Chapter Text
October 30, 1994
It was good for them to get out of the house.
Retirement was wearing on their nerves, Ed’s especially, which was ironic since he had been the one beating the drum to get Stede to step down from his professorship for the last four years. Ed would never properly retire, as long as he had eyes to see the world and hands to hold a camera, but it had been nearly a decade since he had signed a new contract with a magazine or a newspaper. Now he had a hundred hobbies to fill his days. And to fill every available surface in the house, Stede had noticed.
They’d been living together for thirty-five years. Thirty-five years, some harder than others, but through all of it, they loved each other more with every single day that went by.
The only problem was. Well. In all those thirty-five years, they had both always kept so busy. And now they were both retired, free to do whatever they wanted, filled to the brim with memories of a long, loving life in each others’ arms. But now they were both standing still. And they still hadn’t learned how to stand still together.
In some ways, it was like getting to know each other all over again, and it had led to more than a few squabbles. Even when faced with long days with no schedule at all, it seemed they always wanted to use the master bathroom at the same time. Ed wanted to listen to music right when Stede wanted to read in silence, or perhaps Stede wanted to talk and joke when Ed craved solitude.
They had everything they needed. Everything they wanted. And they were so desperately glad to be healthy, all things considered.
But it was good for them to get out of the house!
Ed sat a few inches to Stede’s right, on a bench at the outskirts of the botanical gardens. They were only a short walk from the house, and they came often, sitting and watching white clouds drift across the bright blue sky.
A breath of wind gusted across the park, hurrying the clouds along and rattling the leaves in the trees. Stede tipped his head forward to the angle that he knew would keep his hat on his head, but Ed barely moved. He just smiled peacefully as he watched something happening a little ways away.
Stede squinted to see what had caught Ed’s eye. It was two young men- quite young, likely no more than twenty-five, laying on the grass. One of them was tall and a little chubby, sporting a goatee and sideburns that reminded Stede of dear old Lucius when he was that age. The other was much shorter and well-built, with a mop of floppy brown hair and one of those so-called tribal tattoos winding around his arm.
The two boys were sprawled out on a blanket together, the small one resting his head on the tall one’s stomach. They were too far away to be properly eavesdropped on- especially since Stede's hearing aid was on the fritz- but they were having an animated discussion.
A can of soda were balanced on something flat- Stede winced when he recognized it as a hard backed book- and occasionally one or the other would shift just enough to take a sip, but for the most part they simply lounged, lost in the nearness of each other.
Ed’s shoulder nudged against Stede’s. “You ever wish we had that?”
“What do you mean, a Sprite?” Stede asked with a smirk, “or a twenty-five year old?”
The puff of laughter that Ed released was small and perfunctory, but it was enough for Stede to consider a win.
"You know what I mean."
Stede shifted on the bench so that he could look at Ed. “I do,” he said, and scratched his neck. “You and me… we came up in a different time.”
“On a different planet.”
Stede nodded easily. “Right. Yes. We made… concessions. Lying to the world about who we were and who we loved-”
“Not lying,” Ed interrupted. “Hiding, maybe”
“You’re right, hiding.” Stede looked back at the boys on the lawn. The tall one was idly running his fingers through the other other one's hair and looking at the sky. Stede smiled to himself. “You made it impossible, you know.”
Ed chuckled and sighed. “What did I do this time?”
“You made it impossible for me to hide from myself. When I fell in love with you… all of that ended. Hiding from the world never felt all that difficult, compared to how I hid from myself before I met you.”
It was a rare thing, to render Edward Teach speechless. His left hand found Stede’s right. Stede’s thumb smoothed over rough knuckles and thick veins, and for a while, there was no reason to say anything else.
They didn't look at each other. They didn't need to; not when they were wearing identical looks of satisfaction, memorized decades ago. So they just looked ahead.