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Two months following Blackbeard’s return to himself, the Revenge sails into a fog thick as Poseidon’s clam chowder.
“Trim the sails.” First mate Izzy Hands orders, limping across the deck. “Let's ride this weather out.”
The captain’s nowhere to be seen. Blackbeard seldom leaves his quarters nowadays, only ever making his presence known to piss off the railing or scare the fear of God back into the crew - and that’s fine, for now. Anything’s better than seeing the legendary Blackbeard make a fool of himself, mooning after that upper-crust idiot Stede Bonnet.
He just needs some time to get out of this post-breakup funk. He just needs some-
“Izzy!” Ivan calls out, leaning over the railing. “Izzy come quick! You need to see this!”
“What the f-?” An eerie blue light is shining through the fog, from the hull of the ship.
“Izzy!” Fang shouts.
When Izzy swivels towards him, he finds the lights surrounding them. And then, an angelic voice finds its wings and sings. The sound echoes against slack sails and cherry masts, distorting in the fog until it seems an intrinsic part of it.
Fuck! It should be impossible, but Izzy knows this voice. And whether they’re haunted by a vengeful spirit or not, it means trouble.
“Frenchie!”
Frenchie starts to attention, dropping the mop he was holding.
“Y-yes sir!”
“Get the captain, right n-!”
“Meeeooooooow~” joins the chorus, and Izzy’s never seen Frenchie’s eyes grow so big before, the piss poor excuse of a pirate is practically vibrating from excitement.
Fucking shit fuck fuck fuck!
“Jim!” He barks instead, needing someone competent.
“Ye, cabron?”
“The captain! Get the fucking capt-!”
But Blackbeard is already there. And so is Stede Bonnet.
Blackbeard is standing at the center of the deck, dressed for war in black leather and kohl. Izzy feels his stench (rum, sweat and grief, clinging to his shoulders like a wraith) from all the way across the ship.
Stede’s frozen, one leg planted on deck, the other swinging over the ship's railing. He’s wearing simple, practical clothes for once, his hair disheveled almost beyond recognition. If Izzy didn’t know better, he might mistake him for an actual pirate.
“You came back.” Edward breathes, and Izzy would stomach a thousand toes over that open, vulnerable look in his eyes, the tremble in his hands.
Stede seems to share the sentiment, because he stumbles forward, then halts. They share a heavy silence. The crew, Izzy, even that stupid fucking singing Swede, holds its breath with them. Finally, Stede’s face breaks into a tentative smile.
“Never left.”
“Wh-why?” Ed fucking stutters , and Izzy thinks he’s going to be sick.
“Because. I lo-”
The knife wizzles dangerously close to Stede’s face, leaving a thin, bleeding gash across his left cheekbone.
“DAMN your love, Bonnet! Damn all of your fucking lies!”
Looks like Christmas came early this year.
And just like that, the shit hits the deck of the Revenge like an avalanche.
Stede’s crew, the one they’d marooned and left for dead on the shittiest little strip of an island they could find, board the ship screaming and fighting, tooth and nail. Whatever they lack in skill, they certainly make up for in oomph.
Why they harbor this kind of senseless, fierce loyalty for their imbecile of a captain, Izzy will never know. But watching Blackbeard draw his sword and advance on Stede, like the Kraken made man, reminds Izzy of why he would, why he has, gone through hell and back for him.
“Edward please!” Stede squeals, parrying Blackbeard’s attacks with a sword of his own. “I won’t hurt you!”
That’s your funeral. Izzy thinks, grinning, just as Blackbeard beats the sword out of his hands and thrusts. Blackbeard’s blade runs through Bonnet’s abdomen with a wet noise and a startled gasp. To Izzy, it’s sweeter than any Swedish angel’s hymn.
But just as he’s about to cheer, his celebration is interrupted by a very angry, very naked Scotsman and his thrall of screeching seagulls.
~~~~
“It’s a little late for that, ain’t it, mate?” Edward hiss against the crook of his neck. “I should cut your heart out. Make you eat it!”
He’s trembling so bad that Stede fears he’ll shake apart. Somehow, his heartache cuts deeper than the sword.
“I’m sorry, Ed. I’m so sorry.”
“Blackbeard, I’m motherfucking Blackbeard! You won’t find any of your playthings here, Bonnet! They’re all gone.”
“I didn’t come here for things …” Stede sighs, settling his weight against Blackbeard- Edward Teach- Ed . Why did it take him so long to realize how perfectly their bodies slot together? Vision fading, he muzzles his face into the crook of Ed’s neck, breathing him in. “I came for you.”
Edward chokes,
fighting traitorous hands, mapping the fabric of Stede’s shirt until they brush cold, wet steel-
he retreats.
In the empty space left behind, Stede falls to the floor.
All around him, his crew falls with him.
~~~~
Legendary pirate captain Blackbeard stumbles into his quarters, grabbing a bottle of rum as he goes. He chugs what’s left of it (not enough, never enough), smashes it against that stupid fucking lighthouse painting, then shouts for more - and draw him a bath while they’re at it!
They send Frenchie. The look in his eyes, red rimmed and flickering, makes Blackbeard want to tie him up and throw him overboard.
“If ya make so much as a sound, mate, I’ll cut your tongue out and sew it to your forehead.”
Unlike a certain other, nosey, ex-shipmate of his, Frenchie stays quiet. Too bad. It’s been too long since they had a proper keelhauling.
Once the bath’s been drawn and the rum’s restocked, Blackbeard orders Frenchie out and climbs into the tub fully dressed.
Frenchie used the lavender soap.
Blackbeard would hunt him down and kill him, if he wasn’t so busy trying not to break. He sheds his clothes while still in the bath, cursing the way the wet leather clings to him like carapace. They bleed red with his blood, Bonnet’s blood, and it should feel like victory, but does everything but. If it leaves a stain, he’ll tear the floorboards out and throw them overboard like the books and the oils and the exquisite fucking cashmeres.
Once he’s properly naked, Blackbeard gets to drinking and scrubbing. He’s replacing Bonnet’s blood with his scent, and ain’t that a fucking laugh, no matter what he does he can’t seem to escape -! He smashes the bottle against the wall.
A fuckening. They’d used a fucking fuckening to board the ship, and Blackbeard can’t help but remember the last time they’d done that, raiding those Dutch merchants. He’d ended up in the tub then too, terrified of the monster he tried not to be, and Stede- Stede had found him.
Unlike Blackbeard, Stede was always genuine, never performing as anything or anyone but himself. And he shone so bright in doing so that it was blinding . When he told Edward he could be more than just the kraken, that he could be kind , that he makes him happy , Edward believed him.
“I’ll kill them with kindness!” Stede had told him once, explaining his pirate alias.
“You’ll-?!” Ed had laughed, drunk on rum and life and love. “You’re a fucking delight, Stede Bonnet!”
He should have taken his own advice and stayed away from the light. Crashing against Stede Bonnet’s rocks was more painful than living as Blackbeard ever had been.
And now he’s back. Stede is back.
In the end, there’s not enough rum in the world to wash the taste of him out of his mouth - not enough soap to scrub his blood from Edward’s hands.
He gets out of the bath, feeling raw and drunk and angry enough to set the ship on fire, throws on some clothes and goes to him. Like a moth to a fucking flame, he just can’t stay away.
Blackbeard finds Stede Bonnet in what used to be the old ball-room. He’s lying unconscious on the floor, shivering with what must be a fever. Someone’s patched him up with gauze, but they haven’t cleaned him. His shirt and hands are stained with blood.
He looks pathetic. Blackbeard feels nothing. He can’t stop staring at Bonnet’s chest, the way it sinks and heaves in deep, ragged breaths. He’s back. He’s alive, and he’s back.
Blackbeard feels nothing as he walks inside, closing the door behind him. Feels nothing as moves to sit next to him on the floor, clutching the wet rag from his bath in his hands. Feels nothing as he use it to wipe the sweat from Bonnet’s brow and blood from his hands - blood that he spilt, he-
“We really should stop meeting like this.” He says, to fill the space around them, if nothing else.
“Ed…” Stede mumbles. Blackbeard freeze. “Ed.”
He’s still sleeping, mumbling Blackbeard’s name in fevered, delirious sleep, like he once had Mary’s, and how could he-?! How could he have left him for her?! Ed breaks.
The rag falls to the floor. He can’t breathe, choking on an avalanche of sobs. They rock through his body, making him reach out, blindly, for Stede’s hands and clutch them to his face. He thinks of the sun rising over the horizon, the life they could have had and the look in his eyes when he’d whispered:
“You make Stede happy.”
He shone so bright that Edward couldn’t see the lies.
“Is this a dream?”
“Nah mate.” He withdraws, finding wide brown eyes peering up at him through the dim light. Stede is awake. Of course he’s awake, who wouldn’t wake up with some middle aged sad sack crying all over them? “I’m a ghost.”
Stede reaches out, cupping his face, and Ed couldn’t stop the whimper that escapes him if he wanted to. He rests his head against the hand, nuzzling into it as close as he can get.
“Pretty ghost… what happened to you?”
“Kindness.”
“Oh.” Stede breathes, eyes widening. "I’m so sor- oh! Your feet!”
“What?”
“You’re bleeding!”
Ed looks down at his naked feet and- yeah. Sure looks like he’s bleeding. He must have stepped on glass earlier, when he got out of the bath. He hadn’t even noticed.
“Let me take care of you.”
Stede sits up, grimacing and clutching at his stomach even as moves for the rag on the floor, and Ed can’t fucking stand it.
“Stede no! For fucks sake, you’ve been stabbed, you fucking lunatic! You- I- I stabbed you .”
Vision blurring, room spinning, Edward curls into himself.
“I’m not- not good , Stede- not like you, I’m-”
“Hey.” Stede takes his hand, drawing little circles into the palm until Ed feels like he can breathe again. “You missed all the important bits.”
“Huh?”
“When you stabbed me! You stabbed me in the left side. And I’m willing to bet that it was on purpose.”
There it is again: that blinding, breathtaking light that seems to shine from Stede inside and out. Edward had forgotten how warm it was.
He unravels and moves closer, basking in it by pressing his head against Stede’s chest. His heart is beating hard and fast. Ed’s never heard a sweeter sound.
“Can you- can you say it again?”
“What?”
“Why you’re back.”
Edward feels the happy sigh wafting against his neck and thinks he might die with it. He never thought he’d have this again.
“Promise you won’t stab me?” Stede teases, and Edward almost chuckles. Then he runs a gentle, tentative hand through his hair, and Ed practically melts against him. “I love you.”
“ Oh .”
They kiss. It’s a soft press of lips against lips, made somewhat awkward by the angle and the tears running down Ed’s cheeks, but it’s good and it’s sweet and it leaves the most tantalizing tingle in Edward’s lips when he withdraws.
“Then why did you leave?” He sobs, struggling to breathe in the space between them.
“Because,” Stede answers, worrying at his bottom lip like he’s about to cry as well, and Edward doesn’t think he’d survive that. “I was a fool. I didn’t realize what I was feeling, and I was scared.”
“I’m scared now. Stede, I’m so- so fucking scared that you’ll disappear again, or that I can’t go back to- what if I can’t go back to being Ed? Your Ed, I want to be-”
“Yeah?” Stede cups his face, anchoring him. “Well I’m not scared anymore. My love, my Ed … let me be brave for the both of us.”
Ed nods, and cries, and kisses him, again and again and again. He’s never been kissed like this before: chaste and sweet, like he’s some fine, fragile thing. It feels like sippin on sunshine.