Work Text:
Stede left Ed in the auxiliary wardrobe, in his nest of silks, with a heavy heart and much to think about.
He’d told him some of why he had run away from Ed, instead of away with him, but if he was being honest with himself, he hadn’t been completely honest with Ed.
———
The whole next day, as he works on deck with the others, trying not to get in the way of the more competent sailors, he steals covert glances at Izzy Hands, glowering down at them from the quarterdeck. He regards Stede with an even darker look than usual, and when they happen to pass each other, mutters: “You won’t get him back.” Stede bites back the urge to reply.
Later, over what passes for luncheon, taken at a sort of swinging table between decks— keeping your food on the plate is a different challenge than knowing which fork to use — Pete says: “He’s just jealous. That’s what Lucius says. He knows about that sort of thing.”
“Who?”
“Izzy, mate. The prick.”
Now that he’s messing with them, wearing plain (and dirty) clothes, and clearly not much good at actual sailing tasks, they don’t treat him as their (and he’s rather embarrassed to even think it, but old habits die hard) social better. It’s oddly refreshing, to just be one of the guys.
“Oh, do you think so?”
“It’s obvious,” says Frenchie, and they all nod.
“Aye,” says Wee John. Even Buttons nods.
Izzy Hands can’t have him. He doesn't want Izzy. He wants me, he wants fine things.
———
When Ed comes on deck later, to stand at the rail where he and Stede stood (where we drank tea) he has his hair pulled back off his face. The grease around his eyes has faded to a shadow, to a bruise. The look he gives Stede is hard to read, the tilt of his head as he turns back towards the cabin the tiniest of invitations. Stede can feel Izzy watching as he waits a moment and then follows.
Ed is sitting in the window, legs stretched out before him. He shifts — there’s room for Stede to join him, but he hesitates.
“I see you’ve …” He gestures at his head. Ed makes a sound, not quite agreement. He doesn’t smile, seems turned inward. Stede seats himself cautiously, on the very edge of the cushion. His stomach clenches with the memory of sitting in this very room, talking and laughing, drinking companionably. Learning each other. Now there seems such a gulf between them, too wide and deep to be easily spanned by the rickety bridge he thought they started to build the other night. But Ed pulling his hair back, opening his face to Stede once again, has got to mean something, surely? An acknowledgement of Stede’s overture. Ed said another visit would make him happy, but he doesn’t seem happy now. Stede tries to stop his hands twisting nervously in his lap, having no comb to occupy them.
Ed shifts, as if uncomfortable himself. His left leg is stretched out straight.
Stede gestures at his knee, encased in the metal brace. “Is it … very painful?” Ed never seemed to pay it much heed before, and had not worn the brace when in clothes other than his own leathers. Stede had assumed the contraption was at least partly symbolic.
Ed grunts. “Yeah. Bastard knee.”
“What can I do to help?”
“To help? I don’t need your help. Used to it.”
“But it is bothering you more than usual.” It’s not a question. Sometimes it’s better not to ask. Sometimes it hurts too much to admit something like that. Confess to pain. To need.
The soft sound Ed makes is agreement, if you are listening.
Stede reaches out and places his hand very lightly on the knee. He looks up at Ed, sees the lines around his eyes tighten. He cups his hand over the dome of Ed’s bone. The leather is warm. Stede remembers that warmth, remembers slipping into it, when they hardly knew each other. It had been a caper. He hadn’t understood, at the time, what it meant to slip inside Blackbeard’s persona like that. The leather keeps him out now. But it’s still Ed inside it, warming it.
Ed flexes his knee minutely, pushing up into the palm of Stede’s hand.
“A warm compress? That would soothe, I think.” He watches Ed’s face, sees the lines between his brows that mean he’s considering something. Those lines softening Ed’s face. His face that’s never still, normally, but has lately seemed carved in stone.
Ed snorts. “Warm compress?”
Stede waits.
“Okay. Fucking warm compress. If you say so.”
“Good.” Stede wishes he could touch Ed’s skin now. He forces himself to stand up. “I’ll just go … fetch. Fetch some hot water.”
——
When he returns to the cabin with a can of hot water and a cleanish cloth from the galley, Ed is staring out at the darkening sea. He turns his head and regards Stede, impassive. Stede sets the can on the floor, slopping some of the water over his hand.
He kneels and places his hands on the brace. “May I?”
Ed nods. “I suppose.”
The buckles are stiff under Stede’s fingers, fumbling with nerves. Ed pushes them aside impatiently, his hair brushing Stede’s hands as he bends forward, blunt fingers surprisingly deft. The straps pull free and the metal cage opens. Ed lets it fall to the floor.
Stede dips the cloth into the water and wrings it out. His hand moves towards Ed’s leather-encased knee.
“Usually,” he says, stilling in the air, “one would want the compress directly on the skin.”
Ed flinches. “I’m not gonna sit here naked.”
“Of course not.” Stede lays the cloth on Ed’s knee. “But can you even feel that?”
Ed shrugs, hmms. “’S nice,” he says.
Stede lifts the cloth away, dips it into the warm water, wrings it out, places it back on Ed’s knee. The leather creaks, the ocean whispers along the hull.
He came in here determined to speak again, if Ed will hear him. So he must.
“I was afraid that I had broken you, unmade you, made you less. Of a pirate. That’s what Chauncey said.” Stede isn’t looking into Ed’s eyes as he says this, couldn’t bear to. His dear eyes are so empty now, none of the soft warmth that shone on Stede on the beach. Before he messed everything up. And unmade Ed.
Ed huffs. “Chauncey!” he says, scorn dripping. “English prick.”
“But it’s true. Now it’s true.” His voice sounds thready and desperate to his own ears.
He lifts the cooling cloth off Ed’s knee, dips it, wrings it out, brings it back.
Ed stops his hand. “This is stupid,” he says.
Stede freezes, a trickle of water running down his wrist. “I’m sorry,” he says. He drops the cloth into the water and straightens. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.” He bends to pick up the water and turns away, biting his lips to stop any more words from rushing out.
“Don’t be stupid.” He tries not to flinch at that. He knows he deserves it, but it is hard to hear Ed say it.
“No. Fuck! That’s not what I meant. Come back.”
Behind him, he hears Ed get to his feet. Hears the leather creak. He turns. Ed is undoing his trousers.
When they swapped clothes before, when he gave Ed finery for the party, they didn’t undress in the same room.
Ed stares straight at him as he pushes the trousers down his thighs. Stede isn’t sure what he expected, but under the leather, Ed is wearing perfectly normal linen drawers. It’s a relief, actually, if he’s honest. The thought of the leather chafing there, well, he did wonder, when he was wearing the trousers.
Focus! He reminds himself. Not now!
The trousers have been pushed down past Ed’s knees, but his boots are in the way. “Fucking boots,” he mutters, sitting down.
Stede stifles a smile — he does cut a comical figure, trapped like this.
He hurries back to the window seat and drops to his knees once again. “Let me.” He pulls the boots from Ed’s feet and eases the trousers down his calves and off. He tips his head back to look up at Ed. There’s a softness in his face that Stede thought he might never see again. The moment stretches between them. He knows his eyes are pleading, asking for what he had not allowed himself to want before. For what he knows he cannot have now. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. But it’s very bloody hard not to want, with Ed’s strong thighs and warm skin right here. He lays his hand back on Ed’s knee. On his skin, with no barrier between them.
Ed looks away first, gazing out of the window although it is almost dark.
“It’s not true. You didn’t,” he says. “Break me. Not before you left. Not after either.”
His lovely profile is outlined by the dusk light and Stede sees his eyes fall shut on that.
“But I hurt you. I will always be sorry for that.”
Ed doesn’t respond. So Stede does something brave, something he has wanted to do ever since that night in Mary’s bedroom, when he realised. He places his mouth on Ed’s skin, on the closest bit, the jagged scar on the inside of his knee. His heart hammers in his chest and he waits to be pushed off. He isn’t though. Instead, Ed brushes his fingers lightly down his cheek. He turns his face into the touch, dragging his mouth across Ed’s skin.
Ed makes a tiny sound in his throat, almost a gasp. “I can’t.” The words sound as if they have been dragged out of him.
Stede straightens up, his mouth bereft. “No. Of course. I’m sorry.”
“Stop fucking saying sorry!”
“But I—”
“I can’t—”
They both stop trying to speak. He’s looking at Ed, at the hurt and frustration on his face, but Ed is still turned away.
Stede gets awkwardly to his feet. “I better go.”
Ed stretches out a hand, as if he wants to restrain Stede, but then he drops it to the bench. “Yeah. You better.” He kicks the can of now-cold water and it rolls across the floor, leaving a sad trail on the planking.
Stede turns at the door. Ed is a forlorn figure, half naked, half armoured, his head bowed, face veiled again.
“Goodbye.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I don’t know what else … I don’t know what you want, Ed.”
“Fuck, wish I did.” Ed looks up at him then, his eyes catching the meagre light. His lovely expressive eyes. Stede wishes he was better at reading them.
He opens the door and steps back onto the deck, walks across to the rail, the breeze making the saltwater on his cheeks sting.
He shakes his head, trying to clear it of the memory of Ed’s skin, of the hot, dirty maleness he fancies he can still taste on his lips. He swipes the cuff of his plain and none-too-clean shirt across his face. They’re not so different now. He’s not the colourful, silly parrot whose fine things beguiled Ed and made him happy. He’s ordinary and plain and he doesn’t know how to reach back to Ed, how to touch his face, like Ed touched him on the beach, how to kiss him — properly, not so startled he could barely respond and didn’t know what he was doing anyway. He still doesn’t know how, and now he might never get a chance to learn. He rubs his face again, and hurries away, not daring to turn and look towards the cabin door and the quarterdeck rail and the watching scornful eyes and triumphant told-you-so sneer of Izzy Hands.
He’d been so sure he would win, but what has he to offer, after all?