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Ed wakes up from the nightmare, naked and slightly sore, in Stede's arms. He knows in reality it's just his own sweat, maybe some of Stede's, but he feels like he still has Izzy's blood all over his hands, dripping down his face where Izzy had touched him for the last time. He wants to cry like he did in the dream, can feel it building up behind his eyes, tight and painful in his chest, but the tears just won't come. Still, his gasping is loud enough to wake Stede.
"Ed-?" he starts, sitting up. The blankets slide off of his broad shoulders, revealing his bare chest, his brand new burn soon to scar. The shadows pool below, like seawater pools in coves at low tide.
"It was too fast," Ed blurts breathlessly, looking but not looking. Not like he needs to look anyway, he's seen. He's had. Stede freezes where he was reaching out to comfort Ed, to touch him with love. Too much love at once.
"I- yes," Stede agrees haltingly, soft and regretful. "I'm sorry, darling." Ed surges forward and kisses him hard on the mouth, and Stede cups the back of his head like he - apparently - always does. It feels nice, it feels so fucking nice, it feels perfect - and fucking overwhelming. Ed wants nothing more than to let Stede have him again, roll him over and hold him down and take him apart, again and again and again. Well, almost nothing.
"I have to go talk to Izzy," he says when he finally manages to keep his mouth to himself enough to talk. It's difficult, to say it out loud, to say it so plainly. At the same time, Ed knows that now just like every time before he's not saying it all. He's not saying much of anything. And yet it comes out of him like- like pulling teeth.
"...Okay," says Stede. "W-Will you come back?" Ed grabs his hand, pulls it out of his hair, only to kiss the palm. He nods against it, and Stede strokes his face - with love, way too fucking much love at once - and then lets him go. It's no great mystery why Ed was worried he wouldn't. No fault of Stede's.
Ed climbs gracelessly out of the bed. If it had gone any other way, maybe he might laugh and start up a little flirtation about his new and improved limp. But it didn't go another way, and they're going to have to talk about it, and he's going to have to be fucking honest and maybe they might even fight, but it has to be done. And more importantly it has to be done later. Ed's no proponent of the prophecy of dreams, but he does know when they're vivid like that it's for a fucking reason. And he can still feel that blood on his hands. Slicker, hotter, infinitely more terrible than it ever was when it was literal, because he was always so sure it wouldn't matter. For one reason or another. Ed grabs the first article of clothing that will cover enough of him to make him just decent enough to make it through the dark and empty hallways to Izzy's room.
Thoughtlessly, Ed opens Izzy's door and walks right in, just like he always fucking has. Izzy's eyes snap open instantly, picked out white in the tiny amount of moonlight reflected into the room through the porthole window. His limbs - all three and a half of them - freeze solid, but his chest rises and falls like the waves when a storm is a good way off but coming in soon. Ed freezes too, open door behind him.
"Sorry," he chokes. "Stupid. I'm not- Is- If I sit down is that...?" Even as he's asking, Ed sinks down onto the floor in the doorway. He's desperate for it to work, for it to be okay, for there to be any way they can have something other than what he saw behind his eyes sleeping in Stede's arms, overheated probably but more importantly still alone in the ways that really count the most, the fireworks sending them off slowly warping in his subconscious into cracks of thunder over the pier.
Izzy sits up in bed. Looking up at him like this, it could almost feel like thirty years ago. Ed's first few months on Hornigold's ship, unable to sleep. He'd say it was because he hadn't gotten his sea legs yet, or because Jack and Chuck snored, or because he was just naturally a night owl, or because he was hungry, or he'd had some coffee too close to lights out, or any other excuse he could come up with. None of them believable. And Izzy would sigh at him, just like Izzy sighs at him now.
"Y'have a nightmare, Eddie?" he asks, and the illusion breaks. He never asked before. He never made Ed tell him. He never made Ed tell him anything.
The dam breaks too; Ed is sobbing already even as he nods, and before his head has bobbed twice his face is dripping wet. He doesn't ask if he can come in, if he can come closer, just like he never ever has, even though now he knows he should. He makes the usual excuses in his head as he crawls across the floor to the edge of Izzy's bed like a creature. He can't ask, he's crying too hard. He doesn't need to ask, Izzy invited him implicitly by talking to him. He's getting worse at this. He can only pray that's a good sign.
Izzy doesn't flinch away from him when Ed claws at his sheet. He doesn't push Ed off when Ed presses his tacky forehead to his cropped thigh through the covers. He doesn't tell Ed to fuck off, affectionately or otherwise. He just lets Ed cry on him, wet through the flimsy blanket until it sticks to them both, and if he has anything to say about it he holds his tongue. Ed cries hard enough it hurts, enough salt coming out of him he could have been thrown overboard again and ended up nearly the same. His eyes hurt, his throat hurts, his chest hurts, his fucking knuckles hurt from tearing into Izzy's bedding with such vicious desperation. He cries so hard, and for so long, that for some time in the middle of it he just ceases to exist.
When Ed gets put back together enough to feel things, the soaking wet blanket under his cheek is an awful combination of scratchy and slimy. It's not just tears on that for sure. Yuck. But on the other hand, Izzy's fingers combing rhythmically through his hair is one of the most lovely things Ed has ever felt in his fucking life - which is saying a lot since he stumbled down here to have a breakdown directly from being made love to. Izzy reads Ed's body as well as he ever has. They'd always been better communicating through their bodies than with words, but turns out that's not actually good enough all on its own.
"I'm sorry too, for the record," he murmurs. His voice is thick, like maybe he cried too, but when Ed - reluctant-no, fearfully - tilts his head up to check Izzy's face is dry. Izzy's hand falls away to let Ed move freely. Ed rubs his cheek harder on Izzy's thigh. The blanket scratches him, and it hurts, and that's part of why he's doing it. But Izzy's leg under him is warm and soft, and that's why too.
"What in the fuck are you sorry for?" he mutters. Izzy'd kept his voice low on purpose, but Ed's quiet because his throat is fucked. And his head is fucked too, making him slur like he's fucking drunk. He closes his eyes. He can't look at Izzy's face when he points out: "I shot your fucking leg off. 'S way more than fucking even." Izzy's hand comes back, brushing Ed's hair back from his face. It'll need a wash after this, salty and sweaty and snotty, but for now Izzy pulling and petting it untangled and mostly soft again is enough.
"It's not about being even," Izzy explains, patient like he was those same thirty years ago. And twenty, come to think of it. And ten, sometimes. Five, every now and then. Still, once in a while. He swallows several times before he continues. Ed hears his throat click dryly, feels a subtle shake come into his touch. "I want you to be- happy. When I've... not done that, I regret it. No matter what came before, or during, or after."
"So if I offer to let you cut something off...?" Ed floats, only half joking. Maybe a third. A quarter at least.
He can hear the slight smile in Izzy's voice when he says, "No, thank you. Twat."
Ed sits and thinks about that for a long time, until his stupid knee starts to hurt more than his stupid throat. He's done so much he can never repent for, taken what he can never replace, cost others things he can never repay. People he's cared for. People he's loved. People who've loved him too. Gravy Ben had said he could either not feel bad or he could kill himself, but if Izzy's anything to go by maybe there's a third option. Ed's followed Izzy's lead on less.
He's on the edge of sleep, somehow, kneeling on the hard deck at Izzy's bedside, when he mumbles near unintelligible into Izzy's thigh, "Had a dream about you."
Izzy's breathing turns choppy again instantly, his leg under Ed's cheek tensing up hard as a fucking rock. Nicely fucking done, Teach. Again.
"I could read in it, it was so weird," Ed adds quickly, in a panic. He tenses up too, putting a crick into his neck. He doesn't move to soothe it. "And the Republic was, like, all burned up and exploded and shit, and I put my leathers on underwater - that part actually was cool - well, first I was a fisherman, and then-"
"Edward," Izzy interrupts curtly.
"-you died," Ed finishes, though he'd been intending to go on rambling about all the parts that don't really matter. His eyes start to leak again, and he shifts position so that he can hide his face in the bend of Izzy's hip. "Felt real. Realer than when-" He can't say when. Izzy pets him with both hands now.
"I'm here," he says quietly, eventually, when it's clear Ed won't be completing his horrible, pathetic little sentence. "I'm okay."
"You can't leave me," Ed pleads, even knowing, now, it's so wrong of him to say. Echoing himself in the nightmare. "You're my only family."
"We don't own each other," Izzy says, gentle but steeled, like he's breaking the news to Ed he did die after all and there's nothing anybody could do. Ed whimpers. He shakes his head, still tucked into the curve of Izzy's body.
"You own me," he says. Begs.
"No," Izzy insists. Ed opens his mouth just to bite down on him. He doesn't bite hard, doesn't dig his teeth in with the intent to never let go, like he wants to, like he would have not even a month ago. He holds Izzy's flesh between his teeth, tongues at him, whines like a dog. Izzy keeps petting him like one. "No. Family's more than that, yeah? You build it so you can belong to something greater."
"Like a ship?" Ed asks. He gets his own spit on his nose, rubbed off from Izzy's skin. He needs to clean his teeth.
"Like a crew," Izzy corrects. Ed can't help the despondent groan that comes out of him at that, melodramatic and loud.
"They hate me," he whines. Izzy has the gall to laugh at him. Little shit.
"They're angry at you, and afraid of you," he acknowledges, smile lines creasing up the vowels. "But they care about you too. You wouldn't still fucking be here if they didn't."
Ed has to think about that too, half against his will. He has to think about how long it took them to turn against him, how god damn hard he had to push them until they finally pushed him back. He has to remember the couched sympathy in Frenchie's voice when he told Ed his bird story was impossible. He has to think of Fang's patience and forgiveness, his understanding, and how easily he was ready to move on, how he calmly taught Ed something new, alone with him, and then let Ed get to know him even after twenty years of Ed never bothering to before. Frenchie, standing just over the threshold of the same room as Ed, but calling him Captain again anyway, sort of, even though he isn't.
It's a strange, hollowing relief to realize he has apparently failed completely at the only thing he thought he was naturally, inescapably good at. Now he has no choice but to pick something, anything, and try.
"Come up here, Eddie," Izzy says, when Ed's knee and back have started to hurt enough Izzy must be able to see it written on him. Laboriously, and with many agonizing cracks, Ed climbs partially onto his feet, only just enough to crawl into Izzy's bed with him. Izzy pulls back his sheet for Ed to tumble under, and then throws it up over top of both of their heads. Ed curls into Izzy gratefully, remembering again those decades ago when he was the smaller one of them. They look at each other from too close to really see. Breathing the same air.
Slowly, as Ed's eyes adjust to the new depth of darkness in their little bundle, a devious, sly little smirk grows onto Izzy's face. It's familiar in a bittersweet, wistful way. Ed didn't miss it enough when it was gone.
"Since we're having a sleepover and all," Izzy drawls, and Ed knows to groan in preemptive - and affected, now, but not back then - embarrassment. "How big-?"
"Fuck off!" Ed snaps, laughing. He shoves at Izzy, and Izzy shoves back, and then suddenly they're ineffectually, half-assedly, joyfully wrestling like boys. Izzy gets in a good slap against Ed's bare chest, revealed by his tangled up robe. Ed tickles him in revenge, and he shrieks with raspy laughter - before kneeing Ed in the groin hard enough to take away his breath. Fucking bastard.
"Everything okay in here, boss?" Ed hears Frenchie ask, shaky and cautious, from the doorway. Ed is still recovering (and now possibly also hiding), curled up with his forehead pressed intimately into the dainty bone of Izzy's collar. Izzy pulls the sheet down so Frenchie can see them - Izzy's grinning face and staticky hair, and the carefully held still back of Ed's head.
"Yeah, we're good," Izzy says. Ed swallows down a wounded, euphoric noise with difficulty. It blocks up his throat. Not that he was planning to speak anyway.
"You sure you don't need me to kill him for you?" asks Jim, apparently there to check on Izzy at Frenchie's side.
"I'm not an invalid," Izzy scolds them, but for him the tone of it is as sweet as Ed takes his tea. "I can do my own killing still." Jim makes a doubtful noise. Izzy reaches around Ed's shoulders to flip them off. He lets his arm rest there when he's done with the gesture.
"Okay..." Frenchie says. "If you're sure." Ed can feel the heat of Jim's evil eye at his back, but they don't do or say anything worse and - alleged curses aside - he doesn't think they're quite superstitious enough to really, truly mean it. The two of them close the door behind them, like Ed was too busy dissolving into hysterics to do when he came in.
"They love you," Ed tells Izzy, as if he might not know. Izzy hums in agreement. He puts his hand back in Ed's hair, cups the back of his head to hold his face close where it is. Just like Stede does.
"I let them," he says. As if it's just that fucking simple. It isn't. It isn't simple at all, it's a million different broken little pieces, and some of them are lost forever, but some of them still fit, and that, at least, is pretty straightforward.
The tension - the warmth - builds up between them again, until it has a physical presence in the bed between them. Ed lets it, lets it grow and grow, and in that moment when he can feel Izzy start to get uncomfortable, he breaks it. He grins like the shark he is, all his teeth against the meat of Izzy's shoulder, gentle now with reawakened curiosity for what he is, who he can be.
Ed brags, "Really fucking big, mate," and keeps the two of them up all night.