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The night sky cupped the ocean beneath it, tossing starlight and moonlight down to catch on the breakers below. The moon was full and almost obnoxiously bright, reflecting off the scattered clouds and making their shapes stand out against the black. Down the beach, music and laughter and the roar of the bonfire could still be faintly heard, but it was distant to where Ed stood now, waist deep in the water, rocked gently back and forth by the waves.
"Ed?" he heard from the shore, in a voice that felt even more familiar than her own. "Ed, are you down here?"
Ed didn't call back, feeling spellbound by the stars and the sea in a way she didn't want to break by yelling. But Stede saw her anyway, and as Ed glanced over his shoulder to watch him she smiled to see him already shucking off his clothes to join her. She'd left her own breeches up on the sand, but still wore her thin shift, now translucent and stuck to her skin with water where it wasn't flowing around her hips on the surface of the waves.
Stede dispensed with all of his clothes– loath to try to get salt water out of them later, Ed imagined– and forged his way out to her, batting seafoam out of his way like a disgruntled cat. She laughed at him, making him pout, and extended her hands to him. She was the picture of innocence until he took them, at which point she clamped her fingers around his wrists and yanked, sending him spilling under the water.
She was still cackling as he re-emerged, curls a salt-plastered mess, but took his weight easily as he clambered up her like a tree, clinging to her shoulders and letting his legs float free.
"Really," Stede said, but Ed could see the grin he was trying to repress, poked him in the cheek to draw it out. The waves pulled out, lowering Stede's feet to the ground, and then it was Ed's turn to squeal as Stede pulled them both over.
They fought each other all the way back up to the wet packed sand of the tideline, shrieking like children the whole way. Stede managed to seize the last word when he threw himself at Ed in knee deep water, tackling her to the ground with a splash-thump that split her laughter with a groan.
"All right, all right, call it a tie," she said breathlessly, rolling up the sand so only the shallowest edges of the water brushed at her. Stede followed, settling across her hips and leaning down to press them chest-to-chest.
"This doesn't seem like a tie to me, my love," he teased, but gave up the argument when Ed leaned up to steal a long, biting kiss. She giggled into it when she felt his cock twitch against her bare thigh, her shift caught up around her ribs.
"So easy," she said, low in her throat.
"For you? Always," Stede said. His smile had a magic in it that could make even his teasing sound so earnest, like every word he ever said to Ed was a wedding vow.
They kissed lazily where they lay for a while, feeling the tide come in over their legs and pull away the sand underneath them, until a stray wave covered them up to the shoulders and Stede scooped Ed up to carry her to drier sand. She clutched his neck and kicked her legs in delight, even as Stede staggered a bit under her weight and his deposit of her onto his spread coat was less than graceful.
"What were you doing all the way out here?" he asked eventually, once they were both arranged beside each other, their arms and Ed's shift a tangled, sticky mess around them. Ed hummed, tucking her head into the soft divot between Stede's shoulder and chest.
"Just vibing, honestly," she said after some consideration. "When you live on the ocean all the time, you get used to it. You forget to be awed, sometimes. I don't like to forget that." There was agreement in Stede's answering, comfortable silence, the shift of his arms around her.
"I used to imagine I was a mermaid, you know," Ed said, tilting her face to look up at Stede. "When I was really young. I was scared of the water at first, did I ever tell you that? But Ma made sure I learned; she was terrified I'd fall off a dock someday and not know how to get back up. So I pretended I could swim off into the whole ocean and never be scared once. Eventually I pretended so hard it worked. Plus," she said after a moment, "the tits were a bonus."
"I don't know, you grew up with some pretty nice tits after all," Stede said, tweaking one of her nipples until she swatted him away, grinning. "Do you know, I used to pretend that same thing."
"No," Ed gasped, delighted.
"Yes!" Stede was beaming now, propping himself half-up on his elbows, Ed looking up at him raptly with her chin on his belly. "Well, I wanted to be pretty and mysterious and be able to swim off into the sea and never look back. The rest was all so appealing that I didn't even really give the maid part all that much thought!"
"You're incredible, mate," Ed said, eyes shining. "Imagine if we'd done it. You think we would have run into each other, somewhere out there?"
"Oh, I have no doubt of it." Ed raised a hand, tilting it back and forth in a skeptical gesture.
"I dunno, man, there's a lot of sea between Bridgetown and Bristol."
"Well, first, you would have put as much distance between you and Bristol as possible anyway, because England is a terrible place." Ed nodded in agreement. "But if you didn't run into me first– save me from an embarrassing death by shark, perhaps– I don't think the tides would be able to resist bringing us together."
"Maybe so," Ed murmured, tracing patterns with her fingertip into the damp hair on Stede's belly. "That would have been nice, wouldn't it? If we'd found each other sooner. No fuckin' stupid pirate drama to deal with. Just us and the ocean."
"And the shark," Stede reminded her, to renewed giggles.
"And the shark," Ed conceded. "Not after it messed with you, though."
"Oh, would you wrestle the shark for my honor?"
"Damn right I would. Bastard wouldn't know what hit him."
"Why is it a bastard? What if it was a lady shark?"
"Well, first off, ladies are bastards, just look at yours. Second, I'll punch a lady. I'll punch a lady shark. I don't give a fuck."
"What if she was carrying all her little eggs with her? You'd orphan a whole crop of sharks for some mermaid you'd never met?"
"Fuckin' absolutely. I'd still be Blackbeard, obviously. Black, uh, fin maybe. Might not even have to fight the shark. Might be I just show up and it runs off in terror."
"Swims off."
"What?"
"Well, the shark isn't running anywhere, is it?"
"Aw, fuck off," Ed said, smothering a smile into Stede's chest.
"Blackfin, hmm. Has a ring to it. They'd have to call you terror in the seven seas, I suppose. Would I be the Gentlemaid Pirate? I'm not sure that has the same panache."
"Stede?"
"Yes, sweet?"
"Shut the fuck up."
"Mm!" Stede's surprised sound was muffled into Ed's lips as she pounced on him, hands pressing his shoulders back down into the sand. "Yes, sweet."