Archive of Our Own ^beta

Their raids had been very clothing-oriented lately.

They took the normal plunder, of course. Anything valuable, anything they could reasonably fence, provisions they were in need of (And some they weren’t—Roach could not possibly find a use for seven entire wheels of cheese, but they remained in the larder for the day an occasion might arise) and anything that could be used to make life aboard the Revenge more interesting or comfortable.

Because that’s what their piracy had become. They were no longer chasing riches, infamy and a legacy that would precede them in life and echo them in death. They’d done it. Blackbeard had been born, he’d conquered, and he’d died. The man who’d worn his personality like a cloak, Edward, was alive and thriving—sauntering around in his day-to-day wearing a silk coat and bows in his hair, or otherwise ignoring the fact that he’d once, very recently, been a frequent feature of maritime nightmares. Now, he was a man ensconced comfortably in what to him, his crew, and the creampuff he called a lover was the life. They were pirates, above and below the law, and they used their particular place in society to make…a home.

Izzy was introduced to the existence of the Auxiliary Wardrobe some weeks into this new status quo. He’d been wondering where the trunks full of fabrics Bonnet had claimed as his share from raids was disappearing to, and he’d finally asked out of pure frustration if nothing else.

“Weight,” Izzy snapped, arms all but flailing, “We have to be concerned about weight, Bonnet, where is it all going?”

It had been weight that helped sink the Whydah.

Bonnet’s face went giddy and conspiratorial, and he said, “Can you keep a secret, Izzy?”

And Izzy said, “What?” and clenched his jaw so hard his tooth almost cracked, then watched in abject horror as Bonnet flounced to the bookshelf and activated a latch. The wall indented itself.

Inside the wardrobe were several trunks overflowing with bright fabrics and a large amount of empty space. Abruptly, Izzy realized that this must be where all the clothing they’d thrown overboard during the Kraken’s reign had come from. It had been an obnoxious amount of clothing, and he hadn’t quite known where it’d come from—hadn’t been his job to know. It’d just been his job to make it disappear as it came to his attention, piles of it appearing randomly over the course of those first few weeks.

“Bonnet,” Izzy muttered, “this is a fucking mess.”

He was referring to the whole idea of a closet this size on a fucking pirate ship, where space was so limited in the first place, but Bonnet deflated and rubbed the side of his head.

“I know,” Bonnet dismayed, “I haven’t had the time to sort through them and see what I want to keep, let alone if any of it actually fits…”

“What makes it worth keeping if it doesn’t fit?” Izzy muttered.

“Oh! Well, if it’s too large, it can be tailored.” Stede reached down and sifted through what to Izzy just looked like a pile of brightly-colored nothing, but when he straightened up he’d produced a pair of breeches, color of the sea at night, and held them against his hips. “For instance, these are a size too big for me—and a little long. If we found ourselves a good tailor, they’d be able to take them in—”

Bonnet rambled for indeterminate minutes, and Izzy let his eyes glaze over. The fabrics in the trunk were fine—and Izzy had seen a fine fabric before, of course. Mostly from a distance and mostly immediately before soiling them with blood. Even in the months he’d spent enduring Bonnet’s presence before the rise of the Kraken, he hadn’t gotten close for anything other than violence. Now, within arm’s distance as they were, Izzy felt himself pulled to touch.

“Ah, do you like that one?” Bonnet said, and Izzy realized that his hand had reached out of its own volition to take the hem of a sleeve between his thumb and finger. It was a particular smooth, cool texture that he didn’t think he’d ever felt before. It was green like the stone on the ring he wore at his throat, shot through with swirling gold patterns.

“It’s…fine,” Izzy ground out, dropping it like a hot coal. “It’s all fine.” Bonnet, to his great (though receding) chagrin, was a captain. It was a captain’s prerogative to take and keep what they considered theirs. Edward had once had a certain fascination with peculiarities, with knickknacks and baubles that he horded like a bowerbird—and Izzy had indulged that fascination. Bonnet, it logically concluded, should be allowed his frivolities if only by providence of his position on the ship.

Bonnet hadn’t seemed quite himself without the ribbons and silk, anyway. Walking around in the same sweat-stained shirt-and-pants outfit as the rest had certainly helped him to resemble a pirate captain, but it left something to be desired when one had been treated to the whole Gentleman Pirate experience at least once in their life. Not that Izzy would admit to any sentiment even resembling such a thing.

“Is it all…” Izzy made a vague, circular gesture, “worth keeping?”

Bonnet chuckled. “Oh, God no. Some of it is absolute dross. But we have to dig for our treasure.”

Izzy took another moment to rove his eyes over the piles. Chewed his cheek. “Alright, then. Which of these—where do we start? Not—” He held up a finger as Bonnet started flapping. “—that I fucking care about how you dress, Bonnet. Or about any of this…posh…shite—”

“Of course,” Bonnet simpered. He leapt into action, arms plunging elbow-deep into fabric. The way the man could move if he had the right motivation. Izzy wished he could bottle it and splash it on the idiot’s face when he was dithering about on deck, loudly doing nothing important.

He unearthed a shirt the color of cream. “Let’s start with this one!” Without any particular indication that he’d ever in his life felt shy, he began to disrobe.

Izzy scoffed and slanted his shoulder against the bulkhead, arms crossed. The coffee he’d had this morning set his blood to humming as he watched Bonnet haphazardly undress himself.

Edward found them in the closet much later. Izzy, through a series of events that blurred together in his mind until he couldn’t remember what order they’d happened in, was propped in a corner with his removed horsey-leg leaning on the bulkhead and what remained of his knee elevated on two pillows that Bonnet had retrieved from a pile on the settee. Bonnet, flouncing in the middle of the room with his foot half-out of a pair of fuck ugly trousers, had a pile of discarded and rejected items around his feet. Izzy, somehow, had been given the task of minding the ‘keeps’ as Bonnet dubbed them. They were much smaller in number, folded neatly by Izzy’s hip on the plush carpeting of the wardrobe.

“What’s this, then?” Edward said, and there was a grin on his face as he leaned around the corner. He had eyes only for Bonnet and the milky-pale color of his legs emerging from the seasick green color of the trousers, but he swept his gaze over Izzy in the corner, too—curious, obviously, and a little amused.

“Oh, hello!” Bonnet cheerily tipped towards Ed, allowing him to catch him around the shoulders. Izzy watched silently and with only slight incredulity as Bonnet kissed Edward then, like there was no reason not to. “Izzy and I were just sorting through all of my booty.”

Izzy winced spectacularly. Over Bonnet’s shoulder, Edward met his eyes and offered an odd expression—affectionate and commiserating at the same time, like he knew exactly what Izzy was thinking and shared that thought, but all of it was layered on top of how smitten he was with Bonnet.

“How’s that going?” Edward asked as he released Bonnet and bent to pick up a rejected pair of trousers with little yellow birds patterned onto them. Even Bonnet had thought them too twee, though they’d fit well and were clearly for a man despite looking for all the world like they would only ever be suited to a small child. Edward was tickled by them, as evidenced by the fact that he held them against his own hips and smirked at himself in the mirror, but they were quickly rehomed back to the floor.

“Very well! We’ve found a few promising items.” Bonnet, heedless of the fact that he was bare-legged, stomped over the piles of fabric toward Izzy. “Hand me that pile there, Izzy, thank you.”

Izzy held them out to him like they might defend him against the encroachment of a half-naked Stede Bonnet. From this angle, with the added proximity, Izzy could see underneath the shirt tails trailing over Bonnet’s hips. He was wearing drawers, thank God, but they did little to hide what dwelt between his legs. Let it never be said that Bonnet was not a blessed man.

“Some of these shirts are quite nice,” Bonnet said, offering them to Edward for his perusal. “I daresay we’ve found the cream of the crop. Izzy has a very keen eye for fashion, it turns out.” For some fucking reason, he looked over his shoulder and winked. Izzy felt so instantly, completely annoyed that it made his stomach swirl.

“Fuck I do,” he muttered, tossing himself to the side to retrieve his leg. “If we’re quite done, Bonnet, some of us have actual work we’re meant to be doing.” He slid his leg into the supple leather of the horsey-leg’s socket and tightened the belts snug. It’d taken several months and quite a few sores before the combined forces of Roach, Frenchie and Fang had been able to produce a version of the socket that offered the least irritation to his residual limb. Izzy spent vast amounts of time at night thinking about how he was never going to be the kind of man who could adequately express his gratitude for their determination.

Bonnet watched him do this with a soft, nameless emotion on his face. Izzy wished that he could find some hint of pity or hostility there so he would at least have something tangible to lash out against, but the expression was small and utterly unreadable. Izzy scowled against the brunt of it as he attempted to shift himself off the floor.

Quite suddenly, a strong hand slipped under his arm to haul him upward. There was no part of Izzy’s mind that was capable of reconciling the casual and easy power in the grasp with what he knew of Bonnet, whose hand it clearly was given that it was attached to his arm. He brought Izzy easily to standing, taking the majority of his weight as he adjusted his center of gravity back over his wooden limb.

Bonnet, who’d been soft and aristocrat-pale the first time Izzy ever laid eyes on him, had clearly been bulking up. Hard not to do with the lifestyle of a pirate, even one so lackadaisical as Bonnet. Izzy had been aware of this on some level. To have vivid confirmation of it was something else entirely. He was suddenly aware of their height difference, in a way he hadn’t been even when he’d been trying to put a sword straight through the man’s gut. It reminded him of, strangely enough, Edward—who towered over him by some nine inches, and Izzy knew every single one of those inches with an ardor that he would probably take to his grave.

“If we’re done, Captain?” Izzy said again.

For a moment, Stede’s eyes looked just as dark and hungry as any expression Izzy had ever hoped to be graced with from the likes of Blackbeard. Then it passed. A trick of the light.

“Of course,” Bonnet said, and bobbed his head towards the door. Just before Izzy was through it, for he’d gotten quite good at moving at speed with the horsey-leg but running was still somewhat out of the question despite how badly he wanted to, Bonnet added, “This was fun, Izzy! It was nice spending time together.”

Izzy clung feverishly to the doorjamb. He opened his mouth, furrowed his brows, and managed to scoff.

“Ooh, fun, was it?” he muttered. “Bring some wine next time, Bonnet, we’ll make a proper evening of it.”

He pretended not to hear Bonnet’s excitable little, “Ooh!” as he finally extracted himself from Stede Bonnet’s odd little bower.

“I was kidding about the wine.”

This was said as Bonnet slowly but insistently pressed a cup—a thick-walled crystal goblet, diamond-shaped etchings casting odd colors into the amber liquid contained within—into his limp hand. He’d arrived only moments before, drawn in by Bonnet’s claims that there was a matter of ‘some importance’ waiting to be discussed in the captain’s cabin. When he’d entered, the only pressing matter seemed to be the decanter of wine sitting on the desk. That, and the odd little smile Edward wore on his face, though Izzy was ready to admit that the importance of that particular item might exist only in his own chaotic thoughts.

Still, it was surprising and not a little annoying to find that such a throwaway and sarcastic comment from himself, nearly a week ago at this point, had resulted in this.

“Oh, I know,” said Bonnet, who was daintily fingering the stem of his own goblet as he patiently waited for Izzy to properly grasp the other. “But we do have so much of this madeira, and it’s delightful. Go ahead, Izzy. Sip!”

Izzy watched Bonnet’s face for a moment, straining to see any sign of subterfuge, but Bonnet was surprisingly open in this moment. Izzy had found him to be both hard and easy to read at turns but currently, with the orange candlelight of evening on his golden features and, likely, a few cups of wine in him already, it seemed he hid little. Even the sleeves of his pretty silk shirt were rolled up, baring the pale and tender underside of his arms. He’d taken to wearing waistcoats again, as their pillaging expanded his wardrobe once more, but there was no matching jacket today. The deep green color of the waistcoat brought forth echoes of itself in his eyes.

Why, he considered, would he ever be thinking about the color of Stede Bonnet’s eyes?

“C’mon, Iz.” Edward spoke up from the other side of the room, where he sat in a chair by the library shelves that Bonnet had been slowly but surely bringing back to their former glory. Edward’s body had that languid, relaxed quality to it which spoke of the number of cups that he, too, had imbibed. Izzy had seen Edward at all levels of intoxication, and this one was a soft and sweet kind. When Edward’s hair and beard were still black and he was so bogged down by his own legend, this was the point where he was most likely to laugh, joke, and sing. He did a lot of that of his own accord nowadays, no drink required, but some part of Izzy’s heart still ached to see him like this. It was something that hadn’t been shared with him for some time.

Izzy finally grasped the goblet and lifted it to his mouth. He took the smallest possible sip, parting his lips only briefly to allow the barest taste of the wine to cross onto his tongue. It bloomed there, sweetly rich. Like baked apples, coffee and molasses. Finding it quite pleasing, Izzy shifted his hold on the cup and drank of it properly.

“That’s it,” said Bonnet, looking far too pleased, and turned to gesture towards the settee. “Have a seat, Izzy. I thought you might want to help me sort through some more of my plunder! Ed was going to try on a few things this time, as well, and I found an item or two that might suit you—”

“No,” Izzy said immediately. When Bonnet favored him with a wide-eyed, almost injured look, Izzy sighed and squeezed his eyes shut.

There was part of himself, a large part, that no longer wanted to play the contrary, tetchy first mate. The part of him that prided itself in his capacity to stand on circumstance even when everyone around him bowed under its weight had been waning and shrinking since before a bullet ripped through his knee. Now that he was a person who survived, perhaps even did something in the vein of thrive, on the good will and compassion of others it was almost impossible to find his way back into that mindset.

He wanted, he’d been realizing (and perhaps truly comprehended, in that moment) to be part of it. The silly little games that Bonnet and his crew (and now Edward) used to pass the time, the stories they all told each other. The easy way they laughed and danced and lived and loved. But it was terrifying. It wasn’t what was done. Letting your guard down like that got people killed or worse in this line of work, and once upon a time he’d tried very failingly and very inelegantly to make Blackbeard see those fears. What a self-fulfilling prophesy that had been. Edward, driven so out of his mind with lovesickness and heartache and his own fear, becoming the very thing he’d dreaded all along.

(And Izzy had wanted it. Wanted him as much as he’d feared him.)

“I don’t…” He sighed, sucked in a breath between his teeth, eyes still closed. “My clothes are…my clothes. I don’t want…” He chanced a glance, eyelids fluttering open as he searched for words.

Surprisingly, a look of understanding crossed Stede’s face. Surprising because Izzy wasn’t even entirely sure he knew what he was attempting to express. Only the fact that the leathers he wore had been broken in painstakingly, that he’d had to mend this shirt to accommodate for his narrower shoulders and broader chest himself, and putting them all on his body in the morning was part of a ritual that made him feel if not safe then at least prepared for the unsafety of the day.

“Oh, I would never ask you to give up your clothes, Izzy,” Bonnet said. There was a placating tone to it. Izzy had heard it before when men of Bonnet’s station spoke to children or upset women. It should have rankled and it did, a bit, but he had to admit to even himself that it was unlikely Bonnet viewed him as either of those things. Perhaps, for a man like Bonnet, the tone had less to do with who he was talking to and more to do with what he wanted to imply.

Still, Izzy ground his teeth together. “I know how you feel about the…black. The leather. This isn’t Blackbeard’s ship anymore, and the leather isn’t…part of your—”

“Mate,” said Ed, “I told you, Stede didn’t make me pitch the leathers. That was my choice. He never said anything one way or the other about ‘em. It just wasn’t me anymore, man. Wasn’t what I wanted to be.”

“Exactly.” Bonnet gestured to Ed, lounging there in a flowing shirt open down to the chest and a pair of linen trousers. His hair was tied back in a royal purple ribbon. “Ed has found that he’s more comfortable in looser, flowier sort of clothing. It took some soul-searching, but we found a vibe that works for him. Isn’t that right, love?”

Edward hummed, leaned his chin on his hand and fixed Bonnet with a look that seemed to imply that all the riches of Earth rested somewhere within the candlelight glinting off his softly curled hair.

“But if it’s important for you to wear those clothes, Izzy, then of course you should! After all, the clothes make the man. If the leathers are what make Izzy Hands, then the leathers he shall have.” Bonnet nodded to himself, seemingly satisfied by this speech, then swept over to a trunk sitting by the open doorway to the auxiliary wardrobe. It was less disorganized this time, though not what one could call neat. It seemed that someone, Bonnet more than likely, had taken the time to sort through and do some perfunctory folding. “I just couldn’t help but notice that you seemed to enjoy the fabrics, and I thought we could perhaps find you a few items for loungewear!”

“Loungewear,” Izzy muttered. Remembering the sweet wine in his hand, he took another sip. It warmed his belly and pooled a pleasant ache in his thighs. In deference to it, he finally lowered himself onto the settee. It was softer and plusher than anything other than a bed really had any right to be.

“Clothing to wear while one relaxes,” Bonnet said. His tone was patient, indulgent, but distracted. “It can be nice to have a little separation between your work clothes and your, er, non-working clothes, as it were. For instance, a robe or a—Ed, where did that robe go? The green one?”

“Closet, maybe?” Edward murmured.

“Ah, did I…?” Bonnet vanished into the auxiliary wardrobe, still muttering to himself.

Edward stood from the library chair and eased his way around behind the settee, where he leaned with his forearms pressing against Izzy’s shoulders. Izzy swallowed reflexively, thinking of all the violence he and Edward had done to each other in this room. Though it had to be said that it had really been a different room then. Stede Bonnet’s presence had been wiped from it. Now, with the return of its rightful owner, it was somehow an area of warmth. Izzy had noticed it on previous visits. Where the Kraken had left it empty of everything but a certain damp chill, fear, the scent of desperation and salt, Bonnet had returned and filled it with soft yellow light, sweet lavender, a certain presence of himself that was as irrevocable from the room as it was from the man.

It was there now as Edward leaned forward until the tips of his hair, hanging down over his shoulder in loose and beautiful ringlets, brushed against Izzy’s shoulder and throat.

“What’s happening?” Izzy muttered, goblet to his lips again.

Edward, hovering just within Izzy’s peripheral vision, tucked a smile into his own palm and muffled the words, “He likes you,” against it.

“What does that mean?”

“Hmm…a lot of things.” Edward, softly, brushed a finger over the outside of Izzy’s ear. He couldn’t remember the last time Edward had touched him in that fashion. Gently, for seemingly no reason, in a way that felt kind and indulgent. “Mostly, right now, it means he wants you to want to be here. And have something nice.”

“This is…” Izzy breathed deep through his nose, tried to anchor himself to the sweetly boozy scent of the wine. It only proved to help him take in more of that lavender. It was coming from Edward. “When we came aboard. The first time. This is how he was with…with you. Little—gifts. Indulgences. Silly…fancy things—”

“That’s what he does. How he shows…what he feels, I suppose. Sort of sweet, eh? I’m not even sure he realizes he’s doing it, he just…does.” Edward smirked. It reached his eyes, catlike. There was joy in the expression. Smugness, too, and something that Izzy distantly recognized from experience was a sort of extremely sexually-charged playfulness. Something twitched between Izzy’s legs. Further, he had to stifle a gasp in his throat when Edward said, “He’s not sure how to seduce men. It’s only the second time he’s tried.”

Izzy took another, larger gulp of wine, and let it set into his stomach before he ventured, “Am I…being seduced?”

“Would you like to be?”

Gripping the goblet was becoming hard as Izzy felt his palms begin to sweat. Somewhere in his lower body, the ache from the wine and the heady situation combined into an almost physical weight that settled over his hips. Part of him wanted to absolutely run.

“He’s…” Izzy searched for words, for a satisfactory way to define the unit of Edward-and-Stede that had formed in the whirlwind months since Bonnet’s fateful return to the Revenge and the once-and-for-all banishment of the Kraken. Finding all options deeply lacking, Izzy settled on, “Yours.”

Edward showed his teeth, an easy and sly expression, and leaned very far forward to whisper, “And you’re mine.”

“Still?”

“Mm.” Edward pulled away. His eyes, some of that deep sadness creeping into them again, swept briefly down to the horsey-leg. “If you still want.”

The last time Izzy had felt so perceived by any part of Edward, it had been through the sinister and cruel eyes of the Kraken and Izzy had just lost a toe. And in the moment it had been good. The pain in his foot had almost filled the gaping emptiness in his gut where Edward had flayed him open and lived all those years, and it had felt like relief. This was something else entirely. This version of Edward—the one that perhaps he was always supposed to be; softened and loved and all the more beautiful for it—was captivating. As enticed as Izzy was, he didn’t feel a right to it.

Before he could form a response, Bonnet bustled back into the room with something green draped over his arm. He’d removed the waistcoat and replaced it with a flowy, golden banyan that closely resembled one destroyed by Izzy himself months ago. This was one of the items that Izzy knew Bonnet had specifically sought out to buy instead of leaving its replacement up to chance—he was partial to it, apparently, and deeply disappointed by news of its destruction. When he’d commissioned it from a tailor in Nassau, someone in the Republic who nonetheless operated with skill and discretion, the only element he’d changed had apparently been the number of pockets. He had many, now, and most of them filled with a little secreted treasure. Individually-wrapped candies, lengths of ribbon for Edward’s hair, a string of beads he liked to fondle in his hand in nervous moments.

Izzy didn’t know how he’d come about this knowledge. It just sat there in his mind, hidden and waiting to be rediscovered by his own wandering thoughts.

“Here we are,” Bonnet said. He took the fabric in hand and shook it out, revealing it to be a robe—the one he’d gone in search of, evidently. It was a heavier fabric than that of the banyan. The way it caught the light was rich and soft. He held it aloft, grasped by the shoulder seams to hold it open. “I thought you might like this one, Izzy. You seemed partial to this color the other day. It belonged to an officer on that Dutch merchant vessel we raided day before yesterday, and it must have been a recent purchase—you can still smell the dye on the fabric!” Bonnet seemed very pleased with this fact.

Izzy leaned forward and caught the fluttering hem of a sleeve in his hand. It was a similar smooth, watery texture to one he’d touched and found pleasing the previous week. He imagined it slipping over his arms, sliding along the rougher fabric of his shirt, and found the idea pleasant as well.

“Alright,” he muttered, and stood to take the robe. Bonnet tugged it away slightly. Izzy fixed him with a scowl, but Bonnet simply smirked and shook the robe again. A game, Izzy realized. It was a game. The rules were simple and could be easily changed if Izzy said no—that much had been made clear after his earlier protest. But it was a game, and Izzy realized with a strike of liquid heat in his stomach that he wanted to play along.

This time, when Izzy held out his arm, it was an invitation. Bonnet’s smirk broadened from the small, teasing thing it had been to a more excited and eager expression that stretched his cheeks and showed his neat white teeth. Izzy, despite himself, thought about them on his skin. It was a more dangerous thought than he was willing to entertain so soon. He pushed it away.

“Would you like to take off your vest, Izzy?” Bonnet asked. “Just a thought. Could be a little more comfortable that way.”

Playing the game, Izzy quirked the corner of his mouth and unbuttoned his vest. He draped it over the back of the settee and stepped forward, almost into the circle of Bonnet’s arms to put his own through the proffered sleeves of the robe. The slide of the silk lining was as pleasant and delicate as he’d thought it might be. Bonnet’s hand alighted briefly on his elbow as they both dropped their arms, and Izzy didn’t comment—even when he felt the tremble in the touch.

“Right,” Bonnet sighed to himself as Izzy slumped back onto the settee. He hadn’t tied the robe, preferring to let it drift around him in a heavy wave. His fingers immediately found a hold on the hem of a sleeve, where they rubbed and stroked the fabric idly, repeatedly. He tucked himself back into the corner of the settee, body turned to face the rest of the room, and watched Bonnet go to the trunk. Edward, still leaning there, turned his head in a languid way that sent his hair cascading over his shoulder. His eyes were bright when they met Izzy’s.

Izzy wondered, now that Edward was no longer Blackbeard and no longer really even his captain, if there was a way for him to say how pretty he found those eyes.

A heavy scraping sound vibrated through the room as Bonnet dragged the trunk over to rest beside the settee. It became apparent why he’d done this when Edward came around and dropped onto the chair beside it, and they both bent over the trunk to sift through its contents. It was close enough for Izzy to reach in as well, though he chose not to.

Little boys playing dress-up, sneered a part of his mind that would always be afraid and always be mean in that fear. It was easier to ignore in the candlelight.

Bonnet and Edward took turns bringing each other’s attention to different articles. Bonnet, who narrated the entire time, claimed to be partial to bright and pastel hues, lace, and silk. Edward was drawn to interesting patterns and all things soft. He accumulated a small pile, some of it practical and some of it that Izzy could not possibly imagine a person having need for, such as a little purple capelet that barely covered him down to the elbows. Bonnet had oohed at that one, clapping approvingly, and Izzy had found it within himself to gesture amicably with his wine goblet when Edward turned to him for appraisal. Bonnet, for his part, sourced a larger collection of mostly matching vest-and-breeches sets that either fit well enough already or could be whipped into shape by his ‘man in the Republic.’

Through it all, Izzy offered his opinion in the form of hums (when approving) and scathing little noises (when not). Bonnet managed to keep the wine flowing despite his almost constant state of half-dress. It was strong wine, but still just wine. Izzy had known how to hold his drink since he was old enough to see over the top of the bar at a tavern, notwithstanding a few miserable moments of recent. A few hours passed in a sort of buoyant haze, but he kept his faculties.

The wine, of course, had certain other effects—and not just on him.

“Oh, now look at this,” said Edward, and he tugged forth a long garment that Izzy at first thought was some sort of nightshift. Quickly, he realized it had no arms or collar—it was a skirt of some sort, an almost-sheer one. Cream-colored with delicate floral patterns in the lace. Edward let it fall through his fingers, cascading like so much water, and said, “Oh, feel—feel, Iz.”

Izzy, languid and warm with wine, didn’t even think about reaching out a hand. It felt just as cool against the rough pads of his fingers as he thought it might.

“Oh!” Bonnet, who was now shirtless under the banyan but wearing a sort of tight-fitting pair of breeches that went all the way down to his calves and showed off the formed musculature of them, pranced over and slid his hand along the fabric as well. “It’s a slip. Must’ve put it in with the rest by mistake. They’re meant to be worn under a petticoat. Mary had a few, though they were plainer…this one is very elaborate. It might be for…” He cleared his throat, and blushed so sweetly under his eyes and at the tips of his ears. “Well, they’re usually not meant to be seen, but this one may be. It may be for…oh, you know. Titillation.”

“Titillation,” Izzy mumbled into his goblet rim, and laughed into the wine. It dripped a little onto his beard and one drop down his neck. He ducked down and placed it on the floor, somewhere beside his now-removed leg. “For sex, Bonnet? It’s a sex skirt?”

“Not in so many words!” Bonnet protested, but he laughed as he slid into the chair Edward had abandoned. He was looser than he ever usually was, dipped far down in the chair. His knee pressed fully against Izzy’s at an angle that pushed his thighs apart without a second foot or knee to keep them together. Izzy, languid himself, let it happen—and Bonnet didn’t even seem to notice. “A lady might wear it for, I don’t know—her wedding night, perhaps. To feel, er, attractive to her husband. Or her herself! Or her—"

Izzy clicked out another half-laugh in the back of his throat. He tilted his head and informed Edward, “It’s a sex skirt.”

“Ooh,” said Edward, and scrambled out of his trousers. Izzy watched him, hiding a grin he couldn’t suppress behind his thumb. Stede gazed openly—he’d straightened up, crossed his legs and pressed fingers into the arm of the chair he was in. Izzy took the meat of his own thumb into his mouth and bit hard.

The skirt wasn’t made with Edward’s waist in mind. It tied at the back with barely enough slack to make a bow and bit hard into the flesh above his hips. Quickly, though, it flared out and dragged over his thighs and calves in a flowing swirl that left both little and too much to the imagination. It was nearly sheer, just a panel at the very peak of his thighs providing modesty—what little modesty it could provide, given Edward’s height. He wore no drawers. Izzy stared, and wasn’t sure he was allowed, and stared.

Edward swayed his hips back and forth, watching himself in the mirror Bonnet had dragged into the center of the room. He turned, tipped himself up onto the balls of his bare feet, and examined the shape of his own ass in the reflection. There was something to be said about the looseness of the fabrics he wore juxtaposed to how revealing they still managed to be. The skirt’s three lacy tiers all translucent and doing little to hide all but the finest details of Edward’s dark skin; the shirt opaque but open, collarbones and the curves of his chest visible.

“Certainly titillating,” Bonnet hummed into the rim of his own goblet. The last, large gulp of his third glass of wine (Since Izzy’s arrival, anyway) disappeared into his mouth. He bent over his lap to set it on the floor next to Izzy’s, and when he looked up Edward had approached on almost silent feet. Bonnet looked stunned and delighted to find him there.

Izzy sunk down in his seat and watched them, feeling the heat roll off them. It was like standing on the deck and watching another ship burn, hot flames threatening to hop across the water and scorch anything it could reach. It felt dangerous and wrong to sit quiet and furtive on their settee in their cabin and watch their sex—because there could be very little ambiguity about what was happening and what was about to happen. It also felt good. Erotic in a way that Izzy hadn’t ever quite experienced before. Safer and lovelier for him to be here and Edward to be there, seen and wanted but not touched, and for the things they’d done to each other to feel more distant than their desire for each other, at least in this moment. And Bonnet…

Stede was seducing him. With his little Fine Things game and his wine and most of all through the love he showed Edward. Izzy wanted to sit here and watch him at it until he learned how to do it too. It was a thought that was so blindingly fucking hot that Izzy really forgot how to breathe for a moment.

As he tried to remember, Edward dipped into an unskilled curtsey. He wobbled with the unpracticed movement as he tried to hold the skirt aloft and balance on one foot. He caught himself by slamming the foot back down, snorted tipsily, then brought himself back into character with a forced sobriety that left his chin wobbling in barely-suppressed mirth.

“Sir!” he laughed. Then, when he’d sobered, “Hm-mm. Sir. Would you do me the honor of accompanying me to the dance floor this evening?”

“Oh, certainly,” said Stede, and took the hand Edward offered to stand from the chair. Izzy slipped even further down the settee, now mostly supine with just his head and shoulders still propped on the arm. His foot was braced on the floor, knee bouncing idly as he watched them come together. He couldn’t help the trickle of good humor making its way through his body; he half-hid his face behind the robe, grinned privately there in its safety, and kept the laughter mostly in his chest.

“I’ve been watching you all night, you know,” Edward said. Stede clearly knew how to dance and Edward clearly did not—despite the practiced placement of Stede’s hands and the careful square footwork he was leading them through, Edward seemed more determined to see how much of his body he could press against Stede’s and still be capable of moving his feet. The answer was a surprising amount—they were pressed together practically from shoulder straight down to knee.

“Ah, I thought I felt your eyes from across the room.”

“Yeah, that was me. Couldn’t help it. You being so handsome ‘n all. Sexiest guy here.”

“Aside from you, of course.”

“Well, you can be the sexiest guy and I can be the sexiest—er—”

“…Sexiest…”

“Sexiest…” They moved their eyebrows at each other and laughed. Edward shrugged. “Sexiest person in a nice, lacy…skirt, maybe.”

Stede pulled away and lifted Edward’s hand above their heads, inducing him to spin. He did, the skirt flaring out around his knees and hair a wild silver fan. He overbalanced and caught himself with an arm over Stede’s shoulders. They collapsed into frantic giggles for a moment. “Careful there! Can’t have the belle of the ball finishing the night laid up with a twisted ankle.”

“Wouldn’t mind being laid up by you, sir,” said Edward, swinging his other arm around Stede’s shoulders to join the first. Stede was still trying valiantly to lead them in some sort of dance, but it was devolving quickly and was mostly just serving the purpose of navigating them closer to the bed by inches.

“That’s awfully forward of you,” Stede breathed. His hand clutched onto a handful of Edward’s ass. “Though I can’t say I’m not…interested in such a proposition—oh, Ed—”

They stumbled to a halt there, nearly to the bed, as Edward managed to get a leg wrapped around behind Stede’s knee. Izzy couldn’t see quite what happened between their hips, but he could see the pattern of it—Edward’s body moving in a filthy circle and Stede’s meeting his in a stuttering jut.

“They don’t teach you how to dance like that at your fancy balls, do they?” Edward whispered, so low Izzy had to strain to hear it.

“Just another one of your insightful lessons, my dear,” Stede said with heat, and nudged Edward backward the last several steps to the bed. He pushed until Edward sat back, bouncing on the edge of the mattress, and Stede followed to kneel on the floor between his knees. They kissed, finally, and Izzy witnessed it with a shot of his own relief and arousal. In his lap, his cock pressed a thick line along his hip. The wine had done nothing so much as make his erection that much needier in its insistence to be touched. Slowly, as though to avoid disrupting the air in the room, he plucked at the tie of his laces.

Edward pulled away from the kiss with shiny lips, one of them caught and pinched almost purple between his own teeth. He buried a hand in Stede’s hair, sending the curls wild about his head, and lifted his hips in obvious desire towards Stede’s face.

“C’mon,” he whispered, abandoning the pretense of their game. “Please, baby, I want it so bad.”

The tone of his voice was like nothing Izzy had ever heard from his mouth. He’d seen Edward in desperate states, both sexual and otherwise—heard him whimper, moan. But this was so easy and tender, every wall he’d built up around himself fallen or at least crumbled beyond recognition. His eyes were like those of a starving man, and Izzy marveled at it because surely Stede gave this to him often, and happily, and whenever he wanted. Such was the nature of their obvious desire for each other. It filtered into their every interaction, even the public-facing chaste ones. Here, within the context of actual intimacy, it was overwhelming to behold—and so was how badly Edward wanted it.

Again, Izzy felt how strange and taboo it was for him to be watching this. His untouched cock throbbed with it.

Stede was far from unaffected by Edward’s pretty begging. He gasped raggedly into Edward’s lap and began a campaign of frantically palming the slippery fabric of the skirt upward along Edward’s thighs. Edward helped, mostly via tugging and wiggling his legs, and finally they found the hem. Stede’s head disappeared underneath, golden hair cast ghostly by the lace but still mostly visible, and Izzy knew that Stede had his mouth on him when Edward cried out and thanked God and fell back onto shaking elbows to keen at the ceiling.

It was obvious when Edward remembered Izzy’s presence on the settee. He didn’t think Edward had truly forgotten about him, though his attempts to blend into the pattern of the furniture might have implied such. Edward certainly wasn’t disappointed to see him—his eyes halted on Izzy’s face when he saw it through the dim light, and it added an exquisite layer of something to the pleasure clouding his eyes. Izzy’s tongue dried as he watched Edward’s knee rise under the skirt and hook over Stede’s shoulder, his hand grab a handful of Stede’s lace-covered hair. Stede’s mouth noises were loud, obscene and ardent.

“Yeah,” Edward breathed, hips moving. His eyes danced between Izzy’s face and the hand Izzy had pressed into his lap, palming his trapped erection as it leaked hot down his thigh. Edward nodded, moved his eyes more pointedly along that path. “Yes, yes.”

Izzy shoved himself up against the arm of the settee, half-sitting again and trying to be quiet about it. His bootheel skittered along the floor, a loud squeaking sound that Stede must have heard even with both of Edward’s thighs pressed to his ears now. It didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest as he quested for Edward’s ecstasy. Izzy ripped into the laces of his trousers, shimmied them and his smallclothes just far enough down his hips to free his aching cock. It was impressively red, even to his own eyes, as it popped free of the waistband of his drawers. He shuddered, teasing at himself with the first two fingers of his hand. His balls throbbed.

The entire time, Edward’s eyes were intent on him. His hips were moving restlessly against whatever ministrations Stede was performing between his legs. And God, next time (If there was to be a next time. If Izzy was to be allowed this guiltiest of pleasures ever again) Izzy was going to ask Edward to tell him what was happening. He’d find it within himself to open his mouth and ask or beg Edward to tell him what it felt like to have Stede’s tongue inside him.

The thought drove him a certain kind of insane. Enough to finally wrap his entire hand around his cock, using what had already leaked to slick the slide of his own well-known and familiar grip. Edward, from the bed, gave a choked-off yelp and fell fully back against the mattress, his head disappearing as his shoulders lost the war they’d been fighting with his own strength and whatever shuddery pleasure was making his thighs visibly quake.

“Ste-e-de,” he whined, fingers steepled against the back of Stede’s head. “Babe-babe-babe, oh—Stede—fuck, fuck!”

Izzy’s hand slid fast. The room sounded of nothing but the fwip-fwip of his own frantic masturbation and Edward’s voice gone high and needy, naturally tenor and bereft now of all the gruffness Blackbeard forced into it.

Sounds which stopped, abruptly, when Edward flipped the hem of the skirt up to look at Stede’s face and asked with sudden clarity, “What’s wrong?” His feet hit the floor with twin thumps as he pushed himself to sit up. His hair had come mostly out of the ribbon, strands of it playing with his shoulders as he caught his breath. The concavities of his collarbones glistened with sweat. A tear was streaking down the side of his face.

Debauched, he was. Gorgeous with love and sex and still aching for it. Looking at him, Izzy twitched in his own grasp even as he carefully stilled every muscle in his body. A moment of calm as Edward waved a proverbial white flag on the field of battle.

“Nothing,” Stede assured. Izzy couldn’t see his face, but his voice was strained. He was putting effort into something. Izzy couldn’t tell what.

“You made a noise,” Edward said. “Wasn’t a sexy noise.”

“It’s just—the floor—” Stede braced himself on the edge of the bed, shifted his knees and hissed. “My knees…just let me—”

Edward drew his knees together and sat up properly. “Nah, come on. We’ll switch it up.” He spared Izzy a glance over Stede’s shoulder. Unsure what to do in the moment, Izzy tucked his damp hand underneath his thigh, cleared his throat, nodded. Edward, because he was Edward, snickered.

“Oh,” Stede tutted, “but you were getting there.”

“I’ll get there again.” Edward grabbed Stede’s hand off his thigh and tugged until Stede acquiesced to stand. He did so with a groan and alternated shaking out his feet for several seconds. Edward, meanwhile, did something with pillows at the head of the bed. When Stede was done shaking the ache out of his knees, Edward stood just to take Stede’s shoulders and shove him down onto the bed, directly in the center of a semicircle of pillows he’d constructed. Izzy understood why when Edward crawled on after him to straddle his lap, his own worse-for-wear knees landing each on a preplaced cushion.

“Oh, hello,” Stede murmured as Edward settled. He’d lifted the skirt up and out of the way, leaving his tattooed thighs and apple-round ass bare. Stede’s hands were on that ass instantly, skin welling up between his fingers as he squeezed. His mouth trailed from Edward’s shoulder blade up to the sensitive skin behind his ear.

Edward looked over Stede’s head, met Izzy’s eyes, and said, “Izzy.”

Surprised to hear his own name for the first time in so long, Izzy twitched. He felt drunk, but not in any way that had to do with the wine. His heartbeat pounded, slow but thunderous in his own ears. His foot on the floor was the only thing that kept him even somewhat upright in his seat, and it was holding on for dear life. His right hand, still clamped somewhere underneath his thigh, sweated.

“Hng?” was all he could manage.

Edward smirked. “Having a good time, Iz?”

Dumbly, Izzy nodded.

Stede broke away from Edward’s neck to take his own look at Izzy. His eyes trailed from Izzy’s open trousers and slowly up to his eyes. Izzy felt the path of them like physical touch; a scorching route from the needy-red head of his cock to the heated skin of his cheeks.

“Oh, Izzy,” Stede whispered. “Touch yourself again? I want to see.”

Izzy’s head fell back and he moaned. His hand had already gotten three hard strokes along the length of himself before he truly realized he’d extracted it from under his leg.

“You too, Captain,” Edward said. Izzy made himself open his eyes, only vaguely aware he’d closed them. Edward’s hands were working in the vee of his open thighs, tugging at the fall flap of Stede’s breeches. “Get that cock out.”

“Ed,” Stede bleated. Izzy absolutely chewed on the inside of his own cheek to keep himself from doing the same. “Oh, fuck, Ed—"

“Yeah, you wanna fuck me?” Edward freed Stede’s cock. All swollen pink, he was, and glistening at the head. Izzy enjoyed the look of a hard cock, and the sight of Stede’s was no hardship to endure. Especially not when Edward’s hand, familiar to him in just about every way right down to the flexing tendons underneath the tattoos, wrapped around it. “Let’s show Izzy how I bounce on it, huh?”

“Oh, oh—” Stede grabbed Edward’s wrist. “I won’t last, love.”

“Oh, fuck, me either.” Edward caught his balance on the wall and crowded up against him, thick thighs snug against Stede’s hips. His hand struck up a rhythm on Stede’s cock that looked punishing, but Stede made a noise like he’d just found religion there on the bed. “Like this, then. Just—” He grabbed Stede’s wrist and shoved his hand underneath the skirt. “Y-yeah, like that—oh…”

“Ohh,” Stede breathed, “you’re so—”

“Yeah,” Edward whined. “Yeah, yeah.”

The skirt had dropped, mostly hiding what was happening between them, but the movement of their bodies together was enough. The line of Edward’s neck, bared by Stede pulling it all over the opposite shoulder, was enough. The tensed muscles of Edward’s thighs, the reverent way Stede watched him move, and the way they seemed to kiss by just breathing into each other’s mouths, was enough.

Izzy’s breath punched out of him through his nose. His orgasm thrilled in his gut, building and building like a fire in the wind. His balls were tight, sensitive and full. He tugged up the hem of his shirt, preparing to ejaculate onto the plane of his own stomach.

“Oh God,” he heard Stede groan. They were both looking at Izzy now, even as their bodies moved with increasing frenzy against each other. Stede had fisted most of the skirt into one hand, pulling it roughly to the side. The other was working between them, the muscles in his forearm bunching and twisting as he moved in a fast, repetitive motion. The hair between Edward’s legs was still black and, currently, glistening damp. Izzy couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. Stede, of course, noticed.

“Can you see him, Izzy?” he panted. “How gorgeous he is?”

“Yes,” Izzy hissed after somehow detaching his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Yes. He’s—f-fuck, Eddie.”

“Next time,” Edward said, and Izzy didn’t know who he was talking to. Both of them, maybe—he seemed to intend for the entire room to hear him. Maybe the entire world. “Next time we’ll do this right, and I’ll sit on it so good for you—so good, baby—”

“You’re always good!” Stede babbled. “So good, so good for me!”

Edward’s eyes squeezed shut, head tilted back. “I’ll sit—ah—sit in your cock, and Izzy, you can—can f-fuck my mouth.”

“Fu-u-ck,” Izzy growled. He had no idea how he could be so turned on still not be coming. Perhaps the wine, or the sweet shame still percolating in his stomach, or simply his age. His hand was a blur, forearm aching as he worked. God, the way he needed to come.

“Tell me what I want to hear,” Edward panted. “C’mon, Stede, say it. Wanna hear it when I come—"

“I love you,” Stede gasped, “God, I love you! I love you I love you I—"

Izzy shouted as his orgasm ripped through him. He’d not tugged his shirt up nearly far enough. Spurts of it hit his navel, his chest and the underside of his chin. His back arched, his foot finally slid all the way away from him and he fell inelegantly against the arm of the settee, still coming, dribbling with each shuddering pulse of his spent cock. It lasted for at least half a minute. The twitching of his thighs wouldn’t calm for several more.

When he managed to woozily lift his head back up from where it’d cracked against the wooden trim on the settee—and he’d feel just a little aroused every time he felt that bruise until it healed—he caught the tail end of Edward’s passion, watching as he slumped heavily against Stede and buried his face against his neck. Stede, fingers held aloft in a particular way, did his best to pet Edward’s hair without touching it with what glistened on his hand.

“Oh, there you go,” Stede was whispering. “Oh, my darling. You beautiful thing.”

Izzy, strangely, felt for the first time that night like he was actively intruding. He sunk down flat against the settee and pulled some of the flowing fabric wrapped around him over his head. The robe, hopefully, hid the flush on his face and the wetness of his eyes.

The room hummed with subtle sounds for a few moments. Chiefly those of fabric shifting from the direction of the bed, low whispers, and the creaks of the ship itself. Izzy let his heartbeat regulate and tried to convince himself to show his face again, though he couldn’t get a good read on what was happening in the rest of the room, or when would be a good time to excuse himself.

Someone’s heels thumped their way across the floor from the bed, past the settee and to the cabin door. It was Bonnet, and that much was obvious as Izzy listened; Edward was light-footed, sometimes to a fault. He’d been snuck up on enough times to know that. In fact, Edward was doing his best to sneak up on him right then. Only the utter quiet in the room made it so Izzy could hear his soft footfalls.

Edward pulled the robe off his head. He was wearing his own blue robe now, and likely nothing else given Izzy could see the skirt and shirt in a puddle by the bed. The robe pooled around him as he tucked himself into the adjacent chair, holding out a handkerchief. It was monogrammed.

“S.B.B.?” Izzy read, tilting his head. “What’s his middle name?”

“Bartholomew,” Edward snorted. “Here, take it. He has a bunch. This is the main thing they get used for, anyway.”

Izzy pushed himself up, maneuvering himself awkwardly until he was sat in the way it was likely appropriate for one to be sat on the settee in a captain’s cabin. Nevermind that captains didn’t typically have settees in their cabin, much less invite their first mate to pleasure himself on said settee while watching the captain fuck. Izzy and this settee were going to have an interesting relationship from now on, no matter what the future brought.

He cleaned himself perfunctorily with the handkerchief, which then went into his pocket for lack of anything better to do with it. He tucked himself into his smalls and trousers, wincing with sensitivity. Thus sorted, he glanced back at Edward.

He had a glow about him, of course. Orgasm had always done that to Edward.

“Hi,” Edward said, hand tucked against his mouth again. Izzy wondered if he was feeling shy. He’d never known Blackbeard to be shy but, well. He really had to stop thinking of Edward as anything other than Edward—and he did not know Edward nearly as well as he wanted to.

“Hi,” Izzy mumbled. His fingers curled over his knee and the end of his thigh. “Where’s Bonnet gone off to?”

“The galley,” Edward said. “Looking for a snack. Sex makes him peckish.”

Izzy huffed out a small laugh, mostly to himself. Edward smiled, though, and raised his mouth from his hand to show it, so Izzy let himself smile back.

“Tonight was great,” Edward said. “Hot as fuck, mate, you have no idea. Thought I was gonna pass out when I came. That was…” He blew air out from inflated cheeks, eyes wide. “Well, it was good for me.”

“Yeah,” Izzy said. “Me too.” He considered saying more, but he couldn’t quite find what to say. Instead, he retrieved his leg from where it leaned against the side of the settee and set to buckling it on. Edward watched, silent, the leg still an elephant that neither of them knew how to address. They were both of them a step closer to it, perhaps, but not quite there yet. Izzy, for his part, was getting more comfortable with the idea that it was something he and Edward might be able to approach together, meeting in the middle to peer into all their nastiness and try to sort through it.

That would be another day.

He stood and traded the robe for the vest again. He didn’t bother fastening it, given the walk to his berth was less than a minute and he would be removing it again there. The robe he carefully draped over the back of the settee.

“Stede wants you to keep it,” Edward said.

Izzy hesitated.

“Rather keep it here,” he said, gruff. “Nowhere to put fine things in my room. It’ll get…pitch or wax on it. It’ll keep nice, here.”

Edward cleared his throat, tilting his head, scratching behind his ear with one finger. One of his nervous tells. “He also, um, wanted you to…stay.” He flicked his eyes up, huge and brown.

“Did he?” Izzy mumbled. Edward hummed. “And you? Do you want me to stay?”

“I…” Edward’s eyes wandered the room, looking for something he didn’t find. He shrugged, made a creaking sound in his throat, and sighed, “Yeah, me too. I…God, I miss you, Iz. I loved you and I had to stop because I thought it would kill me. I know you got yourself just as fucked up over me. Wasn’t good. But I do still…want you. You’ve been…different. I like it.” He leaned back against the chair, leaned his chin back on his hand, and visibly gave himself permission to admit, “I still dream about you sometimes.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Edward bit the side of his lip briefly. “You’re not going to stay, are you?”

“Not tonight.” Izzy tilted his head, tried to soften his eyes. “I…have a lot to think about. Have to do it alone.”

Edward nodded. “That’s fair. Tonight was…a lot.”

“Hot, though,” Izzy offered with a small quirk to his lips, and Edward laughed.

Izzy shrugged to settle his vest better onto his shoulders, shifted to ensure his leg was fastened well onto his thigh, and stepped towards the door. Before he passed by Edward’s seat completely, he leaned down and pressed their mouths together. Edward’s fingertips brushed against the underside of his jaw, and Izzy heard him sigh when he pulled away.

“Wasn’t sure you’d ever kiss me again,” Edward said.

“Whenever you want,” Izzy told him. “I’ll kiss you whenever you want.”

He did, twice more, before he emerged into the cool night air on deck.

“Good talk, then?” asked Bonnet, who’d clearly been lurking outside the door, as Izzy suspected he might. The galley was not nearly so far to justify the length of time he’d been gone. He had a little plate in his hands, empty of all but crumbs, but he could have just as easily brought it back into the cabin. Izzy sighed, leaned back against the door with his hands folded in front of his hips and his head on the wood.

“How long have you been planning that for?” Izzy asked, despite himself. It was excruciatingly late for someone who needed to be on duty in the morning at three bells, he was tired, and his mind was spinning in a way that told him sleep would not come easy. He wanted badly to be alone with his thoughts, but part of him wanted just as badly to know. Just how long had Edward and Bonnet been conspiring, murmuring his name to each other in secret?

“There was no plan,” said Bonnet, as though the idea were foolish. Izzy, knowing how eager Bonnet and Edward always were for a fuckery, how they egged each other on in that way, pointedly rolled his eyes. Bonnet sighed. “Well, not as such. I just…have been noticing, lately, how much Edward missed you, so we spoke about it. I admitted to him that I find you…enticing.”

“Really.”

“Yes! You have a certain allure about you, Izzy. Surely you know. You’re…very skilled, and quite handsome. I’ve always found your voice to be…er, that is, it does do things to a man.”

Izzy smirked. “Go on.”

Bonnet rolled his eyes. “Hush. The point is, I’ve always been a little…curious. Edward encouraged that curiosity. We decided that, should the opportunity present itself, we would…extent the invitation, as it were. It really wasn’t supposed to turn so…well, I thought we might do a little more wooing before all the clothes came off, but—”

“I seem to remember no clothes coming off,” Izzy said. “More clothes seemed to go on than came off, in fact. Seemed like that was something that really did it for you actually.”

Bonnet huffed. “Oh, for God’s sake.”

“For future reference,” Izzy said, “all you needed was the wine.”

“Oh?”

Izzy shrugged. “Gets me hot. Always has.”

Bonnet dragged a look over him, as heated as it was appraising. “Noted.”

Izzy returned to the look, paid particular attention to Bonnet’s tits half-out of the banyan, bright in the moonlight and lightly dusted with golden hair. He told them, “Goodnight then, Captain.”

“My eyes are up here, mate.”

Izzy raised his eyes. Winked. “Good-night, Captain.” He pushed himself away from the door and made it one step before Stede’s hand was around his wrist, hauling him close.

His mouth tasted of coconut.

“Goodnight, Mister Hands,” Stede said as he released him. “Sweet dreams.”

When Izzy did finally sleep, drifting off after laying on his back for quite some time, his dreams smelled of lavender and they were, indeed, just a little sweet.