Chapter Text
Stede continues to care for Izzy.
He hadn’t ever planned to stop, really, even when he’d felt such intense insecurity regarding Izzy’s feelings towards him.
He continues to take naps in the Captain’s quarters, curled up on the settee while the Captains have tea or sprawled out on their plush mattress, fists curled in the white linen whilst one or two captains press themselves against him.
Stede enjoys caring for Izzy, goes out of his way to do so, and tucks away those sad little feelings for the few quiet moments he allows himself to be alone in.
Of all things about Izzy being small, he particularly enjoys watching Ed care for him. It's strangely endearing, to see the man he loves so dearly bend over backwards to make their first mate squeal and giggle. Both men, usually stony faced and carrying the aura of the countless men they’ve slaughtered, find themselves in a softer persona and cling to it, Izzy no longer depriving himself of the physical contact he craves so dearly, and Ed allowing himself to share his soft underbelly with someone aside from his own lover.
He seats himself at their quaint little dining table and plucks ceramic dishes from the heavily laden tray that Roach had brought in moments before. Ed takes his seat at the head of the table to Stede’s left, and Izzy scrambles to get a seat beside him, almost tipping his chair over in his utter desperation to be close to Ed.
“Woah there, Bugs,” Ed says as he reaches to stabilise the little cushioned footrest Izzy has chosen to sit on, “You gotta be more careful! Such a silly Bug-boy.”
Izzy giggles under his breath as he rights himself on the little footstool, crossing his legs and scooting until he sits comfortably in the centre of the rounded cushion. “Not silly, Baba.” He murmurs, hiding his mouth in the palm of his hand as he grins.
“I think you are, a bit,” Ed snarks back, barely able to hide his own grin as Izzy laughs again, “Now come on, Iz, we gotta eat our breakfast, okay?”
Izzy’s face wrinkles as he looks at the spread before them, taking in the cakes and jams lined across the tray with a petulant frown.
“Can you see anything you might like to eat, Izzy darling?” Stede asks, watching as Izzy’s eyes rake over the contents of the tray with a very disinterested look on his face.
“ No. ” He frowns, crossing his arms in a way that is just so , and makes Stede’s heart swell almost painfully.
“Are ya sure, mate? Look, there’s some fruit up there, you like to eat fruit.” Ed presses himself against Izzy’s side, pointing at the little platter of assorted sliced fruit in the centre of the wooden tray.
“No.”
“Izzy…” Ed warns, sending a gentle look in Izzy’s direction. Ed is the centre of Izzy’s whole universe, and usually a simple look is enough to settle him. Not today apparently.
“Don’t like.” Izzy whines, wriggling about in his seat.
“What do you mean you don’t like it, Buddy, we had this yesterday and you ate it all up!”
Izzy’s frown deepens, his eyebrows furrowing as he shakes his head wildly. “Nope.”
“No?” Ed meets Stede’s eyes across the table, trying in vain to wipe the grin off of his face. “We didn’t have fruit yesterday?”
It feels strangely lonely to watch Ed and Izzy talk like this. He’s right here , Ed is glancing up at him every other second, talking to him through those deep dark eyes of his, but it still feels like he’s the outsider, in his own cabin nonetheless.
He wishes that maybe he too could be on the other side of the table, have Izzy try to burrow into his side, have Izzy eat off of his fork, have Izzy look up at him with those soft sleepy eyes and no longer have to wonder if he’s a part of this little dynamic or if he’s inserting himself where he doesn’t belong, the way he has been his entire life.
Even with his own children he found it hard to coexist. In every life he’d cultivated for himself, with his father, at school, with his wife and children, and now with Ed and their crew, it always felt like he was too much, not right, like a lousy puzzle piece with jutting corners in all the wrong places. It’s hard not to think that maybe there’s no place that he can ever truly be a part of, not in any way that really matters.
Not in any way where he can be himself and be fully appreciated for that.
“No!” Izzy thunks his forehead down on the table as he whines, flailing his legs about underneath.
“Here, Izzy,” Stede says, reaching for a slice of fresh bread and holding it up for the boy to see. This is his chance, an opportunity for him to slip into this little dynamic here without disrupting and derailing it all.
Izzy does, reluctantly, peel his face away from the wood to glance up at Stede as he talks. He runs his fingers over the several jars lined at the edge of the tray; Izzy hates marmalade, even despite Ed’s insistence it’s delicious, and cares for few other spreads aside from strawberry preserves. “I’ve got a nice slice of bread with - look , Izzy, strawberry preserve !”
Izzy perks up, watching intently as Stede glides a preserve covered knife over the bread. His hands fold neatly at the edge of the table and he sits up slightly to get a better view over the tray between them.
“Let’s say, if you have one piece of fruit, then you can have a bite of jam bread, okay?” He holds the slice up between them, letting the boy inspect the piece of bread with what could not be dismissed as anything but a hungry look in his eye. Timidly, he reaches out and grabs an apple slice, snapping it in his mouth and chewing quietly.
Ed and Stede share a wide eyed look as Izzy slowly nibbles at the chunk of apple in his hand, eyes lighting up as Izzy swallows the apple chunk without complaint. He looks expectantly between Ed and Stede, and truthfully it takes them a moment before they remember their agreement.
Ed takes the jam bread from Stede, and just like that his opportunity, his olive branch, is gone to the wind. Ed holds it up to Izzy’s mouth, both he and Stede laughing as he takes a big bite, spreading the preserve across his lips, nose and chin. Ed has to pull the bread away when Izzy goes in for another, pointing back at the plate of fruit. “One bite per fruit.”
Izzy scowls deeply at Ed, bottom lip jutting out as his arms cross over his chest again.
“I don’t make the rules, bud,” Ed laughs as Izzy’s scowl only deepens, “You gotta have fruit if you want your jam.”
Reluctantly, and not without complaint, Izzy reaches forward and takes a wedge of orange this time, squeezing the juice out of the soft yellow flesh and handing it to Edward once he’s done. Edward takes the fruit in his open palm with a poorly hidden grimace, glaring at a snickering Stede as he tips the slobbery rind onto the table.
Stede watches the interaction with a practised smile, wiping his sweaty palms on the cotton over his knees. His chest hurts a little, in a way that makes him feel small and pathetic, like when he was still picking flowers and running away from the boys in his class, but he ignores it. The feeling will pass, as it always does, and he opts instead to let his teacup shake a little in his hand, to swallow thickly instead of sighing and mopping his tears with a hanky and taking away from what is only a sweet exchange of affection over breakfast.
It’s not a big deal anyway.
Breakfast goes slowly, as it always does when a crewmember is feeling small, but Izzy is content in his trade of fruit for jam. At one point he points instead to a little cake at the edge of the tray, looking up to Ed with wide open eyes.
“Yeah, you can have the cake if you want, buddy.” Ed reaches out to grab the little pastry, small enough to be eaten in a single bite, and lets Izzy nibble around the edges until it’s all gone and he’s reaching for the half eaten jam covered bread again.
The breakfast tray is almost empty by the time Izzy eats the last mouthful of strawberry preserve, Ed sculling the last of his tea as he and Stede stack each little ceramic plate back on the tray, the now empty teapot seated in the centre of the tray and surrounded by their meagre leftovers. Ed stands to take the tray, pressing his lips against Stede’s as he hooks his fingers underneath the handles.
“Ah!” Stede catches Ed’s wrist with his hand as he lifts the tray. “I think you forgot someone!” Stede points across the table, and Ed’s gaze follows his direction until it falls on the image of a pouting Izzy.
“Oh my gosh,” He says, setting the tray back down and sliding over beside Izzy’s seat, “I almost forgot!” He leans down and gives Izzy’s cheek a big raspberry, using his hands on the other side of Izzy’s skull to hold him close and keep him from wriggling away. “There you go.” He smiles echoing the large grin spread out across Izzy’s jam covered face.
Ed’s not fast enough to step back, however, and ends up with several very sticky kisses on his cheek. Stede chuckles as Ed wrenches his face out of Izzy’s hold, trying not to grimace at the slick sticky feeling of the preserve wiped on his cheek. He scoops the tray up once more and pads out of the cabin faster than usual, probably to wipe the sticky kisses off of his skin as soon as possible without Izzy seeing.
Stede takes the opportunity to rise from the table, over to the library where the little fireplace sits, burnt down to only embers now, and uses a thick leather square to protect his hands as he reaches in and plucks the little metal basin out of the charred remains of last night’s fire. The basin is filled with water, now warmed by the golden embers, reddening as they crumble and fizzle out in the cool air, and he takes the little basin over to the table, seating it down on the tablecloth - thick enough to protect the table from getting any nasty ring marks on it.
He takes a gentle cloth, the towels he uses to wipe his face after his morning shave, and dips it into the water. It’s hot, but not uncomfortably so, and so he steps around the table to Izzy’s side and squats down to his eye level. “Can I wipe your face, please, Israel?” He asks, showing the damp cloth to Izzy.
The boy, after thoroughly inspecting the steaming white fabric in Stede’s hand, nods, and lets Stede brush the damp towel over his mouth and chin.
“How on earth do you get so sticky, Israel?” He asks, highly animated, taking great pride when Izzy cheekily giggles between each brush of the warm cloth over his mouth. “Hands please,” He says, once he’s sure there’s no sticky remnants of preserve on Izzy’s soft skin anymore. He holds up both of his hands in front of him, fingers spread, and motions for Izzy to do the same.
He reaches over to dip the cloth back in the steaming basin and wring it out again, bringing it up to wear Izzy’s hands had mirrored his and wiping each finger clean of the sticky fruit residue.
“All your sticky little fingers, yum yum yum yum!” He says, making it look as if the damp cloth was gobbling up each of Izzy’s sticky fingers, much to the boy’s delight. “All gobbled up!”
“No!” Izzy laughed, pulling his hands away from the towel and putting them in Stede’s face, wiggling his now clean fingers. “Still there.”
“Oh, yes!” Stede grabs Izzy’s hand and holds it close to his eye. “They all appear to be there,” He says, inspecting each finger by tugging his hand around, much to his hiccuping laughter, “And they look absolutely delicious .” He takes Izzy’s pinky and holds it close to his mouth, making onomatopoeic slurping and chomping noises as he moves from finger to finger until all but Izzy’s thumbs remain attached to his writhing, giggling form.
“Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop!” Izzy squeals, wrenching his wrists from Stede’s hold and cradling his hands close to his chest. “Need my fingers!”
“Are you sure about that?” Stede asks, cracking a wide smile as Izzy shakes his head from side to side fast enough to blur his features.
“Are you sure I couldn’t eat just one ?” He draws out, watching as Izzy inspects his fingers and makes sure that there’s still ten of them, five on each hand.
“Noo!” Izzy whines, fisting his hands and shoving them under his armpits. “Need them all. ”
Stede sighs, exaggerated enough that Izzy will clue onto his lack of genuine disappointment, nods his head solemnly. “I suppose so,” He affirms, meeting Izzy’s eyes as his gaze grows from timid to suspicious. “I mean- after all, without all your fingers, you couldn’t possibly ever do this .”
Izzy’s gaze turns inquisitive as Stede talks, looking up at him with confused, wide eyes in the few moments before Stede strikes.
Stede slips his hands down to Izzy’s waist, digging his nails into the soft exterior of his stomach and wiggling them about.
Izzy squeals, writhing about on the little settee as Stede’s fingers prod at his belly and poke at his sides.
The knowledge that Izzy was ticklish - at least, to this level - was still relatively new, but it had already littered their everyday interactions with Izzy, pulling soft giggles out of his quiet little mouth and distracting him - even if only for a moment - from the small things that would typically send him into an anxious spiral and effectively ruin what hours of being small had managed to accomplish.
It’s always a little jarring to be on this side of Izzy’s affections, no matter how often it occurs between them. Ed is always his favourite, no matter his state of mind, and Stede has no rational issue with it. Izzy had followed Ed from the moment he’d laid eyes on him at only twelve, and had been a devoted follower ever since.
Irrational feelings, however, Stede had no shortage of them. It made perfect, understandable sense that Izzy would care deeply for his captain, the man he’d served for more than half of his life, even more so that those deep affections would translate into his smaller mindset, the purer, unabashed affection spilling out of him without any buffer to hold it back. So Stede doesn’t know why it hurts .
It hurts when Izzy runs straight for Ed every morning and afternoon after waking, stings and leaves a deep ringing ache behind his ribs where his little heart would sit, if he were sure it existed past the sound of its beating rhythm. He watches Izzy curl into Ed’s side in their bed, hears him giggle as Ed whispers into his ear, watches him climb all over Ed and trace his tattoos with unpracticed, jarred movements, and aches so firmly inside him that he worries he might keel over and die if he lets the feeling linger.
He has to remind himself sometimes that Izzy does care for him, to some degree. He enjoys bedtime stories, so long as they’re delivered personally to him and not to the entire crew. He curls up into Stede’s side too, sometimes, on days where the seas are calm enough for Stede to rest in his cabin without the gnawing guilt that always bites at his heels.
He lets Stede bathe him, lets him dress him and comb his hair, lets Stede hold him close without wriggling away like he so often does with Ed - though that in itself can’t be attributed to an overall appreciation for Stede’s cuddling. Izzy seems to enjoy wriggling around in Ed’s grasp, like slipping out of his hold and instantly being swept back up and held just as tight as he was before.
But right now it’s actually quite lovely.
That little aching itch, usually tucked behind his ribs, is nowhere to be found right now, replaced by the easy weightless touch of this feeling he’s only felt a few times in his barren life, when he’d first held his screaming newborn children and each time Izzy looks at him with those eyes that hide none of his affections for him.
Izzy is laughing and wriggling in his hold, almost falling off of the little footstool he’s sitting on.
It’s nice to actually hear his laughter for once, instead of the gruff little noises he makes anytime something doesn’t go his way, which is quite often for a small Izzy.
He can admit, easily, that Izzy can be quite loud on occasion. He supposes it’s his own fault, that he’s not more in tune to the rest of the sounds in the room. Izzy’s giggling is loud and shrieking and Stede almost jumps when he sees the dark shape of Ed’s figure slide in behind Izzy.
“Izzy!” Ed gasps, sticking his head over Izzy’s shoulder. “Oh my gosh!”
Stede looks up to Ed, where his arm, bare of leather, hooks around Izzy’s neck as he wriggles about. Izzy’s not stopped giggling and writhing, but he’s definitely leaning back into Ed’s touch. It leaves a strangely bitter taste at the back of Stede’s tongue.
“Are you being attacked by a tickle monster!?” Izzy shrieks again as Ed moves to grip him around the waist. “Don’t worry, Bug-boy, I’ll save you!” He tightens his hold underneath Izzy’s ribs and lifts him, shrieking, up into the air, slinging him into a fireman’s carry and hoisting him up so their faces are close together.
“All safe!” Ed cheers, giving Izzy a loud kiss on his forehead.
“Safe, Baba.” Izzy mumbles, eyes beginning to droop as he slips from the excitement of before.
“All safe, yeah,” Ed smiles. He leads Izzy over towards the bunk, lowering him and gently slipping him down onto the mattress.
Stede would normally object to Izzy being put back to bed so early; he already has established nap times, and doesn’t do too well with big changes to his routine, but Stede already feels out of place, and bites his tongue.
Izzy seems to drift off with a few bleary mumbles, unintelligible to Stede, rolling onto his back and quieting down.
Ed stands beside him, dark curls hanging limp over Izzy as he smooths his palm over the boy’s forehead.
“I love him so much,” He says, smile in his voice. He looks up to Stede and he rushes to meet Ed with a smile, instead of the pathetic longing written on his face only moments before.
“I know, love,” Stede hums, taking a seat in the chair Ed had claimed not long before. “I do too.”
Ed leaves Izzy with a little frown, but quickly recovers as he latches onto Stede’s side, half sitting in his lap in the cramped little armchair. “I love you,” He murmurs, the new growth of facial hair idly tickling at Stede’s collarbone.
“I love you too, Ed.” Stede sighs, tucking Ed’s head under his chin.
It’s an odd feeling, going between feeling estranged and feeling so wholefully loved. That estranged feeling doesn’t ever really go away.
Ed tucks his big lanky legs in between Stedes, shifting until he’s comfortably sat half in Stede’s lap, spread out against his chest.
Ed seems content to cuddle into Stede, watching carefully over Izzy where he’s breathing evenly and shallowly. Stede however, can’t stop his mind from running. His cheeks feel equally flushed and cold, and there’s an odd sense of panic tucked behind his ribs.
He pushes it away, filtering it out with a deep breath and hooking his fingers in Ed’s tumbling curls, grounding himself in the armchair.
Izzy’s asleep right now, and Ed’s sure soon to be too. For the moment, he can just forget about it, forget about the dry mouth he gets when Izzy runs straight to Ed, the ache in his belly when Izzy latches onto him, bypasses Stede entirely.
It can wait until later.