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“I’m getting the hang of this, if I do say so myself,” says Stede, cheerily.
“And you do.”
“What’s that, Izzy?’
“Say so yourself.” The man looks entirely unimpressed, but it does take a lot to impress Izzy. Stede has accepted it by this point, and knows not to take it personally. Knows, too, that if Izzy actually wasn’t at least a little happy with him, he could leave the ship just about anywhere and find another pirate crew to join. And yet, port after port, he doesn’t.
And all Stede had ever wanted was for people to stay.
Stede attempts to spin his sword a little in a cool and impressive fashion, the kind of thing that Jim always does. He is not successful, but he also doesn’t injure himself, which is a win. “It sounds like you have a different opinion. Care to share with the rest of us?”
The crew is minding their own business around them, mulling around, doing this task and that as assigned by Izzy and Oluwande, so there isn’t really much of a rest of them. Only Izzy is paying much attention to Stede. Still, always good to check.
“Yeah, I’ll share.” Izzy’s own blade is also drawn, but, Izzy being Izzy, he holds it firm, his stance strong, as though he’s about to be attacked at any minute. “Stop bragging about how cool you think you are during a fucking raid, it’s a waste of time. Wait until we get home.”
Stede looks down at the captain of the merchant ship they’re mostly done taking over, the man’s throat under his boot. “Well, I think it’s fine. Don’t you, Captain… sorry, what did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t,” the man says, sounding fairly miserable about the whole affair.
“Fair enough, I thought my memory might be slipping. Anyway, I’m not in a rush.”
“Can you just kill me already?”
“I hope not,” Stede says, still cheery. “That’s not really my style, if it can be avoided. Can’t we avoid it? I’m a gentleman, after all.”
“You’re a goodamn pirate.”
“One can be both! He taught me that!”
And here, Stede gestures at Izzy, who doesn’t seem to agree. “Stop saying I taught you that, I didn’t teach you that.”
“Won’t you can it and just agree with me for once in your life?” Stede grumbles. He tries to accept Izzy, he really does, but sometimes it’s a lot, and the initial months of tension between them aren’t just going to evaporate in an instant.
“Fuck you,” says Izzy. There’s not much venom in it. Stede’s fairly sure that Izzy just says that whenever he’s not sure what else to say but wants to sound tough. And he can’t really blame him for wanting that, he is a pirate.
“Should you really be talking to your captain like that?” the enemy captain asks, sounding both impatient and rattled.
“There, do you see?” says Stede, feeling quite vindicated indeed. If this man, of all people, thinks that Stede deserves a bit more respect… “He says that you should be kinder to me!”
“More like, if you keep talking like that, it’ll be you under his boot, yeah?”
“Yeah!” Stede agrees, automatically, and he has had some particularly memorable dreams to that effect, though that might not be what the man is getting at. “I’ll step on you, and then you’ll be awfully sorry.”
Izzy raises an eyebrow, unphased—as he always is—by Stede’s bravado. Though he’s mostly come around to his new captain’s approach to piracy, he’s not exactly one to cheer Stede on. The effect of this is that while it’s always exciting when he does earn Izzy’s approval, they also spend much of their time out on the field in precisely this way. “Will you, now?”
“Will I…”
“Step on me? I’d like to see you try.”
“Should I… leave?” the man under Stede’s heel croaks.
“Fuck you, too,” says Izzy, and jams his blade into his chest, aiming for the heart, in one clean movement.
Or, well. As clean as it can be. It’s awfully dirty, just by the nature of it.
“I think the stabbing was a bit much,” says Stede, not much later. Just as soon as they’re back on the ship. He’s got to address these things promptly and clearly, that only seems right.
“You were going to kill him eventually,” Izzy says, already getting comfortable on one of Stede’s best chairs. “That’s how it works, during a raid. First mate does a lot of the dirty work, especially if the captain thinks he’s too good for it.”
Stede thinks back to Edward, how he never liked to strike the killing blow. Did Izzy think that was the reason why, because Ed thought himself above murder, and not because it was hard on him? He wonders sometimes if that was the root of their issues, their unwillingness to just have a little sit down and talk about what was eating each of them up inside.
“I wasn’t going to kill him,” Stede says. And it’s true; he’s not above it himself, these days, but it’s not ideal. And with the way he and the crew conduct things on this ship, it’s also usually avoidable. “We had a whole meeting about nonviolent conflict resolution just a few days ago. I wouldn’t go back on my word so quickly.”
“Wasn’t there,” says Izzy, shrugging, pulling something half-whittled out from wherever he’d stored it near the chair. Honestly, it’s nice he’s comfortable here, but Stede is going to get splinters from this eventually. “I had better things to do.”
“You were there, I saw you!”
“Then I wasn’t paying attention.”
Izzy is just fucking with him, he just likes the kind of reaction he can get from Stede when he acts like this, and Stede falls for it every time. Hook, line, and sinker—though that’s more Ed’s kind of thing, the fishing. What he doesn’t seem to realize is that Stede is fully aware of this. It’s just one of the little games they play, and it’s so hard to get Izzy to play that he just has to trick him into it, let him think he’s got the upper hand.
“In that case, pay more attention to me,” Stede says, in what he thinks of as his captain’s voice and Izzy only accepts in bed. That’s the other way the two of them play; Izzy, as it turns out, isn’t half as much a stick in the mud when he’s naked under Stede.
Izzy picks at his whittling with his pocket knife, no doubt leaving shavings on the floor. “And what if I don’t fucking want to?”
“Do it anyway! The way things turned out today, I got blood on my boots.”
“I got blood on my vest.”
“And I suppose you’re fine with that? You like that?”
“Nah. Pain in the ass to clean.” A beat, then he adds: “Leave your boots by the door, I’ll do everything together.”
Izzy often takes care of Stede’s leather. It seems like he doesn’t enjoy attention being called to it, though, as if he wants the affection he shows toward his captain to be silent. Probably thinks that Stede hasn’t realized that, either, and there’s where he’s wrong.
“Mmm. I will. Later. I need to thank you first—for saving me.”
Nobody saved anyone. They just did their jobs, and they were damn good at them, and there wasn’t much danger at all. But this, too, is how to talk to Izzy, and how to slowly get on his good side: make him feel like he’s of use to you. And he is! But making sure he knows that sometimes feels rather like Stede is trying to reward a rescued working dog that needs to be tricked into accepting treats.
Izzy puts down his whittling, and looks up. Bingo. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Stede says, lowering his voice. Like it’s a secret, a conspiracy. Like Izzy doesn’t know exactly what he wants to do tonight. He nods toward the bed. “Come with me.”
And Izzy nods back, and he follows orders.