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Jim slammed their hands on the table, loud enough to receive a wince from Roach and Lucius and a jump back from Black Pete. They paid these reactions no real mind though, aside from an internal grin at the fear struck, instead continuing with their planned movements. They nudged Oluwande in the arm, hard enough to notify him but not hard enough to hurt.
Jim, known murderer, was respectful like that.
Oluwande rolled out a long piece of parchment onto the table, clearly torn from Stede’s log. Lucius winced again, but not out of fear, no, it was rather a wince of disgust. Jim, again, paid this reaction no mind. Perhaps even less mind than the first reaction.
The crew crowded closer around the table once the paper was fully situated, curled ends held down by various planters and cool rocks that Frenchie had eagerly picked up as souvenirs from their vacation. There was a collective sigh of relief as the crew realized that there were no words on the page to be found, a horror they expected out of paper. No, instead, this specific paper had hasty doodles and intricate drawings (the former provided by Jim, of course, and the latter provided by Buttons).
Jim stabbed their finger into the middle of the paper and threw a stern glance around the room. “Since unmuting myself — not out of choice, may I add — you have all learned a bit more about me. And the primary thing that you guys have learned from my incredible speaking adventure is that I despise inefficiency.” Jim bit back a snarl at the thought. “So. I’ve made a plan to rid our ship of inefficiency.”
They began to trace their stabbing finger around the paper like a map as they explained further. “This is Stede Bonnet, our captain. And this is Blackbeard, our..guy who lives here. And—“
Black Pete held up a finger to shush Jim, and Jim, amazed at the audacity, complied. “Is this a plan to get these two together? If so, I’m out, Blackbeard deserves so much better than St—“
And it was now Black Pete’s turn to be shushed. Oluwande brought a steady hand to Jim’s shoulder as Jim began to lunge, stopping them in their path. They inhaled once and exhaled once, as breathing tended to work like that, and stared daggers at Black Pete. “You think I want to be doing this?”
Black Pete looked to Lucius, to anyone, for help, but all he got in return was cowering and helpless stares. God hath no fury like a genderqueer scorned, or whatever the quote is.
“Do you genuinely think I woke up one morning and said, ‘Hey, Oluwande. Let’s make our captain get some desperately needed dick.’? You think I’m doing this out of joy? I’m doing this out of necessity, gringo, and you’re either in with the plan or you’re out of my fucking sight and in the ocean.”
Oluwande, who had done all he could with the hand, simply nodded along to the rant in encouragement, knowing that he would die if he had stopped Jim. And, honestly, it’s not like they were wrong. Out of line, maybe, but the last thing they cared about was a theoretical line.
Black Pete had nodded along too, not out of encouragement, but out of fear, and proceeded to clamp his mouth shut, a gesture that Jim accepted with a softened, but nonetheless there, glare.
Frenchie piped up as the tension began to dissipate. “So..eh..what exactly is the plan?”
“So glad you asked.” It was now Oluwande’s time to do the talking, a warm welcome of a change from Jim. “What we need to do is just get them to confess to each other. Could be anything. Lock them in a room, hostage them, blackmail them, bribe them. Anything. But if they just realize what the other feels for him, they’ll get together and we rid the ship of inefficiency — something Jim defines as ‘long yearning looks’ and ‘meaningless laughter’.”
Oluwande took the following silence as a sign to keep talking. “Buttons is up on deck distracting Stede, and I’m sure Izzy is doing something with Blackbeard, so we should have time to discuss the game plan without being torn away from the endless duties of a pirate's life.” He took a step back, smiled, and shook his hands in a gesture that would be known years after as ‘jazz hands’. Jim shot some ash at him — it was planned that the ash would be sprinkled above Oluwande’s head as the dramatic finisher, but sure, a grey and powdery splotch on his face was fine too.
A pair of tell-tale boots stomped against the floorboards behind him, and Oluwande knew then that the silence was not, in fact, an attentive crew, but a signal of bashful fear.
Bashful fear that hit Oluwande like a cannonball and Jim like an ant running at high ant velocities: it didn’t hurt, but Jim was acutely aware of it.
“Wonderful presentation.” Blackbeard got closer to Oluwande and Jim and clapped them on their shoulders. “Surely could’ve been done with a bit more pizzazz, but I understand you were working on short notice.”
As Blackbeard walked through Oluwande and Jim and towards the table, Lucius attempted to slouch and slip himself under, but Wee John grabbed him by the crook of his arm, a firm believer in the ‘all or nothing’ school of thought.
Blackbeard hummed and laughed a little to himself as he scanned the drawings. “I didn’t realize how quiet we were about it. Neither of us are exactly known for how secretive we are.”
“About…what.” Jim feared they knew the answer to this already, speaking slowly, carefully.
He shrugged. “Us.”
This incited a number of reactions. A sigh from Jim, a nod that said ‘I guess that makes sense’ from Oluwande, horrified gasps from Wee John and Black Pete, various eyebrow scrunches, and most notably, a silver exchange from Frenchie to Roach, the latter with a disgruntled frown. Roach, louder than he thought he was, examined the silver with a pointed remark of, “I told you, Blackbeard would never groan of a ‘stomachache’.”
“I thought he ate some bad fish! It happens to everyone! The fish don’t get cooked properly and they steal your soul! It happens to everybody, Roach!”