#ed/frenchie

[house-afire]

Where We Left Off (Ed/Frenchie)

Prompt: 100 words of gift giving

Two weeks after the silvery chime of the cat bell stops tinkling in Frenchie’s dreams—honestly, he can’t say whether it’s a warning or a promise, might be both—he wakes up to find a page of sheet music tucked between his coat and his chest. It’s the middle bit of some symphony. Spoils from their latest raid, he thinks, because it’s got a bit of blood on it. Still readable, though.

It’s not hard to work out who it’s from. There are only two people on this ship who’d think it was all fine and normal, just the uszhe, to slip a present between his ribs like a knife instead of giving it to him properly, and Iz clomps a bit too much when he moves now to go sneaking around in the night. Has to be Ed, then.

Frenchie thinks it’s meant to be an apology for the rattling box in his mind. But he’s not, like, an apology person? It’s just hearing a reprise of a tune you didn’t even fancy the first time—in a minor key, too, like it’s all sad and dressed in sackcloth. Better to just move on, let it go. Eat your cake. Follow your bliss.

But he does like a good gift. A gift’s extra; it’s not doing any heavy lifting. It doesn’t have to put its hand inside weeks and weeks of darkness and turn it all inside-out like a pocket, leave the delicate lining of his life hanging out in the cold.

It doesn’t have to make things right. It’s just nice. Frenchie likes nice things.

He sits on a barrel, score on his knees, and picks out the fragment of the song on his lute. Ed watches him from across the deck, dark eyes huge and almost more hopeful than Frenchie can stand.

Ed looks good, these days. Better than he did even back before it all went to shit, if Frenchie’s honest. Back then he was like one of his cups of tea, seven sugars—one sip of him would hit you like a spike, like a snort of rhino horn. Now he’s more like … tea with honey. There’s something soothing about it.

Frenchie raises his chin a little: come on over, if you want.

It’s the first time he’s invited him so close, since all the purgatorial break-up grimness, and for a second the box in his head twitches, like some wild animal inside it has flung itself against the side. But Frenchie lets it go; thinks instead of waking to the crinkle of paper against his chest. Of knowing Blackbeard’s hand was right above his heart as he slept, and he’s still alive to tell the tale.

Enough of reprises and reprisals, yeah?

“What do you think?” he says, when Ed’s closer. “How’s it sound?”

“Playing’s great,” Ed reassures him, speaking a little too quickly. “We could start getting sirens hanging off the barnacles, man, you go on like that. But the start’s a bit shit, isn’t it? Just wallops you out of nowhere.”

“Yeah, well.” Frenchie looks from the score to Ed and back again. His throat is dry, and he has to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Think there’s a page missing, maybe. Like I’m coming in at the middle. But, you know, shrugging it off. Got to start somewhere.”

He imagines tossing a bunch of bloodied, marked-up pages into the sea. Tipping his box over the side with it.

And he knows he can’t, not completely, but you have to play with what you’ve got, don’t you? You just pick a song and go with it.

Ed’s all about the metaphor, Frenchie thinks, because he’s looking at him like Frenchie’s given him something back. Hope all trussed up with a bow on it. Last thing to fly out of Pandora’s box, in Stede’s story. He clears his throat, like he could use some tea with honey too.

“Where do you think it goes from there?” he asks Frenchie, pointing to the bottom of the sheet, where the notes traipse off the page and get lost.

“Dunno, babes,” Frenchie says, holding on to hope’s ankles. “Want to help me figure it out?”

[internerdionality]

New porn!

Chapters: 1/6 Fandom: Our Flag Means Death (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Additional Tags: Mildly Dubious Consent, Free Use, (sorta) - Freeform, Gangbang, Punitive Sex, Public Sex, Public Humiliation, Basically an Orgy as Restorative Justice?, Putting my sad babygirl through a redemption arc since the writers half-assed it, now with more porn!, Our Flag Means Death (TV) Season/Series 02 Spoilers

Ed's gotten tossed off the ship by Lucius. He's gone fishing with Fang. He even let Jim throw some knives at him! But nothing seems to be working to earn the crew's forgiveness. How is he supposed to move on when no one else seems to be able to let it go?

Then Stede comes up with an idea...

(AKA a blatant excuse for filthy, unrepentant porn)

[napneeders]

what are we calling ed/frenchie then and is it frenched because they should

[strawlessandbraless]

Thinking about Frenchie holding Izzy’s hand as the crew talk sense into him about his toxic relationship with Blackbeard. How Frenchie knew he needed all the comfort he could get, even though he was being held by Fang. Even though Frenchie has all his trauma locked up in a box in his brain.

Thinking about Frenchie saving and hiding Izzy at great risk to himself. About Jim and Archie helping Izzy after getting shot by Blackbeard. About Frenchie using Izzy’s thigh as a pillow when they’re in prison awaiting death. They’re a crew. A family. They love each other.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

currently pissing myself over the way that the blackbeard-themed emo makeovers are serving SO much cunt. with one notable exception.

^slaying absolute penis

^utterly swagless. cringefail first mate. did not understand the assignment. go girl give us nothing.

[5queerducksinatrenchcoat]

IZZY'S THEIR UNICORN! LUCIUS AND HIS CUNTY LIL BELL BOTTOMS! A SEAGULL! FRENCHIE'S GOT A PEANUT ALLERGY! FANG AND ED WENT TO CATCH FISHIES! IZZY AND STEDE WERE LITERALLY JUST HANGING OUT THE WHOLE TIME! PROPOSAL!!! IZZY JUST VIBING AND GETTING PRAISED!!! IZZY MADE LUCIUS A LIL WOODEN SHARK!!! IZZY ALREADY KNEW HOW TO WHITTLE AND HE DOES IT WELL!!!!

KEVIN!!!!!!!!!!!!

[cliopadra]

Dug up and coloured a silly “fix-it” comic I doodled shortly after ep.6. Throwing it here because why not, I haven’t posted a comic in over a month.

[daftmooncretin]

richard siken (crush.)

[wokeandghey]

[our-flag-means-love]

ofmd as text posts | part 7/?

(alternate version where they're all one image for easy saving)

[my-thyla-my-captain]

the fact that they use the figurehead izzy defaced for "not doing its job" to instead give him his purpose and identity back. the fact that figureheads were historically not only fixtures of stature and power but also, to their crews, "the eyes of the ship guiding them safely home". the fact that izzy protected the goth crew from a lot of edward's spiraling ire physically, the fact that when izzy was presumed gone and dead the ship was steered and then moored in a storm. the fact that without his intervention they would have likely died in that storm, but instead afterwards were able to be come across by the other half of their crew and brought "home". you see the vision, don't you?

[house-afire]

Knives in His Feet (Ed/Frenchie)

Prompt: 100 words of cats

“You’re the one who made the cat flag, aren’t you?”

Frenchie did his best not to jump out of his skin. It was sort of Blackbeard’s deal, especially these days, to suddenly be right behind you, so the startle reaction was just something you had to train out of yourself, wasn’t it, like needing sleep or flinching at the sight of blood. He always had blood on him now, drying around his fingernails and in the weave of his clothes.

“Thought it’d be fierce,” Frenchie said. He hastily added, “Skeleton with the heart, though, that’s better. Some of my best work, really.”

Blackbeard leaned close to him, his voice a hot whisper in Frenchie’s ear. “Want to see something weird?”

No, he actually didn’t. A guy asked you that kind of question, it wasn’t ever the good kind of weird, like a funny-colored parrot or a biscuit that sort of looked like you.

But he liked all his fingers and toes right where they were, thanks, so he wasn’t going to make trouble.

“’Course,” he said, following Blackbeard to the captain’s cabin.

It’d been a pretty place, in Stede’s day. Bit of a pit now, if Frenchie were honest. Very obviously the home of a man going through a real shitstorm of a break-up: damp hankies everywhere, slashed-up paintings, ashes from the ritual burning of the ex’s possessions, all that jazz. Sort of smelled funny.

“You hate cats,” Blackbeard told him.

“Hate’s a bit strong. Healthy terror of them, I’d say.”

Blackbeard’s kohl was streaked with tear-tracks, but picking up on that didn’t really make his bared-teeth smile any better. “Would you kill one?”

Frenchie had heard about Fang’s dog by now. Did Blackbeard have a cat in here, waiting for an appointment with Frenchie-the-executioner?

“D’you want me to get Iz?” Frenchie offered. “Think the whole, ah, death thing is more his speed.” Not that Izzy didn’t look as ashen and out-to-lunch as the rest of them, lately.

“Oh, Izzy won’t kill this kitty,” Blackbeard said, with something dark curling in his voice: satisfaction and anguish and bitterness all mixed together. “One of the few things he won’t do, even when he’s ordered, the little fucker.”

“Guess we all draw the line somewhere,” Frenchie said.

“But you’re smarter. You wouldn’t stick your head in the lion’s mouth, would you? Fucking terrible idea, right? Something shows you it’s a monster, and you know it’s a monster, you’ve got to put it down, not trust it, not let it go on gnawing at you.”

Did lions gnaw? He’d have thought they could just bite straight through. But then, he’d lost the plot here, he was pretty sure.

“Yeah,” Blackbeard breathed. “Yeah, you’re a smart man. ‘Healthy terror,’ love that. Gotta be healthy.”

He started peeling off his leathers.

So they were doing that, then? Frenchie could work with that. He couldn’t say he was much in the mood, what with the exhaustion and the mind-numbing fear and all, but he also couldn’t say he hadn’t thought about it. Never imagined there’d be this much preamble about cats, though. Well, nobody could accuse Blackbeard of being predictable.

“Right,” Frenchie said, undoing the clasps on his jacket. “Bit of fun’s healthy too, yeah? Good thinking.”

He was a touch behind on the undressing, so he hadn’t gotten more than his jacket off before Blackbeard went and turned into a cat.

Frenchie decided to fit in that jumping-out-of-the-skin bit after all, and he recoiled to the point where he banged his back against the door. It wasn’t every day that you saw a man you were ready to bed turn into a … small-ish panther? Crazily enormous house cat? There were silver strands of fur mixed in with all the black.

Blackwhiskers, Frenchie decided, and then he had to bite down on his lip until it bled, because there were certain laughs that could come out of you that you could never get back in. He didn’t want to find out how far gone he was just from that.

Blackwhiskers was even more terrifying than most cats. Wicked sharp claws, and a hiss that made every hair on Frenchie’s body stand on end. But, well—its tail wasn’t all bushy, was it? And cats did that, when they were pissed off at you: made themselves into bottle-brushes to scrub the soul clean out of your body. It wasn’t slinking into a hunting pose either.

Frenchie wanted to jump ship to get away from it, but that wasn’t the same as wanting it dead, least of all dead by his own hand. He was more of a lover than a fighter, really.

And Blackbeard had it all wrong if he’d thought Frenchie would kill him while he was like this. Cats were a holy terror, but Frenchie had never gone around picking them off one by one. He’d armored himself in them, flown them on his flag, tucked their claws between his fingers. There was no point in wasting what scared you. Blackbeard was fucking terrifying, too, but sometimes that had kept them safe.

Mostly kept them safe from dangers Blackbeard himself had led them to, true, but safe all the same.

He knew his fear wasn’t all Blackbeard had counted on for this, though. He never looked at a thing from just one angle: it was like he had eyes like a fly’s, everything broken up into all these shards of possibilities. He’d known that Frenchie would have to think about the others, too.

It was hard to imagine any of them would ever get close enough to Blackbeard to do a proper mutiny, with a quick in-and-out, sorry-about-that knife plunge or a proper heave-ho with an anchor. Blackbeard had them all outclassed, even Jim. Izzy … there was a chance Izzy could do it, skills-wise, but he was three toes down and still loyal, so there wasn’t much hope there.

Cat was … manageable, maybe. And Wee John and Roach and Olu and the rest had all died parched and starved somewhere, and the rest of the crew was coming apart at the seams, and the box in Frenchie’s head was beginning to look a bit battered. And if Blackbeard died, they could all breathe for a change. Sail to Nassau, maybe. Regroup.

And if Blackbeard died, Blackbeard would be dead. And he hadn’t always been … this. It wasn’t so long ago that he would’ve been the cat on the flag, not the cat on your chest in the middle of the night.

And it was awful, wasn’t it, that Blackbeard had called him in here for this? It was so sad it made something twist around inside Frenchie’s chest.

“Can you still understand me?” Frenchie said softly.

Blackwhiskers gave him another hiss. Bit hard to translate.

“I know it might backfire on me and all,” Frenchie said, sliding down the door to sit on the floor, “or on the rest of us, but I don’t particularly want to kill you, if that’s all right.”

The cat’s ears flattened against its head. Very cursed skull shape, that. He ought to keep it in mind for their next flag, if he lived long enough to stitch one.

“But,” Frenchie continued, “I’m still not clear on whether you’ve got, like, a human brain in there or not. Far as I know, you’re just working with cat instincts. So if you wanted petting, or anything like that … I mean, I’d think it was just the cat asking for it.”

The cat’s eyes were luminous, like those eerie bits of the sea. It stalked towards him, and Frenchie held his breath, waiting to see if it would claw his face off or sink its teeth into his throat and toss him side-to-side.

It dug its claws deep into Frenchie’s legs, instead. It felt like being sliced open by a bunch of white-hot razors. Having his clothes bloodied from the inside-out made for a bit of a change, at least. If he didn't die in here, he'd need to dump some rum over the scratches so they wouldn’t infect. (To be fair, if he did die here, infection would be the least of his worries, wouldn’t it?)

Blackwhiskers settled down on Frenchie’s lap, its claws still rhythmically flexing in and out of his thighs. It glared up at him.

“On it,” Frenchie said. He stroked a hand down the cat’s back: once, twice, three times.

Blackwhiskers didn’t purr for it, but it put its knives away, and Frenchie was of a mind to count that as a win. He might have to grab that bottle of surgical spirits after all.

The cat’s fur was soft and fine as silk, the way he used to imagine Edward Teach’s hair would be. He had always marked those fantasies down as pleasant but unlikely, since Ed had only had eyes for Stede, but here he was, living proof that dreams did come true, in a fashion. Granted, he wasn’t having a nice nooner with his boss’s boyfriend so much as he was petting a suicidal cat-man who’d ordered most of his friends marooned, but if you looked at it a certain way, those were just details. Life never worked out how you thought it would.

“I’d like to hold on to what I’ve still got, you know?” Frenchie said, tentatively scratching the cat’s ears. “You included, I think? So, just one man’s recommendation and all, but you could stop trying to get people to kill you.”

Blackwhiskers let out a noise that was like a strangled creak, still less like a purr than the opening a door maybe better left closed. Kindness was always chancy that way.

Frenchie decided to be hopeful about it. It was nice, being hopeful. Nice and dangerous, like an enormous warm cat napping on some of your blood, but still the best he’d felt in weeks. No sense in ignoring a silver lining.

[z-tomaz]

it also caught me so off guard in episode 1 in particular that the crew clearly knew how much izzy was doing to protect them from ed?? no one's saying it out loud because it won't help but the hug, and the whole scene surrounding it, says they've all quietly been paying attention and worrying about him behind his back and it was a culmination of weeks and months of living like they were while knowing that izzy was bending over backwards to absorb as much of ed's rage and heartbreak and anger as possible in order to shield the rest of them??? help??

[napneeders]

witch Frenchie catboy Ed petplay WHEN

[cadmuslabs777]

Frenchie stopped to help Izzy the moment he saw him btw. if you care.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

ALSO,