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There’s shit that’s just a fact of life.
Shit like—you get beat if you’re small, you get dead if you’re useless, you get fucked if you’re pretty.
Ed was small once, but he loved his ma more than he feared that fuckwad of a man that sired him, so he learned how to be smart and ruthless. What he did that night eats at him if he looks at it sideways. Turns him brutal and heavy if he looks at it head-on, so he doesn’t look at it at all. Enough that he fixed it. How is a fact best left buried, and besides—he doesn’t stay small for long.
Never been useless, thank fuck. Less good at being who people expect him to be, but just like before he learns. Blends in when needed. Keeps his plans and his smarts to himself until it’s the right time to show off. Until it works for him—he already knows how to be smart and ruthless, after all.
The pretty thing though, that’s more of a problem.
Half of it isn’t his fault. Can’t really control the gift given him by his ma, now can he? But some of it, yeah. Some of the problem is his own willfulness, he knows. He likes his hair long. He likes moving a certain way. He likes feeling—
Well.
Gets him in trouble, don’t it.
But he makes do, because he always has. Always will.
Which means Ed fucks so he doesn’t get fucked, or knifes a shithead when he can’t turn the tables—where depends on how important they are, how much Ed can get away with. Left a sailor bleeding out on the docks once and he was dead by morning. Not that it’s Ed’s fault, really.
Never Ed’s fault, those things.
Being pretty and the way that makes other men feel out on the sea in a closed up coffin of wood and endless drudgery isn’t either, but it sticks with him, haunts his steps. Ed gets good at managing the bother. Handling the situations as they arise. Builds himself a bit of a reputation. Gets easier, then. Gets to where Ed doesn’t think much of it really, until—
“For fuck’s sake,” says Hands. “You lying twat.”
“What. Never been a liar,” Ed babbles, digging his fingers into the pot. Coin clinks. Ed thinks about getting a ring so that the clinking can be more obvious, more obnoxious. He winks at Hands. “I’m a certified fucking gentleman, you piece of shit. Watch your mouth.”
“And I’ll eat my big toe if you didn’t cheat,” is Hands’ growl.
But he folds anyway, and that—that’s the funny thing about Israel Hands, ain’t it? All that bark, all that gruff stoicism. Only he rolls over easy enough for Ed. Now that Ed’s fought for it, fucked him over, put him in his place and gotten him clean out of trouble with Mayfield. “You’re too fucking smart for anyone’s well being,” was Hands’ rasped response, that time. When Ed set him up for a public caning so severe he would’ve gotten infection, probably, what with their loss of a surgeon.
When Ed smiled hard at him.
When Ed muttered the right thing at the right moment to the right person, got Hands back out of the gallows he was due for, and Hands proved himself smart enough to notice it.
“Took care of you, didn’t I?”
“Fuck you.”
Ed had laughed then, but it’s—strange.
He keeps thinking about it.
Hands is pretty too. He’s shorter than Ed, but thick and solid. Tucks himself away though, like he can become invisible, like he can smother his own presence beneath the weight of servitude, and Ed—Ed doesn’t know.
He doesn’t know why it gets to him, but it does.
“You a sore fucking loser, Hands?”
“I am not,” comes the bite. “Not when it’s fucking fair.”
Ed laughs. Drags those clinking coins in against his shin. “The fuck is fair? You got any left, or we done for the night.”
They’re below deck, out of the way. Moon out bright up top in the dark. Snores filling the air. It’s just Ed and Hands in here, this tiny room full of supplies. Ed doesn’t wait for Hands’ answer. Says, “Your given name really Israel? S’pretty. S’mouthful. Sounds like—”
“Yeah, yeah. Know what it sounds like, don’t I? The fuck am I supposed to do with it,” is the tired response.
Hands leans back against the wall, eyes closed. His hair isn’t that long, not anywhere as long as Ed’s in it’s messy folded over tail, but it’s long enough to hang about his face. Those smooth cheeks. Frame that mouth, fucking pretty as anything when it’s not all twisted up in a scowl. When it’s softly open, like now.
Ed shifts where he sits. Clears his throat.
“Call yourself something else.”
That pretty mouth twists; turns sullen, bitter. “There’s meaning in names,” Izzy whispers.
“Sure there is,” Ed says, but he’s not thinking about names anymore.
He’s thinking about—
“You’re a sore loser,” Ed decides. “Pitch a fucking fit every time. But fuck, man. I like taking your money. You gonna keep offering it up? Or…”
Hands raises a brow. Doesn’t open his eyes. “Or?” he asks, mockery in the tone.
A flick of Ed’s wrist.
The coins spill out, glinting like a promise.
Ed gets up onto his knees.
“Want a consolation prize?” Ed asks, and it’s fucking stupid—a thing he’s told himself he’ll never be, a thing he stopped being when he was small and sullen and trapped. When he killed his father and left him for the ocean to claim.
But fuck—Ed wants it.
“You’re in the same shithole I am,” Hands grunts. “The fuck can you offer, Teach?”
“Oh,” Ed murmurs. “Lots of things.”
Slumped and tense, Hands blinks his eyes open, settles on a narrow kind of squint, a wary expression. He knows Ed by now. Not many do, but Hands has managed it somehow. Ed feels the thrill of that. The power of Israel Hands, competent to a fault, waiting patiently to see what the trick is, where it will go. Beneath the dismissal, he already trusts Ed.
And truth is, Ed doesn’t want a lot of things.
Can’t want more than the burning need to survive, to be on top, to not be small and weak and easy prey, because that’s the only way worth living, isn’t it? So he mostly just wants the one—to be strong and smart and durable enough to become someone who never has to fear again. Who never has to look away. Who doesn’t have to shift skin and learn to be someone he never wanted, just to be alive.
Problem with that, Ed knows, on his knees and sucking on his own teeth, staring Hands down from close quarters, a single lamp for light—
“You been fucked plenty, haven’t you,” Ed drawls.
“The…the fuck, Teach!”
Despite the furious protest, the bark of censure, Hands glances down from Ed’s eyes to his body. Chest, hips, thighs, groin. A hungry expression lights him up. Hands looks feral, a moment; shutters it closed.
Yeah.
Maybe that’s why Ed wants it—why he thinks he can have it.
Ed laughs a little. More a puff of breath than anything else, some dark and quiet thing. For the first time in a long time, he feels like he fits inside of his skin. He feels molten. Feels like the sea itself, endless and restless. He reaches up and takes down his hair, lets the long fall of it drape around him.
He says, “Not gonna fuck you, Hands.” and watches the flicker of disappointment across Hands’ face with satisfaction so sweet it aches.
“Teach…”
“Already took you for all you’re worth,” Ed interrupts, amused. He leans forward. Goes down onto his hands, knees against the hard boards. The coin clinks again. Ed grins and knows it’s feral; brutal and too hard, too hungry.
That’s okay, though, because—
“Teach,” Hands says again, and then, “Ed—Edward, what—”
Ed tilts his head and prowls forward; one hand, the opposite knee. Hair swinging in the air and sliding over his cheek, halfway covering his eye. Ed’s real fucking pretty, he can’t help but know it by now. And for all that it’s been a pain in the ass, he likes being pretty.
And he’s got real good at managing it, but that’s the problem, isn’t it? Because Ed doesn’t want lots of things, but with Hands, he finds that he can. That he does. That he wants—
More.
He wants to indulge a craving he’s buried down, held under water until it drowned.
Until Israel Hands woke it up, gave it life, gave it shape with his hot, soft eyes, his waiting patience, his softly open mouth and his willingness to roll over, to let Ed take him for all he’s worth.
Yeah, yeah. Ed knows what he wants.
Knows he can have it, too, if he just plays this right.
“Want me to sit on your cock, Israel,” Ed asks, laughing again, that huff of air and malice, that melted longing given form. “Oh, don’t look so shocked, man! What do I care, hm? Just buggery. ‘Sides, I’m a good winner, see. Don’t mind giving you a little consolation prize. That make you feel better? Make you want to keep slipping your share of the earnings into my pocket?”
“Fucking—twat,” Hands chokes out, eyes wide now.
Shocked.
Horny, too, Ed sees, and that makes him prowl ever closer, clamber onto Hands’ lap. Press his palms flat against the rough wood on either side of his head and lean in, hair a curtain around them, soft and fine and pretty, pretty enough to lead to Ed’s ruin, if he lets it.
He won’t; but that doesn’t mean he can’t indulge this, does it?
Sure he can.
Israel Hands is his now, or close enough.
Only a little more. What was it he was saying, about names? Ah, yeah—Ed grins wide and mean again, leans in to tip his forehead to Hands’, grinding in. “Don’t wanna moan Hands when you fuck me,” he muses, low and dark, calculated and sharp. “Israel, hm. Israel, Is, ah, I got it! Izzy—yeah, that’s what I’ll call you.”
“You—That’s not—”
“If you name it, it’s yours,” Ed whispers.
“Fuck.” Izzy gasps in a harsh breath, and it’s the easiest thing Ed’s ever done and the worst thing, too. Pressing down, taking what he wants. Letting himself open, wet mouth to wet mouth, tongue to tongue and teeth scraping, biting, stinging. Letting Izzy sink trembling fingers into Ed’s hair, tangled in like some men have tried before, to use as leash and tether, to tug and hold and force, but—
Izzy’s careful. He’s gentle.
He holds Ed like something sacred; like he’s seen Izzy palm that bible when he thinks no one’s looking.
Izzy gathers up the long soft fall of Ed’s hair into his hands, bunched up precious and lovely, and he holds Ed’s face with tender fingertips, with a touch that sparks and burns and feels like power, like freedom, like becoming. Ed moans, lets his spine arch how it wants. Grinds down into Izzy’s lap, shuddering hard all over at the hardness he finds there.
“Yeah,” Ed pants. “You want it, don’t you?”
“Fuck.”
He sounds wrecked. He sounds broken. So Ed works his trousers down and opens up Izzy’s laces, gets him out, spits on his hand to slick Izzy’s cock up. Izzy manages to grit out, “You ever—unh, have you ever—” with this look on his face that’s all worried, that’s too real and focused and not at all what Ed wants, fuck that. So he laughs big and reckless and sits on Izzy’s cock with a grin for a grimace, sealing the deal before that sentence can finish forming and oh, it fucking hurts, but it’s fine, that’s fine, because—
Like this, Ed gets what he wants.
Like this, Izzy holds Ed like he’s something precious, someone to be cherished. Like his skin isn’t scarred and inked over, made hard by choice and time and living. As if his body is malleable and soft instead, a thing made delicate with want, with surrender.
“Edward,” Izzy chokes out.
Ed adjusts. Takes the pain and lets it shudder through him. Slips a hand down and takes his cock in hand, tries to transform the overwhelming pressure inside him into sparks beneath his skin, embers to catch, to smolder, to build and build into a flame with hungry licking tongues.
He laughs again, tips his head back. Holds onto Izzy with one hand in his hair as he rides him.
“How’s that?” he asks, breathless.
“Ed,” Izzy moans, exultant. Then he’s putting those shaking, reverent hands to Ed’s hips, the small of his back, the line of his jaw. Presses that pretty, bitter mouth in a hot, wet glide to Ed’s throat, whispering prayers, offering benediction.
It’s good, it’s so good.
Ed slurs out, “Yeah,” and leans his weight back, spilling onto the floor, over scattered coin and cards. Drags Izzy down with him, over him, fucking him.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ed says, laughing, riotous.
Izzy surges up, cock hard and hot, deep inside. Kisses him.
Ed opens into it.
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It’s addictive, that feeling.
Izzy isn’t a slouch. He’s a survivor too. Brittle but sharp, smart and mean when he needs to be, kiss ass when he has to. Better at being useful than Ed; clever about being indispensable. Ed wants to shove him into a wall sometimes, infuriated at his groveling, his quiet rage, his choked back sickness that’s going to poison him from the inside—
So Ed does, sometimes.
Shoves him against the wall and punches him, gets Izzy hissing and spitting and driving a knee into Ed’s thigh, shoving him off.
Gets Izzy to laugh under the stars, sharing names of constellations, the journey they tell. Gets him so piss drunk he climbs the rigging buck ass naked and hollering psalms to the heavens, arms outspread like wings.
Gets him down after, clothed and covered, wiping the moisture from his face, the weariness from his brow.
Gets him to wrap those wings around Ed instead.
Gets him to orient north, toward Ed alone.
“Izzy, Izzy, Izzy,” Ed teases, reaching out to collect his winnings. His two rings clink against coin, obnoxious and obvious.
Izzy leans against the wall with one knee bent, an arm draped over it.
He sneers, “You’re a fucking cheat, Edward. Nothing new. Same old, same old. You’re getting boring, aren’t you?” as if Ed doesn’t see the fervor of his devotion burning bright, burning unholy in his eyes, casting him in shadow and light and raw, sharp planes of longing.
“Such a sore fucking loser, fuck, man.”
Izzy holds still, waiting.
Slowly, Ed reaches up, takes his hair down. “Want me to kiss it better?” he mocks, thrilling down to his fucking toes when Izzy snarls, doesn’t deny it.
“Yeah, you do,” Ed tells him, smug and thick and liquid now inside his skin, a good feeling, a pure one. Like freedom. Desire. He drapes himself across Izzy’s lap, wraps his arms around his neck and laughs at him, the naked want on his face, echoed as it is in secret within Ed’s chest, his gut, blurring his edges.
“Yeah,” Izzy croaks, one hand sliding slow under Ed’s shirt and up his spine. “I really fucking do.”
It feels good.
Ed lets his eyes close, his mouth open, soft, too soft. “Go on then, take your pity prize,” he fumbles out, dazed and shivering when Izzy kisses his shoulder, mouth dragging on coarse fabric.
He holds Ed close.
Just like Ed wants him to.
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