Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was just one of those things they’d done for years and years—so long that it seemed like it’d always been a part of the intensely tangled thing that was Iz-and-Ed.

If it started anywhere, it started in the first apartment they shared. A one-room flat barely big enough for the both of them, with the cooker and the fridge stuffed into an alcove no larger than a closet. It was cold in the winter, sweltering in the summer, and their mattress was off the floor only by dint of a bed frame they’d scavenged from the alley. They neither of them remembered it fondly, exactly—years later, when Edward heard the building had been condemned, he’d come home with a bottle of cheap champagne from the off-license. But still. They’d been together.

They were young and hungry, burning phosphorous-bright. Eight, ten, twelve-hour shifts in kitchens, in bars. Nicking food from the walk-ins when they thought they could get away with it, frantic handjobs in the customer bathrooms before the dinner rush began. Then they’d crash into bed with their boots still on, only to wake up a few hours later—just enough time for a quick fuck, a coffee each, and a mad sprint for the train.

No one burns like that without burning out, especially not brilliant Eddie Teach. Sometimes Izzy saw it coming: the way Ed would get restless, all sharp edges and jittery hands. Chain-smoking every second he wasn’t on the line, barking back when the chef so much as glanced his way. Sometimes it hit without warning. The alarm would blare in the morning and Edward wouldn’t even twitch. He’d just be dead weight under the covers, eyes wide and empty. Couldn’t pull himself out of bed, couldn’t meet Izzy’s eye. Couldn’t do anything but roll away, bury himself in the blankets, and stare out the cracked window at the smudgy grey sky. Silent. Blank. Like the fire in him had gone out for good.

Izzy still worked those days. Hell, he worked more. He picked up extra shifts when he could, because the budget was tighter than Edward’s favorite leather trousers and the rent on their shoebox wasn’t going to pay itself. But when he finally stumbled through the door, half-asleep on his feet and aching all over, he’d dump his bag and coat in a heap and crawl onto the bed. He’d press close, sitting with his back to the wall, legs stretched along the lump of Edward’s body.

Then he’d read. Whatever book they had lying around—a supermarket spy thriller they’d found on the street or some pulpy sci-fi they’d gotten from the library—he’d pick it up and read into the heavy, stale air. His voice would stay low, barely above a whisper. Sometimes—often—he’d read for an hour without a sound from Edward. Just the steady rasp of pages turning, the hum of distant traffic through the thin walls. But sometimes Edward would shift closer, nudge his head against Izzy’s thigh, gaze still half-lidded and far away. His thumb would find his lower lip and trace it in a restless rhythm—back and forth, back and forth.

“Iz?” Edward would croak. His voice always got creaky around the third or fourth day—not enough water, Izzy said, though he always seemed to be pushing chipped mugs of tapwater into Edward’s unresisting hands. “What if our spaceship crashed ’n’ nobody could hear our S.O.S beacon?”

Izzy would dog-ear their page so he could think about it earnestly, fingers brushing through the fine, soft hairs at Edward’s temple.

“Anyone else on the planet?”

“No.”

“Atmosphere’s probably too poisonous to sustain life.”

“Yeah, prob’ly.”

“Were we injured in the crash?”

“I was. Got my arm all… fucked up. Mangled. You’re alright.”

“Hmmm.” If Edward could bear to open his eyes he’d peek up and see Izzy chewing on the inside of his cheek, turning the scenario round and round in his mind. “Guess I’d help you into our quarters, then. Get you comfortable on our bunk.”

“We share one?” Eddie’s voice would waver.

“Course. ’S double-wide, for both of us. And I’d lay you out with a pillow under your head. Then I’d get the proper strong painkillers from the medbay—the ones that’re like slipping into a warm bath with bubbles, just like you like—and I’d crack a window to let the air in and lay down with you and give us both a triple dose.”

If Edward was coming out of his mood a little, he might ask: “We’ve got a window in a spaceship?”

“Sure,” Izzy’d reply, tipping his head back against the wall. “They told us not to open it, but this is a special occasion.”

“And you’d stay with me.”

“Forever.”

It was always forever, every time Edward got this way. The two of them died together a thousand different ways, one never taking a breath without the other. If it was their plane that crashed they’d climb into one seat, fingers laced tight as they plummeted. If they were spies on the run, cover blown, minutes from capture, Izzy’d press their foreheads together so their last bullet could shatter both their skulls. If their surveying ship was stranded in the Arctic, timbers groaning and cracking from the pressure of the ice, they’d wrap their arms around each other and slip into the ocean, freezing irrevocably into a single tangled mass.

Izzy never called it macabre. Never said chin up, mate, this’ll pass. Never told Edward to think of something nice instead or promised him that things would look better tomorrow. He just stayed close: a steady, solid weight. And when Edward couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t do much of anything at all, Izzy read. Voice low and steady, no different than if Edward were wide awake and hanging on every word.

After all, they had forever.

Chapter Text

After Stede came back, things were good. Not perfect, and certainly not right away—no one, not even Stede fucking Bonnet, could breeze back into the wreckage of the lives he’d blown apart and pick up like nothing had ever gone wrong. There were tears. There were arguments. There were stiff, uncomfortable silences that came when nobody quite knew what to say. But then came the flowers—pink roses for Ed, followed closely by blue-black irises for Izzy—and somehow they all three found their stride, stumbling into something steady. Something that—well, it was good.

Technically, Stede still had his condo downtown. He’d rented it after leaving his house to Mary and the children; a polished little bachelor pad, all chrome fixtures and panoramic views. He still spent the occasional night there, maybe once or twice a week. Most of the time, though? He was at Ed and Izzy’s, crowding their bathroom counter with pots of cream and tins of pomade. Littering the kitchen table with half-read books and fancy stationery. The air felt warmer when he was around, and louder—full up with chatter and off-key singing and the kind of godawful jokes that made Izzy groan and Edward tackle him onto the couch, both of them wheezing with laughter like a matched pair of madmen.

It was the best things had been in years, probably. Maybe ever. That’s likely why Izzy didn’t see the signs before the wind changed. Didn’t notice when the fire in Edward’s eyes would gutter; didn’t catch the pauses, heavy and cotton-thick, between a question and his answer. It’s not as though Stede knew what to look for. Even if he’d noticed something just a touch off, Ed had gotten very, very good at smiling wide enough to hide the cracks.

So when Stede woke up on a Wednesday morning and found that Ed was still asleep, cocooned in his blanket, he thought nothing of it. He kissed the blanket-lump on top of its head, shuffled into his slippers, and bustled downstairs to the kitchen. Izzy was already there, leaning one hip against the counter as the kettle sputtered and steamed. He wore his jogging shorts low on his hips, a sweat-soaked tee shirt slung around his neck.

“Morning, love,” Stede pressed up against Izzy’s back, letting his hands come to rest on the dip of the smaller man’s waist. “Smell nice.”

Izzy scoffed. “Like fuck I do.”

“Very…” he took a deep breath in, nuzzling into Izzy’s damp hair, “masculine.”

“Pervert.”

Stede’s hand darted up to pinch at Izzy’s ribs, just hard enough to make the man hiss. “I’m trying to appreciate you—honestly, I don’t know why I bother.”

“Me neither. S’Edward up yet?”

“He was still asleep when I got up. Shall I go wake him?”

The kettle clicked off. Izzy pulled two mugs down from the cupboard and popped a fragrant teabag in each. “Don’t bother. I’ll handle deliveries today—he just needs to show up in time for us to open the kitchen.”

“Right!” Stede accepted his mug with a grateful little grin. He dumped in a spoonful of sugar—then another, and another—before asking, all innocence: “and that’d be… six?”

“Six? Bonnet—you do know when we open, don’t you?”

“…ssssssix? Thirty?”

Izzy paused in front of the fridge, carton of oat milk in his hand, and closed his eyes like he was summoning patience from some deep, deep internal well. “Five, Stede. The dining room opens at five. The kitchen opens two hours before that.”

“Ah! Yes, of course. Three o’ clock. That’s exactly what I meant.” Stede took an overeager sip of his tea and winced as it scalded his tongue. “So, Ed’s fine to sleep in a bit, then.”

“Right. Long as he’s out of here before three, we’ll manage.”

“Perfect. No need to wake him just yet.” Setting his mug down on the counter, Stede sidled back into Izzy’s space and hooked a finger coyly in the waistband of his jogging shorts. “What about you? What’s your diary look like for the day?”

“Trying to, what, pencil in time for a face-to-face?” Izzy’s cheek twitched. “Dead sexy.”

“Doesn’t have to be a face-to-face. I’m highly adaptable.”

Izzy turned then, leaning back against the counter with his hands braced behind him. He let his gaze drag slowly over Stede’s body, the tip of his tongue just barely brushing his lower lip. “Expand on that,” he said, voice going cool and professional.

Stede grinned, bright and easy and golden, before sinking to his knees on the worn lino. He shuffled closer, hands sliding up Izzy’s thighs. Then he smoothed his palms up and down the warm, pale skin, fingertips dipping just a little beneath the hem of Izzy’s shorts on each pass. “My team thinks this approach could be… mutually beneficial.”

“Your team?” huffed Izzy, tilting his head as he looked down at the other man. “That so?”

“Absolutely,” Stede said, his thumbs pressing slow, teasing circles just inside the hem of Izzy’s shorts. “Only top-tier service for our most valued partners. All hands on deck.”

Izzy rolled his eyes, but his gaze on Stede’s face was awfully fond and his stance widened just a fraction. Just enough. “Well,” he said, dry as ever, “I’d hate to be anything less than cooperative.”

It was a few minutes past three when Izzy’s phone rang—the tinny chorus of Queen’s “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy” warning him that it was his husband’s boyfriend (his boyfriend too, if you got down to it, and wasn’t that embarrassing) on the other end of the line.

“Bonnet,” he said curtly, dismissing Ivan with a jerk of his chin. “I really haven’t got time. Is Ed on his way?”

“That’s the thing...” Stede’s voice was high and strangled, the way it only got when he was proper worried. Izzy felt his heartbeat kick into a higher gear. “Um. He won’t get out of bed.”

“And you’ve tried to wake him?”

Stede made an exasperated little hissing noise in the back of his throat and Izzy could precisely imagine the face that went with it: brows drawn in, mouth twisted tight and impatient. “Of course I’ve tried! The first time he told me to fuck off and since then he hasn’t said a thing I could understand.”

For half a second, the kitchen floor tilted precariously. Izzy had to grab at the stainless steel countertop to keep from tipping along with it. “Fuck.”

Maybe Ed’s knee is just acting up? But even as the thought crossed his mind, Izzy dismissed it. He’d known Edward far too long and too well to believe that. If it was just the knee he’d probably be in the kitchen and trying to walk on it, the stubborn, reckless twat. No; this was something else—something Izzy should have seen from a mile off. How long had it been coming? Had Ed been awake just this morning, suffering in silence while Izzy was downstairs—canoodling? With fucking Bonnet?

“Izzy?”

“Right, yeah. Fuck.” Izzy scrubbed a hand over his eyes. “I’ll tell the kitchen he’s ill; we can handle tonight without him.”

“Is he? Ill? Should he see a doctor?” The strangled quality in Bonnet’s voice was turning into a sort of a desperate whine, his vowels pulling longer and thinner like taffy. Christ, Izzy realized with a queasy jolt, Stede’s never seen him like this.

“It just… gets bad sometimes.” He had to step slowly here, carefully. Bonnet spiraling out now would only heap shit on top of shit. But what did Stede even know, really? He’d watched Ed take his pills in the mornings, but had he ever realized why? Did he understand that brilliance like Ed’s came with a price, that sometimes the whirring engines in his head just seized up and stopped running?

Izzy dragged a hand through his hair, nails digging in at the scalp. Focused on the dull pain. Let it anchor him. “You know how his head works. He’s just been up for so long… I should’ve known he was headed for a downturn. Should’ve looked out for it.”

“Oh, love...” Stede’s voice went soft in an instant, comforting as a cashmere blanket, like Izzy was the one who needed looking after. Like he wasn’t wasting his worry on the wrong person. “That’s not your job.”

“Of course it fucking is,” Izzy snapped, sharper than he meant to be. “I’m his husband, Bonnet. Just—” he dragged in a breath and glanced around the kitchen. The usual chaos of prep was already in full swing: Jim filleting fish as fast as their knives could move, Ivan knee-deep in veg, and Roach managing three simmering pots like he had extra arms, tossing in spices and splashes of coconut milk without so much as a glance. They could survive a Wednesday night without their head chef… but if Izzy bailed now to go sit bedside, the whole line would start to wobble. “Sit with him, yeah? He’s not—he won’t try to hurt himself, but not being alone is better. Try to get him to eat something, too. I’ll come home early as I can.”

“Of course. Of course, love.”

Izzy didn’t need the softness—not the way Edward did. But in that moment, the way Stede said love… something inside his chest eased. The iron band of anxiety around his heart loosened a fraction. Enough to breathe, at least.

It had always been just the two of them. Him and Ed, shouldering the whole world on their own. Jack might pitch in when he was around, yeah—bringing a pizza sometimes, or helping Izzy wrestle Ed into the shower on the worst days. That’d always been sporadic, though: a favor, not a constant. Now there was someone else. Someone who’d keep an eye on Edward until Izzy came home. Someone who might be better at coaxing him into eating, or take over reading when Izzy’s voice gave out. That kind of presence… that kind of help… It sort of made Izzy want to cry.

“Thank you, Stede,” he murmured, pushing the words past the sudden lump in his throat.

“Oh, love,” Stede breathed again, and oh, there it was: the limit of Izzy’s tolerance for gooey, saccharine emotions when they were T-minus two hours from taking their first order. Christ’s sake, Izzy still had a big fuck-off pan of paella to get started.

“Alright,” he said, squaring his shoulders. “Tell him I’ll be back, soon as I can. Doubt he’ll give a shit, but—“

“I’ll tell him. You go run your kitchen like a little tyrant.”

Izzy snorted. It only sounded a little watery. “Ta.”

His hands didn’t shake when he slid the phone into his pocket. His heart wasn’t trying to punch through his ribs anymore. Just a few hours. Just like they’d done before—dozens, maybe hundreds of times. He dragged in one last deep breath, heavy and sore in his chest, and got to work.

Every light in the house was blazing when Izzy finally stepped back through the front door, shoulders slumped, his eyes swollen with exhaustion. There was a noise drifting in from the den—the familiar, polite sound of a sitcom laugh track—but even with it the air felt muffled, like someone had wrapped the whole house in gauze. The back of Izzy’s neck prickled.

He kicked his work shoes into the hall closet and padded in his socks into the den. Stede was curled up in a miserable little ball of blankets at one end of the couch, spine pressed to the armrest like he wanted to disappear into the upholstery. A rerun of Black Books played at half-volume behind him, but he wasn’t watching. His eyes were on Izzy the moment he walked in.

“He asleep?” Izzy asked, stopping in the doorway.

“I think so?”

“You’re not sure?” It took effort for Izzy to keep the edge out of his voice. He didn’t mean it to sound like an accusation, but fuck—if Edward was still awake, why the hell wasn’t Stede with him?

“He—” For just a moment, Stede’s expression twisted, turning haunted and agonized and very, very small. Then it was gone again, smoothed back into a practiced sort of calm—albeit with worried little lines around the mouth and eyes. “He told me he didn’t want me in the room. He was… really very emphatic about it.”

Izzy’s jaw flexed. He bit down on the first reaction that clawed its way up—That shouldn’t have fucking mattered!—and ground it to pulp between his molars. This wasn’t Stede’s fault. He was helping, he was, and Izzy was fucking grateful. Ed did have his nasty moments when he got like this—cruel and sharp and full of hate for anything soft that dared to love him. So instead of snapping, Izzy heaved a deep, shuddering sigh and perched on the arm of the couch.

“Thank you.” After a moment’s hesitation, he carded his fingers once through Stede’s hair. This type of tenderness still didn’t come easy to him—not the way it did to Ed and Stede. They were always all over each other, wrestling and snuggling like a couple of puppies. Izzy took more patience, more coaxing, swiping his claws at anything that dared come too close until he’d been properly plied with treats. Sometimes he still wondered why Stede ever bothered. “For staying.”

The brittle smile on Stede’s face turned a shade more genuine. “Nowhere else I’d want to be.” He wriggled a hand free of his blanket and gave Izzy’s knee a soft squeeze. “You should sleep with him tonight,” he added. “I’ll take the guest room.”

“Oh, allowed to sleep in my own bed. What a privilege,” Izzy muttered. A year ago, the sarcasm in his tone would’ve been real bitterness. A year ago he would’ve felt alone, even with Edward upstairs.

“Well someone ought to, and I’ve been banned.”

Izzy huffed, weak but unmistakably fond. Then, with a final chaste press of his lips to Stede’s temple, he dragged his aching body upstairs.

The bedroom was the only dark corner left in the house, like the lights couldn’t bear infringe on Edward’s misery. The light from the hall seemed almost offensive, slicing across the floor as Izzy pushed the door open, careful not to make a sound.

Edward didn’t stir. He might’ve been asleep. Or he might not’ve been bothered by the sudden brightness, buried as he was under the duvet. No movement, no sound; only the ragged end of a braid poking free near the pillow. Izzy undressed in the sliver of light and tumbled into bed, fighting against his exhaustion to keep his movements unobtrusive. When he tucked himself up close around Edward’s back, the smell hit him almost immediately: sweat and sleep and misery. He hated how familiar it was.

“I’m back, Edward,” he whispered into the dark, pressing his forehead to the curve of his husband’s spine. “I’m here.”

And maybe Ed heard him, maybe he didn’t. Either way, Izzy’s eyes slipped shut and he was asleep before the silence ever answered back.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Izzy skipped his usual run. Instead he padded barefoot into the kitchen in his boxers and an old, stretched-out hoodie of Edward’s, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Moving on automatic, he gathered what he could carry: one thermos of strong black coffee and one of water, two mugs, an orange, and an unopened packet of biscuits. On a normal day he’d be dead set against the biscuits, grumbling about crumbs in the bed, but today wasn’t normal. When Edward got like this, the petty shit didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting him to eat. To drink. To open his eyes.

He hesitated before heading back upstairs, fingers hovering over a book left out on the table. It was definitely Bonnet’s, with that bright, flashy cover, the title embossed in shiny gold leaf: The Golden Age of Piracy: Fact, Fiction, and Fabulous Lies. The kind of pop-nonfiction twaddle you might buy at an airport kiosk. It’d do well enough.

The bedroom was just as he’d left it: dim and quiet and stagnant. Ed hadn’t moved. That was fine. That was normal. Izzy set his haul on the bedside table and climbed back into bed, this time propping himself against the headboard. He shoved a pillow behind his lower back—Christ, but he’d gotten old—and settled in, opening Bonnet’s book and clearing his throat.

“Chapter One,” he intoned softly, pausing to glance sideways at the lump under the blankets. Still nothing. “The Legend. The sloop arrived in the afternoon of April Fools Day 1696, swinging around the low, sandy expanse of Hog Island and into Nassau’s wide, dazzlingly blue harbor…”

They were some way into chapter three when the Edward-lump stirred. Just a twitch at first, a barely-there shift of weight. Then something slowly wriggled beneath the duvet—a hand, maybe— and pressed with heartbreaking tentativeness against Izzy’s thigh. Izzy didn’t move, though every one of his instincts screamed at him to grab Edward, haul him upright, and start shoving biscuits into his mouth. He’d been without food for what, a full day? Maybe longer? But decades of agonizing trial and error had taught him that urgency now would only accomplish tears and frustration. So instead, he slowly reached out and rested his hand on what he guessed was Ed’s head through the blankets. Just enough pressure to say I’m here before he lifted it again without a word, turned the page, and kept reading.

“There was a saying,” he read, his throat going tight around the words, “‘Those who would go to sea for pleasure would go to hell as a pastime.’ Only the ignorant or naive did so voluntarily.”

“Iz?” Came a small, fragile voice from beneath the covers. Izzy’s breathing hitched. He closed the book around his finger, saving their page, and murmured:

“Yeah, Eddie.”

A single brown eye peeked out from the depths of the duvet, red and watery, and blinked blearily up at him. “Could we have been pirates, d’you think?”

One corner of Izzy’s mouth twitched up in a smile. “Sure. You’d’ve been captain, since you’re the clever one. I’d be your first mate.”

“Good pirates?”

“The fuckin’ best. So much loot we’d have to chuck it in the ocean, just to make room for more.”

“And what if…” The next words came out too broken to understand, drowned in a choked-off sob. Ed coughed, swallowed, tried again. “What if there was a storm?”

Izzy chewed on the inside of his cheek. He knew this script. He’d said the lines before, time and again. He should talk about the wave that caught them both off guard, the sea snatching them up like they weighed nothing. How they held each other close all the way down. How they didn’t struggle, didn’t panic—just slipped under, side by side, and that was that.

But this time, the story sat uneasy in his stomach. Maybe it was just the book getting to him; they’d just been reading about the pirate crews—these desperate, unlikely groups of men who depended on one another for their very lives. Maybe it was the memory of Stede on the couch last night, the way he sat there curled up small but still stubbornly determined. Or the way Jim had nodded sharply and said got it, chef when Izzy’d announced that Edward wasn’t coming in—the way Fang’d briefly squeezed his shoulder and said the same.

Maybe, Izzy thought… Maybe they weren’t two pirates alone in the middle of the sea anymore.

So he cleared his throat and said instead: “Well… we’d have a crew, wouldn’t we? They’ll be up on deck right now, getting us through it.”

There was a long pause. Long enough that Izzy opened the book up in his lap again. He began dragging his finger down the page, trying to find their place to keep reading.

Then, from under the blankets: “The crew hate me.”

“Come off it, no they don’t…”

“They don’t listen to me anymore. They hate me. Hate us.” There was a thin, sharp edge of something in Edward’s voice… irritation, maybe. Or petulance. Fuck it, Izzy thought, feeling a little hysterical himself. Angry’s loads better than empty. He laid a hand on the lump of Eddie’s shoulder and tried again with a little more conviction:

“They’ll listen if you tell ‘em how we get through the storm. They just wanna get out the other side, same as us.”

“I don’ want them to.” Edward withdrew deeper into his cocoon of blankets until he wasn’t touching Izzy at all, not even sharing warmth. The rejection stung harder than it should’ve, and Izzy bit down on his lower lip himself from snapping something sharp and mean. Instead he sighed, forced himself to look down at the book again.

“Merchants were compelled to adopt aggressive tactics to fill their crews—”

“I’ll blow up the mast.”

“What?”

“Blow it right up with a cannon.” Edward’s voice was distant and flat, like he wasn’t talking to Izzy at all.

“Edward,” Izzy said, almost pleadingly. Against every better instinct he broke one of his own rules: he reached for the blanket, peeling it back just enough to see Edward’s face. To see the hollow, dead-eyed glower that’d haunted so many of their worst days together; their bleakest, longest nights. “Eddie…”

“Then we’ll be proper fucked. All of us going down with the ship.”

It shouldn’t have hurt. It was just a fucking story—a way to coax Edward into himself enough that he’d eat something, maybe sit up in bed. But Izzy had fucked up the second he pictured it too clearly: their little ship riding out the storm, crewed by the people they loved. Stede and Roach and Fang and Jim in fucking… flowy shirts or leather or ropes—whatever pirates wore—lashed by the rain, helpless as their captain hauled a cannon into position to end them all.

They’d be scared, wouldn’t they? Scared like he was, every time Ed got like this. Scared that this time would be the one where Ed did something more awful, more permanent, than just rotting away in bed.

“I’d stop you.” Izzy reached out tentatively to brush Edward’s cheek with the backs of his fingers. There was a note like pleading—almost whining—in his voice that he couldn’t seem to regulate. “That’s what the first mate’s for.”

But Ed moved faster than Izzy expected. His hand shot up and seized Izzy’s wrist in a bruising grip, nails biting into the vulnerable skin of the underside.

“Fuckin’ traitor.”

“Shit, Edward, let go—”

Now Edward was staring up at Izzy. He was still the most beautiful man Izzy’d ever seen, even with pillow-lines pressed into his face and flat, cold loathing in his eyes. He didn’t mean it. Izzy hoped to god he didn’t mean it.

“Y’know what?” Edward hissed, voice cracked and rough. “You can’t stop me ‘cause you’re already dead. I told you to kill yourself and y’did it: blew your own face off. That’s how fuckin’ obsessed you are with me. Can’t go five minutes without hovering around, yammering in my ear—maybe once you’ve carked it I c’n finally get some peace ’n’ quiet.”

Suddenly Ed kicked out with his good leg at the same time he shoved hard from his shoulder, and Izzy went sprawling off the bed. He landed heavily, his elbow hitting the nightstand. The mugs rattled like loose teeth against the wood, the orange went rolling across the floor. By the time he found his feet again there were pins and needles blooming all down his arm; he curled into it for a moment, sucking in air through his teeth.

”Fuck you, Ed,” he hissed, squeezing his tingling fingers into a fist. Edward didn’t mean it he didn’t mean it he didn’t mean it he didn’t—“Drown, if you want to drown.”

“Get out,” Ed replied, with venomous calm. “Get the fuck out, Izzy. I don’t want you here.”

It was the simple clarity of that sentence: I don’t want you here, that stabbed like a shard of ice into Izzy’s chest. It shouldn’t have mattered. He and Ed had said worse, far worse, to each other over the years. But nothing had felt true the way this did. Not in a while. Not since Stede came back.

Izzy turned to leave without a word, arm still tingling, wrist throbbing where Ed’s nails had bitten in. At the door, he found himself pausing—just for a second. Just in case Edward changed his mind. The lump on the bed had gone still again, as though nothing at all had happened.

He stepped into the hall, shut the door gently at his back, and collapsed back into it. His knees felt oddly watery, like they might not hold him up for much longer. He’d told himself a hundred times not to take it personally—not to take him personally, when he got like this. But fuck, it was hard, wasn’t it? When the man you loved all but said it’d be better if you were dead.

I don’t want you here. Can’t go five minutes without hovering around, yammering in my ear—that’s how obsessed you are with me.

Something deep in Izzy’s gut—something in the core of him—felt like it was crumbling. Was Edward right, after all? What had Izzy ever done except follow Ed around, throw himself into Edward’s dreams, beg Edward to look at him with clear eyes again—

He wasn’t sure how long he stood there, limbs too heavy to properly move, every fight he’d ever had with Edward playing and replaying in his head. He startled when he heard a noise on the stairs, though, and came round to see Stede halfway up them, his fingers tight on the bannister and his eyes radiating concern.

“Booted out too?” Stede said softly, mouth quirking in an apologetic smile.

“Y’reckon? Fuck.” Izzy tried to smile, but it probably looked more like a grimace on his numb face. He scrubbed a hand over his mouth and up through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes. “Don’t fancy trying to get‘m to eat for the rest of the day.”

“We’ll give him some time, hmm? Say—you didn’t leave my pirate book in there, did you?”

“Did, yeah.”

“Izzy! I was enjoying that.”

Instead of making Izzy bristle, the note of indignant irritation in Stede’s voice was weirdly comforting. This ridiculous man, Izzy thought, and you let him in. Christ, you have gone soft.

Not quite so soft, though, that he didn’t narrow his eyes at Bonnet and sneer: “I haven’t chucked it in a tiger enclosure—’s right next to the bed. Go on: pop in and get it.”

Stede’s brow wrinkled and he leaned toward the bedroom door a moment, like was considering it. Then he shook his head.

“Give him some time,” he repeated firmly, clasping his hands together at his sternum. “I’ll check on him in a bit. For now, the kettle’s just boiled and there’s a BBC documentary on pirates I’ve been keen to check out. You can watch it with me, since you’re the reason I can’t read my book.”

Soft or not, Izzy didn’t have any more fight in him today. He sighed through his nose and rolled his eyes for show, but followed Stede downstairs all the same.

It was another day and a half before Izzy saw Edward again—the longest they’d ever been apart during one of Ed’s dark spells. For the first time, Izzy wasn’t spending every minute he wasn’t at work by Edward’s side, reading book after book until the words blurred together on the page. He went on his normal run in the mornings, started a chicken stock (enough so that Stede could bring Edward soup for days, if necessary), went to work, covering for the gap in their line as best he could. He even stayed for a beer with Fang and Ivan after the house closed on Friday night.

Stede’s eyes would shine softly every time he looked at Izzy. Said it was fucking healthy for him and Eddie, breaking this kind of entrenched codependent behavior. It probably was, too.

He fucking hated it.

Every minute of that day and a half Izzy felt about a heartbeat away from clawing his face off, as if that’d quell the anxiety and dread crawling like insects just under his skin. People who didn’t absolutely need to speak to him at work kept their distance, not that he could fucking blame them. He spent most of his shift glowering at customers through the service window, burned practically a whole night’s worth of oven-roasted aubergine, and once nearly came to blows with a busboy—probably would’ve, too, if he hadn’t recalled that technically, he was their bloody HR department.

He yearned for the days before he quit smoking. Not just for the nicotine, either; it would’ve given him something to do with his hands that wasn’t checking his phone every seven seconds, waiting for an update on Edward.

Soup :) Stede texted, at 8:25 PM.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Izzy all but shouted at his phone, gripping it like he might be able to throttle out a better answer. Jim looked up from carving a massive steak, just long enough to shoot him an unimpressed glance. Izzy bit back a fuck you too, Jimenez, and stomped to the little office he and Edward shared to chuck his phone in the desk drawer.

He couldn’t fucking take this. Not the uncertainly, not the stupid bloody lack of control. He trusted Stede, of course he did—but then again, could he actually trust Stede? Did Stede know that Ed might eat Ritz crackers when he was like this, but never Saltines? Could he brush and plait Ed’s hair when he wouldn’t lift his head off the fucking pillow? How the fuck could Izzy trust that he wouldn’t just fucking leave again, now that things weren’t all heart eyes and lazy Sunday morning lovemaking and fucking… kittens and roses?

(He wouldn’t. Izzy knew he wouldn’t, damn his stupid sincere apologies and his stupid twat smile. Didn’t stop Izzy from pressing his forehead to the closed office door, flexing and squeezing his fists helplessly, trying to work the feeling back into his fingers. Wishing there was something in this stupid fucking building he was allowed to punch.)

That night he fell asleep on the couch, his shoes kicked off into a corner somewhere and his white chef’s jacket slung haphazard over the armrest. Muted telly playing Planet Earth in the background. He had the presence of mind to wonder, just for a moment, if Stede was sleeping in the guest room tonight. Was anyone watching Edward? He should check. Just peek his head in. Eddie might need something, might want…

He was out before he could finish the thought.

He found himself dreaming of the deck of a ship, pitching so wildly he could barely keep his feet underneath him. He wanted—needed—to set their course to rights, but the steps to the quarterdeck seemed insurmountable and besides, the wheel was broken all to fuck. The waves were towering things now, sweeping over the rails, across the deck, cold and vicious and relentless. Someone lost their footing, tumbled, sliding past Izzy on their belly while they grabbed wildly for a loose rope, for something to stop them being swallowed by the sea. By the time he reached for them they were gone. He screamed, and he couldn’t hear himself over the thunder, and they were going to die, going to die, going to die…

As Izzy breached the surface of consciousness, gasping for his first waking breath, his heart was beating wildly in his throat. For a moment he half-expected the floor to pitch under him, to fall off the couch and into a hungry sea. But as he opened his eyes and sat up blearily, he found himself in his own familiar living room again, bathed in the kind of soft, greyish light you got just after dawn. His back pinched sharply as he stretched, a fuck you for sleeping anywhere but on a firm-spring mattress after the age of forty-five, and he would’ve groaned and stretched about it but something had woken him, hadn’t it…

Bare feet on carpet don’t make much noise, but it’d been enough to tug him towards consciousness as Edward shuffled down the hall, down the stairs.

As soon as he realized it, all of Izzy’s attention focussed immediately on Edward. He didn’t turn towards him, not yet. But stealing a glance from the corner of his eye, he tried to get a read on his husband’s mood. Out of the bedroom was a good sign. This moment of reentry into the world was always a delicate thing, though. Ed might be on the upswing—finally stabilizing—or he might be teetering on the edge of mania. Izzy hoped—Christ, did he hope—that after nearly thirty years together he could tell the difference.

Edward was wearing his favorite pink velvet robe, the fabric snugged up across his chest to tuck under his armpits, and his damp hair was pulled back from his face with an oversized satin scrunchie. He shuffled across the kitchen floor like a sleepwalker, slow and deliberate. That was good. It was when he bounced out of bed and started pirouetting through the house like a sugarplum fairy that Izzy knew he had to worry.

The fridge opened with a sigh, and then there was a soft scrabbling noise as the things inside were rearranged. Izzy’s heart executed a tight, nervous little thud-jump-thud. Hunger was another good sign. Hunger meant Edward was coming back to his body.

When Ed shuffled back into view he was clutching a plastic clamshell of raspberries almost the exact same shade of bruised red-pink as his robe. He popped a few into his mouth, chewing as he stared unabashedly at Izzy. Izzy found himself staring back, all of his earlier subtlety abandoned. There were shadows under Edward’s eyes, dark and heavy, but behind them—at last—was a flicker. Just the faint, stubborn glimmer of something that hadn’t been there yesterday. Like a pilot light: tucked low, but still burning.

Clearing his throat once, then again, Izzy found the nerve to rasp: “Eddie?”

At the sound of his name, Edward’s face crumpled. He swayed forward where he stood, like he was a breath away from tumbling across the space between them. Like he might just collapse into Izzy’s lap and stay there, if he could make it that far.

“Iz—” Ed’s face twisted further, a knot of pain and confusion and abject, desperate hope. Fat tears hung in his eyelashes. The bitter aftertaste of their argument still hung in the air around them, but it didn’t stop Izzy from shoving himself to standing and crossing the room, cradling Ed’s jaw in his hands, brushing the tears away with the pads of his thumbs before they had a chance to fall.

Edward’s head dropped heavily, landing in the crook of Izzy’s neck. His fingers stayed tight on Izzy’s elbow while he stretched to ditch the raspberries on the counter. “Stay…”

“I’m right fuckin’ here, Ed,” Izzy murmured. “Not going anywhere.”

It took some rearranging, but they finally settled onto the couch, Ed curled with his head in Izzy’s lap, his fingers tangled in the drawstring of his husband’s sweatpants. Izzy scrubbed his nails gently across Ed’s scalp and let the smell of him—sleep, freshly-clean skin, a hint of citrus from the fancy shampoo Stede bought him—fill his lungs.

There was a moment of stillness then, before the relief hit Izzy like vertigo.

“Fuck,” he breathed, shaky with it. “Eddie.”

“Iz,” Ed answered, shaky but certain, like the second half of a prayer. He took a few slow, steady breaths, in and out, before he licked his lips and whispered: “I wouldn’t blow up our ship.”

He sounded wrecked about it, like he’d had the same nightmares as Izzy. The ground tilting out from under his feet. The hungry ocean rushing up to claim them. Just the foggy memory of it made Izzy’s throat tense.

“Said I wouldn’t let you,” he replied anyway, voice gone husky and rough. “My friends live there, you selfish prick.”

Edward made a stoppered, choking noise, halfway between a laugh and a sob. “Right. And I don’t… Izzy, Iz—I wouldn’t want you to actually…”

“Said I’m not going anywhere, either.”

Ed burrowed in tighter, pressing his face into Izzy’s threadbare sleep shirt, against the warm softness of his belly. His breath tickled Izzy’s skin as he mumbled: “Indestructible little fucker.”

Some time later, when the sun had risen enough to pool golden on the living room floor, Stede came down from a fitful sleep in the guest room to find both of his boyfriends dozing on the couch. Ed was half-draped across Izzy’s chest, his face tucked into the hollow where his neck met his shoulder and his arms pinned under Izzy’s torso. One of Izzy’s legs was slung high around Ed’s waist—the angle made Stede wince just looking at it—and the other had seemingly vanished somewhere between the couch cushions.

Stede knew he should wake them; really, he did. Edward might be out of bed, yes, but a crick in his neck wasn’t going to do wonders for his mood. And Izzy… well, Izzy hadn’t even bothered to change out of last night’s clothes, for heaven’s sake.

It was Izzy’s sleeping face, more than anything, that stopped him. He just looked so very peaceful. So utterly at rest. The furrow that’d lived between his brows for days was gone, smoothed over like wet sand at the waterline. The harsh pinches at the corners of his eyes had softened back into crow’s feet and laugh lines. One of his hands was nestled in Edward’s hair, grey tendrils threaded through his fingers like ivy climbing a ruin. Growth clinging so tightly to the old stone that it becomes part of the architecture, impossible to separate without collapse.

Stede stood there, barefoot at the edge of the sunlight, and let the sight of them anchor him. Aches in hips and necks could be soothed in the tub, massaged away with careful hands. He’d gotten quite good, over the years, at tending to that kind of discomfort. But this kind of bone-deep contentment—fragile as it might sometimes be—was something Stede hadn’t really known before he met these two.

He was happy to let it go on a little longer.

Chapter Text

For all of Izzy’s life—at least, all of it that counted—dying by Edward’s side had seemed like the best possible end to their story. He’d spun it out a thousand ways, from the tragic poisonings to the doomed last stands, through every star-crossed-lovers chiché that even Bill Shakespeare would’ve called a bit much.

But they weren’t ratty, twatty little punks anymore, barely making it from one day to the next. They co-owned a house, had their own restaurant. Izzy took a daily multivitamin, for fuck’s sake. If his twenty-three-year-old self could’ve seen him now, the scrawny little shit would’ve probably sniffed and gone, actually—I’ll take the murder-suicide, cheers. What the fuck did he know, though?

Yeah, Izzy took his fucking vitamins and needed glasses to read; and yeah, Edward had to tape up his bad knee more days than he didn’t. They fought hammer and tongs over the chef’s specials and usually ended up snogging in the walk-in afterwards; half-giddy, half-embarrassed to be acting like sweaty little commis chefs. They had a golden, ridiculous boyfriend who took them to flea markets on the weekends and had gotten Edward hooked on Love Island. They were on Ivan’s fucking pub trivia team.

They were fucking alive.

Edward’s flame guttered again a few months later, flickering low as the days got shorter and the cold started to settle in. It was shit, yeah—but thankfully, not all that unexpected. By the time the last of the oak leaves outside their window had rotted away to slick brown mush, all Ed seemed to want was to curl up into a gloomy little ball and vanish under the covers. Izzy would come home and hang his bag on the peg in the hall, kick his shoes into the closet, and open the bedroom door to find Stede already there—perched against the wall with his laptop on his lap, legs stretched out beside the vague, lumpy shape of Edward under the duvet.

“Hello, love,” Stede would say softly, pushing his readers up into his hair. “Is it story time?”

And Izzy’d grunt in a vague affirmative and pick up whatever book was on the nightstand—some musician’s biography Ed had been paging through or a pulpy sci-fi they’d gotten at the library—and he’d climb into bed on Edward’s other side. He’d start reading in a low, steady murmur, soft enough not to disturb the hazy late-night quiet. He rarely made it through more than a few lines before Stede chimed in with a breathy little hmm! or an earnest, delighted gasp. Izzy would shoot him a glare over the rims of his glasses until Stede pantomimed zipping his lips, wide-eyed and solemn.

Eventually, Ed might shift just enough to nudge his head against Izzy’s thigh, eyes half-shut but tracking the rhythm of his voice. His thumb would start its usual path across his bottom lip—back and forth, back and forth—like his body needed something to do while his brain slowly floated back toward them.

“Iz?” Ed would croak. “What if we were a band, yeah, and our tour bus broke down in the middle of the desert and there was no one around for hundreds of miles?”

And before Izzy could come up with an answer Stede would say: “Ah! It’s a good thing we were in the Mojave Desert, then—have you ever heard of the Mojave Desert Phone Booth?”

“No,” Izzy would respond, deadpan: “of-fucking-course I haven’t.”

“Well, as it sounds—it’s one single phone booth in the middle of the Mojave, hundreds of miles from anything. And people from all over the world call it, on the off chance that a total stranger in the desert will pick up.”

“And it’ll ring?” There’d be a wobble in Edward’s voice, but at least they could hear him from under the covers.

“Just our luck,” Izzy’d say. “Finally somewhere with no cell service, and telemarketers are still breathing down our necks.”

“No!” Stede’s eyes would shine. “Wouldn’t you know it, it’s a record producer! He’s fed up with all the office politics, and he just wants to ask a stranger if he should pack it all in and retire to…”

“To Florida, Bonnet.”

“To Florida, of course, because he’s always wanted to just drive a golf cart around. So he calls the Mojave Desert Phone Booth, hoping for a sign—”

“You should pick up, Edward, you’re the only one of us with any people skills.”

To which Stede would say: “Ex-cuse me; I think I’m a perfectly good conversationalist—”

“When you met Jim’s nan you told her congratulations on raising a terrifying thing.”

“I was only on the third level of Duolinguo Spanish then—they hadn’t gotten to the nonbinary options!”

And that’s when Edward might let out the smallest—the absolute smallest, most watery breath of a laugh, but it would be enough to make Izzy’s heart melt right then and there in his chest.

They might not get more than that out of him today, but Izzy wasn’t in a rush.

After all, the three of them had forever.