking profession.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess that too. Really, I think of myself more as a cutthroat pirate warrior who does carpentry on the side, though.”
“Do you really.”
“Well!” Lucius intervenes, with a slightly too bright smile. “Let’s head on up, shall we?” He’s pulled his undershirt back on and slung the overshirt over his shoulders but left it open.
Izzy collects his own belongings and follows, pinching out the candles along the way.
Later, up on the higher decks, when they’ve washed and dressed themselves properly and joined the rest of the crew who aren’t on watch in the galley, Pete insists Izzy join him and Lucius where they’re sitting at one of the tables with Archie and Fang, and then also insists on hearing all about Lucius’s training.
“It’s just punching,” Lucius says. “It’s not very impressive. I’m extremely bad at this sort of thing, it will no doubt shock you all to hear.”
“You weren’t… that bad,” Izzy admits. “You’ve never done it before, that’s all.”
“That’s right,” Fang pipes up. “It’s all about practice. And it looks like you got some good hits in, if Izzy’s face is anything to go by.”
Archie whistles noisily and delightedly, with a mouth still full of soup, and Izzy feels his eye start to twitch.
“I think it’s hot,” Pete declares. “My man getting all tough.”
Izzy scowls. “You think everything he does is hot.”
“And can you honestly say I’m wrong?”
Izzy feels his face heat, and opts to say nothing in response.
“Besides,” Pete continues, as he reaches out and nudges Lucius’s hand with his own. “It might make you feel better, sweetie, to learn how to defend yourself. You know, just in case you ever get in a situation again like when you were separated from all of us.”
It’s… interesting. The way Lucius’s shoulders tense up, and continue to tense further and further as Pete continues speaking.
“I bet Izzy could teach you some moves that’d have those sadistic bastards quaking in their boots.”
“Yeah,” Lucius says, somewhat hollowly, eyes suddenly fixed on his bowl of soup. “I guess that’s- yeah.”
“It’s bullshit,” Izzy helpfully interjects. Lucius’s gaze snaps up to meet him across the table.
Pete’s frown deepens. “Hey, now…”
“No. I know what you mean, but it’s fucked.” He doesn’t look away from Lucius, not even when the others start to shift uncomfortably in their seats around him. Speaks directly to him, instead of Pete. “You were on your own, unarmed. There was a whole crew of them against you. It wouldn’t have mattered how strong or good at fighting you were, even if you were Blackbeard himself. If you’d tried to fight, they’d have killed you. There was nothing you could do.” Peripherally, he’s aware that the galley has fallen silent around them, and that Fang is looking at him with that soft face he makes sometimes when he thinks Izzy’s being a good person. It makes his jaw clench in annoyance. Because it’s not about being good, or kind. It’s just the unvarnished truth of the matter, and that’s all anyone can ever expect from Izzy Hands. “You survived,” he says, firmly. “That’s the most anyone can do in that situation, and you did it. This-” he gestures between them in a way he hopes conveys that he’s talking about their new training sessions, “-has got nothing to do with all that. It’s about this ship, right here, and the life you’re making on it. Yeah?”
Slowly, like he’s half asleep, Lucius nods. “Yeah,” he says, so quiet it’s barely a breath. “Yeah. Alright.”
Izzy nods back and, gradually, the moment passes.
When conversation picks up again, he realises he’s finished his entire bowl of soup for the first time since getting shot.
Across the room, Roach gives him an approving smile.
*
“He didn’t mean it like that,” Lucius says, later.
They’re once again sitting side by side, but on the wooden boards of the main deck this time, instead of the hold. Their legs are stretched out in front of them - Izzy’s wooden one is resting against Lucius’s, and he would swear he can feel the heat of that touch. It’s late enough that the dark sky overhead is scattered with pinprick light, like sea spray across the firmament, while down here on the ship the sounds and sights of ever so slightly drunken merriment, music and mayhem surround the two of them. Another unofficial crew party, making the most of their time anchored in the relative safety of the cove.
Mr Roach and the Swede are mixing dubious (“experimental”) cocktails while Mr Feeney serves as honorary bartender, distributing drinks based mostly on “vibes” rather than actual requests, while the captain’s music swirls around the deck like a warm tide on white sand.
Izzy wonders what it means that no one blinks an eye at how close he and Lucius are sitting. Time was, Izzy would’ve avoided Lucius Spriggs at all costs, terrified of him and his flirting and his easy, provocative sensuality. Terrified in a way he’s never been of any of the fierce pirates or bandits, cut throat mercenaries or heavily armed navy officers who’ve tried their hand at killing him over the years.
He’s not sure when that changed.
“Who didn’t mean what?”
“Pete. He didn’t mean the self defence stuff like that.”
Pete’s currently dancing with Spanish Jackie to one of Captain Frenchie’s largely improvised shanties. There’s a little group of spectators gathered around them, clapping in time. Jackie’s leading, obviously. Her arm is firmly held about Pete’s waist, while his hand stretches up and around the back of her neck, like he’s clinging to her for dear life. They’re too far away to hear what she’s purring in his ear, but it’s making him blush red as an early sunrise.
“I know.”
Izzy doesn’t drink spirits any more, and so, by unspoken agreement, neither do the others when they’re spending time with him. It’s… touching, in a way Izzy doesn’t quite know what to do with. So, now, the two of them are drinking small beer, like children, out of matching tin mugs.
“He thinks you’re cross with him,” Lucius says, nudging Izzy with his leg. The place where the prosthetic’s strapped in place still aches from earlier - he wants to take it off for a bit, rub the soreness away, but the thought of it makes him uncomfortable somehow. Like taking his clothes off in front of everyone.
“Well you can tell him I’m not.”
“I could, yeah.” He gives Izzy a cheeky little sideways grin. Izzy gulps his beer and pretends to be unaffected by it. “Or you could tell him.”
“Fuck off.”
“He likes you, you know. And he is trying.”
“He’s very bloody trying.”
“Oh shut up.” It’s affectionate, Izzy thinks, as well as somewhat exasperated. “At least he’s not telling me to pretend a shark did it.”
“Are you criticising my coping mechanisms? The nerve. I thought this was supposed to be a safe space.”
“Yeah, the whole safe space thing was a bigger lie than the shark.”
“That’s not very poison into positivity of you, Spriggs.”
They both dissolve into giggling, and Izzy can’t even blame it on the drink. Disgusting.
He heaves himself to his feet, clinging on to the railing, just as the song ends.
“I’d better go talk to him then,” he says. “Since he apparently likes me so much.”
“Izzy?” Lucius turns those big, dark eyes up, and suddenly Izzy feels like he might stumble. He holds tight to the rail. “Be nice to him? For me?”
“Idiot,” Izzy exhales. “I’m always fucking nice.”
“Oh yeah.” He bites his split lip like he’s trying not to smile and failing. “I forgot.”
“May I have the next dance, Mrs Spriggs?” Izzy asks, with a deep bow and an over the top flourish.
Pete, still flushed and tipsy from being spun around the deck by Jackie, giggles as he allows his hand to be taken and kissed. He brings his other hand to his chest and pretends at maidenly virtue. “Well I don’t know if I should, Mr Hands. What would my husband say?”
“He’d say you don’t own each other.”
“True! I guess it’s alright, then!”
The audience, such as it is, has started to pair off and start dancing themselves. Well, most of them are pairs. Boodhari, Jimenez and Archie are dancing their own trio-based dance initially, that quickly becomes a four person number when Zheng is dragged in.
Izzy lets Pete twirl him around between the others to the tune of that old sailor’s song, Fly Me To The Moon. The moon herself, tonight, is no more than a sliver of a thumbnail, barely illuminating the black.
“You know, I think dancing with you is some secret embarrassing dream I’ve had for, like, years. Since I first heard your name in the same sentence as Blackbeard’s, probably.”
Izzy frowns. “Do you ever think something and then decide to just keep it to yourself, or does it all come spilling out regardless?”
Pete doesn’t seem at all offended by this. He only laughs, in that way he has when Izzy’s trying to insult him and it’s not working. “Letting it all spill out is healthier, I think. It’s not good for you to keep it bottled up.” He wiggles his eyebrows, as if Izzy isn’t perfectly aware of the double entendre. He fully intends to ignore it anyway.
“Hm. Maybe you should try telling that to the captain; he’s got peculiar ideas about bottling things up.”
“Why would I want to talk to Frenchie when I could be dancing with you?”
“You smooth talking bastard.”
He smiles, outrageously pleased with himself. “I know, right?” He spins Izzy a bit, and it’s an impressive move but it leaves Izzy putting too much pressure on his prosthetic leg. For a moment, the pain is blinding. Izzy has to stop for a moment and breathe, slow and steady.
“Oh shit.” Pete’s face is full of soft concern and, for a moment, Izzy hates him for it. “Come on, let’s take a break.”
Izzy leans on him more than he’ll admit to as they make their way to the stairs leading up to the quarterdeck. Pete clearly expects him to sit on the lower steps like he does, sometimes, when everyone’s gathered on deck for some kind of briefing and he wants to be able to hear it but can’t be on his feet that long. Izzy doesn’t sit there. Instead he hauls himself up the steps using the rope strung on the side like a bannister, until he reaches the top. Then he sits, up where the lantern light doesn’t quite reach so well, where it’s darker and more distant from the festivities below.
After a moment’s hesitation, Pete joins him.
Izzy doesn’t look over at him as he unstraps his leg. He eases it off with a small sigh of relief, rubbing very gently at the stocking-covered flesh, trying to soothe some of the rawness. It’s… easier, somehow, to be vulnerable around Pete Spriggs than any of the others. Maybe it’s because the man weathers embarrassment so well (and so frequently) himself. Or maybe there’s something about him that invites it, something warm and light as a candle flame burning under all that bravado and ridiculous bluster.
“May I?” Pete asks, reaching out, and Izzy wordlessly hands him the unicorn leg. He watches him test the leather cup, the suppleness of it and the give in the straps. “You’re fastening these tighter than you did when you first got it,” he observes.
“Yeah,” Izzy replies, gruff. “Swelling’s gone down since then.”
“Makes sense.” There are two large straps that do the bulk of the work to hold the leg in place. “I still think these would’ve been better as more little straps than two big ones. Then you could fine tune exactly what parts should be tighter or looser, right? But we didn’t exactly have lots of options when it came to the leather. We took these from a pair of boots.”
“Whose boots?”
“Oh, you know. Someone’s. Maybe someone who owns a lot of pairs of fancy boots. With good leather that’s mostly unworn. You know, just whoever.”
Ugh. Izzy grimaces. “You mean to tell me I’ve been going around wearing bits of Stede fucking Bonnet’s fucking boots?”
“We all decided that he owed you.” Pete shrugs apologetically. “We might have borrowed some leather from Blackbeard’s coat, too. Who can say.”
“You can bloody well say.”
“You’d think so, right?”
“Ugh.” Izzy lets his head thunk back against the side of the ship.
“We didn’t have the greatest choice of materials or much time. But I bet Frenchie would let us get whatever we need to improve it, now that he’s captain. Look.” He shoves the leg under Izzy’s nose. “See where the unicorn’s ankle joint is? That was my idea, that angle, to make it more comfortable to walk with.”
Izzy’s no shipwright, but a life onboard various sailing vessels has given him a basic competency with engineering. He takes the leg out of Pete’s hands and inspects the joint. “You’ll have lost some strength, over just making it from one piece of wood.”
“Yeah, that was the gamble, right? But Stede made this whole ship out of super good quality wood, so I figured it was probably okay. I have this idea, it’s probably stupid, but I thought we could make the joint hinged, a little bit? So that it can lock when you’re standing but, like, bend a bit more when you need it to.”
“When would I need it to?”
“When you’re running, I guess. Or walking on an uneven surface. Like sand.” Pete’s looking down at the leg studiously, like he’s avoiding Izzy’s gaze. “I didn’t–” He clears his throat awkwardly. “None of us liked it, that you couldn’t get away as fast from those navy guys.”
Oh. That.
“Don’t worry about it, Spriggs.” He looks miserable, so Izzy uses the last name purposefully, because it always seems to cheer him up. Not that he’d admit to wanting to cheer Pete up under torture. “It’ll take a lot more than a lucky shot from some incompetent posh twat to take me out. Even fucking Blackbeard himself couldn’t manage it.”
“That’s true,” Pete allows. “Still, I’d like to do what I can to help make sure that continues. And this?” He shakes the leg, gently, to call attention to it. “Is what I can do.”
Izzy shrugs, and sets it down on the step between them. “Alright. If it makes you feel better.”
“It does.”
“And.” Izzy tries to gird his loins and get it out. It’s not easy; goes against a lifetime’s deeply ingrained habit. “Thank you,” he eventually manages. “I suppose. For that.”
“Oh. You’re welcome.”
They sit in silence for a moment. Below, Izzy watches Lucius lean against the capstan to gossip with Wee John Feeney.
“I should thank you, too,” Pete says.
“For fucking what?”
“You’ve been taking care of Lucius. It means a lot to me. He means a lot to me, I guess.”
“I should bloody hope so. You married him.” Izzy wishes he had a drink, or a smoke. Anything to do with his hands. “I’ve not been taking care of him, anyway. He can take care of himself.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I really don’t.” Izzy thinks he might, though. On some level.
“There’s all this stuff I don’t know how to talk to him about. Stuff he went through that I just can’t understand, no matter what I do. I keep saying the wrong thing and fucking it all up.”
“Yeah,” Izzy replies, bluntly. He respects the man too much (god help him) to lie about it.
“I am trying. But I’m glad he’s got someone else he can talk to.”
We don’t talk about it, Izzy wants to say. We’re not like that. But he’s not sure it’s true anymore. Or maybe ever. They both know enough of each other’s weaknesses, each other’s traumas, that there’s a shared understanding between them; a language, almost, that’s all their own. They both know it; have known it since Bonnet and his lot had first retaken the Revenge.
“He knows you’re trying,” Izzy says, instead.
“Honestly it freaked me out a lot at first. I mean, I know I come across like a guy who can handle anything–” Izzy doesn’t dignify this with a response, but does shoot him a deeply sceptical look. “–but I struggled seeing him so defeated, you know? It felt like - that’s not the Lucius I knew. The old Lucius would have dealt with it with humour and bitchiness and maybe sex. Okay, definitely sex.” He grins to himself, briefly, and then it fades. “It’s not like he never went through bad shit before in his life. We all did, that’s how we ended up here.”
Izzy’s not sure what to say. Pete’s surprisingly insightful observations aside, Izzy is the last person on this ship anyone should be looking to for advice on shit like this. It’s a terrifying thought that he might be the best they’ve got. He casts about in his mind for someone else who might be good at this talking it through stuff. Frenchie? He’s definitely more of a bottle-it-up man. Boodhari, maybe? He’s the most sensible, perhaps. Warm, friendly, but not so friendly that it impairs his judgement.
Ironically, he’d once have said the best person to talk to about complicated feelings shit was Lucius. Not that his advice was always the most sound, but he’d make you laugh and get drunk with you until you didn’t care as much. As long as the you in question wasn’t Izzy, back then.
It’s not that he’s changed, exactly. Everyone changes, all the time, in a million small ways that no one has much control over. That’s just part of life. It’s more that he’s shrunk, somehow. He's jumpy, like everyone who approaches him might hold some hidden danger. Not quite as flirtatious, not as bold. Smaller.
“It’s early days,” Izzy tries. “He’s doing better with Ed off the ship.” They all are. Painful as that is. “Give it time, Pete.”
“I am.” He shares another smile with Izzy. A little smaller, more private than the others. “So. Were you two really fighting, down in the hold today? Or were you fucking? Come on, you can tell me.”
Izzy nearly swallows his tongue. He coughs, slapping at his own chest. “We’re covered in bruises,” he says, indignantly, when he’s got his breath back. “He’s got a split lip!”
“I know, right, so kinky.” He sounds more than mildly impressed. “But, no offence, that’s not exactly what I was expecting when the two of you finally did it.”
Part of Izzy wants to ask what, exactly, he was expecting. But it doesn't matter, because there's nothing to expect. Hasn’t been and won't be.
“I’m not sleeping with your bloody husband, Spriggs!”
“Oh.” Pete looks, bafflingly, disappointed to hear it. “That’s what Lu said, but I thought maybe he was protecting your privacy.”
“That man can’t keep a secret to quite literally save his life. There’s no way he’d be able to hide that from you, even if he wanted to.”
“I guess.” Pete sighs. “But you do want to, right? I mean obviously I’m biased, I think most people should want to. But I’ve seen how you are with him - you’ve wanted to for a long time. Like since before you had that duel with Stede, I think.”
Izzy finds himself, once again, rendered speechless by a Spriggs. It’s apparently his fate to have this happen over and over again. He should probably just accept it as one of those bizarre, inexplicable yet true facts of life, like the Bermuda Triangle, or Calico Jack’s success with women.
“Don’t worry, you weren’t that obvious. I just have a keen mind and a finely honed set of deductive skills, so I pick up on things that most people miss.”
“Oh god.” Pete’s delusional, which means it must’ve been obvious to anyone within about a two mile radius. Fantastic. Fuck Izzy’s life.
“If it helps, I think Lucius enjoyed it?”
“Oh my god.”
“No really, he likes that kind of bitchy flirtation thing. I think he thought it was just a matter of time before the two of you…” He makes a suggestive and, frankly, confusing series of hand movements. “But I guess some things got in the way.”
“Yeah, like having a fucking husband for one.”
Pete laughs. “No way, babe.” Why does everyone on this ridiculous ship insist on calling each other by that ridiculous term. “We don’t own each other, remember? We enable each other.” He gives Izzy a wink, and Izzy contemplates diving off the side of the ship. He probably wouldn’t drown, but he might hit his head and forget this conversation ever happened.
“Anyway,” Pete continues. “If it happens, please know that I would like to hear all about it in as much detail as possible.”
“Fuck my life,” Izzy tells him, with utter sincerity.
“Pass,” Pete replies. “I think it’s already fucked enough. No offence.”
And, well. Who could argue with that?
*
The next time they fight there’s no hesitation on Lucius’s part when Izzy orders him to punch him. He considers it excellent progress.
The time after that, he encourages the lad to use the rest of his body a bit more, to fight dirty - kicking, head butting, even biting if he can get close enough. Then he demonstrates some useful holds, and demonstrates how to get out of them again, even when you’re smaller than whoever you’re fighting.
It’s not that it comes easy to Lucius. But he’s got a vein of steel running through him, Izzy’s discovering; a hard, bloody-mindedness underneath all the humour that refuses to back down. Izzy doesn’t even think it’s new. He felt it before, back at the start, when he’d tried to bully him into behaving and Lucius had stood his ground and bullied Izzy right the fuck back. He gives as good as he gets, Izzy thinks. And when push comes to (literal) shove and it’s time to do what has to be done, he doesn’t flinch.
It’s exactly the quality you need to be a first mate, in Izzy’s opinion. It’s impressive. Izzy’s impressed.
And Pete’s words still linger in the shark-infested waters of his mind.
You’ve wanted him for a long time. It isn’t even that Izzy hadn’t known it, exactly. It’s more that he’s spent a lifetime wanting things he can’t have, and so he’s learned to ignore his own desires like a phantom limb. He’s almost scared to acknowledge it, now. Feeling the want means he’ll feel the pain of it, too; all that he’s yearned for and lost, or never had in the first place.
But he can’t help it. Now that he’s been forced to confront it, to hear it spoken out loud, it’s there at all times when he’s with Lucius, like a third person in the room. He’ll be talking Lucius through putting him in an armlock, going through the process slowly, step by step, and suddenly he’s brutally aware that they’re writhing on the floor together sweaty and half-dressed. That he knows the smell of Lucius’s sweat, the heaviness of his breathing. That he’s pinned, helpless, beneath the big bulk of him, trapped between him and the unforgiving rough wood of the decking, his arm twisted up behind his back and his body aching, forced into stillness. He can’t help the noises that have started escaping him in those moments.
Fortunately, Lucius is good enough to ignore them.
Today they’re rowing out to Deus Ex Marina together, just the two of them.
The captains and their advisors are keen to be getting underway now that Izzy’s fully healed. They’re not going to be here much longer, in the safety of this in-between place, and Izzy plans to take full advantage of it before they leave. Lucius’s training, the entire crew’s training, will continue as they go forward, but there are certain things that are easier to teach on land.
It’s a strange place, the island; small enough that the British take no notice of it– don’t even seem to be aware of its existence –but big enough in elevation that a ship can be virtually hidden from sight by it. It’s got a single mid-sized freshwater stream and some forest that’s grown up around it, but no animal life save the birds, and the sea creatures that make their homes on its beaches.
It’s a hot day. The wisps of cloud that had formed in the cool overnight have long been burned away by the bright sun, and Izzy’s making Lucius row, on the reasoning that it’s good for developing his strength. Privately, he tells himself he’s earned the right to sit back and enjoy the tempting view of those strong arms working, skin glistening in the heat. Growing old has to have some benefits.
Roach has packed them a picnic basket, despite Izzy’s insistence that this excursion is purely for training purposes. He’s still fussing over Izzy, despite how well he’s healing and how his appetite’s been slowly but surely returning. And perhaps he’s thinking of the sandwich he’d lobbed at Izzy’s head that one time, who knows.
“Would it be crazy if we just, like, skipped the training stuff and went sunbathing instead?”
“We live and work outdoors in the Caribbean, and you want more sun?”
“Hmm. It’s more the lying down with a cold drink doing nothing bit that appeals, actually.”
“Lazy sod.”
“Ugh, fine. We’ll do your boring training instead.”
Izzy smirks. “Don’t think you’ll be bored today.”
At his feet, safely protected from the water in a double lined box, are a pair of pistols, a powder flask and a quantity of bullets. He doesn’t mention this to Lucius just yet.
“That sounds promising,” Lucius says, with an up-and-down look and a flirtatious twist to his mouth.
“Well, then you’d better row a bit faster then, hadn’t you?”
The tide’s in, and the dinghy’s able to get them far enough up onto the beach that they barely wet their legs hopping out and dragging it up onto the sand, and still Lucius complains about it.
“It’s all just inside my shoes. It feels gross.”
“My heart bleeds for you.”
“And the sand’s getting in too and mixing with the water. I can feel it between my toes. Ugh, no thank you.”
“Truly, no one has suffered like you, a professional sailor who’s got some seawater on him.”
“I know you’re being sarcastic and I don’t even care. I’m pretty sure a bit of seaweed went in my sock. This is basically a hate crime.”
“Get the boat further up from the tideline. Last thing we need’s to be stranded here until those idiots notice we’re missing and decide to rescue us.”
He does drag the boat up, and then he makes a big production of taking his shoes off and emptying out all the wet sand.
“Oh my god I think that was a tiny crab.” He makes a retching sound and Izzy has to turn away to hide his silent laughter. “Can we agree that, on some level, this is Stede and Ed’s fault?”
“What, your shoe crab?”
“Yes.”
Izzy considers this. Fuck it, he thinks. “Alright. Sod them, the shoe crab’s on them.”
“Yesss, that’s the spirit. Come on, what else can we blame them for?”
Steadily but entirely too slowly for Izzy’s liking, they make their way past the treeline. The slowness isn’t all Lucius’s fault, either - Izzy had forgotten how difficult it is to walk on the shifting surface of a beach with a wooden leg. After a few steps Lucius extends an elbow like Izzy’s a fine lady in a gown trying to step over puddles without getting his expensive fucking stockings dirty, and after another few steps of struggling he grudgingly accepts it, leaning half his weight on Lucius’s surprisingly sturdy arm.
“Training’s paying off,” he grunts.
“Right,” Lucius replies. “Soon I’ll be as buff as you.”
Christ, Izzy hopes not. Nothing wrong with strength, but what a pity it’d be to lose that soft voluptuousness he’s grown used to seeing when Lucius strips off his shirt. The curve of his stomach, the palmfuls of his tits. The ripe, squeezable swell of his waist.
He shakes his head and tries to focus on not dropping the box. Lucius has the picnic basket. Once they get onto the firmer ground beneath the trees, Izzy lets go of the arm supporting him and instantly misses the warmth of it, the excuse of it. He sternly instructs himself to pull it fucking together.
“So what are we doing out here, anyway? Bit of a nature walk?”
“We’re gonna start with seeing how much of what you’ve learned you can remember and put to use when you’re in a more complicated environment than an empty hold.”
They’ve reached a little clearing not far from the stream. It’s as good a place as any, so Izzy sets down the box and removes his baldric and sword, setting them down beside it. Opposite, Lucius copies him, dropping the picnic basket and his sketchbook to the mossy floor.
“Little field trip,” he says. “Nice.”
There are bruises and scrapes on him from their fights that still haven’t healed, visible on his arms and face, on his throat and the place where his throat meets his collar. Anywhere his clothing doesn’t cover. It satisfies something in Izzy, some animal that spends all its time growling menacingly at shadows.
It’s cooler here, under the shelter of the trees. He takes a swig from a water flask then hands it to Lucius and watches him drink. Izzy would swear he can feel the working of that pale throat as it swallows in his own body, like a hand wrapped around his neck. He quickly looks away.
“There’s a lot more cover here than you’re used to. Uneven ground, foliage. Even the fucking bugs.” This close to the river, the air’s thick with them. Little flying, biting bastards. Aunty had smeared their necks and wrists with lemon oil and eucalyptus before they set off, raising an eyebrow at Izzy and reminding him quite pointedly that the best way to not get bitten was to keep as much of your clothing on as possible, but it hardly seems to be putting the little fuckers off. “Generally stuff that’ll get in your way or obscure your view.” Izzy runs a hand over his hair, smoothing it back off his face before continuing. “So in a moment I’m going to run for it, and you’re going to try to take me down. Got it?”
Lucius puts down the water flask and stretches his neck from one side to the other, rolling his shoulders as he does it. “Aye aye, sir,” he says, with a cheeky grin.
“Twat. Ready?” A nod. “Now.”
It’s a freeing feeling, after so many weeks aboard ship. Izzy’s entire life has been at sea, there’s nowhere he feels more comfortable than on the boards of a ship feeling the ocean move beneath him, and yet there’s something about the freedom to pick a direction and run as far as your legs will carry you without having to worry about going overboard.
Not that he gets that far now.
He’s barely out of the clearing before Lucius is on him, using the force of his body and its momentum to knock Izzy off his feet. They grapple for a bit in the dirt before Izzy gets his feet under him again, knocks Lucius back with a well aimed elbow, and scampers into the thicker undergrowth to catch his breath.
As stealthily as he can manage with a prosthetic fucking leg, he circles around out of sight to behind where Lucius is wading loudly through vine and fern, poking at the forest floor with a stick he’s found to make sure there aren’t any hidden snakes.
He’ll be expecting Izzy to run on ahead and hide, probably. But Izzy’s got no time for that. They’ve more than this to cover before the sun goes down.
He rushes up behind him and, before the lad can react, sweeps his feet out from under him with his prosthetic.
“Oh shit,” he yelps as he goes down, hard, onto his back.
Izzy drops down to straddle his chest, pinning his wrists above his head. “Not as easy as it looks, is it?”
“You sneaky little bastard.”
“Izzy Hands. Have we met?”
“Very funny.”
Lucius writhes, pushing his weight up against Izzy, testing how easy it would be to dislodge him. If he’s smart he’ll realise that his long legs are still free, and put that realisation to good use.
“Come on, twatty. Can’t even take an old man with one leg?”
“What if I’d rather be taken?” he asks, fluttering his eyelashes coyly, and for a moment Izzy is so distracted by trying to work out what the fuck that’s supposed to mean that Lucius is able to get his knees up and flip them so that Izzy’s the one pinned on his back on the forest floor. The trees tower above, peering down at them like voyeuristic sentries, and Izzy can feel Lucius’s body covering what feels like every inch of him. He’s fever hot. His dick is pressing into the give of Lucius’s stomach, and Izzy prays to anything that’ll listen that it doesn’t betray him by getting noticeably hard.
“There,” Lucius coos, all breathless condescension. “Isn’t that better?”
“Much,” Izzy tells him, with an approving, slightly feral grin. “You’re becoming not entirely shit at this.”
“High praise.”
He’s smug, clearly thinking he’s won and fucking delighted with himself for it, and for a moment Izzy’s gripped with the pathetic urge to let him have this small victory just to keep that giddy light in his eyes a little bit longer.
There were moments like that with Ed. Too many of them. Izzy’s weakness has always been wanting to make the men he admires happy by any means necessary - and, at that thought, he realises that this is exactly what he feels for Lucius Spriggs. Fucking admiration. Jesus Christ, as if his pride hasn’t suffered enough.
Izzy makes himself go limp, feigning surrender until Lucius lets his guard down. He’s staring at Izzy’s mouth now in a way that makes Izzy’s throat go dry, his heart pound in his ears like the distant sound of panicked, running footsteps.
“Izzy…” Lucius breathes, looking at Izzy like he’s trying to work out something that’s been puzzling him for a while, and Izzy feels his hands go slack where they’re pinning Izzy’s wrists to the ground at each side of his head. His wooden finger is ever so slightly cooler than the others. The sensation of it grounding, somehow; familiar.
Quickly, Izzy twists his hands and swipes them down towards his sides and out of Lucius’s grip, simultaneously thrusting, hard, upwards, knocking him off balance. Lucius sprawls forwards, hands going out to stop himself crashing face first into the leaf litter, crotch distressingly close to Izzy’s face. With a grunt of effort, Izzy wraps his arms around Lucius’s waist and brings his head up sharply into his stomach.
Lucius cries out in shock as much as pain and Izzy thinks he hears a few choice and colourful exclamations as he rolls out from under him and starts making his getaway into the trees.
The word “bitch” echoes through the forest like birdsong.
*
When they’ve worn themselves out with a few more good grapples, Izzy concedes that it’s time to break for lunch.
They’ve grown used to sharing meals together, not just in the way that shipmates tend to when you work and sleep and eat in shifts, but as the two of them (or three, if Pete’s about). It’s hard to define what, exactly, the difference is between eating in the galley with the rest of the crew who aren’t on watch, and eating in the galley with the rest of the crew with Lucius. But there is a difference. And, sometimes, when it’s all too much and something in Izzy’s gut refuses to let him sit and eat, or something in Lucius’s memory rebels at the thought of all those other people watching him, they take their food and go off together to any one of the numerous nooks and crannies around the ship that they’ve discovered and claimed as their own. Quiet and alone, together. It makes it all easier.
It’s like that now.
The forest is quiet in a different way than the sea. Izzy can still hear her - the waves on the beach and the insolent screeching of the gulls, and the deep white noise of her endless, restless churning. But it’s muted by the leaves, soaked up by the moss. Louder is the noise of the nearby stream where they’d refilled the water flask, the buzzing of insects and the sound of the breeze through the tree branches.
Roach has made them a cold gazpacho soup. Refreshing yet oddly comforting, perfect for a hot day spent beating the shit out of each other in the woods. They eat it with a small loaf of bread that they tear apart with their hands, sitting on a fallen tree trunk that must have come down in a fairly recent storm - its leaves are still green and clinging to it, despite the roots being exposed to the air.
Izzy taps it with his knuckles after setting his empty soup mug aside. “Decent wood, this. We should send a party to cut and dry it and bring it back to the ship.”
“What for?”
Izzy looks at him like he’s got two heads. “You kidding? We live on a vessel made of wood and you can’t think why it’d be handy to have some spare in storage?”
“Huh. I guess that’s true.”
“Anyway, Pete’s a decent carpenter. He’d probably appreciate having more materials on hand to work with. Will you shut up, Spriggs.”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“Well don’t give me that look, then. I’m allowed to acknowledge competence when I see it. I just rarely see it.”
“I just think it’s nice that you’re thinking of Pete so much. I like it.” Izzy shoots him a murderous glare, and he holds his hands up in a mockery of surrender. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone that you’re secretly not always a total bastard.” He winks. “I’m amazing at keeping secrets.”
“And I’m a fucking ballroom dancer.”
“Oh I don’t know, you did okay dancing with Pete the other night.”
“Yeah, well.” Izzy pokes uneasily at the empty mug, and can’t think of anything else to say. He can feel Lucius’s eyes on him, but can’t quite bring himself to look up again and meet that gaze head on.
“Izzy?” Lucius’ voice has that same gentle curiosity to it from earlier, like he can make the single word of Izzy’s name into a complicated question.
“What?”
“What are we doing?”
The question drops as softly as rain on the sea, leaving a new hush in its wake. It settles on Izzy like a strange kind of calm. Perhaps the kind that comes before a storm, or the kind you meet in the dead centre of one.
“Because we are doing something, aren’t we?” Lucius continues, still maddeningly gentle, like he doesn’t understand how unbearable it is. “We’ve been doing it for a while, I think.”
“Training.” The word, though also quiet, is scraped raw out of Izzy’s throat like he’s had to reach in there and pull it out by hand. “We’re training. Come on, enough sitting around.” He gets back on his feet and limps over to the pistol box, his leg sore from exertion and cramped up from sitting down immediately after. “This is what I brought you out here for.”
Lucius hesitates a moment, like he’s unwilling to just let it drop. But eventually he heaves a great, put-upon sigh and gets to his feet, stretching until his back cracks. “Sure it is, babe.” He saunters over, his body loose in a way it never is on the ship. “So what are we playing with today? Are you finally letting me get my hands on a sword?”
Izzy scoffs. “Fencing takes years to master. If I gave you a sword now you’d be more likely to hurt yourself than anyone else.”
“So you’re just not even going to try?”
“Didn’t say that, did I. When I start teaching you fencing you’ll fucking know about it; it’ll be nothing but drills for months, you’ll be bored out of your mind.”
“And today’s not boring.”
“Right.”
He undoes the clasp on the box and lifts the lid, then folds back the layers of oilcloth keeping the contents dry.
“Guns,” says Lucius, and Izzy can’t quite read his tone. “Okay, not actually entirely sure how I feel about that.”
“Here.” He picks one of the pistols up and holds it handle-first to Lucius, who takes it with visible trepidation. “Take that look off your face, it’s not going to go off.”
“Hmm. You seem very confident about that for someone who won’t even let me have a sword.”
“It’s got no bloody powder in it. You’ve helped Feeney man the cannons, I know you know how this works.”
“Some scholars are now saying that cannons and pistols are two different weapons. I don’t know, I’m waiting for more evidence before I believe them.”
“Smart arse.” Izzy lets the corners of his mouth curl up in an almost-smile. He doesn’t even try to pretend, anymore, that he doesn’t enjoy Lucius’s sharp mouth. They’re alike, the two of them; falling back on meanness too readily, comforted by the bite of it. “Look, a pistol’s a much quicker weapon to learn the basics of than a sword. And yeah, it’s slow reloading, and wasteful if you can’t aim for shit, but you can use it at a distance - which is where you’re going to be for the first few jobs we do when we get back underway.”
“Not that I’m complaining about that, but what was the point of doing all this combat training stuff if I’m not going to be using it?”
Izzy can’t help scoffing. It’s probably not very kind, but then again, he’s never claimed to be a kind man. Nothing about this life is kind, and anyone who claims otherwise is a fucking liar. “You’re nowhere near ready yet. If it was that easy everyone would do it.”
“But I thought Stede learnt how to do all this pirate stuff from you in just a day, while Blackbeard was out fishing with Fang?”
Izzy, suddenly reminded of that ridiculous fucking day trying and failing to impress upon Bonnet how woefully unprepared he was for life as a serious pirate, laughs. “Stede Bonnet is exactly the sort of man who’d believe he could master anything in a day. I thought he’d realise how out of his depth he was if I said I’d teach him, more fool me. He wasn’t skilled, he was lucky. And he was overconfident. And, most of all, he was surrounded by people earning significantly less than him who picked up the slack whenever things went tits up.”
“Actually yeah, that makes a lot of sense.” Lucius considers the pistol in his hands with a thoughtful look on his face. “So when will I be good enough, in your opinion?”
“No idea. This, like every other bloody thing, takes as long as it takes.” He nods at the gun. “You’ll learn how to fire that, and we’ll keep you at the rear of the boarding party for the first few raids so you can get a handle on what it’s like when you’re not cowering and trying to do bloody sketches. Then we’ll see where we are.”
“Sounds like a plan.” He shoots Izzy a smile, bright and dizzying, but there’s still something there underneath it that Izzy can’t quite place. Complicated. Amused. Steel-hard. “So. Show me how to work this thing?”
Izzy stands behind him, slightly to the side but close enough that his chest is almost touching Lucius’s back, and the smell of citrus and eucalyptus and sweat is heady.
“Learning how to load and fire it’s the easy part,” he’s explaining. “But it can be fiddly, so you need it to be second nature by the time you’re doing it for real.” It’s not so easy to focus when you’re on the deck of an enemy ship, chaos and smoke all around you and some bugger advancing on you menacingly with a blade or a club or a fucking pistol of his own. “The harder part’s learning to actually hit anything when you fire it. You’ll be shit at it at first; don’t let it put you off.”
“I’ll try,” Lucius says, voice still soft with that tone of amusement, and he’s watching Izzy’s face rather than the weapon in his hand.
“Pay attention.” He lifts the powder flask that he strung by its long strap over Lucius’s shoulder so that it hangs at his waist in easy reach. “You need about eighty grains of gunpowder for a pistol this size. When you’ve had more practice you can eyeball it, but to start–” he unscrews the cap of the flask and tips a little of the powder into it, just enough to fill it level. “You can measure it with this. Right, tip that down the barrel.”
Lucius does as he’s bid, and Izzy does the same with his own gun before replacing the cap on the flask. Then he fishes a ball and a few circles of muslin from his pocket. He cut the little fabric pieces himself, early this morning, in readiness. He places one of them over the top of the barrel, and the ball on top of that.
“Right, now you. Cloth, then bullet.”
Lucius’s hands, Izzy notices, are rock steady as they copy him. Steadier, perhaps, than they have been in months. Something about being on land, maybe.
“Right, now you take the rod and– yeah, just like that.” Izzy rushes to catch up, pushing the ball and the fabric it sits on as far down the barrel of his own pistol as it’ll go, until it’s snug in the breech against the powder. He tucks the ramrod back into place. “Now you’re going to prime the pan, nice and easy.”
“This bit?” Lucius asks, innocently, tapping the frizzen with the tip of his prosthetic finger.
“Under that.”
He reaches out to demonstrate but, before he can, Lucius tips the frizzen back, exposing the pan underneath. He’s a quick learner, Izzy thinks. Always a quick learner.
They're standing so close that Lucius speaks quietly, almost intimately, when he says, “And what does priming entail, exactly?”
Izzy blinks. “You’re getting it ready to–” Lucius is staring right at him again, he suddenly realises. Right into his eyes. Izzy clears his throat. “–to go off,” he manages, weakly. “It needs a spark.”
“Does it?”
“Yeah.”
“Mm. So how are we going to make that spark happen?”
Izzy’s never been good at fucking word games. He can tell that there's something implied, something going on beneath the surface of that question, but he's fucked if he can work out how to respond to it.
So instead he takes the little horn of priming powder from around his neck and uncaps it one-handed.
“A dozen grains,” he grates out. “I’m pretty sure that even you can manage that by eye.” He taps it gently into the pan. The grains are much finer than the normal gunpowder, so they’re harder to count, but you get an eye for these things after a while. Like Roach not having to measure out exactly how much of each herb or spice he puts into their meals for the flavours to balance.
He hands the horn to Lucius, who doesn’t seem to have any trouble tapping out the right measure of primer either, and who flips the cap back on with his thumb when he’s done and locks the frizzen down without having to be told.
“...right,” Izzy says, something tickling persistently at the back of his mind.
“What next, Izzy?” Lucius says, before Izzy can try to puzzle it out.
“Next you pull back the, uh. The—”
“The what?”
Izzy feels like he’s being mocked, somehow. He’s always been an idiot for a pair of big brown eyes, and Lucius is blinking his at Izzy with an innocence that feels at once both false and absolutely sinful.
“The– oh for fuck’s sake. The cock.”
“This?” He rubs his thumb back and forth over the very tip of the jaw in tight, maddening little circles. “And then it’ll go off for me, yeah?”
“You’re not being clever.”
“Eh. Agree to disagree.” He smoothly pulls the jaw back, cocking the pistol.
“Careful,” Izzy warns. “There’s nothing to stop it shooting now.”
“Scary.” He holds the pistol with care, though, pointing it well away from both of them. “Why don’t you show me how it’s done first?”
Izzy frowns. But that is, after all, what he’d planned.
“Alright.”
He cocks his own pistol and raises it carefully, aiming it between two trees at the edge of the cleaning, to a third one quite a way behind them. It’s a slender bugger, probably younger than Lucius, but Izzy has always enjoyed a challenge.
He steadies the pistol with his other hand.
“Don’t hold it too far down the barrel,” he instructs. “It gets hot. And not too close to your face, unless you want an eye full of flare and powder smoke.”
Slowly, measuredly, he pulls the trigger. The hammer strikes the flint; the spark catches in the primer. A second’s delay, a bang, and the bullet’s set flying. It imbeds itself smack in the middle of that narrow tree trunk, leaving a tiny, visible wound in the bark.
It’s oddly anticlimactic.
“Nice,” Lucius murmurs. “You’re so impressive, Izzy.”
“Shut up.”
“Mm, make me.”
“No. Fire the fucking gun.”
“Ugh, alright, if you’re going to be grumpy about it.” He widens his stance a little and casts a look back over his shoulder. “Why don’t you help me with it?”
They’re already standing so close to each other. There’s no reason for Izzy to move closer still; but he does. Lets himself press his body to the long line of Lucius’s back, crotch to that plush arse, and bring his arms around to take Lucius’s wrists and raise them until the barrel of the pistol is level with the ground, manipulating him just so.
Lucius lets him do it. Goes pliant in Izzy’s arms in a way that makes Izzy’s head spin like he’s drunk.
“That’ll do,” he manages. “Don’t worry about hitting anything, just get used to firing it first.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just try to hit that same tree you did.”
“If you like. But don’t be pissy when you miss it.”
He rests his own finger on the forefinger of Lucius’s right hand, the one made of flesh and blood, and manipulates it into position on the trigger. “You just need to squeeze it,” he says, mouth so near to Lucius’s jaw from the position they’re standing in that he can feel the warmth of his own breath reflected back at him. “I’m going to let go so you can do it on your own.”
He lets his hands fall to Lucius’s hips, like he thinks he can steady him against the recoil. The pistol isn’t big or forceful enough to really need it, but he knows how to lie to himself about such things.
Lucius takes a moment to adjust his aim, and Izzy could swear he can feel him grinning even though he can’t see his face from this angle. “Ready?” Lucius asks, cool as a cucumber, and it seems backwards somehow. Like Izzy should be the one asking.
Still, he nods against Lucius’s shoulder, and a moment later the whip crack of the gun rings out.
It hits the tree dead on. But Izzy has no time to be impressed by that, none at all, because not only does it hit the tree dead on, it hits it right in the fucking centre of the mark his own bullet left.
He gapes uselessly at it for a moment while the wisp of powder smoke dissipates, then he springs back a few paces, letting empty air rush to fill the space between the two of them once again.
“How the fuck did you do that?”
Lucius’s mouth twists. “Beginner’s luck?”
“Fuck off.” A shot like that… Izzy’s never seen anyone, gunner to marksman to fucking luck-of-the-devil Edward Teach himself, do anything like it. He stares at the distant, bullet-marked tree, then back to Lucius, who is failing to conceal an obnoxious grin. “I thought you’d never done this before?”
“I never actually said that,” he points out. “You just assumed it, babe. Like with the navigating.”
It feels like the floor has tipped up to a seasick angle, and all the little fucking biting insects in the air are mocking him for losing his feet. “What else have you been pretending to be shit at all this time?” Izzy grasps at his own hair, a subconscious mannerism that always seems to take hold of him when he’s upset. “Can you fight, too? Is that what you’ve been doing all this time, fucking pretending? Is it all just a game to take the piss out of stupid fucking Izzy Hands?”
“What? No!” He looks offended - no, hurt by that suggestion, and something in Izzy quietens just a little. “Do you really think I’d let you headbutt me in the stomach just to take the piss? I’m not that committed to anything.” He takes a step towards Izzy again, mollifying. “I didn’t even know you were bringing the pistols today, remember? I’d have told you if you asked, but since we were here already I thought it might be… I thought maybe you’d…” He gestures helplessly at the tree. “You know you’re a very intimidating man, Izzy Hands? It’s not easy trying to get your attention.”
A few things start to click into place at those words, like the cogs of an improbable (and possibly explosive) clock.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, dick head, that I thought you’d be impressed. Or, I hoped you’d be, maybe.”
“Impressed?” Izzy echoes. “Fucking impressed?”
He barely feels the gun in his hand drop to the ground as he stumbles forward to grab at Lucius’s ridiculous fucking shirt and pull him forcefully into his arms. Their mouths meet like Izzy and Lucius themselves did, all those months ago: aggressively, neither one prepared to back down. It’s a juicy bite of a kiss, all teeth and spit and tongue.
Lucius moans like a parched man given a drink of water, gasping the word “finally” into Izzy’s skin, and his hands on either side of Izzy’s face are still rock steady. By contrast, Izzy feels like he’s going to shake his way out of his own body with his trembling.
“You– you’re so.” Izzy growls in frustration. “I’ve never met…” He gives up. The language for this is beyond him.
Lucius takes Izzy’s shivery hands in his own and holds them, and the kiss slows and sweetens into something gentler, infinitely more intimate, until their lips are barely touching. They breathe the same air. “It’s okay,” Lucius says, and Izzy doesn’t know what that means, or why it comforts him.
He’s got his eyes closed, and he doesn’t want to open them again. He wants to stay here in the dark behind his own eyelids, feeling Lucius’s steady grip on his hands, soft lips just barely brushing his own.
“Pete said,” he whispers. “He said you. Wanted to, with me… Before.”
“Pete’s a clever boy.”
“He’s really not.”
“Oh shush. You’d be surprised.”
“I’m never anything but, with the two of you.”
A giggle that’s not much more than a soft chuff of breath, and then, “Izzy,” Lucius coaxes. “Izzy.”
“What?”
“Let me.” He draws Izzy’s mouth back to his own with a hand on Izzy’s jaw. Kisses him slow and thorough, insistent. “I want.”
Izzy nods. “Yeah,” he says, like he understands what’s being asked of him. “Alright.”
The leaves whisper, and Izzy lets himself be lowered to the forest floor.
It starts to make sense to him, what Pete said about not expecting their first time to be brutal. Izzy would perhaps have argued with that, at the time, if he’d considered it to be at all sincerely meant - after all, what have he and Lucius been doing the last few weeks but punching the living daylights out of each other and getting weird about it? But now that they’re here, it’s somehow not like that at all.
Izzy’s old enough to have had plenty of time to accept exactly who he is and the shameful sorts of things he desires. Rough, beautiful men who’ll knock him around and treat him like a dog, and yeah, he knows that’s fucked up. That’s why he so carefully represses it, thanks.
Lucius, though. Lucius touches him boldly, with boundless delight, like Izzy isn’t just some sick craving he needs to get out of his system but something, someone, he genuinely likes. He lies beside him on the ground, props himself on one elbow and runs his other hand all over Izzy’s chest, the worn cotton of his shirt, and says, “Fuck me, you’re so hot. Do you have any idea what I’ve suffered these past few weeks, having to watch you swan around in the candlelight with your top off? Ugh.” Izzy had removed his leather waistcoat when they’d arrived on the island, the heat too much for it without the sea breeze to cool him. Now, without it, there’s barely any barrier between his skin and Lucius’s wandering touches. He focuses on the sensation of it, letting the baffling words wash over him and away.
“Is this okay?” Lucius asks.
Izzy nods. He doesn’t think he’s ever been asked that before, in this context. “Anything,” he says. “Anything you want.”
Lucius is petting at his tits, squeezing them under his palms, possessive and admiring all at once. Izzy feels his nipples tighten until they ache, and leans up to cover his embarrassment with a kiss.
“God,” Lucius breathes. “You’re just…”
“What?”
“So hard.” He digs his fingertips into the taught muscle of Izzy’s chest, inadvertently pressing on one of his bruises so hard Izzy whimpers, dizzy and aroused.
“On top of me,” he begs, lying on his back and tugging Lucius up over him, “please.”
“I’m not too heavy?”
“No, it’s perfect, you’re perfect. I–” He swallows. “I like it.” His cheeks are burning. He’s always liked the weight of a bigger man on him, pressing him down and smothering him, making him feel powerless. He wants it, now, too much to pretend otherwise.
But Lucius only nods down at him in understanding, and adjusts himself so he’s covering as much of Izzy’s body as possible. Izzy’s thighs fall open for him to settle between, forced even wider apart by the breadth of Lucius’s hips. The tension of it in his muscles is an exquisite ache. His cock throbs with it, and he twitches, unconsciously seeking friction by trying to rub up against the man on top of him, and lets out a throaty sound of relief when he’s unable to move even that much due to the pressure holding him down.
“Is that good?”
“Yeah.”
Izzy nuzzles his face into Lucius’s neck, tasting the scratch of his scruffy beard and the salt of his skin.
“I like making you feel good.” Izzy closes his eyes again, but Lucius continues, relentless. “I want to do it more. I don’t think you get enough of it.”
“That’s life.”
“Not my life. Not if I have anything to say about it.”
He sounds surprisingly vehement about it. Almost angry.
“Good for you,” Izzy tells him, and means it. He suckles at a mottled, yellowing patch of skin below Lucius’s chin, a fading memento of one of their earlier training sessions. They’re both covered with them. Izzy thinks there might be some deep psychological meaning there, about the ways that life has permanently marked the both of them against their will, and the ways they’ve chosen to mark each other, but he can’t make his mind focus enough to properly catch it. “You gonna fuck me now or what?”
He feels Lucius’s long fingers card through his hair and shivers.
“Is that what you want?”
“Anything. I already told you, anything you want.”
“Uh-huh. And what if what I want,” he says, and sits up just enough to kiss Izzy’s mouth again, his cheek, the dip of his throat where his top shirt button has come undone from all the pawing, “is to show you what else I’m impressively good at?”
“There’s nothing you could do that would be more impressive than your marksmanship. That was fucking. Insane.”
“Okay, but you see how that sounds like a challenge now, right?”
Izzy smirks and tucks his (still trembling) arms behind his head. “And what are you going to do about it, babe?”
Lucius’s grin turns wide and predatory. “Oh, it is on.”
What is? Izzy wants to ask, but before he can get the words out Lucius is pulling at the fastenings of his trousers, and all rational thought goes overboard.
He bites at Izzy’s nipple through the fabric of his shirt, and squirms a clever hand into his now-open trousers to tug out his prick, cupping a hand over it protectively, possessively.
“Oh fuck,” Izzy gasps. He feels weirdly held by that hand. Shielded.
“Okay?” Lucius starts twitching open the buttons of his shirt with his other hand.
“Yeah.” Izzy brings his arms down from behind his head to help, and in moments his chest is bared to the fresh air.
“Fuck, I’ve been wanting to do this for ages.” Lucius dips his head and licks a broad stripe across Izzy’s chest hair.
Izzy’s legs are still spread, Lucius’s hand still firmly holding his cock, and he’s never felt so open in his life. He’s not even getting fucked, for fuck’s sake, but he feels like every part of him is available to Lucius, vulnerable to and held by him.
Izzy’s dappled with bruises, speckled with it like a young gull, so every swipe of that insistent tongue sends shivers of ache through him. Lucius bites once, softly, at a nipple, then lets it go.
“Okay, here we go,” he says. “Tell me if it’s too much.”
“If what’s too– fucking– shit.”
The plush wetness of Lucius’s mouth as it sinks down the length of his prick is like nothing Izzy’s ever experienced in his miserable life. His hips try to fuck up instantly, instinctively, but Lucius is holding him down with a strong forearm braced across Izzy’s abdomen.
“Oh my god,” Izzy pants, eyes staring blindly up at the gaps in the tree canopy where the sky is visible. “Oh my god.”
Lucius swallows him down to the root, then again, and again, and Izzy’s entire universe narrows down to the slick clench of his throat, the sensation of being enveloped by it.
It’s not that he didn’t know Lucius did this, this act that’s so taboo even fucking pirates consider it beneath them. He’s known, in that way where he never really lets himself properly think about it, since that very first day he caught Lucius and Pete going at it in the larder with John Feeney watching, and he taunts them about it regularly. Cocksucker is a glorious word, one of Izzy’s personal favourite insults, but it’s not something anyone’s ever offered to do to him, not something he thought he’d ever experience for himself.
His previous shags have all been furtive, shameful things; bending over for some heavy handed stranger behind Jackie’z when the longing got too much to deal with by himself, or letting Edward have what he wanted when he was in a bad enough mood that he’d started taking it out on everyone else.
Pleasure this intense feels… unearned. And overwhelming.
“Please,” he says, clutching at Lucius’s hair. “Please, I can’t.”
Lucius grips hold of Izzy’s hand and raises his head, releasing Izzy’s dick with a slow, obscenely wet pop. “You need me to stop?”
Yes, Izzy wants to say. And he wants to say no, never, I never want to stop feeling that.
“It’s just a lot,” he manages, instead.
“Oh babe.” Lucius is looking at him with unbearable softness. “Did you like it, though?”
Izzy nods, helplessly. He liked it. He wants more. He wants to do it to Lucius, to make him feel like that, to be penetrated so unignorably.
Slowly, keeping his eyes on Izzy’s face the whole time, Lucius licks him from root to tip. Izzy whines, feeling the sound in the very back of his throat.
“More?” Lucius asks.
Izzy nods again, and groans long and low when Lucius parts his reddened lips and takes just the very tip of Izzy’s cock between them, worrying at the underside with his tongue over and over, head bobbing only minutely this time, mouth slippery wet with saliva. Izzy slams his fist into the moss beside him. Everything in him is taut, drawing in.
“I can’t,” he gasps, panicking. “I’m going to-”
“Ah-ah,” Lucius says, releasing Izzy’s prick from his mouth regretfully and tugging, gently but firmly, on his bollocks. “Not yet, sweetheart.”
“Oh fuck, oh fuck.” The endearment makes his head spin as much as the dull ache in his balls does, climax chased away by the weird counter pressure of it.
“That’s it. I’ve got you.”
“Please.” Izzy doesn’t even know what he wants any more. Lucius is everything, everyone. Izzy wants to please him, to serve him, to suffer. He wants to be good.
“Damn. This is a lot for you, isn’t it?”
“Uh huh.”
“Can I tell you a secret?” Izzy stares at him askance, and he seems to take that as a yes. He shifts around to lie beside, and partially on top of, Izzy, so that they’re face to face again. “It’s a lot for me, too,” he whispers.
Shakily, Izzy cups the side of his ridiculous, beautiful face. “What do you want?” he asks, stroking a thumb across Lucius’s cheekbone. “What do you need from me?”
Lucius smiles, kisses the tip of Izzy’s nose, then takes his wrist and moves it, in a way that reminds Izzy of how he moved Lucius’s hands into position on the pistol, down his body, to the bulge in the front of his soft linen trousers. “Touch me,” he sighs. “And let me look at you while you do it.”
“I can do that.” He runs his calloused fingers over the shape of it, feels it twitch under his exploratory touch. He’s not sure if Lucius wants the trousers off or if that’ll be too much, so he settles for slipping a hand under the loose waistband and gathering the silky-hard length of him in his grip.
“Mmm.” Lucius smiles lazily at him, shifting his hips luxuriantly from side to side like Izzy’s rough hands are an indulgence. “Stroke it, babe, go on.”
Izzy’s feels his face get hot. He’s no blushing maid, but he’s never met anyone as brazen and unashamed as this man when it comes to softness and pleasure, to sheer vulnerability. Even Calico Jack’s lack of shame was mostly a kind of macho bravado, another way to hide.
Izzy strokes Lucius’s cock in long, slow pulls. Face to face as they are, he can see every tiny reaction. The way his mouth falls open on an upstroke, the way his eyes glaze over when Izzy’s fingertips brush the underside.
“Little bit faster,” he instructs, breathlessly, and fuck, Izzy’s always liked being told what to do just a little too much. Being told what to do here, now, while he’s fondling another man’s dick for him? It’s incredible. Addictive. He does as he’s told, and his belly lurches with arousal like a ship over a high wave. “Ah, no, keep it light - yeah, like that, that’s really good.”
Izzy feels giddy with it. With being really good for Lucius, pleasing him, being praised.
“Thank you,” he says, before he can help it.
Lucius’s eyes sharpen, like he’s taking that information in and storing it for later use.
“You like touching me, Izzy?”
“Fucking love it.”
Lucius laughs, delighted, and tugs Izzy’s hand up off himself to lick the fingers wet in lapping strokes of that wicked tongue that make Izzy think, dizzyingly, of how that same tongue had felt on his cock.
“Hands by name…” Lucius says, impishly, wriggling his trousers down to his knees and putting Izzy’s hand back down where it belongs.
Izzy squeezes, feeling the new slickness between him and Lucius’s skin, and rolls his eyes. “Never heard that one before.”
“Well, sorry but I've not got a team of world class comedy writers telling me what to say. It's just me.”
“It shows.”
“Rude.”
The wetness makes it easier to go as feather-light as Lucius seems to prefer. Izzy’s fingers slip up the hot shaft, gathering still more wet from the leaking tip and smearing it around the sensitive skin beneath.
“There,” Lucius sighs, “just your fingertips, right there.” The instruction, the implied order, makes Izzy’s heart pound in the cage of his chest, beating at the bars.
“I like it when you tell me what to do,” he confesses, before he can stop himself.
“Oh wow. I'm definitely going to use that to my advantage from now on, just a heads up.”
“Idiot,” Izzy tells him, and he can't keep the fondness out of his voice.
“DILF.”
“What does that mean?”
“Do you want to know or do you want to be a good boy and fuck me?”
It's not a hard choice, all things considered.
Lucius sits and kicks his trousers all the way off. He pulls his shirt off, too, and tosses it aside - no undershirt, today, and doesn’t that make Izzy want to bite something. Instead, he kneels and runs the palm of a hand up Lucius’s body, stomach to chest to throat. He doesn’t know if Lucius likes a hand there like he does, so he keeps it light and unthreatening, stroking his thumb over the place where he can feel the pulse skittering under the skin. An offer of more, if it’s ever wanted.
“Have you done this before?”
Izzy raises an eyebrow. “What, fucking?”
“Buggery,” he replies, bluntly.
“Course I have. Only not… you know.”
Lucius shrugs. “Do I?”
Izzy feels the inside of his throat twist up in mortification. They’re only words, so why does he have such a hard time saying them? “It was always the other bloke who was sticking it in.”
“Ah, okay.” Lucius nods in understanding. “Well, that probably bodes better than the other way round, to be honest.”
“It does?”
“For this? Yeah. Trust me.” With one hand he grasps for the forgotten gun box, still on the ground, just in reach of his long arms, and for a ridiculous moment Izzy wonders if he’s going to shoot him. “You’re ridiculously anal about maintaining equipment so I know you’ll have– ah ha, yep. Here we go.”
Izzy stares at the bottle in confusion. “Linseed oil?”
“It’s the best we’ve got, babe, beggars can’t be choosers. It’s better than nothing.” He opens it and tips some onto his fingers, leaning back and bringing them between his spread legs to… oh.
“You mean for–”
“Hmm. Why, what do you normally use?”
Izzy feels himself flush, the red travelling all the way down to his chest. “Spit, if they can be bothered. Or if there’s time to do it myself.”
Lucius pauses, fingers stopping midway through their glistening circle round his arsehole, and Izzy doesn’t know what expression’s on his face because he can’t look away from that sight. Even the sight of Lucius’s cock, pretty and perfect and standing up hard against his belly out of the lush hair below, can’t compete.
“Right,” Lucius says, slowly. “If they can be bothered. Wow. Okay. Now’s not the time, obviously, but I’m definitely filing that one away as something to talk about later. Because, yeah. No.”
Izzy wants to feel defensive about that, but he can’t. Of course Lucius needs more than a bit of spit in the dark, of course he deserves something other than a hurried fumble in an alleyway stinking of piss. He’s soft and precious, beautiful, something to be savoured and pleasured. Something to be kept well and treated right, like a good sword or a well made flintlock. Or a friend.
“Please,” Izzy begs, suddenly feeling leagues out of his depth. “You’ve got to tell me what to do or I’ll fuck it up.”
Lucius’ eyes soften, and he reaches out to Izzy with that oil-slick hand, wrapping it around his dick and giving it a single, slippery pull that forces a cry out of Izzy’s throat.
“Breathe. That’s it. You’re not going to fuck it up, Izzy,” he says. “I won’t let you.”
Izzy lets out a shudder of breath. “Good.”
“All I want you to do is lie back and let me have fun. Can you do that?”
“Yeah.”
Lucius smiles and kisses Izzy’s mouth softly, sweetly, but with just a hint of that steel that Izzy’s come to recognise in him. “Fantastic.” He squeezes Izzy’s dick again. “Right, that’s you all primed and cocked, I think. Try not to shoot off before I want you to, hm?”
The burst of laughter that escapes him goes some way to clearing the panicked tension Izzy feels, the worry that he’s going to do this wrong and never be allowed to have it again. He settles himself back down on the moss, ignoring the itch of fallen leaves and little bastard twigs that press into his now-bare back, and Lucius tucks his own discarded shirt under Izzy’s head. It smells like him. Like cigarette smoke and a good fight. Izzy inhales deeply.
“Do you want your trousers off?” Lucius asks.
Izzy shakes his head. “Can’t do it without taking off the leg.”
“Oh, yeah. Of course. Well - you could take the leg off, too, if you like? Not like you’ll need it for this.”
He shakes his head again. He offers no explanation, and Lucius doesn’t push for one. Just eases Izzy’s trousers down a bit further, making sure his cock and balls are fully free of the leather.
When he straddles Izzy, knees on either side of Izzy’s hips, hair all mussed, biting his own lower lip, Izzy thinks he’s never seen such a sight in his life. Perhaps he really did die, in that miserable hidden room with a gun in his hand and his own blood soaking the sheets. Or on the deck in Edward’s arms. Or at fifteen years old, back flogged to the bone by the navy bo’sun and infection setting in fast. Because this can’t be real, it can’t be something Izzy Hands is allowed to have.
“Stop thinking,” Lucius instructs, and leans down to kiss him, to cover Izzy’s body with his own again the way he knows, now, that Izzy likes. Izzy brings his hands up to Lucius’s waist, feeling the solidity of him, the smoothness of his peachy skin. Incredible, to be allowed this. To touch and squeeze and feel.
Izzy’s cry when his cock is taken in hand again is muffled into Lucius’s mouth. It’s moved into position, put exactly where Lucius wants it, and he feels the damp heat where it’s pressed against Lucius’s hole.
“Yeah?” Lucius asks.
“Yeah.”
Pressure, a stretch and a sudden give, and he feels himself breach it. Just the head, caught in the grip of Lucius’s body, and he bites back a desperate cry at the sensation.
Despite every instinct to press up and in, Izzy holds himself so still he can feel his own tremors sinking into the earth and dissipating like ripples on water.
“There,” Lucius breathes, his back curved so his forehead rests against Izzy’s. “Just like that. How’re you doing?”
“Fine,” Izzy tries to reply, and doesn’t quite recognise his own voice; the thinness of it, pitchy and spare.
“I’m not crushing you?”
“No. I told you, I like it.”
“Good. Be a good boy for me and don’t move, okay?”
“Y-yes– ah!”
Lucius lifts forward minutely and sinks back down again, a little further this time, circling his hips like he’s enjoying the drag and stretch of it. The oil has made him sleek inside; a tight, velvety clench on Izzy’s cock.
“Oh god,” Izzy gasps. This is how he dies, he thinks. Here on his back in the dirt trying to be so good, so still.
“Don’t move,” Lucius repeats, breathy, rocking back and forth, taking more and more of Izzy in. “Don’t move, don’t move.” His eyes are closed as if in ecstasy. “Fuck, I've wanted to sit on your dick since the first time you yelled at me.”
“Yelling does it for you?”
“Ha. No, bitch, I wanted to shut you up. Touch me.”
He's taking Izzy all the way in now, arse hitting the tops of Izzy’s thighs. His prick is trapped between them, shoving up against Izzy’s abdomen with every little, rocking thrust, so Izzy runs his hands up Lucius’s back instead. He clings to his broad shoulders and fucks his hips up, once, unthinkingly.
“None of that,” Lucius warns, and Izzy falls instantly still again. “I want you nice and passive until I tell you otherwise. Understand?”
“Yes. Yes, Ca– Lucius.”
Lucius sits partly up again, bracing his hands on Izzy’s solid chest, and the angle allows him to move quicker, further, bouncing on Izzy’s crotch and making the most obscene noises Izzy’s ever heard; all breathy moans and bitten off curses.
It pops into Izzy’s head out of the blue, the thought that maybe this is what Lucius does with Pete. He's not sure why, but the image that conjures up in his mind makes his blood quicken further still. It rushes in his eardrums until he can't hear anything else. He wonders if Pete’s good at this, if his dick fits Lucius the way Izzy’s does, if he gives himself over to Lucius’s pleasure as willingly. If he’s used to it, this passivity, practised at it, can take it for hours without complaint.
Izzy doesn’t think he'll be able to last that long. Would Pete help him, teach him like Izzy’s been teaching them all how to sail and fight and find their bearings by the angles between light and the horizon? Probably he’d laugh at Izzy for how he responds to it, how soon he’s found himself cresting the edge of the wave.
He worries at Lucius’s plump little nipples with his thumbs and tries to claw his way back, think of anything but the slick friction of him getting himself off on Izzy’s dick and how it'll feel to watch him come apart.
He’s raised enough, now, that Izzy can get a hand between them - so he does, reaching down and taking that pretty pink prick in his fist. If he can just make Lucius spill first, he tells himself, it’ll be okay.
“Yeah,” Lucius gasps. “Here, give me your other one too.” He shapes Izzy’s hands into a small, loose circle and guides them between their bodies to rest on Izzy’s belly. “That's it, keep them right here so I can fuck them.” He positions them in front of himself and thrusts experimentally into their gentle grip. A blissful moan shudders out of him.
“Fuck, Izzy, I'm so close. Can you feel it?”
Izzy makes an anguished moan by way of reply. Because yes he can fucking feel it, the way Lucius is tensing around him, tightening in anticipation of release, every movement rocking him back onto Izzy’s cock then forward into the clutch of his hands.
Lucius is going to come on him. He's going to see Lucius come. Suddenly Izzy’s right there, mortified, almost half gone with it already.
“Shit, fuck, please, I can't hold it–”
“Shh, you can.”
“I can't!” He bites his lip, hard, trying to distract himself with the pain.
Lucius is smiling, blissful. “Of course you can. You're going to stay very good and still and let me have this. Then maybe I'll let you have a turn.”
“Lucius!”
“Be good,” Lucius tells him. “Be good, oh fuck, be good, be so very–” And Izzy’s trying to be good. He can't come now, can't let his greedy dick ruin everything, not when Lucius still needs to use it till it breaks– but then Lucius’s thrusts turn sharper, rabbit-quick, and his cock twitches in Izzy’s hands and spills in long, hot spurts across Izzy’s bruised midsection.
Izzy groans like it’s his own release.
“Fuck,” Lucius moans, quiet like the breath’s been stolen out of him, rocking himself through it.
When he’s done he collapses down onto Izzy, pressing that wetness between them like he doesn’t care about the mess it’s making. “Oh fuck me.”
Izzy whimpers, and his hips make an abortive jump.
“Mmm,” Lucius sighs, catching his breath and wriggling on Izzy’s cock, all satiated glow. Izzy clings to him and tries not to beg. “Alright, pet. You can move now.”
“It’s not– it’s not too much?” Izzy always feels touched-out after he comes. Like even the barest caress would be painful.
“A bit.” He wriggles again. “But I like it. Go on, your turn.”
It’s almost impossible to move much with the bigger man’s body all over him, pinning him to the ground, but Izzy bends his knees and gets his feet under him, using the leverage to push up experimentally. The angle makes his leg ache, a bit, but it’s worth it.
Lucius has relaxed a little after the blissful tension of orgasm, and Izzy’s prick slides into him like a knife through butter; a slick, easy glide. Izzy whimpers again, and the sound is pathetic even to his own ears. This isn’t going to take long. He thrusts up again, and again, harder, and Lucius makes a breathy little uhn sound that Izzy’s going to be hearing in his dreams for the rest of his miserable life.
“Please,” he begs, and he doesn’t even know what he’s asking for, but Lucius seems to. He kisses Izzy, a hand scrunched in his hair to hold him steady, lips red and warm from being rubbed against Izzy’s beard.
Izzy lets himself be plundered. He shoves up haphazardly, a messy rhythm, whining into Lucius’s mouth and finally allowing himself to let go, to let it happen, to come in another man’s body as if he deserves it, as if he’s earned it, like Lucius wants him to feel pleasure too. His bollocks tighten, emptying themselves into Lucius’s body, and everything around the two of them whitens into non-existence then fades back in a great rush.
Izzy gasps like a drowning man, panting into Lucius’s mouth.
No one’s ever known me like you, he thinks, as he drifts back to shore, hazy and drunk on the sweetness of it all. There are men who’ve known me all my life who don’t know me like you do. Like a keeper knows a lighthouse more intimately than any ship, though the ship depends on it more.
“Ugh,” Izzy mumbles. “Sodding lighthouses.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Nothing.” He threads his trembling hands into Lucius’s hair and kisses him again, less frantic this time. It’s growing longer, his hair. Just about back to the length it was before.
“Good. Because if you ever mention anything that reminds me of Stede while we’re having sex, I’m telling Pete you said you thought he’d be a great captain.”
Laughter, again. Izzy doesn’t think he’s laughed so much in years as he has the last few weeks. Everything’s lighter, easier, like a ship with an empty hold.
“Tell him anyway.”
Lucius sits up, and Izzy feels the odd sensation of his softening dick slipping out of him and shudders. “I’m sorry,” he says, looking down on Izzy with a kind of bewildered scepticism. “I know sex with me is pretty amazing, but who are you and what have you done with the real Izzy Hands?”
Izzy attempts to shrug. It’s not easy, boneless on the ground in post-coital stupor as he is. “He’d not be the worst captain I’ve known.”
“Right. That’s not quite the same thing, though, is it?”
“Ask him that.”
Lucius stares at him a moment. Then, “Oh my god,” he says, face splitting into an evil grin. “You are so totally soft on Pete.”
Izzy scoffs. “I am not.”
“You are, though.”
“How dare you. I’m never soft.”
“Right, but do you see how being hard on Pete would be worse?”
“Fuck off.”
“Make me.”
Nothing’s ever been this easy. “That sounds like a challenge, Spriggs.”
When Lucius’s grin only widens, Izzy decides now is a perfect time for another little grappling demonstration, and flips him, still laughing, to the forest floor.
*
When they’ve finished their rough and tumble wrestling, and washed themselves clean of dirt and sweat and jizz (“there are bugs glued to my chest hair, Izzy, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, I’m going to need a new trauma sketchbook”) in the river, they sprawl in the clearing, naked and drying in the low evening sun, until its last rays slip under the horizon, leaving only the pink memory of daylight.
“Where did you learn to shoot like that?” Izzy asks.
“Funny story, actually; a shark taught me.”
“Don’t make me come over there.”
“Ugh,” he sighs, pulling a face. “Alright, alright. The truth is…” He tails off, frowning, and casts his gaze past Izzy, deeper into the island, where the trees have turned into shadows and nothing is discernible.
“Lucius?” Izzy prods, gently, and watches him startle in response like he’d forgotten Izzy was there from one moment to the next.
He blinks, and says, “I just can’t talk about it. I’m sorry.”
“Okay.”
There’s a pause and then - “Yet,” he relents. “I can’t talk about it yet.”
Izzy hums. Yet could mean a lot of things, in reality. It could mean soon. It could mean yes, but not with you. It could mean piss off and stop bothering me about this.
“Okay,” he repeats. “When you’re ready…if you’re ever ready.”
“I will be,” Lucius says, and he looks almost surprised, like he hadn’t known that was true until he said it out loud. “Can’t keep it all locked up in a box forever, can I? No one’s strong enough to carry that around.”
Izzy shrugs. “Not alone.”
“Speaking of which. Should we start heading back to the ship? Everyone’ll be waiting for us.”
“Yeah, alright then. Let’s go home.” The tide should be in again, by now. Or at least far enough in that they can drag the boat out to meet it.
“I mean, only if you’re ready.”
Izzy remembers being ready to die, once. The terrible lightness of that feeling, the way it ate his bones hollow, how he thought that would be the last thing he ever felt.
He gets to his feet with only a little difficulty, steadying himself on Lucius’s arm when it’s offered. When he casts his gaze seaward he can see, distantly through the trees, the lantern lights of home winking bright as a guide star across the water.
“I’m ready.”