Chapter Text
“Crew pulled him out of the water,” Izzy says without any preamble, shutting the door to the captain’s quarters behind him with more force than usual. Ed glances up from the map he’s studying at the desk, blinking to clear the swirling morass of place names and trade routes from his vision. Izzy hauls a dripping mess of a boy into the center of the room by the collar of his too-big shirt and drops him unceremoniously at Ed’s feet.
“Didn’t get too close a look, a small mercy.” Izzy says. Ed glances at the boy and then blinks up at Izzy, bemused.
“Why is this my business?”
“He doesn’t look familiar to you?”
Interest piqued, Ed bends down, smooths back a layer of the boy’s thick, black hair like he’s parting a heavy curtain - unnecessarily dramatic. But it doesn’t take much of a look to make his blood run cold.
“Fucking hell.”
“Eerie, huh.” Izzy says, and Ed snorts.
“Understatement, mate. It’s uh,” he runs a nervous hand through his beard, “it’s fucking unreal is what it is.”
“I’m right here,” the boy snarks as he slithers out of his dripping clothes without a shred of shame, “and I can hear you perfectly fine.” He pulls on the shirt Izzy had fetched for him - still too big but at least it’s dry. He holds the fabric away from his body as he sniffs it and seems to find it acceptable. Ed knows a wry smile is creeping onto his face, doesn't do anything to stop it. The boy catches the look and his expression sours immediately, his posture going angular and spiky, like he’s preparing for a fight. Ed can’t help the soft laugh that huffs out of him.
“Settle down, son,” Izzy says, and immediately looks like he regrets himself. Ed fails to conceal a snort of laughter as a cough. He figures Izzy can be forgiven for handling the situation with less grace than usual, considering that the situation is this: in the middle of his captain’s cabin stands a young Israel Hands, not a day over 20, looking like wet laundry that’s been hung out to dry.
They talk haltingly for a while, Ed finally coaxing the boy down into a chair. Ed hops up to perch on the edge of his desk while Izzy - his Izzy, Ed thinks - rests with his hip against the table, his arms crossed, a calculating furrow deep in his brow. They manage to confirm that the boy really is a young Izzy, with all of Izzy’s younger memories, and after some quizzing back and forth, the boy seems satisfied that Ed and Izzy are who they say they are, as well. It makes the situation no less strange but it seems to put them all at some ease.
“You got old,” the young Izzy says after a while, mocking but fond, and there’s a light in his eyes that Ed feels like he hasn’t seen in years. It sets something in his stomach to burning, a low kindling of an old, forgotten feeling.
“So did you,” Ed says, gesturing with his head to the older Izzy, knocking an elbow into his side. Izzy glowers.
“What kind of fucking trick is this?” Izzy asks, but it’s flat, more of an accusation than a question.
“Wouldn’t I like to know,” the younger Izzy says, sliding liquid out of his chair to pace before them. “Last I recall, I was asleep. Woke up with lungs full of sea water. Figured this was some kind of vision of my future, hmm? Maybe a warning from the gods.” He spares his older self a glance before settling on Ed. He takes him in with a slow slide of his eyes, and Ed is suddenly self-conscious of all the differences between himself and the Ed this boy must know. New scars, new tattoos, new wrinkles. A whole life lived between then and now.
“I like the hair,” he says finally, “suits you.” There’s a cheekiness to the way he cocks his head, the angle of his hips, the open look of desire in his eyes. He’s loose and easy still, hasn’t learned to hide things about himself, hasn’t been hardened by the years like Ed’s Izzy. Ed’s chest tightens at the thought, but it doesn’t stop him looking. This Izzy is just as Ed remembers him all those years ago - all dark hair swept roguishly out of his eyes, skin still largely unmarred, the wiry hairs peeking out from the wide v of his shirt still jet black. And gods his face, clean shaven and untroubled by lines of age except around his smiling mouth and eyes.
“Your tattoo,” Ed says, and his eyes linger there. It looks fresh. Izzy smiles, suddenly shy.
“You gave it to me last night,” he touches the reddened skin with reverence that Ed can’t miss, not now, “in my time. Do you remember?”
Ed opens his mouth to answer but this Izzy isn’t looking at him, he’s looking at the man at Ed’s shoulder. Ed turns to look at him, too, but he can’t read the expression on his face in the dim light. He looks angry, maybe. Suspicious, certainly. Mostly he looks tired.
“It’s been years, boy,” Izzy says, instead of answering. The younger Izzy’s jaw flexes and Ed knows that it must be enough of an answer. He’s gone sharp at the edges again, clenching and unclenching his fists at his side - and that is so eerily Izzy that Ed is dazed for a moment, feels an old memory wash over him like a wave, a riptide pulling him under.
He remembers trading sips from a bottle of rum, tussling on the floor of their shared cabin, pinning Izzy in place and straddling his waist. He remembers how sure his grip was, as he reached for the ink and needle, how steady his hand, how still and trusting Izzy was beneath him. “Now you’re mine, forever,” he’d said as he’d finished his work at the corner of Izzy’s eye, cupped his cheek and drawn a thumb across his lips, felt the trembling breath Izzy let out-
“Why didn’t you kiss me?” The younger Izzy demands, suddenly, and Ed feels himself wrenched violently back from that memory into the present. But that young Izzy’s face is here, too, that same desperate want haunting his face. Something curdles in his stomach.
There’s a small commotion as the older Izzy lurches forward. He growls, shoves at his younger self’s shoulders until he’s pressed up against the wall. The boy yelps as his back hits the wood but doesn’t stop - “that night, why didn’t you-” Izzy’s ungloved hand fits easily against the curve of his younger self’s throat, the other covering his mouth and nose, fingers digging into the soft skin of his cheek. The leather stifles an indignant squeak that bleeds into a growl and Ed wonders idly if Izzy used his gloved hand because he knew he’d bite.
“Don’t you dare speak to your captain that way,” Izzy hisses, fingers on both hands flexing in warning. The look in the boy’s eyes as he stares up at his older self burns so hot Ed feels the flames licking him even a few paces back. There’s a resentment there, a kind of indignant, hopeless thing that Ed can’t name, can’t look at directly.
“Technically, I’m not his captain.” Ed says, finding the presence of mind to advance on the two of them. The older Izzy doesn’t move, just returns his own gaze with a cool indifference that Ed knows is practiced. “Let him go, Iz.” He notes the way Izzy hesitates before complying, barely a second passing before he snatches his hands back, steps away enough to give the boy some room to catch his breath.
The young Izzy touches the marks his older self’s fingers left on his jaw, eyes glassy. And that’s familiar, too, Ed thinks - he’s seen that look on Izzy’s face after every punishment he’s ever given him, the look of a man whose buzzing mind has finally gone quiet. It’s odd to see it on this younger face, so much more expressive. He realizes with a sudden clarity that he wants to see what other expressions this Izzy has hidden in him. Right now, the look on his face says want. It says desire. And he won’t meet Ed’s eyes, just stares at his mouth with naked supplication.
“Is that what you want? A kiss?” Ed says, stepping closer, right into the space his Izzy vacated, until he can feel the heat radiating off this Izzy’s body, see the rise and fall of his chest as he breathes like a drowning man. “Would that make you happy?”
The glassy look isn’t gone from his eyes, but he looks more alert, at least, blushing a dark red from his cheeks all the way down to his chest. He has to tilt his head to meet Ed’s gaze and Ed can’t think about that now, can’t do anything but slide a knee between the boy’s legs with an ease he barely feels. He presses in, noses at Izzy’s neck, his ear, the place on his cheek where he’d staked his claim all those years ago.
And then he kisses him, sweet, just a simple press of lips. Izzy doesn’t move under him, doesn’t react except for the way his heart is thundering so loud Ed feels like he could go deaf. When Ed pulls back to look at him, his eyes are wide open, his pupils blown and swallowing the thin ring of his iris until there’s nothing left but ravenous darkness. He’s not looking at Ed but over his shoulder, at Izzy again. At himself. That expression is back - nameless, stricken, yearning.
“Do that again,” he says, soft. And then, “please, captain?”
There isn’t a world where he could say no. He kisses him, this young thing, and tries not to think about the boy this Izzy is dreaming of. Lithe and wily, alive with a frenetic enthusiasm that feels like a distant dream to him now. He touches Izzy’s tattoo to hear him gasp, still tender, and Ed thinks of the boy who made that mark with a snarling twist of affection and resentment that he smothers with another bruising kiss.
“Sorry,” Ed whispers, hot against Izzy’s mouth, “I should’ve-” Izzy kisses him again, surges up against him like an ocean swell, mutters s’okay against his lips again and again and again until it’s lost between their tongues. Ed rocks back with the force of Izzy’s excitement, pivots and redirects the boy back into the bed, shoves until his knees hit the edge and he buckles down onto the mattress.
“Izzy,” Ed says, looks at the younger one but pitches his voice lower, is pleased when his Izzy answers the call to stand stiffly at his side, “sit.”
Izzy gives him a withering look but lowers himself on the bed beside his younger counterpart. It’s unnerving to see them like this, and Ed’s eyes can’t find a place to rest, vacillating between the two of them like it’s his life’s duty to memorize every difference. The younger Izzy doesn’t have his swallow yet, but there’s already some gray at his temples. His Izzy is gray all over, the fur of his chest thicker and more abundant where his shirt falls open, and his ring-
“Edward,” Izzy says, and he sounds fucking put-out, which Ed can’t even begin to understand. Isn’t it marvelous, he wants to say, isn’t this a fucking gift from the lady sea herself? But Izzy, his Izzy, looks fucking miserable, like he’s the one that nearly drowned and died out there.
“What?” He snarls, and both of the Izzys look startled. There’s a beat of silence and Ed can hear himself breathing, can hear the hitch in the boy’s throat as he gasps a little shocked breath. Ed feels his attention slip from one Izzy to the other, the sudden flare of anger dimming as he watches the younger one shift, unsubtle despite his best efforts, his hands coming to press at his crotch. All the attention in the room narrows in on that movement, his tiny grunt of pleasure as he grinds the heel of his palm into his hardening cock.
“Christ,” the older Izzy groans at the same time Ed says, “Oh?”
“Sorry, I don’t know why-” the young Izzy huffs, squeezing his eyes closed and pressing down on his erection like he can make it go away if he’s annoyed enough.
“What?” Ed says again, more breathless than anything this time.
“Your voice, you-” his Izzy makes a dismissive movement with his hand, “when you’re Blackbeard. Never mind.”
“Okay,” Ed says, let’s it lie only because there are more pressing matters at hand. The boy’s eyes snap open when Ed knocks his palm away, replaces it with his own. He grips the younger Izzy’s cock through the fabric of his borrowed shirt, watches the play of emotions on his face as he starts to move his hand. Conflicted, overwhelmed, lustful - but, ultimately, a pure and consuming adoration.
“Oh, oh, oh-” the boy pants, little moans shuddering out of him as he thrusts clumsily into the loose circle of Ed’s fingers. Ed laughs, pulls his hand back to lick a wet stripe up his palm before slipping under Izzy’s shirt to grip his cock properly. Ed glances at his Izzy, who’s sitting stock still beside them, his hands clenched into fists at his thighs. He’s bright red everywhere Ed can see his skin and there’s a vein standing out on his forehead.
“Yeah, just like that-” the young Izzy moans, “feels so good, Edward, fuck, oh-”
“So talkative,” Ed chuckles, low and affectionate. His Izzy is doing it now, that slow opening and closing of his fists.
“Ah, christ, y-you’re gorgeous, you’re perfect-” he’s rambling, and the older Izzy jerks into motion, finally, wraps a loose hand around the boy’s throat like a warning.
“Hush, boy, you talk too much.” His voice is barely a whisper, but it’s edged with a threat that makes Ed’s cock ache.
“He likes it, though-” the boy protests, raising his eyebrows meaningfully in Ed’s direction. His Izzy looks at him, eyebrows rising in a frankly charming mirror of his younger self. There’s a beat as they watch each other, Izzy’s eyes dropping to his mouth, then pointedly to his crotch, where an obvious bulge is pressing against his laces.
“So it seems.” Izzy says, huffing a ghost of a laugh that the younger Izzy echoes, and then they’re both laughing in earnest, their eyes crinkling shut in twin expressions of genuine joy that make Ed’s heart swell. He snatches his hand back and starts to pull at his laces.