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It was one of those nights where Stede decided to read a book by the window, where the waves threw uneven shadows across the pages, mixing in a whirlpool of light and dark with the flickering amber candle glow from inside. This was a favourite habit of Stede’s, Ed had observed; indeed, one in which Stede partook almost nightly and Ed was content to just lie quietly in his company and listen to the soft creak of the ship he had come to love so much punctuated every minute or so by the rustling of a turning page. It would be rather more accurate to say that it was one of those nights where Ed wanted Stede’s company in a more engaged manner. He turned over on the couch where he lounged, draping an arm lazily over the back and observing Stede. The Gentleman Pirate looked the picture of a perfect gentleman with his bright fuchsia floral dressing gown falling off his shoulders in comfortable neglect, his long white cotton dressing gown hanging off the knees, bent up and acting as a support for the book he was reading, revealing ankles and dainty red silk slippers. He turned the page and uttered a little “oh!” of quiet interest. Truly, looking at Stede, Ed could almost forget they were on a pirate ship but for the way the icy moonglow danced a nautical waltz across half of Stede’s face.
Ed opened his mouth to get Stede’s attention, but nothing came out. Stede was just so engrossed in the book. With a very light sigh, Ed tossed himself backwards onto his back on the couch with his arms crossed over his chest. For a few minutes he lay there, fidgeting with the end of the black cotton necktie that had once belonged to Stede. Stede made another soft noise of interest and Ed halfway lifted himself to see his friend. Nothing had changed, except maybe Ed’s restlessness. He fell back down on the couch again. Sighed. The waves rocked them gently, and the constant monotony of it all began to irritate Ed. Stede gave a little gasp then that seemed to propel Ed up off the couch. In one swift movement he launched himself into an overconfident strut over to the minibar where he poured two glasses of brandy. It wasn’t disrespectful to interrupt someone briefly for a drink, right?
“Here, mate,” Ed said gruffly, tapping Stede lightly on the shoulder with his glass.
“Oh, thank you, that’s very kind!” Stede looked up from the book with that slightly dazed expression he always had immediately after resurfacing from a good read. He clinked his glass against Ed’s with a satisfied little grin and started to turn back to the book.
Seized with a suffocating sense of urgency, Ed blurted out, “Wassachorreadin?”
Stede returned his gaze to Ed, brows furrowed. “I beg your pardon?”
Ed realised that he was at once pointing stupidly at the book with the hand that held his glass of brandy and also that he was breathing way too fast. To rectify both, he took a hearty gulp of alcohol before trying again, now that he wasn’t competing against an inanimate object for Stede’s attention – and losing. “I was just wondering what you were reading,” he said, only just managing not to choke on the drink he’d barely finished swallowing before speaking. Every part of him felt hot and uncomfortably exposed. Was this embarrassment? If so, it sucked.
“Oh!” Ed was unprepared for the sheer, puppy excitement that came across Stede then, brightening his face in a way that even the glaring sun of midday never could. Somewhere, not so deep inside, he had expected Stede to find the inquiry inane and irritating. But, no. Stede surprised him by behaving quite the opposite – as only Stede was wont to do. “Why, I’m reading the Romanz of Chrétien de Troyes. It’s a classic! Do you know it?”
“Was that even English?”
“They’re the tales of brave knights like Lancelot and Yvain, and how they best many Proud Foes and terrible beasts and malicious enchantments in great feats of arms,” Stede enthused, having now half closed the book so he could gesticulate with it. “It’s really very engaging, used to be one of my favourites as a kid. Would – ah – would you like to read with me?” His gaze flashed away even as a mildly sheepish look that Ed couldn’t understand came across his face. But that might have been because his entire brain short circuited. He’d never read a book in his life – had never even really handled one (except for that one time he stopped Stede restocking the library of a ship they were raiding, but that didn’t really count). It was one of those things he’d never thought belonged to someone like him, one of those untouchable things that Stede had quite miraculously brought within his reach – even insisted on handing to him. The red silk square, folded neatly and tucked away in an inside pocket of his leather vest, felt like it was burning a hole through the left side of his chest in that moment.
“Ed?” Stede’s face was steadily falling from pure excitement to mild concern and pained embarrassment.
“No, I’d like that, yea!” Ed almost shouted in his haste to stop that giddy glow of enthusiasm that so brightened Stede’s face from being darkened by an expression of uncomfortable insecurity. He didn’t even know how to read, but that didn’t matter as much as staying the frown creeping onto his best friend’s face.
“Yea?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, great!” Stede threw his legs down so that his back was to the window and Ed could comfortably sit beside him. “Shall I read out loud? That would probably be easiest, and I do love reading to people.”
“Probably,” was all Ed could manage to say as he settled himself beside Stede, comfortably close but not quite touching. As Stede began to read, Ed leaned back and pressed his shoulders and lower neck into the cool glass of the sea-sprayed windows behind him, relishing the refreshing cold again his body which still felt like it was burning. Between that and the engaging way that Stede had about reading, Ed calmed within a few minutes and was swept away by tales of knightly adventure, falling back into an easy kind of rapport with Stede for the rest of the evening.
~*~
It only took Stede asking Ed (with the most outrageously hopeful expression Ed had ever seen on a person) on the following night whether he wanted to continue reading for the two of them to establish it as a nightly routine, as if by some otherwise unspoken understanding. Every night for two weeks they read thusly, slowly making their way through the various and strange adventures of the Knights of the Round Table. Every night, Ed was pleased (relieved) anew to find himself not an intrusive, but rather a now integral part of Stede’s most beloved ritual. Sometimes Stede would use Ed’s shoulder to lean on so that he could curl up in his favourite reading position with the book resting on his knees. Sometimes Ed would lay the length of the window seat with the top of his head gently touching Stede’s thigh while he listened. Once he must have fallen asleep that way, because he woke up the next morning covered in Stede’s fuchsia dressing gown with a pillow under his head.
One night, Stede came down to their cabin later than usual – settling some dispute between the crew, it had sounded like – and threw himself down on the couch where Ed lay, lazily sipping on a glass of fine Scottish whiskey and smoking his pipe. Stede draped himself dramatically over the back of the couch, across Ed’s thighs.
“You alright?” Ed asked, propping himself up on his elbows.
“Yea. You know, I love them all, but they can be so tiring!”
“Drink?” Ed offered Stede his glass.
Stede lifted his head and took the glass from Ed with no hesitation, knocking back the rest in one go. “Thanks.”
Silence stretched – not uncomfortably – between them as they sat there: Stede all but in Ed’s lap and swooning back in the most dramatic fashion, and Ed lounging back, observing his friend with concern. After a few moments Stede broke the silence. “Would you mind reading for us tonight? I’m very tired.”
“Uh.” Ed was pretty sure his heart and lungs had stopped working. That hot, exposed feeling came back to him, and he suddenly felt uncomfortably overstimulated by Stede’s nearness which had felt pleasant and warm only a moment ago. He cleared his throat three times in rapid succession, nearly choking on his own spit the third time.
“Ed?” Stede tilted his head to the side, all weariness gone. “Are you alright?”
“Maybe we, uh,” Ed grunted – because he didn’t stammer or stutter – as he pulled himself to a seated position. “Maybe we don’t need to read tonight.” He removed his legs from under Stede – not ungently – and got up, pacing stiffly across the room to the door.
“What? Why?” Stede asked, utterly dumbfounded.
Good, confused is better than… Ed could feel the red silk burning the flesh of his chest again, mocking him for his pretension to things that were never supposed to be his. He suddenly felt the strong urge to not be exposed to the company of people and amended his course abruptly to take him to the privy. “Mate, whatever, maybe I’m just not in the bloody mood tonight – whatever,” Ed gruffly bullshitted, though not as easily as he once might have.
He had almost made it through the door to the privy when Stede’s voice, no longer befuddled and blindsided by Ed’s behaviour but soft and filled with patient concern, said: “Ed?”
Ed paused with his fingers grasping the handle of the door so hard they started to turn white and numb.
“Ed, do you know how to read?”
The utter lack of judgement and disdain in Stede’s voice undid him, and that made him angry because it offered the dangerous promise of safety. Tears of self-loathing clouded Ed’s vision and his hand shook on the door handle, rattling it slightly. He wanted to say, What do you think? But he knew what Stede thought: inexplicably, through some esteem for his character that Ed would never understand, Stede had thought he could read. He wanted to say, Of course I bloody can’t, look at me. But he didn’t think he could stand Stede looking at him in that moment – it might sweep him away like foam on an ocean current. So, he just said (almost whimpered): “No.”
A few seconds of painful silence followed, during which Ed’s mind had ample opportunity to bombard him with all sorts of ways Stede might express disgust, disdain, and derision for Ed’s lack of proper education. His knees had started to shake from anxiety and apprehension, and that was when Stede spoke again.
“Well, would you like to learn?”
Ed couldn’t help himself. He peeked slowly over his shoulder, hiding behind his wild mane of salt and pepper hair. Stede’s expression was not one of disgust or horror, but one of worry and – was it even possible? – mildly excited hope.
Ed’s entire body trembled, though from embarrassment or relief or sheer terror he couldn’t tell, and his voice utterly failed him. He just stood there, immobile, gripping the door handle as if it were the only thing anchoring him to reality. His gaze – obscured by a wall of tears and a thick forest of hair – remained fixed on Stede’s soft expression of open concern.
“I would be very happy to teach you,” Stede said after a while, his voice still so gentle and patient, so like when he'd comforted Ed that night when Ed had failed to murder him. It was a tender kind of patience Ed couldn't believe Stede wasted on him.
“I… I don’t think I can,” Ed finally managed to say, his voice gravelly with shame.
“Well, sure you can!” And there was that note of excited determination that wouldn’t take no for an answer – which often got Stede into so much trouble but was nonetheless the virtue of his that Ed admired most. “You’re the greatest pirate there ever was, I’m sure a few – 26 to be exact – letters won’t be too much for you to handle.” Stede’s voice had steadily floated closer as he talked, until his face was no longer so obscured by hair and tears. “What do you say? It’s easier than silverware, I can promise you that.” He held out an inviting hand.
Ed studied his friend’s face as best he could, but still there was no hint of derision, no haughty superiority, no fickleness. Just a man with a love for reading who wanted, very genuinely, to share that love. Still trembling slightly, Ed released the door handle and placed his hand in Stede’s waiting palm. Blood flowed back into his fingertips where they rested, safely enfolded between Stede’s, and with it: feeling. By the time they reached the window seat Ed’s hand was tingling like sparking gunpowder – the overall sensation was warm and not unpleasant, but jarring. When Stede let go to pick up the book, Ed just lowered his hand, palm up, acutely aware of the fact that the tingling sensation grew at once more intense and colder in the places where Stede’s hand had just been.
“So, reading,” Stede exclaimed, interrupting Ed’s anxious musing and proceeding with all the overabundant excitement with which he faced everything. He opened the Romanz. “So, each sound we make with our mouths can be represented by a letter, or a combination of letters. For example, this, here, is the letter ‘L’…”
~*~
Stede was right. Letters were much easier to learn than silverware. Of course, Ed suspected that it helped enormously that they had constant access to the written word, whereas they had never had much access to the kind of fine feasting one might encounter at a hoity-toity party. Still, he was not only reasonably proud, but rather excited by how well his reading was coming along after a few weeks of practice. Of course, their progression had slowed considerably because of him, and he often worried that that vexed Stede; but his friend never said anything to that point and indeed appeared for all counts even more thrilled by Ed’s progress than Ed was himself. That alone was worth the trouble of making an effort, Ed thought. It seemed they had finally found something from Stede’s world that Ed could really do – kind of.
One night they stayed talking rather late while slowly sipping brandies – which they did often enough, and which Ed always deeply enjoyed, for Stede’s brain utterly enthralled him. It wasn’t until the moon drifted high in the sky outside over the endless deep while they leaned convivially on one another on the couch using Stede’s fuchsia dressing gown as a blanket for them both that Stede reached with a contented sigh for the Romanz. “You up for a little reading tonight?”
“Let’s see what happens next,” Ed answered, taking the book and opening it up. The had made it to the tale of Lancelot, or the Knight of the Cart, and Stede had made it quite plain that this was one of his favourite tales. He listened with rapt attention as Ed began to read only slightly haltingly. As he recounted the scene that Chrétien painted in ink, his voice grew more assured and he relaxed into the rhythm of the words – that was, until he came to Lancelot’s meeting with Guinevere:
When Lancelot saw the queen at the window – which was blocked by bars of iron – he pressed himself against it and saluted her with the sweetest grace he possibly could. The same burning desire called to them, urging him towards her, and her towards him. They approached each other and remained there, hand in hand; but they suffered greatly from the bars which blocked them from uniting.
With that phrase something slipped, quite unconsciously, inside him as he read and suddenly the words flowed no longer from his head; rather, his tongue caressed words that seemed so uncannily intimate and familiar, yet not moments ago he could have sworn that any such sentiments must have lain nowhere in him if not in the most abyssal recesses of his heart. But now they gushed out in great and unstoppable torrents.
“Don’t you see how these bars are rigid and difficult to break? You shall have to exert tremendous effort to break them. You won’t manage to remove more than just one.”
“My lady, said Lancelot, worry not! I do not believe that this iron can do much to bar me from you. Nothing and no one but you alone could stop me from coming to you now. If you but permit it, then the path to you lays clear and open before me. But merely your displeasure would be obstacle enough that nothing could make me proceed.”
“Oh, I want it, that is certain, said she. My desire will not hold you back.”
His whole body heated up – a bit like embarrassment and excitement all at once, in a way that made his every nerve tremble with acute awareness. And oh, was he aware. He was aware of his tongue as it traitorously dripped such secret sentiments of his soul into the world for Stede to drink; aware of his calf, knee, thigh, hip, arm, and shoulder pressed tightly against Stede like a roiling fault-line; aware of Stede’s fingers intertwined with his, propping up the book (and when the fuck had that happened?); aware of Stede’s face mere inches from his own, of Stede’s eyes surely following every word on the page – so Ed couldn’t stumble, he couldn’t hesitate or pause or trip because that would be to throw his entire self, exposed and vulnerable, into the line of those gentle, attentive blue eyes in a way that he wasn’t sure he could survive. Ed kept his own eyes trained upon the words as if that, somehow, would save him. He fixed upon them as though nothing in the world existed but them – and in every way, in every visceral way, nothing at all in the world existed but the traitorous scene which had somehow been extracted from the most unreachable depths of his heart and dashed across the page for them both to see:
Before Guinevere Lancelot fell to his knees in adoration – he did not place such faith even in the holiest of relics – but the queen held her hands out to him upon their meeting. She embraced him and clutched him to her chest, leading him to her bed where he had the most beautiful welcome that she could possibly give to him, and his heart trembled and quaked with love.
Love encouraged her to make merry of his presence. But as much as she loved him, he loved her a hundred thousand times more; indeed, Love had left all other hearts but his cold and abandoned by comparison. Love came entirely alive in his heart to such an extent that it could not but be called mediocre in others. Lancelot saw then the realisation of all his dearest wishes, because the queen expressed willing pleasure in his company, because he held her in his arms, and she held him in hers. In those kisses and embraces he found such sweet happiness that, truly, the most marvellous joy was theirs that night – and theirs alone. What ext--
He stumbled. What the bloody fuck is that word supposed to be? He was falling. The perhaps two seconds of silence in which Ed attempted to figure out what sound -raor- was supposed to make seemed to stretch on for an eternity, stripping Ed bare as he fumbled for anything to grab onto to stop him plunging with the weight of seven anchors into the eternal deep, but there was nothing. There were only the hot flames that devoured his skin, turning it raw and sensitive everywhere Stede was still touching him (Stede hadn’t pulled away, that was good, right? Maybe this was all in Ed’s head?), and the suffocating feeling of his heart swelling still, ready to exhale every gust of its great burden into existence. Finally, unable to bear it anymore, Ed steeled himself and turned his gaze from the words up to Stede, saying weakly, “Stede, what is this w—”
Stede wasn’t looking at the book.
He was looking at Ed.
And Ed thought he was going to shatter under the tension building where their gazes met, because suddenly he knew that the strange pull that kept him from withdrawing from Stede’s nearness, the thick vibrancy of the air around them like the air before a summer storm breaks, the inferno that roared everywhere they touched was not all in his head. Typically, Ed found Stede’s expressions to be unfathomable; there was always some inexplicable sweetness in the tilt of his mouth or a particularly fond spark when he looked at Ed that, if Ed did not know Stede half so well, he would merely attribute to the gentleman’s sheer good nature. But in that moment Ed could swear he understood Stede’s expression better than he ever had: he thought his own expression must now be mirrored in Stede’s. Which of course terrified him in a giddy sort of way, for how could it be possible that Stede should now be so completely devoid of repulsion and reproach as to be almost... hungry in a desperate way which resonated in Ed’s very core?
Ed couldn’t have said how long they sat immobile while every barrier between them erupted with fissures from the, now nearly insupportable, heat in the air and crumbled down leaving the space between them dangerously penetrable. But then that fathomless yearning would not be starved any longer and Ed wasn’t sure who moved first but suddenly there was nothing between them and they were speaking to each other with the secret words that only the tongues and lips of lovers know. That night they read no farther.