Work Text:
It took eight British sailors to hold Ed down as he thrashed and bellowed on their deck. Buried under a pile of sweating sailors in posh naval uniforms, he was gasping for breath and humid-hot, still damp from the ocean water he swam through to get back to the Revenge - back to Stede.
Stede, who was currently shouting at the top of his lungs. “What do you think you’re doing - this is abuse of a prisoner! Unhand him!”
Ed twisted his head, scraping his cheek on the deck planks. He could only catch a glimpse of Stede beneath a sailor’s arm, and even just that brief flash of color steadied him. Stede was all right. Stede, at least, was still on his feet. The rest of the crew had already been hurried below deck, and were likely settled in the hospitality of the brig. A ship like this should have a sizeable one. Ed shuddered.
Polished black boots thumped by in front of Ed’s gaze. “No, I don’t believe I will,” the captain drawled, hands tucked behind his back. “He looks much better like that, don’t you think?” From the look of it, he had stalked over to stand behind Stede and lean his chin over to speak coldly into his ear. “Ground into the dirt like the mongrel he is.”
The sailor over Ed’s face shifted slightly, and he could see Stede’s face, and oh, that was even better than the view of his coat, even though Stede looked tense and stressed, the lines of his face drawn tight. Despite his hair and clothes being mussed from the scuffle, he was still the best-dressed man on deck. Ed couldn’t help but grin.
Stede’s voice was shaking when he spoke next, and Ed honestly couldn’t tell if it was with fear or fury. “You have no idea who he is.”
The captain sighed and straightened up. “He is a murderer and a monster,” he said, his tone nearly bored. Ed jerked reflexively, and the sailors holding him down shuffled and shouted at each other to keep their balance. Two of them knocked heads and swore at each other. When Ed laughed, they swore at him, too.
“Enough,” the captain barked. “Jones, Marley, get the shears. We’ll see how much of our Samson’s power is truly stored in his namesake.”
Ed wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but he didn’t like the sound of it. Stede looked horrified.
“I ain’t got any powers, mate,” Ed called. “I’m just better than y- oof!”
One of the navy men had planted his elbow on Ed’s head and shoved him into the planks to cut him off. He felt the skin on his cheek open up as he tried to twist so his nose wouldn’t get broken. Over the stifled curses of the sailors piled on his back, Ed could hear Stede yelling again, but he couldn’t make out the words.
By the time their little scuffle resolved itself, leaving Ed panting against the rough-grained wood, someone new was crouched at his head.
“Ease up a bit, old chap,” the new sailor muttered, and the elbow on Ed’s face moved away. “My name’s Jones,” the new sailor told Ed, winking one bright blue eye at him. “And I’ll be telling my grandkids about the day I sheared Blackbeard like a sheep.”
Ed’s stomach dropped.
“Oh, do get on with it, lad, we don’t need the grandstanding,” the captain sighed. “We’ve got to turn into the wind soon and I’ll need all hands for that. Be quick about it.”
Jones grumbled and fisted his hand in Ed’s hair, tugging painfully to crane his head awkwardly back. The shears were big, ungainly things, and they probably were for shearing sheep. Ed hoped that meant they were sharp, at least.
“A beard’s just a beard, mate,” Ed gritted out. “Nothing special about it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Jones said. “This one’s yours.” And the shears snicked closed.
Ed zoned out a bit. He knew better than to try to fight over something so trivial when a sharp blade was at his throat. It would be all too easy for the sailor to slip and catch his jaw or neck in the shears, and he didn’t want to deal with that. It was just a beard. It wouldn’t matter soon, anyway. They were all headed to the gallows.
He cut his eyes over when Jones twisted his head to get at the other side of his jaw, and saw that Stede was still on deck, forced to watch, held still by two large sailors and gagged with a scrap of filthy fabric. But he was still on his feet. Ed wasn’t sure why that was so important, but it was. He was okay with being on the ground as long as Stede was still on his feet.
The sailor did a hack job in the end, of course. That was probably part of it. When he had snicked the shears as close to Ed’s cheeks and chin as he could, he slammed Ed’s face back down onto the deck. The locks of hair cushioned his face a bit, but his lip still split and his teeth clacked together harshly.
“Are you done?” The captain said.
“Almost,” Jones grunted, and gestured over Ed’s head. “I’ll get his hair next - you there, move your arm -”
“Oh, honestly, man, you can do the rest later,” the captain said. “It’s frightfully warm out here, and I’ve missives to send about our capture. Has their ship been crewed adequately to get underway?”
“Yessir,” a voice said.
“S’called the Revenge,” Ed growled, because Stede couldn’t with his mouth stuffed full of fabric, and some things were important.
“Is it?” The captain smirked. “How quaint. I’m sure we’ll come up with a better name than that. Come now, get them below, chop chop.”
The sailors holding Ed down all started to move off of him at once, and he blinked. Was that it? Did they think he was cowed and broken, now that he’d been trimmed? Did they actually believe that he was no more than his beard?
He waited a moment more for more men to lift their weight off him, then heaved himself back and slammed his forehead into the face of the closest sailor. The man screamed and pinwheeled backward, blood gushing from a nastily-broken nose. Ed’s head hurt at that, but he still managed to get up on one knee and kick out with his other leg, slamming hard into the meat of Jones’s thigh. He couldn’t quite reach the man’s groin from this angle, but he hit close enough - Jones doubled over with a guttural wheeze and the shears clattered across the deck, scattering locks of Ed’s beard into the wind.
That was about all he got, of course. There were far more sailors on this ship than Ed could take, even if his hands weren’t tied behind his back. They bore him back down to the deck and he felt blows raining down across his ribs, his legs, his shoulders. One sailor got a particularly good hit on his head and Ed gasped, a starburst of aching hot light filling his vision.
Eventually the captain must have called things back to order. Ed didn’t pass out, but it was a near thing, and he came back to himself as he was being manhandled down the stairs into the dark hold. He stumbled on the steps, then caught himself. If he fell now, he wasn’t sure that the sailors dragging him would catch him.
The moving air felt strange on his exposed face.
A metal door creaked, and Ed hit the planks on his shoulder and side, his ribs protesting in a way that suggested bruising from the kicks. He jerked himself around, tensing abused abs to try to coil upward, but then he slumped in relief when Stede was tossed into the next cell over. The metal bars were criss-crossed and fused together, leaving squares of space big enough to get a hand through, but not large enough for a head.
Other voices rose indignantly in the dim light. Ed rolled over and saw the rest of the crew in a more shoddily-constructed cell on the other side of Stede’s, with thick ropes tying a section of the bars together. He allowed himself a small sigh of relief. They’d really been starting to grow on him. Like mold, maybe, but still. He had to admit that some of them were passably bearable.
Ed’s shoulder wrenched as two sailors dragged him to the back of the cell and locked him to a chain secured to the hull.
“Oh, come now, you can’t leave his hands tied behind his back!” Stede said sharply, peering over the shoulder of one of the navy men who was locking him to a matching chain at the rear of his own cell.
“Captain’s orders,” one sailor grunted, and the other slammed Ed’s head against the hull as he stepped away. Ed managed to avoid making a sound, but only by gritting his teeth so tightly his jaw creaked. The sailor half-smirked down at him as he backed away, and Ed realized that without the cover of his beard, the man could probably see the pained clench of muscles in his cheeks. He relaxed his jaw, but it was too late. The sailors were already locking the cell door and walking away.
“Ed!” Stede hissed, and Ed turned his head to see him scooting his way across the planks, dragging the remnants of his fine coat and trousers in the dirty straw that peppered the floor. “Are you all right?”
“Never better,” Ed said, and grinned lazily at him. His busted lip split more, and he had to pause to lick away the fresh blood. Stede seemed scandalized.
“You don’t look it,” he said, but he was interrupted by the voices of his crew.
“What did they do to ‘im?” Black Pete said, bobbing in an attempt to see Ed over Stede’s shoulder from across the cell.
“What does it look like?” Lucius hissed and swatted him with his still-bound hands. “They cut his beard off!”
“Does that mean he ain’t Blackbeard no more?” Wee John rumbled.
“Of course he’s still Blackbeard!” Stede snapped, spinning around to glare at the crew. Well, presumably that’s what he was doing. Ed couldn’t see his face. “Just because his beard’s been - been trimmed a bit, it doesn’t mean he’s a different person!”
“‘E might be,” Buttons said ominously. He was seated at the rear of their communal cell, masked by shadows. “That’s how it starts, you know. Someone comes back changed, sayin’ they’re the same person, and askin’ you to let ‘em into the house, or bring ‘em onboard the ship they fell off the night before. But you can’t let ‘em in. They ain’t human any longer - if they ever was…”
Frenchie perked up. “You mean like witches?”
“Nay, lad, I mean the Fair Folk!” Buttons snapped.
The others groaned.
“Faeries don’t exist,” Lucius said waspishly.
Frenchie gave him a once-over. “You sure about that, mate?”
Lucius huffed as some of the crew chuckled and the others looked confused.
“All right, settle down,” Stede said calmly. “Ed’s beard will grow back just fine. I’m more concerned about damage from all the kicking…”
Ed closed his eyes. His beard would grow back, yeah - but only if it had time, and he’d run out of that. They all had. They probably only had a few more days to live, depending on where the British captain wanted to take them to be hanged - but hang they would. Ed’s stomach twisted, and only some of it was from the pummeling it had taken earlier. He’d never been caught like this before. He didn’t like it.
“Ed?” Stede’s voice was hesitant. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Hm?” Ed opened his eyes and looked over. Stede’s face was soft and concerned. “Nah, it’s fine. I’m all right.”
Stede pressed his fingers through the bars. “I don’t think you are. And quite right not to be. That was….it was a terribly rude way to treat a prisoner!”
Ed sighed and closed his eyes again, leaning his head back against the hull of the ship. He could feel the pressure of the waves outside. “Normal way to treat a pirate, though,” he said.
“Well,” Stede replied, then paused. “Well,” he said again.
“Captain?” Olu’s voice was hesitant in the gloom. “What’re we gonna do?”
“We’ll think of something,” Stede said firmly, and Ed smiled into the dark behind his eyelids.
The crew muttered amongst themselves as the light faded. Stede joined in the discussion now and then, but he didn’t move away from Ed, and his fingers stayed curled over the bars. Like the others, he’s been put into manacles with half a foot of chain between them, so he had some mobility until he came to the end of the longer chain that was attached to the wall. The rest of the crew had manacles, but weren’t chained up inside their cell. That was useful. Ed was pretty sure that would be useful. He was lucky they hadn’t chained his legs - it was hard enough to keep his balance with both hands still secured in metal and tied behind his back. They’d taken the rope bindings off at some point, but after clapping him in irons they tied his wrists back together again. He supposed he could agree with Stede that it was a bit rude. But after all, he was the “legendary pirate Blackbeard”...whatever that meant.
“Um, Captain?”
Lucius’s voice was a whisper in the dark. Ed moved his head sluggishly and realized that it was full night, a single lantern in the corridor providing the only weak light as it swayed with the movement of the ship.
“Yes, Lucius?” Stede replied, equally quietly. The others had settled into a collection of snoring mounds in their cell.
“They checked us for guns and knives and stuff,” Lucius said as he tugged at his waistband. “But, um, they didn’t find this.”
He held up something that Ed couldn’t see.
“Oh,” Stede sighed. “Oh, you’re brilliant!” He shuffled over and stretched out his hands for Lucius to deposit a length of something into through the bars. “Do you - would you happen to have any lotion, as well?”
“Um,” Lucius said. Ed pushed his shoulder against the hull to shift himself and sit up straighter.
“What the hell are you two yammering about?” He kept his own voice quiet, but left the bite in it he wanted to unleash on the sailors. He was achy and tired and captured and Stede was out of reach - and somehow that last thing was the worst one.
“Oh! Just a moment.” Stede turned and shuffled back across the cell with both hands still clasped around whatever he’d been given. Behind him, Lucius looked relieved.
Ed leaned his shoulder and the side of his head against the bars, and Stede beamed at him and opened his hands. He was holding a folded wood-handled straight razor.
Ed felt his eyebrows go up. “Huh.”
“This look isn’t easy, you know,” Lucius said, tilting his chin to display the precise edges of his sideburns. “This kind of thing takes maintenance.”
“Yes, yes, thank you very much, Lucius,” Stede said, and Ed grinned at his huffy demeanor.
Stede paused and blinked. “Oh, that’s a good look,” he said absently, then ducked his head. “That is - your smile looks different, now.”
“Oh,” Ed said. “Huh.” He wasn’t sure he could say anything with more than one syllable, because Stede was raising his hands to reach carefully through the bars between them.
“May I?”
Ed blinked. “Of course.” Why Stede even thought he had to ask…but then he remembered the last hands that had touched him, and understood why he might be concerned. “You, uh,” he started. “You’re always welcome. To, uh.” He swallowed, then gave up on words and nodded at Stede’s hands, which were trembling faintly.
“Ah,” Stede said. “I see. Well then.” And he reached a little further and laid his fingertips against Ed’s cheek.
Ed couldn’t help but close his eyes. Even just that touch was overwhelming against his skin. The trembling of Stede’s fingers was magnified like this, and Ed turned his head a little to press harder into Stede’s touch.
“Are you - is this all right?”
Ed opened his eyes and gazed languidly at him. “Yeah, s’just fine.”
“Good,” Stede murmured. The blade made a soft, well-oiled sound as it was opened, and Ed felt a slight clench of discomfort - but it was Stede’s hand holding the blade this time. He trusted those hands. He trusted Stede to take care of him.
“I might have to tug a little,” Stede was saying. “I don’t have a good angle to get you clean-shaven, and it wouldn’t be good for your skin without using a lather of some kind. So I’ll just try to even things up a bit…”
Ed drifted in the waves of his voice, rising and falling gently as his fingers caressed Ed’s cheeks, his jaw, tipping his chin up to trace gently across his throat. It was too much. It wasn’t enough.
Stede worked carefully, pinching the longer scraps of beard hair and slicing the razor gently through them. He kept making unhappy noises, as if he knew he could do better, but Ed appreciated the desire to make him more presentable with what was available. He was still Blackbeard even with his beard shorn - but it would be nice to look more like a human than the wild dog the British navy condemned him as.
The razor scraped across Ed’s throat, and he gave an involuntary shiver. Instantly, Stede’s hands were gone, and Ed blinked his eyes open, confused, to see Stede casting him a worried look from beneath his tousled hair.
“I’m so sorry, did that hurt? I’m trying to be careful -”
“Didn’t hurt,” Ed cut him off, and leaned his shoulder and the upper part of his chest further against the bars, wishing his hands weren’t tied behind his back, wishing he could reach for Stede and keep him from moving away. “Feels…good.”
Stede blinked, and blinked again, and in better light he might have reddened. “Oh," he said after a moment. He’d been saying that a lot. “That’s all right, then.”
“Mm,” Ed agreed, and then closed his eyes again as Stede’s hands came back to his face.
“I’ve mostly got the beard trimmed up - you actually look quite well, despite those awful shears. Only a few spots that are close to bare. I don’t think he could get through that mane of yours very well,” Stede said softly. “Your mustache is almost completely fine - a bit crooked, though, and I don’t want to risk trying to even it perfectly in this light. I’m afraid this may be all I can do.”
One hand was holding the razor, but the other hand was cupping Ed’s cheek, soft against the bristles of his newly-trimmed face. Without thinking too hard about it this time, Ed turned his head and pressed a close-mouthed kiss to the center of Stede’s palm.
Stede’s gasp was tiny in the creaking ship, on the dark sea, but Ed heard it. He would hear Stede anywhere. He kissed his palm again, then turned his head and kissed the knuckles of Stede’s other hand.
“I - I suppose we’re done with this, then,” Stede said breathlessly.
“Hm?”
“The razor.”
“The - FUCK!” Ed snapped to full alertness in an instant, jerking upright and wrenching something in his back from the movement. Stede jumped as well, and Ed felt a narrow line brush against his cheek.
“Oh, good lord,” Stede said, horrified, and the razor clattered to the planks. “Ed, what was that for? I’ve gone and cut your lovely face!”
“Forget my - what? No, forget that!” Ed stuttered. “The fucking - the razor.”
“Yes, that’s what I said!”
“What’s going on?” Olu mumbled. The crew was stirring from the raised voices.
“Nothing, apparently.” Lucius sounded petulant. Had he been awake the whole time?
“Your fucking razor is what’s going on,” Ed hissed over Stede’s shoulder. “It’s a bloody blade, and your cell has a section secured by fucking rope!”
It was comical to see the whole crew’s heads turn as one to stare at the panel Ed had noted when he was first thrown into his cell. It looked like their cell used to have another door, or perhaps a larger one, because a door-sized piece of metal was secured around the edges by nothing more than heavy ship’s rope.
“Oh, damn,” Black Pete said. “I didn’t even notice that.”
“Okay, but what are we supposed to do about -” Lucius started, then whipped around and glared at Ed. “Oh, no. No, no, no! It took me ages to get the edges that sharp without Jim’s help! You are not using my razor to saw through rope like a barbarian!”
Ed laughed, knowing he must look a sight, wild-eyed and bloody with his hair a mess and his beard cut down to scruff. “Lucius, mate,” he chuckled, “we are the barbarians.”
Stede was giving one of his slowly-growing half-smiles, and Ed pressed his face against the bars. “Pick the razor up and give it to the crew so they can get started on the ropes,” he said, and lowered his voice to a rumble. “Then come back here to me.”
Stede breathed in shakily and scrabbled through the dusty straw with his chained hands, muttering, “Where is the damn thing?”
“It’s by the captain’s boot,” Frenchie said, pointing. Stede glanced at his feet, and Frenchie shook his head. “Ah, sorry, the other captain. Blackbeard. Sir.”
Ed looked down and saw the gleam of metal on his side of the bars. He shifted down the hull to reach, angling his toe and dragging the razor closer, then tapping it through into Stede’s waiting hands.
“Cheers, love,” Stede said, and Ed nearly slipped all the way down to the floor. Well then. He could work with that.
“Give it here,” Roach said, reaching through the wire with one hand and using what little chain he had between his wrists to hold Lucius off with the other. “I know my knives, captain.”
“That you do, and I’ll trust you with this one,” Stede said brightly, and handed the folded blade over. Lucius made an enraged sound around the hand that Black Pete was holding over his mouth.
“Sorry, babe,” Black Pete murmured. “I’ll sharpen it up for you after.”
Lucius shook him off and whined, “But it won’t be the same!”
“Then I’ll, uh. I’ll get you a new one,” Black Pete said, and Lucius’s eyes lit up.
“Oh yeah?” He said carefully. “And can I - can I pick it out, then?”
“Uh…sure?”
Olu winced, and Lucius smiled slowly, looking like a cat that got into the cream as he leaned his cheek into Pete’s chest and batted his eyes up at him.
“Can it have a mother-of-pearl handle? I’ve always fancied one with a mother-of-pearl handle. Ooh, and can I get it engraved? I want my name on it. And also -”
Black Pete looked like a man watching his hard-earned wealth slip through his fingers into the sea. “Let’s - let’s start with looking for what we can get, okay, babe?”
“Fine,” Lucius huffed, and flopped back onto Pete’s lap to watch the others crouch around the bars and help Roach with the razor as he eyed the best place to cut through the ropes.
“Ed?” Stede whispered, and Ed watched him settle his back against the hull. He frowned, not liking the distance Stede had put between them.
“Why aren’t you over here?” Ed asked.
Stede wrung his hands, the chain clinking between them. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“...What? For what?”
“I should have -” Stede blinked, still not making eye contact. “I should have thought of using the razor as a knife, rather than just…a razor. I’m afraid I’m still not very good at thinking outside the box.”
“Nonsense,” Ed tried to reassure him, pressing his upper body against the bars between them, his hands twisted behind him. “You came up with the lighthouse plan, and that was fucking brilliant!”
“You came up with it,” Stede said morosely.
“We came up with it together, then.” Ed glared at the bars between them, then at Stede’s twisting hands. “We work better together, Stede, don’t you see? Would you - would you just get over here? Please?”
Stede looked at him, then, and his eyes were shining in the swaying light of the lantern. “Do you believe that? Really?”
“That we work well together? Stede -” Ed huffed a laugh, and decided to just go for it. “Stede, love, I left you for one night and you immediately got captured by the British, while I found out someone I thought was a friend was actually playing me for a fool. To be honest, I don’t think we should ever leave each other’s sides again.”
Stede’s lips were parted, and he looked shocked. “L-love?”
“You said it first,” Ed said quickly. Damn it, hopefully he hadn’t mucked it up again, he’d been so sure -
“Did I?” Stede said blankly. “I suppose I did. I must have been…I believe I’ve been thinking of you like that for - quite some time now.”
“Great,” Ed replied, sinking his weight against the bars. “Now get over here and kiss me. I can’t reach you like this, my hands are -”
Stede pressed against the bars and met his lips, interrupting Ed’s words. Ed leaned into the kiss as best he could with the metal in his face, licking against Stede’s lips when it felt like he was going to pull away. Stede made a curious sound and pushed closer again, and Ed smiled against his lips.
“Oh my god, finally!”
Stede jerked back, his shoulders stiff, but Ed didn’t look away from his face, smiling gently at him and watching his frame slowly relax at the sound of several hands smacking Lucius across the shoulders and back.
“They were having a moment! Why’d you have to go and interrupt their moment?” Olu was saying.
“You have no idea how painful this has been to watch -” Lucius was saying.
“Ignore them,” Ed murmured, and Stede closed his eyes, breathed out sharply, then opened his eyes again and nodded.
“I think I will,” he said, and leaned back in for another awkward jail cell kiss as the rest of the crew got back to sawing through four-inch thick rope with a razor blade. The thing was, Ed thought, if anyone could manage it, this crew could. And once they were out, they could find a way to open Stede’s cell, and Ed’s, and cut through the ropes keeping his hands tied back. And then. Well. They’d figure the next part out when they got there.
Stede made a soft sound and Ed nearly broke his own nose against the bars trying to chase it. Stede giggled - honest-to-God giggled - and leaned back in. “I'm sorry, Ed,” he said quietly, a love-drunk smile on his face. “I think I’m just happy.”
And in the depths of a Royal British Navy brig - the last place Captain Blackbeard ever wanted to be - Ed was happy, too.