#unclear if the 'possessed by an immaterial eldritch being' thing is because i'm terminally spn poisoned

[ladyluscinia]

I was typing my response to this and then tumblr briefly froze and deleted it 😭😭😭. But I will try again because I love additions. Hijack away!

Binding magical tattoos are a concept that fucks so hard, so yeah Edward's snake / tentacle tattoo definitely spilled across his skin the first time he touched Izzy to agree to the deal. Magically screams "This random human is not for fucking with" (not than anyone around can understand it). He didn't really have much ink before that, so his initial reasons for getting more tattoos was to try and make it stand out less. Then he got into it for its own sake.

Izzy's tattoo is because he thought Edward's were really weird but interesting once he started accumulating them - very:

"But it doesn't mean anything. Or pretend to mean anything. And you have to injure yourself to apply each one? Why bother?"

"I dunno man... Tattoos are cool?"

Anyway one day Edward realizes holy shit Izzy has skin and he tries to be cool about making the offer, and Izzy is just like well it's not *my* skin so why not and Edward tattoos him. On the face because Izzy doesn't have a preference. It's super horny (as it is in every universe) and Izzy gets way more into it than he thought he would.

(Sidebar: while I love possessiveness, I'm leaning toward the Stede stabbing thing being such a big deal for Izzy because he had to learn how fragile the humans are and how important it is not to injure them and then Edward is just willingly getting injured! What the fuck?!? Sure, Izzy has stabbed him before for horny swordfight reasons but that was different. Izzy can fix any damage he does. No risk, see? Stede meanwhile is reckless endangerment and must be stopped.)

I doubt there's anything telling Edward he has to fuck his bonded eldritch god, but there's no rules against either! And what kind of coward do you think he is? Izzy has no normal person hangups around sex and a whole slew of completely freak ones, so it's consistently interesting.

And as for Izzy's body... My interest always leans toward eldritch beings that can't really manifest on a physical plane, so Edward has only ever seen Izzy possessing a corpse (which originally looked very corpse-like until he fixed it, for the horror 😘). Does not preclude catching glimpses in dreams though (fun idea), and of course gives Izzy a fantastically inhuman relationship to his body. Yeah he'd love something like the toe thing, because it's not actually hurting him. Just a really creative and dedicated gesture that he can apply all kinds of meaning to.

I gotta write more about the possessed corpse meeting. I'm so into that.

Ok, Dark Sea God Izzy thoughts...

Edward can't forget what Izzy is - being trapped in the middle of a burning ship and knowing death is coming only to have a god offer to save you... well that leaves an impression - but he tries not to think about it too much. Both for the aforementioned horror and because (he'll die before admitting this to another soul) everything happened so fast and chaotic that he doesn't fully remember what he agreed to. He just wanted to live.

Izzy, meanwhile, didn't actually intend to stay by Edward's side for decades. He grabbed a perfectly serviceable corpse, fixed it up, and then only meant to watch his new devotee / partner / master for a bit. But he hadn't actually been in a form much like a human in so long, he kinda forgot what it was like and everything was so novel. It was fun. He got distracted, and then by the time he remembered he'd planned to go back to the water he was fully enamored.

I like the fear thing. Maybe Izzy can only more directly do Sea God type things when part of or at minimum in the sea, so a lot of his day to day powers are more subtle and (initially) underwhelming then you'd expect from an eldritch being. Things like Fear. I also like the idea he can inflict people with Thirst (the saltwater kind).

He can talk to Button's seagulls but he refuses to unless they pay respects. Which they won't, because he's doing a stellar job of pretending not to be a god and also seagulls are stingy.

I think he should have eaten someone at least once. Sacrificial offering and all that. Or maybe he just makes a habit of licking spilled blood off his fingers and looking way too thrilled about it.

Back to the whole devotee / partner / master thing, literally neither of them knows who is actually in charge in this magic arrangement, assuming anyone is. Izzy is doing the thing where he's got an entirely different frame of reference, so "serving" Edward is not something he has to do or sees as work. He just wants to. But of course Edward occasionally remembers Izzy could change his mind and then that tricky little blood oath he owes him could come up again.