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Ed had an unfortunate talent for being too hard on himself--it was a trait they both shared with each other--so when Stede found him grumbling viciously under his breath while repeatedly knocking his own head against the bathroom wall between the vanity mirror and the doorframe, about a dozen possibilities instantly popped into Stede's head. Maybe Ed had forgotten to put the lid back on the dried herring crate in a moment of distraction again and the canteen would again reek of pungent fish odor for a fortnight, or, judging by the enhancement of his usual, already-impressive four-lettered vocabulary by some phrases he'd clearly picked up from Jim, maybe he'd accidentally spilled his tea on another of Stede's books; the level of self-punishment he currently seemed to be indulging in usually belied a sense of personal guilt.
"Ed! Dearest, what's the matter?!" Stede yelped, mentally running an inventory of which of his favorite novels he might need to send up a prayer for. But instead of guilt, upon closer inspection, the emotion written on Ed's face as he leaned his head against the wall, seemingly resting in his attempts to self-induce a concussion, looked a lot more like bitter resignation.
"Stede, my dear one, " he sighed, "we need to hide the nice soaps."
"...The...the soaps, my love? Come again? Oh no, did Roach try to use the rosemary honeysuckle bar to flavor the stew again?!"
"No, no, not this time. I was just on deck and..." Ed sighed, massaging his temples. A few months ago, Stede had had them all practicing reframing insults meant for each other with more loving, generous adjectives to remind themselves that they all cared about and appreciated each other even when they were displeased with something someone had done. It had backfired stupendously, and Stede could now tell when Ed was really trying to keep his temper when he started doling out carefully-considered compliments while describing someone.
"You know how we talked about how when the crew get bored, it's important to give them something purposeful to do so they don't get up to anything like The Rat Incident?"
"Y...yyyes?" Stede could happily go the rest of his life without seeing more than one rat together or a pot of rouge or lip paint ever again. Ed repeated his wearied exhalation.
"Well, I was sensing that mood coming back up on deck again--they were starting to bring out their knives and trying to balance them on things like they do right before they start egging each other on into another stupid contest like they do--"
"Oh, good catch, very good timing..."
"So I told a few of them the deck needed another once-over with some sealant and to get on that, please. 'Make a game of it', 'who can make the captains proudest', et cetera, et cetera."
"Oh good! I mean, they know how important that one is for keeping things all caulked and ship-shape, they certainly take that task very seriously."
"Yes, well, unfortunately, they didn't check before they started whether they had enough linseed oil to do the whole job."
"...Oh...?" There was already a sinking feeling in Stede's stomach.
"Well, they of course discovered midway through that they didn't have enough of the linseed oil, and they didn't want to leave the job half-done, so they tried to," Ed sighed again, "improvise."
"Oh...oh no."
"You remember the haul we took off those Portuguese traders a week or so ago?"
"Yes? The one with all the yummy cooking ingredients we were all so excited about?"
"Yes, exactly, including the olive oil?"
"The ol--no! No, no, no, tell me they didn't!"
Ed gently knocked his head against the wall again so that it came to rest on the wood paneling and seemed to carefully choose his words.
"Our...creative problem-solvers...attempted to swab the deck with the olive oil were were going to use to have a nice...what'd you call it? Pesty sauce?"
"Pesto sauce."
"Yes, pesto sauce, we were going to have a 'nice, delicate pasta primo-whateverthehellhyoucallit' like you said, until our dear...dear, blessed crew tried to improvise."
"Oh dear. That's...well...what...h-happened?"
Ed's eyes snapped open and he glared resentfully at a knot in the oak wood right in front of his nose as if it was the one who should have known not to let those dunderheads get creative.
"Well, as you know, dearest, that type of oil won't soak into the wood properly. You know this, I know this, but apparently, bless their souls, our crew did not."
"Right..." Stede had kept up so far.
"Well they very quickly started slipping and sliding all over the deck like the...graceful little ballerinas they are."
"No! Has someone fallen overboard?!"
"No! Thank God, because at the very least, we've got Jim on the crew. And as we both know, Jim is one of our more..."
There was a beat, because several words could fill this blank.
"...er...'practical-minded'?" Stede offered as a guess based on context clues.
"Yes! Bless Jim and their practical-mindedness, they got the others all stringing ropes across the deck and rails so everyone could use them as guide ropes without falling all over the place."
"Oh thank god for Jim indeed! Good show, Jim!"
"Except--"
"There's an 'except'?!"
"Except, my dear Bonnet, that as soon as our beloved little grasshoppers got their feet under them again--"
"Oh no..."
"--they found several new ways to nearly break their necks."
"Oh dear..."
"Remember the kites from last week?"
"Re...remember the kites?! I thought we'd forbidden them, The Swede nearly brought half the bloody British navy down on us with that stupid flaming monstrosity! Buttons has only been able to open his left eye all the way again since the day before last and my embroidered Chinese silks are--no, no, I'm not going to cry again, it's alright, just...just go on." Stede took a few steadying breaths as Ed’s testimony continued.
"Well, they seemed to think as long as they didn't get carried away with their designs and try to compete or fight their kites against each other again, they'd be fine--"
"Oh, pirates are nothing without an eye for loopholes!" Stede nearly spat out the words in bitterness. How many times had he thought he'd learned this particular lesson?!
Ed had the grim look of a war general in the trenches surrounded by an insurmountable enemy force.
"Our darlings are nothing if not skilled at...seeing things from new angles."
"What did they do?"
"Well, Frenchie--of course--"
"--Of course it was Frenchie!"
"--tried to rig up a very simple device, he said, 'not a kite, captain, you can see that clearly. No, sir, this is...a personal sail!' he said--"
"That man is entirely too enterprising to be left to his own devices..."
"—you see, he had at some point before I got up there been trying to use some of the canvas we keep to patch the sails with to make his 'personal sail' on the end of some twine to try and get the wind to pull him around on his stocking feet across the oiled-up deck."
Now it was Stede's turn to sigh.
"And no one fell overboard, you say?"
"No, because when I got there, I found the not-a-kite in a corner with the giant person-sized one Buttons had made and tried to strap onto his arms and legs to improve upon our dear Frenchie's design. Said they used to make 'em like that when he was a boy to skate on the ice on the ponds in wintertime in Scotland. No, those had both already been set aside in favor of a new, fun game when I arrived up top."
"Oh good Lord in heaven..."
"What they had gotten up to by the time I got there, you see, was that they had formed into two teams on opposite sides of the deck and...did you ever play 'Red Rover' growing up?"
"'Red Rover'?"
"You know, 'Red Rover, Red Rover, send so-and-so over'?"
"Oh god, you mean 'Lord Bunyon's Toffet'?! What are they, schoolchildren?!"
"Clearly they have their moments, Stede. And were having one of them when I arrived up on deck."
"But...what about Jim? Where was Jim and their practical-mindedness by this point?"
"Jim's practical-mindedness, my dove, apparently extended only so far as stringing the ropes across the deck and then getting up into the crow's nest to stay out of the way. By the time I got out there, they were egging everyone else on and calling out a commentary like a croquet match at Westminster, and cackling like a loon the whole time."
"...Et tu, Jim?!"
"So naturally, I knew it was time to bring out the big guns."
"Where was Izzy in all of this?"
"That's the next revelation I was about to uncover for myself, my dearest. My stalwart first mate had, upon hearing the ruckus our little miscreants were making up top, come out onto the deck to try to impose order, as he does--"
"--and does so well, thank goodness in this case--"
"--well, he usually does. When he doesn't, according to his own statement, immediately start falling all over on the olive-oiled wood of the deck, and then, apparently, trying to get up and falling again and just getting madder and madder while the crew keep laughing harder and harder."
Stede could only groan at this point.
"He delivered his accounting of the incident, by the way, from inside the hard-tack barrel, where our ever-thoughtful crew claimed they had shut him in 'for his own safety's sake'."
"The hard-tack--?! They know better! I've told them how many times, closing Izzy into barrels, crates, closets, wardrobes, chests, hidden passages--any storage vessel or space--is strictly not allowed!"
"Well, by the time I got up there, he said he didn't want to come out because the hard-tack barrel is the only one weighted down enough not to move and as long as he was in the barrel he was the only one of them up there who wasn't falling left and right any time they tried to put their foot down."
Well...at least Izzy's pride had saved him once more from the danger of bodily injury. The lines between the Chihuahua-like little man's pride and his sense of self-preservation often overlapped and complemented each other nicely that way.
"So with our last bastion of reason or discipline now stuffed in a barrel and not wanting to come out, where do things stand up there?"
Ed looked weary, like a man who had walked a million miles, lived a million days, and seen some things to tell of, if only he didn't want to put others off their dinner.
"They explained to me that they knew how to clean the oil off--Roach gave a very informative explanation of how soap actually works, interestingly, something about how the fats in goose lard stick to both oils and water?"
"...and the soaps..."
"They begged me to let them have 'just a little while longer' playing on the deck, which buys us some time, because I know we've only got so much of that pine tar soap left..."
"...which means after they run out of that..."
"...which is why I need your help hiding our nice soaps now."
This was followed by a tandem sigh shared between the two co-captains of either exasperation or tiredness from talking...or probably both. Stede rubbed his face, wondering how other pirate captains who hadn't had previous experience with rearing toddlers managed to keep their crews from getting up to the things his and Ed's did.
"...There's a hidden drawer under the bottom panel of the bed, let's put the soap there quick before they run out of the pine stuff."
"There's a drawer there?"
"Where did you think I was keeping the lube and oils and so on to bring out when we need them?"
"Oh, you clever minx! Crack it open and let's hide the soaps, I'm not letting those innovative little cupcakes upstairs cost me another bar of cherry blossom-and-begonia."