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As Izzy stares down at his bowl of food, he realizes he can’t do it. He lifts his spoon. Lets it fall back into the bowl. Raises it again. Lets it fall.
This again.
He hears the laughter in the galley of the crew eating. He wonders if he’ll ever feel the ease of swallowing a morsel of food, chewed just right, the way they all seem to.
Doesn’t seem likely.
*
As the days of this stretch into weeks, his cheeks hollow. His skin turns sallow. No matter the leather and the heat, he does not feel warm. He is reluctant to change clothes, fearful of the growing dimples on the top of his chest on either side of his sternum where his muscles are visibly melting away, day by day.
If anyone notices, they do not mention it to him.
*
When he’s invited to the captains’ cabin one evening, he does not panic.
When Blackbeard looks at him properly, seemingly for the first time in months, he does not feel the euphoria he once tried to smother in his imagination. He hates the barely-concealed revulsion on his face. It makes him aware of his repulsiveness, and in that moment he hates Blackbeard.
When Stede brings the apple over, he does not register it as anything special.
When they say it’ll cure him, he cocks his head slightly.
“I’m not sick,” he says.
“Never said you were, mate,” Blackbeard says, aiming for reassuring and landing somewhere around afraid.
“Just in need of a pick-me-up,” Stede chimes in, aiming for cheery and landing somewhere around anxious.
“Just have a bite,” Blackbeard says.
“Alright.”
He crunches into it, the skin giving under his teeth, the firm heart of it bursting with sweetness on his tongue.
He does not feel his eyes roll back.
He only knows that the world goes dark.
*
He’s nine years old, and his mother is cutting a loaf of freshly baked bread. She hands him a slice. It’s still warm, soft in its floury crust.
*
He’s sixteen, eating hardtack and feeling his throat scrape with every swallow of impossibly sharp bites.
*
He’s twenty-three, bumping shoulders with Ed as they eat like kings after offloading half a dozen raids’ worth of goods.
*
“Shit, shit, shit,” Ed repeats, having barely caught Izzy when he collapsed. His eyes are moving frantically in their sockets, unseeing. He hears nothing. His lips move, his adam’s apple bobs on desperate swallows, and he moans pitifully, as if in pain.
Stede is wringing his hands, saying, “They said it would be violent at first, but it should resolve itself soon. He’ll be back with us in a moment, I’m sure of it.”
*
Izzy is thirty six, aboard the Queen Anne, and drunk. He looks at Ed and remembers, not for the first time, he’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever been within arm’s reach of.
He’s bedded more than his fair share of people, fewer in the last few years as his desire has singled out this god among men.
The words are on his lips. He swipes his tongue over their chapped surface and draws them back in.
I will follow you anywhere. Love drives me mad. And I have never felt so unbalanced.
*
He’s forty nine, and Ed has stopped looking at him when he brings in meals. He eats alone in the first mate’s quarters, if you can call the way he consumes eating. It’s devoid of all thought. A physical obligation the way pissing is.
*
He’s fifty two, and hopeless. He has forgotten the tastes of Roach’s cooking. He has forgotten the weight of anything other than regret in his mouth.
*
He thrashes, once, twice in Ed’s arms before returning to himself. The tears in his eyes are the most damning thing Ed’s ever seen.
“One more bite,” Ed is pleading, holding the apple to his lips. “One more bite, and it stops.”
Izzy sobs, but complies. Anything for his captain.
*
He’s fifty one. The candles burn low and provide no heat, but he is warmed by Ed’s obvious pride; a rarity, these days. His eyes gleam as they gaze upon his first mate. If Ed was a god, then Izzy was his voice on earth.
They clink their glasses and drink good rum.
*
When he comes back this time, the tears are streaming freely down his face. He doesn’t know how to stop them. He doesn’t know how to breathe. He doesn’t know who’s touching him.
“It’s alright, it’s alright,” Ed is crooning. “It’s over now.”
“What the fuck,” Izzy chokes out, “was that?”
“Just something to remind you how to eat,” Stede interjects. “We were worried, and—“
He realizes he’s pressed between them. He throws himself forwards, scrambling away from them.
“You don’t get to— you don’t get to make those decisions for me,” he rasps from where he’s on all fours a few feet away from them.
“Hardly gonna let you waste away, man,” Ed says.
“I wish you would. Fuck, I wish you fucking would.”
He curls in on himself, and does not remember falling asleep.
*
He awakes in his own quarters. His mouth has a lingering over-sweetness of apple, half broken down by saliva.
Someone cared enough to feed him. He knows this. Someone cared enough to subject him to that.
He rolls over on his bunk, fist pressing into the concave curve of his stomach.
Someone cared enough to feed him. He feels wretched for it.
*
He does not come to the captains’ cabin at their request the next day. Or the day after. They try to respect that.
They start to eat in the galley though, and he knows they’re watching him as he moves through it.
And when Blackbeard presses a bowl of food into his hand, he lifts the spoon. He tries again.