#stede??? what are you saying!??! thats your boyfriend??? dont say that to him 😭😭😭

[fivefeetfangirl]

how are you doing post ep7 my friend?

oh its so not going well. bad idea watching this right before i am going out to meet someone 😭😭

[itsclydebitches]

OFMD Party Drabble #6

Prompt: Man vs. Self

Yes I’m still doing this series WHO CAN STOP ME MUHAHAHA anyway here’s Part One and Two.

Edward was his own worst enemy and after thirty years of putting up with the fucker’s nonsense, Izzy was this close to strangling him.

Of course, he’d been saying that for thirty years, so.

Just text him you absolute, utterly deranged sHITSTAIN

Izzy’s fingers flew across the keyboard of his phone. To his left a woman with a baby snuck a look at his ill-tempered texting, whatever expression he’d contorted his face into, and determinedly stood to find another seat. Izzy pressed ‘send’ with the vicious satisfaction of a warrior descending with his sword.

The reply was immediate:

thats not a nice way to talk to your boyfriend :(

YOU’RE NOT GONNA HAVE A FUCKING BOYFRIEND ANYMORE IF YOU KEEP DOING THIS TO ME, EDWARD

you dont mean that 😭😭😭 i just dont know what to say!!! i mean shit Iz he’s a fancy-pants museum curator and i’m slinging burgers all day. how the fuck do i even start that conversation? ‘hi hello i know Iz and he says youre cute wanna go on a fucking date with us’?????

Izzy resisted the urge to lean forward and bash his head against the pole. He didn’t even know where to begin with that. The fact that Edward had never lacked words in his entire, chatty life? That his job was far from just ‘slinging burgers,’ given that Blackbeard’s Bar & Grill was a multi-award winning restaurant with a Food Network spot and a legion of devoted customers? That Izzy had not once, ever, said that Bonnet was cute?

The fact that ‘disgustingly adorable’ might have been a better descriptor was entirely beside the point.

Originally, Izzy had intended to text Bonnet himself, act as the bridge between him and Edward’s rather... unique personality — though he suspected that these two were weird enough that they’d get along like a house on fire. He’d cooled his heels for a day after that absurd miscommunication, got wrapped up in running the restaurant, and then by the time the weekend had rolled around, Edward had decided that he wanted to reach out himself. Great! Less work for Izzy to do.

Except then the idiot had decided he was too chicken to pull it off, leaving them in a weird fucking limbo where Izzy vaguely feared for his life. That Lucius boy might just have been insane enough to follow through on his threats and that was not the kind of Wednesday morning Izzy was looking to suffer through.

Yes, he texted back. Say that exactly.

Iz i can’t say that!!

Sure you can. Put me out of my misery, Edward.

so mean. meanest. meanie. mean-pants :( :( :(

Actually, he should just screenshot all this and send it to Bonnet. Either he’d would fall hopelessly in love with the man like, god help him, Izzy had, or he’d run for the proverbial hills. At this point either option sounded wonderful.

Fuck, but he needed more coffee.

Izzy was just considering whether it was worth getting off a stop earlier and walking the rest of the way to work so he could stop by Ivan’s cafe when a thread of conversation — previously indistinguishable from the rest of the tube’s background noise — hit him like a fucking freight train.

“Hasn’t changed a bit! Wee Baby Bonnet looks like he’s ready to piss his pants...”

Izzy shut his eyes. Surely the world wasn’t populated by acquaintances of Stede Fucking Bonnet, all of whom ended up on his morning route? That was insane. Incomprehensibly annoying. Izzy hadn’t exactly been a saint throughout his life, but did he really deserve this?

Then again, how many people in the city had a predominantly French surname that, depending on its origin, might just derive from a synonym of ‘attractive’?

Sometimes he fucking hated his linguistics degree.

The man who’d spoken sat across from Izzy, just a few seats down, and after a double-take he realized that he didn’t need his eyes checked (again), they were just identical twins. Smarmy looking guys if you asked him, but then Izzy couldn’t exactly throw stones when it came to appearances.

He should ignore it. Really he should. Edward was waiting for a response, Ivan’s coffee was calling, and if he got off now there might even by a blueberry muffin in his future.

Ignore it, Izzy told himself firmly. Just leave, take the scenic route for once —

— and then the cries of ‘Baby Bonnet’ grew louder, accompanied by laughter that was too familiar to ignore.

Izzy closed his eyes and cursed. You sentimental twat.

“Hey.”

The twins looked up, the mirth dying in the face of Izzy’s expression and — while not towering figure — definitely threatening as they sat and he stood, leaning menacingly into their space. So he couldn’t discourage a flirty asshole half his age, but he could still intimidate some identical goons. Good to know.

“Lemme see,” Izzy said and snatched the phone before either could protest. Sure enough, there was Stede, those curls and a bright blue suit — good god with teal lapels? — absolutely unmistakable, even as whoever was filming shook with laughter of their own. It looked like Stede was getting reamed out by some visitor, his hands held up in awkward surrender, protests inaudible against the woman’s yelling. The video ended when she threw whatever was in her takeaway cup across Stede’s shirt. He stumbled back, landing on his ass — hands flying up towards his eyes. Whatever it was had been hot.

What a waste of a good drink. Thank god the suit was ruined.

Izzy wanted to bash that woman’s head in.

He kept his expression neutral as he handed the phone back, the twins sharing wary glances.

“You know that idiot?” Izzy asked — and the smiles bloomed again, identical.

That was all he needed.

“Oh yeah,” the one on the left said, digging himself a deeper hole. “Baby Bonnet was in prep with us. Total fucking pushover.”

“Thought he’d be dead by now,” the one on the right picked up. “Or committed somewhere. Ran him off of Facebook a few years ago, he dropped off the map, but then this gem popped up on Reddit — ”

“I’m sorry,” Izzy interrupted. He removed his jacket and laid it carefully over a nearby seat. The black shirt underneath was rolled to the elbows.

“Sorry?” they echoed.

“Not you,” Izzy sneered. He quickly caught the gaze of everyone else in the car, their attention drawn to the growing electricity in the air. The woman with the baby sighed and got up to leave. Izzy inclined his head at her retreating back.

Then he slammed his fist into the first twin’s nose.

They even went down the same, all bloody spurts and pathetic whimpers. Izzy might not have been as young as he once was, but it would take a lot more than these weak fucks to provide a challenge. Back-alley brawls and two decades of fencing had given him the reflexes of a cat and Izzy’s blood sang at the whoop of approval a few seats down. That’s why he was doing this. It was good to expend the energy on occasion.

It had absolutely nothing to do with Bonnet’s stricken expression in the vid.

When he was done and the twins had fled, with very pretty pictures painted for them about what would happen if the cops got involved, Izzy dabbed his knuckles with an old napkin and rearranged his clothes. The dude who’d whooped finished recording — because everyone recorded everything nowadays, the fucking degenerates — and shot him a small, hesitant smile. Izzy whistled him over.

“Send that to me,” he said, rattling off his number.

Izzy had long since passed his stop, but that was okay. If he was going to be late, might as well be late with a halfway decent breakfast. As he re-planned his route, Izzy attached the vid for Edward, easily imaging the glee on his face when he saw it.

“Had worse mornings,” Izzy acknowledged, pulling up his texts.

Stop being a self-sabotaging twat, you TWAT. Send this to Bonnet with my regards. If we can fight for him, we can sure as fuck invite him to dinner.