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“I don’t like this any more than you do.” Ed puts his suitcase down on the bed—the double bed, fucking hell, they only have one bed—and tries to ignore the daggers he can feel Iz staring at him from across the room. “But we’re close, I can feel it—”
“This plan’s been a bust from the start, Edward. You never should’ve told him we were married, let alone—”
“No, come on, it’s obvious.” Ed turns around, braving the scorn of Izzy’s expression. It’s not that bad, actually: Iz seems tired more than anything. Probably because of the long flight. “He only thought we were together because he’s so far in the closet. Classic wish fulfilment, man. And that’s gonna make it so easy to win his trust. I mean, it’s only been a month and he’s already inviting us on holiday! We’re in. And then—”
“And then, what? He’ll decide to let us in the gallery after hours, turn off the alarms, and leave us to it?”
“He’ll let something slip,” Ed says. “They always do. Especially sweet, trusting guys like him.”
Izzy makes a sound of disgust. “You could’ve just fucked him. Left me out of it.”
“Iz. It’s a free holiday. Even you can’t be miserable about a free holiday.”
“It’s a couples’ holiday!” Izzy shoots back. “It’s one thing to fool Bonnet—he’s a fucking imbecile—but what about the couple’s massage he’s booked us in for? And his wife! Do you think she might notice that we’re not—anything?”
“We’re partners in crime.” Ed unzips the suitcase, pulling out clothes and toiletries at random. “Partners in, you know, life shouldn’t be too hard a sell.”
“Nobody with half a brain will buy it,” Izzy says, which honestly just pisses Ed off.
“Why? Because you refuse to even give it a go? Come on, man, I tried to hold your hand at the airport and you nearly scratched my eyes out. If you’d just commit a little—”
“You can’t just hold my hand without warning!”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Izzy says, taking a deep, heaving breath, “because I need time to prepare.”
“For me holding your hand?”
“Yes, Edward, what about this is confusing to y—”
“So we just need to practice.”
Izzy’s mouth snaps shut. “What?”
“Yeah,” Ed continues, getting into a groove with it. “Get you used to it, so you’re less twitchy. Is it the gay thing?”
Izzy just keeps on gaping at him, which isn’t helpful—but, whatever, Ed’s made do with worse. One time, Izzy kept arguing with him even while they were breaking into the Louvre. They’d made it out fine in the end, undetected and a million euros better off.
“Physical contact in general?” Because, yeah, Izzy’s a bit twitchy about things like that: hugs and claps on the shoulder. He goes all stiff.
But Iz doesn’t react to that one, either, beyond a slight tightening of his jaw.
Ed frowns. “Me, specifically?”
Izzy’s hand flexes: his tell. It stings more than Ed might’ve expected, him being the problem. Things have been a bit strained between them, lately, but he hadn’t thought it was anything serious. Just the stress of the job, of spending too much time in each other’s pockets—the uszh.
“Fuck,” he says. “Alright. Tough obstacle to overcome, but we’ve got a week of this. You’re right—people are gonna notice something’s off if we never touch. And it can’t be worse than crawling through a sewer, which you’ve done for a job already—so you’ll just have to suck it up, I guess.”
“Great,” Izzy says. “Thanks.”
“Get over here and hold my hand,” Ed says. It’s one of the silliest orders he’s ever given—not that it matters. Iz might bitch and complain the whole way, but he’ll do as he’s told. And sure enough: Izzy sighs, rolls his eyes, but then crosses the room, thrusting out his hand like they’re coming to the end of a business deal.
“Goal here is to make it look natural,” Ed reminds him.
Izzy lets his wrist go limp.
“Well, now it’s just a hate crime.”
“I’m gay, you daft twat.” Izzy’s clearly gritting his teeth as he says it. He’s also, just as clearly, coming out for the very first time.
“Yeah, mate, I know that,” Ed says. “I didn’t think you knew that.”
Izzy mumbles something that sounds a hell of a lot like not going to let Stede fucking Bonnet beat me out of the closet, which is honestly fair enough. Then he says, “How the fuck did you know?” which is trickier.
“Uh,” Ed tries, “just a vibe?”
Izzy’s face goes all disdainful and pinched, so Ed decides on the truth.
“You’re into Stede, aren’t you?”
Izzy makes a sound like gears grinding into each other. He looks apoplectic. He also doesn’t say no.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Ed grabs his hand, nice and gentle. Izzy flinches with his whole body.
“See, this is what I mean.”
“You took me by surprise,” Izzy says.
“Yeah, but people in relationships do shit like this. They hold hands without negotiating in advance. They touch each other. Kiss.”
Izzy’s eyes do a bungee jump from Ed’s eyes to his mouth and then back up again.
“We can’t,” he says, quiet.
Ed takes them from awkwardly cupping each other’s palms to interlocking their fingers, the way he’s sure he’s seen real couples doing. It’s sort of nice, actually, when he ignores Izzy’s disgust for the whole thing. Izzy’s hand is smaller than Ed would’ve thought. It feels like something breakable.
“Why not?” he asks.
Izzy shakes his head. “I can’t kiss you.”
“That’s not a reason.”
“It is,” Izzy insists. “It is, if you’d just listen—”
“Please,” Ed says.
Izzy’s hand spasms, going tight enough to be painful.
“Please,” Ed repeats, “just the once. If it’s—weird, or horrible, I promise I’ll never ask again. But I think we should try.”
“You want that stupid fucking lighthouse painting this badly?” Izzy rasps.
Ed doesn’t know what to say; that for him, this isn’t much of a trial, except for the way Izzy’s dead-set against it? Sharing a bed, couples’ massages: they don’t sound all that bad. Kissing Izzy doesn’t sound all that bad, either. In all the time they’ve known each other, Iz hasn’t been involved with anyone, so far as Ed knows. So he’s inexperienced, and Ed—Ed’s the opposite, has kissed most his friends and a few of his enemies, pretty much everyone except Iz. It’d be nice, he thinks, to show Iz how good it can be.
“Yeah,” he says instead, “it’s a fucking nice painting. Worth loads. Worth more’n one kiss—worth—”
Izzy does a weird sort of lunge at his mouth, hitting his beard more than his lips, and at the first contact between them something in Ed breaks apart into a million shimmering pieces.
He grabs hold of Izzy’s face, keeping it still so he can kiss him proper, kiss him like this is the only chance he’s ever going to get—which it is. He has to make it count. He has to make it last one minute, then two, sucking Izzy’s bottom lip into his mouth and biting, teasing, pressing the advantage. They’d never kiss like this in front of people; the resort would kick them out. They’d get done for public indecency, end up in prison.
Ed feels dizzy, and so turned on so quickly it’s kind of embarrassing, and he can’t let it stop. He keeps holding onto Izzy, tight enough to be painful, maybe. And he keeps them standing in place, holding onto each other in the middle of the room, even though he could do with a wall—or, better yet, a bed—against his back.
What tips him past the point of reason is that it’s not a one-sided thing: Izzy’s kissing him back, in a way Ed’d call desperate if they were at a club past midnight—if he didn’t know better. His breath’s coming out in choked little gasps, the way Ed thinks it might—if he was getting fucked—
And then Izzy’s touching him, too, hands on his shoulders: a clutch that’ll leave bruises if Ed has any luck. It wrenches a moan out from Ed’s chest, low and longing.
He pulls back just far enough to say, “Please, Iz. Don’t make me stop.”
Izzy’s eyes are dark enough to drown in, and his breathing hitches again when he says, the most beautiful thing Ed’s ever heard, “Don’t you dare fucking stop.”