Chapter Text
Edward Teach regretted very little.
He couldn't say he regretted the matter of his father's death, for example. Been traumatized by, sure, but regretted? No.
Sailors, being by necessity highly focused on the present and the near future, tended to not regret much. No time to regret sailing into the storm when you needed to focus on reefing down the sails and battening down the hatches. And no matter how harsh the journey, no captain would dare speak ill of the winds that finally brought him and his crew safely to port once more. So, all told, Edward couldn't regret anything that led to him meeting Stede Bonnet, the Gentleman Pirate.
Truthfully, when Edward looked inside himself and found the memories of moments he wished he could go back and do differently, it was less anything he did that he regretted, and more things that he didn't do.
He should have kissed Stede Bonnet.
Now that it was too late, that was his biggest, perhaps only, regret.
There had been so many times he had been tempted. So many opportunities. But Stede was, above all, and despite his best efforts, a gentleman. Edward was a scoundrel, at best, and when placed in direct comparison with the Gentleman Pirate, even worse than that.
Gentlemen... Well, they deserved better than what Edward had to offer, that was for certain. And Stede Bonnet deserved better than any other.
Stede, with his golden hair, eyes like a moonless night, skin unblemished and pristine as a brand new canvas...
Edward, meanwhile, was as scarred and rough as a barnacled hull, with hands so callused that he often thought that a single touch would tear right through Stede's silken skin, fair as the break of dawn and twice as dazzling, like a child's walking stick slashing through a dew-trimmed cobweb.
Edward had always yearned for the finer things in life, the things he was denied as a youth, but after his rocky introduction to high society, he realized... a thousand bolts of embroidered silk would never draw his eye nor tempt his touch the way Stede Bonnet did. The Gentleman Pirate could be dressed in exquisite cashmere or Edward's black leathers or thin summer linens that billowed around his pampered frame like fine curtains, and Edward would view him the same: the way a man dying of thirst views a babbling stream.
He should have kissed him. Even just once.
He almost had, the night of his disastrous debut, when Stede had just burnt down a fancy aristocrat's vessel using only the fine art of passive aggression. He had really wanted to kiss him then.
He had wanted to kiss him when he had told Stede the truth about his father's death, and Stede had responded by calling himself Edward's friend. A kiss of gratitude, a demonstration and declaration of loyalty, a promise to never again suffer anyone to even think about murdering him.
He had wanted to kiss him, a hundred times over, when Stede had let himself get run through in order to win his first real duel. Edward had never felt agony as potent as the moments between hearing the familiar sound of steel piercing flesh and realizing that Stede had truly learned Blackbeard's death-defying secret maneuver. Not even the bite of a sword plunging through his own gut could hurt as acutely, nor as deeply.
But Stede survived. Again.
Edward had never been prouder.
And there perhaps had never been a more inopportune moment in which to want to kiss someone.
He should have kissed him after the fancy party. Missing that opportunity was the one regret that stung the most. Edward had thought, in the moment, that maybe Stede would have kissed him back. The way he tucked the scrap of silk into Edward's breast pocket. Complimented him. Looked at him. No one else had ever looked at him like that. He had known his mother's pitying love, his father's drunken detestation, the suspicion of every sailor who doubted the mettle of a young waif, and the fear of those who knew the name and reputation of Blackbeard the pirate... but never had he been looked at the way Stede Bonnet looked at him that night. Like there was something shiny and valuable underneath all his tar and grit.
Like he, Edward Teach, was valuable.
Stede, who wore his every thought on the arch of his brow, the corner of his mouth, the set of his chin... looked at Edward, and for once, Edward felt... visible.
He should have kissed him then. In the moonlight on the calm ocean, the smell of smoke still clinging to his beard... He should have kissed him.
But he was a coward. He pulled away after he moved closer. He gave up without a fight.
He didn't even try to kiss him, because gentlemen like Stede Bonnet deserved better than scoundrels like Edward Teach.
Pirate captains don't regret much. They don't curse the winds that guide them, no matter how many times those winds turn to tempestuous gales. Edward regretted nothing that, directly or indirectly, allowed him to meet the Gentleman Pirate, Stede Bonnet.
But the actions that led to him losing him... Those, he regretted.
He should have fucking kissed him when he had the chance.
And now...
Now, he never would.