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They’re all going to fucking die.
Edward is kneeling, eyes frantically flicking across the ground. They are. He’s done something horribly, irreversibly wrong here, and they will. He’s fucked it all up somehow and they won’t last a week . A figure steps close, casting a shadow across his face.
Ed glances up to glare at Stede, who is standing above him with a look of gently amused fondness on his face. He shields his eyes with one hand; the golden haired dickhead is standing directly in the sun. His ringlets are practically sparkling. The nerve of him, to sparkle when Ed has doomed his many charges to certain, undignified demise. “The fuck are you looking at?”
“They’re not, you know. Going to die.”
Ed hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud before, had been too focused on the spiral of prickling anxiety he’d been well on the way to falling into to even notice Stede’s approach. He groans, fighting the urge to run a hand through his hair in frustration. The kerchief securing his unruly curls combined with the soil encrusting his gloved hands (It turns out that black leather gloves work as well to keep dirt out from under one’s fingernails as they do as part of an ensemble designed to strike fear into the hearts of merchant sailors) make that a less-than-ideal move, so he settles on petulantly dropping the trowel he’d been holding. It catches in his skirts, adding more dirt to the lilac colored linen, already stained reddish brown around the knees.
(The skirts are another experiment, trading in hot leather for soft layers that breathe and billow. He’d started out with his usual jacket in the morning, but as the sun climbed higher that was abandoned in a heap, leaving only a thin black undershirt, cut low across his collar bones. It’s cool and freeing, and the swish as he walks sometimes brings an aching brittle joy to the pit of his stomach and tears to the corners of his eyes. Not worth examining. Not yet, anyway.)
“What would you fuckin’ know about it, fancy pants?,” he grumbles, shaking the trowel and earth out of the fabric.
Stede chuckles, crouching down next to him. He places a hand on Ed’s cheek and meets his eyes with almost painful sincerity. “Darling, I’ve never seen anyone handle living things with more care. They’ll come up all right, just you wait and see.”
Ed can’t help but melt when Stede speaks to him with such unselfconscious tenderness. He leans his face automatically into Stede’s calloused hand. Such a change there; the skin now roughened by ropes and oars and work was once lily-soft. Now it rasps a little against the scratchy growth of a few days worth of stubble. Stede may have something different to say about care for living things if he’d seen the shocking language and physical violence aimed at a worm that had unexpectedly squirmed across his finger as he was planting squash, but what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. He whines unintelligibly.
“What was that, love?” Stede’s lips quirk up in a smile, and his eyes are twinkling with fondness. Sparkling and twinkling. It’s unbearable.
“Ngh. Maybe,” he says into Stede’s palm. “But I don’t think I’ve done the seeds right. The fuckin’ dirt is going to get compacted when it rains, or the tomatoes are going to get a fungus, and the seeds are never going to come up. Should have done all this earlier– it’s too late in the season and nothing’s going to have time to grow and the weeds are going to take over. Or there’ll be a freak frost and it’ll all die anyway.”
Jesus. He needs to take a breath. It’s maddening, really. How had piracy been so fucking boring compared to this? He feels alive with the sandy soil between his fingers and toes in a way that he hasn’t in years. Both grounded and wildly unsettled. There’s a joyful buzzing in his chest, something suspiciously like hope and maybe even content woven in with the nerves.
The garden is small, next to a little wooden house at the edge of a creek. Small hills of earth are spaced a few feet apart with little shoots in the middle which would, maybe with luck , grow into stalks of corn taller than himself. And just under the surface, beans are poised to climb the stalks and squash seeds wait to burst and cover the ground with protective green life. It’s a method borrowed from the people who’d been farming this land for centuries, but surely he’d missed something vital and it wouldn’t work properly. Beyond the mounds are tiny tomato seedlings that would never get any taller, let alone bear fruit. Closer to the house, herbs would maybe come to life, sprouting from seeds sown directly into the ground. If they didn’t all get eaten by fucking squirrels. Or washed away in the rain, or choked out by creeping tentacles of weedy vines. Or just not fucking grow, because how could a seed so tiny you could barely see it survive, just plonked into the ground like that?
A sword fight and a fuckery on the deck of a ship? That’s a breeze compared to this quiet waiting.Tiny tender shoots of life that may grow and may shrivel or drown and it will be all his fault– Enough .
There’s a voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Lucius. So you, specifically , are incapable of ushering this new life into the world. There’s something about you, specifically , that will kill all the plants. Not the process, but specifically , you. Any idea what that might be about?
He needs to get a grip.
“I need to get a grip,” he says, planting his face dramatically into Stede’s chest, bare where his shirt lies open to combat the Carolina sun, surprisingly sweltering for mid-April. He feels a bit calmer already.
“It looks lovely out here,” Stede tells him, offering a hand to pull him to his feet. His knee twinges as he stands, and he should have followed Stede’s suggestion and brought a cushion out to kneel on. Tests his weight on it – not too bad. “Look at all the hard work you’ve done.” Ed groans pathetically. With a chuckle, Stede’s strong hands take him gently by the shoulders and turn him to face the garden. His hands rest on Ed’s hips, keeping them pressed together as they survey the little plot.
“Now, do you know what happens if they do all die?”
“The fuck? ”
“No, really,” Stede laughs. “Think about it. Tell me the worst that will happen if they do. I don’t think they will! But, as an exercise. What happens if none of them make it?”
Ed takes a moment to actually think. Well, obviously it would mean that he really is a monster fundamentally incapable of sustaining anything aside from death and mayhem, and it was pathetic of him to think he could play at anything else. He might as well throw out the soft silk and linen and grow back his beard and go back to being the Kraken, because he’d failed and his first tentative project as just Edward.
Hm. Which seems like a lot of pressure to put on some little fucking plants. And on himself for that matter.
He tries again. Really considers, trying to be objective.
“We don’t have any tomatoes?”
Stede nods in approval. “That’s about right. And what do we do then?”
He thinks. “We have to buy them at the market. Or try planting again.”
“Exactly.”
“Oh. That’s it?”
“Yeah. Not too bad, eh?”
He makes a noise of assent, and leans in closer. Stede’s arms around him are strong and sure and present, anchoring him in place. The house, their house, bought outright with a hoard of stolen gold, is nestled on the edge of a marshy creek, surrounded by pine trees and the smell of the ocean not far off. It’s on the edge of the newest port town in the Carolinas. It has plenty of room for visits from a crew of rag-tag pirates, captained by a “Blackbeard” with a far more reasonable and competent management style than Edward ever had. It’s also got a great view of the shipping route leading into the harbor, just in case semi-retirement gets a bit dull after a while or and a heavily laden merchant vessel looks too enticing to pass up.
It also, Ed thinks, like divine inspiration, would be a convenient spot for fishermen and merchants coming up from port on the way to town. A great spot to stop if you're hungry, for example. Or low on fishing equipment.
It’s all a bit much, so he leans into Stede’s chest and breathes him in for a while. The plants will grow or they won’t.