Chapter Text
Contrary to popular belief , Edward Teach could read .
It wasn’t a skill that most pirates possessed , nor was it one that was used often in his line of work . Most people weren’t going to be threatened into submission by him waxing poetry , now were they ? But it had been something he enjoyed as a child , and it did come handy every once in a while . He may have learnt how to tie knots and the rigging from word of mouth and working on ships , and treat stab wounds by experience (the latter of which was a double edged sword , no pun intended ) , but he had learnt most of the constellations and nautical terms from books .
He may or may not have also picked up a maiming technique or two from those stories . In his defence , he had to have started somewhere , and horror stories did the trick ! The things people could conjure up in their minds were scary , even if they didn’t want to act so in polite society . He might as well take their ideas to the test , though he was fairly certain that no one had thought to skin anyone with an escargot fork before . He was pretty proud of that .
That being said , when he had first laid eyes on Stede’s library , he felt , what was the word ? Validated . Here was a man who was proving to the world that you could read books and be a pirate , that a life of swashbuckling didn’t necessarily mean having to give up cosy storytelling evenings by the fire .
And fuck , can the man tell a story .
It didn’t matter if most of them were stories he read as a child , Stede Bonnet could be reading aloud from a women’s dress catalog and he’d still be entranced . He was just brimming with that energy that ropes people in whenever he’s excited about anything , like that— uh —cotton candy silk fly thingy , or treasure maps that were clearly a scam , or even ways of getting blood and grime out of clothing because being fierce and intimidating isn’t an excuse for wasting good clothes , darling .
Darling . The word still makes his heart do a little gallop every time he thinks about it . Well , so long as it was a certain voice saying it .
That was probably what drew him in the most during story time . That voice , warm as the lantern that provided the light needed to see the page during the night , soft as his velvet cushions and smooth as honey . It was true what Lucius said , he really was good at doing voices , but he loved the bits where there wasn’t any dialogue, when he was just reading the bits about the going ons . He could listen to that glorious alto for ages , but his favourite bits were at night , when it was talking just to him as they lay in bed together, just them 2 alone in the cabin , his voice lulling him to sleep and gently stirring him from his slumber with loving murmurs , often with even more gentle fingers carding through his hair and the steady thump thump thump of his heart under his ear.
And so , who could blame him for pretending to be illiterate , when it gave him the opportunity to listen to that voice more ?