#stede is too cause he doesn't exactly break things off with ed once he finds out about izzy

[something-about-sunflowers]

More modern au CJ (and people related to him) headcanons cause I should be asleep rn but I’m not:

This is a lot of rambling so under a read-more it goes lmao

Pretty much all of this is stuff I've been rotating in my head for a potential fic involving post EdIzzy, present Izzy/Hornigold (yes, be worried for Izzy lmao), and CJIzzy endgame lmao so some of this I'm gonna skim over cause I don't want to spoil it if I do manage to write any of that lol.

Meets Ed in high school. About 2 years older than him, same grade tho cause CJ got held back and one of them has a fucky birthday putting them above/below the average age for their grade (Ed younger probably?).

Didn't go for college but does follow Ed when he goes cause Ed doesn't want to live in a dorm and they could afford a shitty studio if they room together. They fuckin.

Ed meets Izzy in school and introduces them, Jack falls ass over teakettle, man hears wedding bells when Izzy walks thru the door. He can read a room tho and sees the way Izzy looks at Ed like he hung the moon so he doesn't interfere. They all fuck tho. He 'moves on' when they start actually dating, still fuck tho.

He meets Anne and they hit it off, she knows Jack's gone for Izzy but they like each other well enough. He finds out he knocked her up the same day Izzy tells him he wants to ask Ed to marry him. He has a breakdown, goes on a bender, doesn't really come down from it. Anne dumps him and they go no-contact.

Ed gets bored of college and drops out, buys a shitty run down bar and opens up The Queen Anne. Moves out of his and Jack's place into the apartment above the bar with Izzy. Jack keeps the studio but he's at theirs most often anyway. 'Hires' Jack and Izzy and a few friends from college (Fang, Ivan comes a little later). Izzy drops out too so he can 'help' run the bar.

Its obv a gay bar and its very much not the (late) 10s-20s so they get a good bit of trouble from homophobes. Jack picks a fight with a particularly unhinged one (who threatened Izzy). They leave but they follow him home and try and burn his apartment down. His neighbor calls 911 and he's saved (by the hot firefighter I mentioned in my prev CJ headcanon post lol) but he's got some really gnarly burns. He moves in with Ed and Izzy since his place is fucked and he needs help while he recovers anyway. Izzy does most of the 'help', tho Ed is good at 'distract from pain'.

Anne comes back in the picture when she hears about the fire (she kept in contact with Izzy, who told her). They don't get back together, she's dating Mary/Mark (depending on the day) now, but she DOES care and she figures their kid should be able to know their dad. When Jack is recovered enough he moves out of Ed and Izzy's place cause 'an apartment above a bar isn't really a place you can bring your kid, Jack'.

During his recovery his drinking problem gets worse and he develops a drug problem too (pain killers for the burns). He manages 'functional' for the most part for a couple of years but one day he's supposed to be watching Cal at Anne's place and he's way too drunk/high and Cal gets seriously hurt. Mary/Mark comes home just in time to avoid tragedy but Jack is horrified at himself and Anne gives him an ultimatum.

Mary/Mark (a social worker of some sort) helps him find a rehab and he gets better. He gets a new job (can't stay at the bar if he's trying to get sober) as a mechanic (cause that is also a really good job for him). About a year later he runs into the firefighter who saved him and surprises himself by asking if they can help him join up. They do and he does.

He keeps in touch with Ed and Izzy, kinda, mostly thru social media and Christmas cards (and he ALWAYS calls Izzy for his birthday) but they're not really up to date with each other. He knows they're currently 'off-again' cause Izzy is no longer 'in a relationship' on facebook, and he hears thru the grapevine that Ed's not at The Queen anymore. He doesn't realize that Izzy followed him til he gets a call for a fire at The Revenge and Izzy's the only one on shift (at like, 7am, waaaay past close). This is where THEY start in the fic in my head tho so no more beyond this for them lol.

(Re: Jack and Anne's kid: Calico 'Cal'/'Callie' Bonny. They're 5 when they meet Jack. They're about 7-8 when they have their near death experience. At 11 they come out as non binary (like Mary/Mark). They're 13 when the fic takes place. Jack is in their life but is not their caregiver (tho Anne and Mary/Mark give him weekends sometimes and he watches them when they need it).)

(Re: Ed and Izzy: Izzy brings up the idea of marriage to Ed. Ed is cagey about it. They CAN legally marry cause Izzy is legally still 'female' no cis!Izzy jumpscares here but Ed says he wants to wait til its legal 'as like, solidarity man'. Izzy can't tell Ed 'no' and reasons its at least coming from a good place.

They're never really in a good place in their relationship, Jack doesn't notice cause he's a barely functional alcoholic while they're all living together. Things continue to deteriorate between them. Marriage Equality Act passes and when Izzy brings up getting married again Ed says 'I mean, we're practically married already Iz, don't need a piece of paper to tell me you're mine, yeah?' They wind up being pretty off-again-on-again.

Few years later Ed meets Stede (while him and Izzy are ON-again). Ed hands over The Queen to one of the boys and brings himself and Izzy (and Fang and Ivan) over to Stede's bar The Revenge. He's fucking Stede behind Izzy's back for the better part of a year before Izzy confronts him (he knew, he was just in denial). Ed dumps Izzy. Within the year Ed is engaged to Stede.

The aftermath of all that finds Izzy at Hornigold's bar, where Ed and Jack used to work when Ed was in college but Izzy did not (so he doesn’t really know Ben like they do), drunk and being chatted up by Ben aaaand that's about where the fic starts in my head lmao.)

[leithianxx]

Ed has this annoyingly relatable tendency to swing SO overly hard in whichever direction he's nudged. They're captured and they could apparently very easily simply walk away on foot from the Academy with no consequences but Ed won't even entertain it he's just full on "there is no escape :) :) i'm a professional folder now :)" Then he kisses Stede ONCE and in practically the same breath he's asking him to assume new identities and run away to CHINA. Not go back to the ship together, not even start a new life in like, Canada. Has to pick the most extreme far off destination he can think of. He doesn't even take a beat to plan further, he immediately runs off the beach to get started and wants to leave TONIGHT. Poor guy sets himself up for failure at the docks because now he's not just lost Stede, he's lost this entire new life he's constructed all in his head because he's got so far ahead of himself.

He does it in his break up too like he puts on Stede's robe for comfort and all of a sudden he needs to channel this exaggerated version of the parts of Stede's personality that he loves or wishes he could have. Then the MOMENT Izzy tells him he wants Blackbeard back Ed just fully kills a man, severs toes, and rebrands himself to be the most evil version of himself yet. And by doing these things he just breaks his own heart over and over again because he's constantly mourning these false identities and fantasies that he builds up in his head and has to abandon.

All or nothing thinking makes you feel like such a failure because nothing in life is all or nothing, including the ability to stop thinking about things as all or nothing, so it's hard to even begin to start approaching things with caution or moderation because if you fuck up even once well then that's it, I'm a lost cause I won't even try to regulate myself any more and i'll just make giving up & getting my hopes unrealistically up my full time job. We make (deserved) jokes about Edward "Guess I'll Die" Teach but that's exactly what this kind of behaviour is: I'm bored with my life so maybe I'll just DIE ABOUT IT like jesus dude maybe there's something in between "trying dying" and trying to become a completely new and different person either by literally assuming a new identity or metaphorically through intrinsically weaving his sense of self in with Stede's companionship.

I struggle with this so much like i make the most wild impulsive dramatic life decisions sometimes because they feel like the easy solutions to big problems, and measured responses are boring, and boredom is intolerable.

Stede has the exact same problem I just think he's at a different stage of learning how to break this pattern. He seems much more willing to bounce his ideas and impulses off of other people which can give you a lot of valuable outside perspective. He still makes dramatic unilateral decisions like running away to become a pirate and then running back home, but by the end of the latter I think he's realized that there's always a third option. I guess the lesson when you find yourself between a rock and a hard place of 2 extreme options is to remember (ironically) that there IS always an escape.