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"So you dress yourself like a woman?" Izzy doesn't know why he's surprised — it's far from the weirdest shit he's seen at sea, it's just so…so vulnerable, and he still isn't used to the way this crew just allows themselves to show one another their soft underbellies all the time. Might never be used to it. And he's not really sure of the shape of this, specifically, what it means. "Are you…trying to tell us something?"
Wee John gives him a sidelong glance. "Are you asking if I'm a woman because I like dressing up in silks and putting glitter on?" Izzy grimaces at the floor in answer, and John laughs, not unkindly. (Has John ever been unkind? Has Izzy ever seen anything but tooth-rotting gentleness from him?) "As far as I can tell, I'm a man. My mam was a seamstress, and she used to costumes for showgirls, when I was wee."
"Hmm." Izzy stares at their distorted reflection. "You know, Bonnet has a proper mirror in his quarters."
John looks up at Izzy, who grins.
It isn't easy, by any means, to help carry a fuckoff-big gilded looking glass through a ship's corridors with a wooden hoof in place of one's foot, but John is strong enough that Izzy is more there for balance than heavy lifting, anyway. They get it all set up in John's room, and Izzy perches beside it and doesn't even pretend not to stare as John dips into a box of cosmetics. Once he's rouged his cheeks, he licks a thumb and slicks down both eyebrows. Then he produces two tiny little glass pots of shimmering paint. "This one matches my gown," he explains, "but this one makes my eyes pop."
"The one that matches," Izzy advises. "Calypso color-coordinates, I would think. And it's the color of the sea at twilight."
John's eyes spark, and Izzy flushes — why would he say something so stupidly sentimental? — but John just says, "Good choice, you're absolutely right," and starts applying it with a tiny little paintbrush.
There's a tight, anxious feeling in Izzy's stomach, not unlike the adrenaline he feels before a raid. This feels horribly private, and yet —
John applies lipstick carefully and then blots it on a bit of parchment and smiles at his reflection, then turns to Izzy and puts on a faux-sultry pout. "Well, what do you think?"
Izzy thinks — he thinks — "You look —" his voice is hoarse, even for him. He clears his throat and tries again. "Radiant. Really, it's…"
Wee John drops the teasing to give him an appraising look. "D'you want some?"
The anxiety turns into full-scale alarm bells. Since when does want have anything to do with anything? Izzy doesn't get things he wants.
Except.
They're having a Calypso party. Bankrolled by Edward, condoned by Stede. And he's learning, in fits and starts, to accept the softness, to allow himself into it, allow himself to have it. After Edward took his second toe, forced that one down his throat as well, Frenchie found him shaking apart in the pantry and made him drink tea. Fang took to giving him bone-crushing hugs whenever the opportunity presented itself, and after the third toe, the crew started making him sleep with them — he woke up one morning with Jim's hand in his, and a few mornings later with Frenchie's head on his chest.
That he could get his head around — gentleness as a response to violence, warmth for protection. But this — something soft and beautiful for its own sake — he doesn't know how to want it.
"I wouldn't know how to do it," he says, waving John off.
"I could do it for you."
"Oh, you need to finish getting ready." Izzy isn't sure why he's protesting, when he does want — not what John's done, but, maybe something like it. Wants to feel…beautiful. God, he's pathetic.
"Izzy." John meets his eyes, and Izzy doesn't look away, feels weak for wanting to. "I'll do your face for you."
"I —"
"If you don't like it, we can take it right back off before anyone sees it."
Izzy knows that the note they dropped on his new leg was written by Lucius, because none of the rest of them know how. But he wonders, not for the first time, whose idea it was. "Okay."
"Okay," John parrots, beaming.
"I don't want it like you have," Izzy says, then cringes. He's so fucking bad at being nice, Jesus. "I mean, I want —"
"Not drama," John says, "I got you, boo."
Izzy watches John work — it's fascinating. He dips a clean cloth into his basin first, wrings it out and gently scrubs Izzy's face with it. Izzy doesn't think anyone has cleaned his face for him since he was a child. Maybe not even then. And then out of his cosmetics case comes a brush and a pale rouge, which tickles across his cheekbones. John licks his thumb to fix the edge, and Izzy holds his breath.
"Close your eyes," John commands gently after Izzy's all rouged up, and it goes against all of Izzy's instincts but he trusts Wee John, so he does, and he's rewarded with a brush across his eyelids, and then something that feels like a pencil above his brows. Then something heavier from his lashes to his brow. He can feel John's breath on his face. The pencil-thing scratches again, just along his lashline, and it's so sharp, and John could just ram it right into his eye and blind him forever if he wanted — but it moves to the other eye next, scritch-scritch-scritch. "You can open your eyes."
It takes Izzy a moment, and when he does open them, John is focused on his mouth. He selects a lipstick that's more red than pink, and when Izzy nods, he makes a kissy face. It takes Izzy a second to catch his brain up before he mimics it, and John gently applies the lipstick, carefully dragging it into the corners of Izzy's mouth.
"Okay," John says, "last thing." He reaches once more into the box and produces a very, very small bottle brush and a pot of paint the color of Indian ink. "Keep your eyes open and forward, there's a lad." Izzy clenches his jaw and widens his eyes, and John dips the brush into the pot, scrapes most of the paint off on the lip, and then lifts it to Izzy's eye. Laser-focused, staring right into Izzy's eyes the whole time, he gently saws the brush across Izzy's eyelashes.
Izzy has had sex less intimate.
"There you are," Wee John whispers when he pulls back, "you're beautiful." He caps off the pot and wipes the brush on a wet cloth before he takes Izzy by the shoulders and guides him to the mirror. "Look."
Izzy expects to see a clown, honestly. Not that he doesn't trust Wee John, but he's not someone who can look and act how Wee John looks and acts. He could never carry it off. He's going to look in the mirror and see some horrible painted puppet looking back, and then he'll take to his room with one of the captain's books and let the rest of the crew enjoy the party. It won't be a bad evening.
But he looks.
And he's not a clown.
When he was very, very young, when he still had a mother and a sister and a heart full of hope, he thought that if he stepped in a circle of toadstools, a faery would appear, something not quite a man, something otherworldly, something beautiful but visibly dangerous.
He thought that it would look just like this. He has to remind himself to breathe, and when he does it's a loud rasp and he coughs.
"Don't destroy your eyeliner, I worked hard on that," John says lightly, patting him on the back.
"I…thank you," Izzy says, "Mr Feeney, you've given…" he clears his throat, and he's less embarrassed that he might have thought. "Thank you very much."
"You're welcome, Izzy," John says warmly. "I've got to go finish putting my look on now, I don't have long if I want to be fashionably late." Izzy watches in the mirror as John brushes a feather-light kiss to his temple before turning away. And he keeps looking for several minutes after.