Singing the Body Electric

threesentenceficathon (the ficathon where you leave a prompt and someone writes a three-sentence story for that prompt) has been underway, and this is the second year in a row that I've been having a blast taking part.

So far I've written thirteen Our Flag Means Death ficlets and one for Starfleet Academy:


Our Flag Means Death

About Time (Fang/Izzy Hands, rated G, 66 words, AO3 link)
Prompt: let us be lovers and marry our fortunes together

It's inscribed on the forty-seventh page of the Revenge's second logbook, entered—at the insistence of a certain half of the party—without any fanfare, fuss, or the optional decorative border.

October 5th, 1718 - The captain having performed a ceremony of matelotage for Kevin Fang and Israel Hands, a Calypsish reception following.

Below, a note in the same script by witness L. Spriggs: (About b. time.)


Salvage (Past Izzy Hands/Ed Teach, rated G, 93 words, note: , AO3 link)
Prompt: the art of letting go

You don't cut a rope if you can untie it; you don't burn a rag if you can salvage the thread. It's waste-not, want-not at sea, and a sailor's no different than anything else in supply on a ship. And so Izzy takes pains not to cut his ties with Ed when it's over, not to set any fires, but to let go slowly, slowly, a little at a time with bleeding fingertips, hoping there will be something left of himself at the end of it that someone else can put to use.


(A) Vision (Fang/Lucius Spriggs, rated T, 106 words, AO3 link)
Prompt: a reading bear

He sliiiiides his phone out of his pocket when Fang gets a book out after dinner.

Sweetheart that Fang is, he'll always drop everything to model for Lucius, but Lucius doesn't actually want to interrupt his reading—just wants to fully appreciate the sight he makes reclining in the armchair, delicate wire-rimmed spectacles perched on his nose, one hand propping up the book on his belly and the other absently playing with his beard.

Just a few reference photos for now, and he'll wait until Fang's finished a chapter or two before seeing if he wants to re-create the pose wearing nothing but the reading glasses.


At Arm's Length (Izzy Hands, rated T, 105 words, AO3 link)
Prompt: the first kill

The thing that fucked with his head the most, that first time, was that he hadn't even meant to do it. It was a fast, dirty fight in close quarters, all teeth and knees and flailing fists, his own blood and someone else's spit in his eyes, shoving at the weight on top of him until it suddenly gave way and there was a dull, wrong thump of a head hitting a wall too hard followed by an even wronger silence.

Izzy took up the sword as soon as he could steal one; with a sword, you always have a chance to see death coming.


A Little Ditty (Frenchie/Izzy Hands, rated M, 96 words, AO3 link)
Prompt: Fuck me fast and fuck me hard

He pulled Frenchie with him to the bunk by the shirtfront and yanked him down on top of him, having fifteen minutes to the next watch and an itch to scratch. "Fuck me fast and fuck me hard."

His mistake was immediately clear: for all that Frenchie was obligingly pulling his trousers off, his eyes flickered with the light of a doggerel poet already mentally rhyming 'hard' with 'lard' as he reached for the oil, and his pursing lips were carrying on to the next phrase as he cheerfully whistled "This is la vie en ro-se..."


Beautiful (Frenchie/Roach, rated G, 90 words, AO3 link)
Prompt: 2nd person pov

If you could make one promise to the youth who was pressed to sea, angry, hungry, fearful in the dark, it would be this. Someday, someday, there will be a pot of conch stew simmering on the fire in a breezy galley and nothing at all to do until the potatoes are cooked through. And there will be a man with you, lying half-naked in your arms behind the well-stocked barrels and boxes, laughing, singing a little song to you, and he will be beautiful—oh, he will be beautiful.


Get It Wet (Izzy Hands/Jim Jimenez, rated E, 150 words, AO3 link)
Prompt: strap-on blowjob

He needs to take his leg off to kneel these days, but Jim needs to put their cock on for him to suck it, so he supposes it comes out even. A man long-accustomed to a quick and dirty exchange of favours, he shivers in one hot, flayed paroxysm as he drags his tongue slowly along cool leather instead of warm flesh, aware that this isn't the usual trade of willing hole for pleasure but a more complicated exchange that even he doesn't fully understand—something about how it feels to be down here putting his mouth to work, something about the look in Jim's eyes as they watch him do it. His own cock throbs as Jim pulls his hair sharply, and he gazes up at them, breathing in the salt-thick scent of their arousal, his tongue still pressed to their length, his lips wet and his throat waiting.


Here and Gone (Past Izzy Hands/Ed Teach + background Stede Bonnet/Ed Teach, rated G, 145 words, note: canonical character death + ghost fic, AO3 link)
Prompt: I've learned love is like a brick / You can build a house or sink a dead body

Twenty-some years of his life spent at Ed's side as the sort of stubborn idiot who never had the strength to leave and stay left, is it any wonder he's still here after he's dead and buried?

He sits atop his grave, watching the tides come in and go out again, watching the inn come together, rolling his eyes when Ed and Bonnet are capering like sand-boys and shouting at them to tighten up when they're on the outs—about as heeded now as he ever was, which isn't much but isn't nothing.

It was always going to get him killed, loving that man, but if his last days on this earth saw him laid to rest in the place Ed calls home instead of thrown overboard alone into the cold, dark water, Izzy Hands is still enough of a stubborn idiot to be thankful.


Boys That Sit Like This Want This (Fang/Izzy Hands, rated M, 135 words, AO3 link)
Prompt: thighjobs

Izzy's jaw works silently, tight with an awareness that it would be a little much even for him to bark at Fang to shut his fucking legs. There's nothing defensibly wrong with the way Fang's sitting on that crate, leaning back a little as always, feet planted, knees apart—only that anyone with eyes would find them drawn to where his mast-like thighs are spread, and Izzy's eyes in particular can pick out the square inches he spent himself on last night, screwing into that soft, warm welcome from behind with all the vigour his hips and a palmful of grease could facilitate.

He settles for adjusting himself and catching Fang's eye, then jerks his chin toward the hatch and heads below in the hopes that renewed acquaintance will get it out of his system.


Nuits d'Amour (Wee John Feeney/Izzy Hands + implied Izzy Hands/Crew, rated M, 89 words, AO3 link)
Prompt: three sentences without using the letter "e" besides in character names

Is it John or is it Calypso who has Izzy first that night? Who can say, in that mad and glorious confusion of paint and scruff, satin and scars, his blood thrumming hot with survival and lust and his throat still full of song. Why try, if divinity might allow a thing who both is and isn't Izzy Hands—this charming thing, this thing in pink and gold—to sigh, and kiss, and grant its favours in a sanctuary of obscuring shadow, again and again until dawn's first light.


Rockabye (Fang/Frenchie, rated G, 134 words, AO3 link)
Prompt: 2+ characters with names starting with f, comfort

He could pass it off as an accident, stumbling back to the wrong berth after a late-night trip to the head, but the nicest thing about Fang is that he never needs to. Instead, even though Frenchie ends up jostling him awake and kneeing him in the side as he tries to climb into the hammock, Fang only helps him up and asks: "Bad dream?"

And when he nods, tucking his sweaty brow and cold hands into the shelter of warmth and softness, he's held close in strong arms and given all the 'shhh's and 'there, there's and 'oh, you poor dear's a man could ask for, until the chill is banished from every corner of him and the rise and fall of Fang's chest lulls him into a gentler sleep.


Counting the Thought (Black Pete/Lucius Spriggs, rated G, 81 words, AO3 link)
Prompt: suffering alone after waking up from a nightmare because character doesn't want to disturb their partner/is afraid to seek comfort

Pete would listen, if Lucius woke him up—would hold him close, and stroke his hair, and let him talk his way through the nightmare until he's back to the rotten roots of it. Even if there's a pause before Pete puts his arms around him now, even if Lucius knows he's tired of it all, Pete would try. He rolls quietly out of bed, grabbing his cigarettes as he goes and heading above for a smoke, telling himself that's enough.


Where Land Meets Water (Izzy Hands, rated T, 87 words, note: references maternal and child mortality, AO3 link)
Prompt: what is your earliest childhood memory and why do you choose to share it?

No one actually remembers for certain which of their faded memories of childhood came first, or at least Izzy doesn't. He knows, however, that no sailor ever talks about whatever damp and cramped house they were born in—not a burn from the cookpot or a beating for touching it, not an empty belly, not the labour-screams on the other side of a door or a little sibling gone cold and quiet. Instead, like him, it's always this: "I remember the first time I saw the sea."


Starfleet Academy

Sterner Stuff (Jay-Den Kraag/Darem Reymi, rated M, 100 words, AO3 link)
Prompt: dominant masochism

"Khionian, remember? We're made of sterner stuff," he says, shifting forms as he steps forward into the heated, panting, teeth-baring space of Jay-Den's barely leashed ardour, pausing only to tilt his head and ask, "Unless this face is killing the mood?"

"No—" Jay-Den shakes his head, stare unbroken, his tongue darting across his lip but his clenching hands still disappointingly splintering the edge of the table behind him instead of squeezing Darem senseless. "—no, you look—you look good."

He grins, grabbing Jay-Den by the front of his uniform and yanking him close, purring: "Then come on and hurt me."