Work Text:
All his life, Ed's dreamed of going to a party like this.
When his mother was in service, she gave him more than just a piece of red silk and a cautionary statement wrapped in a comforting tone. She told him all about the fancy people in their gowns and jackets, the glittering chandeliers and the sparkling champagne, the way they danced and flitted frivolously around the room.
Ed's pretty sure that the lesson she meant him to take away isn't the one he got, because by the time she finished one of her stories, and finished rubbing her feet to take the edge off the soreness, all he wanted was to be one of them, just for an evening.
His first impression of the party is that it fits the bill of his boyhood imagination, every cherished pictures held just out of reach inside his mind. Ed's not the same hopeful, pretty boy he once was, feet heavy on the ground but head in the clouds or out to sea, always scheming, always trying to make something better happen.
(It's possible he achieved that with his father. The firing squad's still out on that one.)
But the room he and Stede walk into glitters. It shines, every light catching on the jewels and silks of the party guests. And Stede, standing next to him on the exquisite carpeted staircase, shines the brightest out of all of them.
Ed's second thought is of the fairy stories he's heard more of since boarding the Revenge than he has in years, and how when he imagined a party like this, he also wondered if he would meet a handsome stranger who would sweep him off his feet without even trying.
(Stede's done that, whether he knows it yet or not. Even before tonight, just having him around makes things seem brighter.)
It's a beautiful party. Everyone there likes him, or, at least, they like who he is for the night. They flirt with him, they dance with him, they hang on his every word. Ed's never charmed this many people at once before without flashing around some weaponry with a good old dash of cheerful menace.
With Stede at his side, a party like this, a life like this, feels attainable for the first time ever. Ed has money; maybe not like these people have money but definitely nearly as ill-gotten as theirs, and Stede knows what to wear, where to go, how to eat. Ed can teach him what to say to make these people like him. Together, they're unstoppable.
But, like really good things tend to do, it all comes crashing to an end.
Stede leaves his side at some point and wanders off. Ed wonders if he's supposed to do something about that—Stede promised him they could leave if he felt overwhelmed, and Ed's happy to extend the same offer if Stede needs him to.
But then it's time for dinner, and, as it turns out, he and Stede aren't like these people at all.
They reach out to touch him without permission, as if silk ribbons in his beard can turn him into one of their prized lapdogs. They laugh at him for not having opinions on Paris, laugh at him for forgetting all of Stede's lessons on cutlery, laugh at his threats, laugh, laugh, laugh.
The pageantry's not worth it if it's all just going to end up like this, a bunch of people he doesn't know in beautiful clothes who are so sure they're better than him that they're happy to shriek in his face about it.
Ed leaves, and the glittering rooms look like shards of glass in his eyes. The fancy clothes and hair and food look like the labor that went into them. His feet hurt.
But then he finds Stede and Frenchie, who find Oluwande and their new friend Abshir, and together, they make it seem magical again. Ed doesn't even have to ask them to. They just do all that, turn the party guests' poisonous secrets against them while they laugh and laugh until they aren't laughing anymore, until they've set their own ship on fire out of fear and rage. For him. For all of them.
(Ed burned down a ship. Only once. It wasn't as clean or as pretty as he thought it would be.)
And Stede—Stede's kindness, his care for Ed, is the most beautiful thing in the room. He outshines them all. He always did; Ed wishes he had appreciated that sooner instead of trying to impress all those frivolous, ugly people, who never liked him, not even for a whole evening.
And when he's drawn to Stede later, in the moonlight, like a moth to a beacon—when Stede folds up his heart and his memories and his fractured childhood hopes and tucks it all safely on display in Ed's pocket—
That's when Ed realizes that it wasn't the silks or the chandeliers or the vapid conversation he wanted at all. It was this, standing in front of someone who likes him and finds him worthy; someone who thinks he's beautiful, just as he is.