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Once upon a time, Izzy Hands had believed.
He wasn't the first man to lose that belief out at sea. The spirit washed out of him like the sea salt dragged his clothes from black to grey. Still, though, people could tell they'd been darker once. Still, perhaps, the idea of faith clung to him.
He was serious. He could read. He kept to a routine. He only drank moderately and didn't go whoring where the men would see him. He kept a candle and a book and no ship was ever in want of bells. It would be easy to look at him and see a flicker of the same thing that led some men to rant at the docks with pamphlets and sanctimony.
“Hey Hands, need to borrow your Bible,” said Jack-who-was-still-John, low and under the cover of darkness.
“I don't have a fucking Bible.”
“Yeah you do. You've got books.”
“Not a Bible.”
Rackham sniffled and it was enough to make Izzy turn and look. The moonlight pricked out the ugly tears that had been running down his cheeks and leaving his eyes pink. He had been young then, a little lad with fluff on his upper lip and malnutrition carved into his ribs. A runaway and a stowaway with a bruise on his cheek and something inside him calling for the Holy Book.
“Fine,” Jack had spat, scowled and stalked off. It was the first and last time he'd asked.
Jack-who-was-still-John had been fucked up for days after. Eventually Izzy had cornered Teach in the hold and asked what was going on. It only took two cigarettes to bribe the story out of him. The boy had two dead families and apparently the third had tried to beat the wilderness out of him with stories of wrath and damnation as well as a switch. He'd run from them as soon as he could and he'd chosen the sea.
“Now he thinks he's going to Hell,” Edward said around the smoke, “since he shot that bloke in the face.”
Izzy barely remembered the shot and certainly didn't remember the bloke. It had been Rackham's first raid, though, and some boys needed a bit more to drink after that sort of thing. He should have asked Ivan to keep an eye on him.
“You believe in that sort of thing then?”
Edward had stared at him, then shrugged as though it were easy and as though it could be answered without consideration. “I'm a godless pirate. Doesn't matter if I believe or not. None of the churches would let me through their doors.”
If Izzy ever wanted to take communion again it would have to be somewhere the ship was unknown and he was unrecognised, with a priest who wouldn't ask him to confess sins he didn't regret. He'd made peace with the fact that if the god of his childhood existed, it would bind his limbs and throw him in the brig as soon as he crossed over to the great hereafter. Some days he considered it. Most days he had better things to do.
The sea had its own set of virtues and its own set of sins. Turning a blind eye when the lads threw Hornigold overboard could be seen as either, depending on who was telling the tale. Izzy in general was a virtuous man, with his routine and modesty and dedication, and would allow it to be rounded to a good deed. It was easy to be good for his new captain.
Edward had grown taller and broader. Edward had grown beautiful. With his hair past his shoulders and his beard coming in dark and strong, he looked like a saint on the prow. The part of Izzy still looking for something to worship whispered at night that here it was. Edward, coming back to the ship each time with a new picture, sometimes trading spit with Jack when he drank too much, sometimes putting a hand on Izzy's shoulder or even on the side of his face. Edward smiling. Edward giving blessings. This was what Izzy had wanted when he stayed on a wooden bench with his knees aching to listen to grand stories of grace and salvation.
“Looking at him like he stole corn from the sun,” Jack muttered about it. Jack had grown too and his bravado had grown with him. He had enough muscle across his shoulders to carry as much timber as the ship's carpenter asked for once he's grown out of being whip sore.
Izzy shrugged sharply. “He's the captain. Wouldn't hurt you to have a bit more respect.”
“He's just Eddie. I'm not getting on my knees for him,” which was either a lie or a metaphor, because Izzy had seen Jack on his knees for Eddie plenty of times. “Bet you would though.”
“Watch your mouth, Rackham.”
“Or what? You gonna have me tied to the mast and flogged again? I've seen the stories in your book. You want me to take an arrow to the side for him?”
He would. Jack and Edward loved each other as deeply as they mocked each other, even if neither of them would admit it. Jack had saved Eddie's life and Ed was just about grown enough to know he'd never be able to repay it, that it would hang over his head for as long as they both lived.
Izzy had walked in on them rubbing each other off enough times too.
A few times, after enough to drink, he'd joined in; neither of them were cruel about it, despite his fears. For Jack, it was a good time. Who fucking knew what it meant to Edward. Probably just another hand and proof of the power he held over his quartermaster.
“What I want,” Izzy said, “is for you to show better regard towards Captain Teach when you're out on the deck.”
They were starting to gain a reputation. Jack-who-had-been-John, who watched his family killed twice over out on the frontier, might not have understood, but Izzy did. They were building a story out at sea that would outlive them all. It was one that would get written down in books and told to scared children. Edward could be piracy incarnate with all the right liturgies and homilies. He would be worshipped by every man who'd looked at his life on land and decided to live another one.
They took a ship. They took another. An argument broke out over whether it was a sin to kill a holy man if the man was a sinner. Edward watched it with a smile. Edward knew he was a sinner and met judgement with his teeth bared. The man who had been holy had died just as easily as the rest and his corpse was indistinguishable when they stripped it nude.
The Church's riches made the whole ship glint and its wine made the boys merry. They settled onto the next watch without too much fuss. Izzy was ready to turn in when Jack sidled up next to him, slipped a hand into Izzy's and squeezed. They held palms for a while, Jack's warm and starting to sweat against Izzy's.
“Hey,” he said, “Cap'n Eddie wants to see you.”
Izzy knew that asking why would be a fool's errand. He would always obey. They walked hand in hand like children down to the captain's cabin.
“Got a surprise,” Jack grinned, and he pulled his hand away from Izzy's to cover Izzy's eyes instead. It was slow enough that he didn't pull away. He could feel the pulse in Jack's wrists, a steady, heavy thing, blood rushing to his palms even warmer than the night air, staining Izzy's cheeks as he bled and bled, stabbed in the side and ready to take a spear to save his captain. Izzy held his own hands out and trailed the wood on either side of him.
The cabin smelled like myrrh. Izzy had never been subject to it as a child. His church had given no incense, no art and no joy. He knew the smell, though, well enough to recognise it above Jack's dried sweat tang and Ed's hempflower smoke.
“What do you think?” Jack asked, taking his hands away from Izzy's eyes, and there – there was Ed. Calm. Serene. Ed didn't need to ask. He'd already know.
The robes hung down from his shoulders, not quite as long as they should be. The priest had been a smaller man. There was no blood on them – not that it would be visible on the dark cloth in the candlelight. The priest had been done away with in another way that didn't matter. It wasn't the man but the cloth, the collar, the power and the story that stood before Izzy.
“I think he should be on his knees,” Ed murmured, as holy as a garden kiss. “Ready to take communion.”
Jack pushed. Izzy dropped down onto the wood hard enough to crack his knees with Ed towering over him, Izzy's face at cock height. Izzy had never sucked his captain off before but there was a first time for everything and he'd held the flesh in his fist often enough.
“What do you want, little postulant?” Jack asked, his hand only slightly too tight in Izzy's hair, his breath hot over Izzy's cheek where he leant down to speak. “Shall we feed you the body of Christ or the body of your Father?”
“Going to be honest, lads,” said Izzy, “I don't think either of you twats know how to give communion.”
Edward tutted. “Aw, don't be like that. You think I've not drunk blood before? You reckon Jack's not tasted flesh? We're both practically monastic, Iz. We want to take you into the fold.”
Maybe it was true. Perhaps here in the cabin the two boys, loyal and running hot with philia, were holy enough.
“Go on then, Izzy,” Jack said and pulled a little, tight since Izzy had called him a twat, “confess your sins before Eddie fills you up with the Holy Spirit.”
Izzy was just about to tell him to fuck off when Ed put a hand under his chin and tilted it up. From down on the floor, Jack's hand in his hair and Edward's hand on his face, Izzy could remember what it meant to be on his knees and to have his Father before him.
“I have stolen,” he said quietly, “and I've murdered. I'd be hanged if they ever took me back to England.”
Ed rubbed his thumb over the corner of Izzy's mouth. The sunset shining through the bullseye behind him lit him up like a saint. The Church never gave him permission to look like that in a dead man's cassock. “What else, my child?”
“Lustful thoughts. Sloth. Buggery.”
Jack snorted at the last one. He saw no sin in sex for pleasure. Izzy saw it but did it anyway. None of his fucking would ever lead to reproduction but it was the least of what he was damned for.
“You're forgiven,” said Edward. It was soft and kind forgiveness the boy had no authority to grant in a silly little game the three of them were all playing. It struck Izzy in the chest just the same.
Jack pulled his fingers out from Izzy's hair. His scalp tingled at the loss of them. He stayed imperfectly still as Jack walked round, took Eddie's face in his hands and kissed him fiercely, as if he could teach him what love was through blood and flesh and spit. (Jack wouldn't be the man to teach Edward that. There was something in him that cowered at the thought of it. No wonder he'd had to run from a family that had tried to make him holy.)
Ed's hand trailed off Izzy's face, fingertips lingering until they had somewhere better to be, and joined Jack's body instead. The two of them kissed again. They knew each other in some way Izzy would never understand. It was something more than youth. It was the power of kissing with the knowledge it would damn them both and the lack of care about it.
The hard floor beneath his knees creaked as Izzy shifted. The crew on deck were deep enough into the Church's bottles that they'd started to play and sing. Their half-remembered hymns with drunken melodies and mocking lyrics wound their way through the boards. In the cabin, all was silent save for the wet sounds of Edward pulling back and Jack gasping.
“You ready, little sinner?” Jack asked once they'd disentangled themselves. He put both hands at the ends of Ed's robes and started to lift them in the same way Izzy had seen him lift the skirts of laughing whores on shore – a flirting peepshow of what was to come next. “Take his body into your mouth.”
The hair on Ed's thighs was soft under Izzy's palms. He braced himself before leaning forward. Ed smelled as much of sweat as Jack did, despite his tendency to wash better. His lack of foreskin meant sometimes he needed more spit than average when the boys were giving each other handies, but now it just meant the head was exposed to the air with nothing to roll back on.
Izzy put his lips over the soft skin and opened his mouth wider when Ed pushed forward. He could hear Jack talking, saying something unrelated, ignorable until he dropped the robe he was holding and left Izzy draped in dark fabric between Edward's legs. All he needed to concentrate on was holding the prick in his mouth. He could feel Ed's hot pulse on his tongue, the warmth of Ed's thighs under his hands, the prickle of Ed's hair against his face, and the heavy linen crowning him like Mary under the robe.
He suckled gently until Ed grew to full attention in his mouth and Ed's thighs twitched under him as he hummed and praised around it, warm salt across his tongue to set him free.
It was a quiet place to be. On his knees, he didn't need to think, only worship. He could praise with his mouth wide open and spittle dribbling down his chin. He could hold veneration on his tongue, graze it with his imperfect teeth and listen to it moan and grunt.
It wasn't too long before the fabric of the robes rustled behind him and Jack's hand was in his hair again.
“Don't worry,” he whispered, “I've got you, Hands.”
He pushed Izzy's head further until Izzy was almost coughing. Maybe that was what being on his knees meant here: giving up and giving in and letting Edward choke him on it. His thighs ached and his eyes watered as it hit the back of his throat, no longer quite comfortable but something he could do if it was asked of him.
“Hosanna in the highest,” Jack said close to Izzy's ear, “blessed is he who comes.”
Jack could deliver them both. He knew what it meant to fly close to the sun, sweet and blonde and brash as he was. He could hold flesh in one hand and a cup of wine in the other and make it as holy as it needed to be. He could take Izzy's breath away and give it back before he met his maker.
Jack kissed him close to chastely on the cheek when Ed came down Izzy's throat. The bristle of moustache and the hot gush of liquid made him blink and flail, letting go of Ed's thighs and pulling at Jack instead, who laughed and tumbled on top of him.
“Fuck,” Izzy gasped, wheezing for the air he'd been denied, “fuck you, Rackham, you crazy son of – fuck.”
“Now then,” said Ed with a lazy smile, “none of that when you're in a state of grace.”
“State of disgrace, more like,” said Jack. He pressed himself against Izzy's hard prick and kissed him again, slow and gentle. “You can watch or you can go get changed, Eddie, but we're going to turn the page to the Song of Songs down here.”
Jack smiled down with something that made Izzy want to turn away for fear that Jack would see him smile back. Perhaps to delight in each other wouldn't be too wrong. If forgiveness was granted like that every time, it would be easy to sin and sin again until Ed's robes faded into grey and they could worship together without fear.