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It’s a cloudy day, warm and bright without feeling baked by the sun as it dances with a spotted sky of clouds like a veil. Stede climbs up to the maintop and settles in next to Ed, pulling a letter from inside his waistcoat. "As requested," he chirrups, waving the folded parchment tantalizingly.
Ed lifts a brow, a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. "He finally wrote me one?"
Love letters had become a staple between Stede and Izzy, and while Ed was fine to let them be kept something private between the two of them, he found himself jealous that they wouldn't write him any, whether or not he could read them. “Why not just say it?” he'd asked, frustrated. Stede tried to explain that that was the whole point of a love letter; it's all the things you feel so deeply, the love so raw like a wound that you can't say them out loud. They have to be written to get them out.
So, Izzy and Stede had agreed to write Ed letters and swap them, reading each other's to him. It felt at first like it might take something away from the experience, having someone else read the words meant only for one person, but as the three of them knit more and more together, it became a small price to pay.
Stede had written Ed three letters so far, Izzy reading them to him, re-reading on request, but Izzy had yet to produce one, promising it was coming, he just needed time. Ed was not known for his patience, but he held out. As Stede unfolds the letter, Ed leans over to look at Izzy's spidery penmanship, long, thin letters like daggers. "Seems kinda short. Took him all that time to write me something short?"
Stede perches a pair of reading glasses on the end of his nose and gives Edward a look over their rim. "Trust me. The man can write a letter." He clears his throat and looks at Ed again. "Are you ready?"
Ed settles his body like he's preparing to take it in, drawing a deep breath and letting it out. "Ready."
Stede gives a single nod and clears his throat once more.
Edward –
Whenever I regret how long I kept my love for you a prisoner, I remind myself that there are pages and pages of journals, over decades, that prove there simply are not words to say what you mean to me. How could I have ever told a secret that cannot be said?
I love you is not enough, it never will be, but it will do for now as a placeholder as I try to find something beyond it, to shake the rattling thing in my heart with your name carved into it until it tells me its story, and when it does, I promise to share it with you. What I can say of it is this: the drop over a high wave in a storm, that feeling of coming unstuck from the weight of the earth, the racing heart, the brief moment of floating away as if you'd dislodge from your own body, that is the way it feels to love you. Surrender and shock, taken up wholly by a force beyond my power and suspended from everything else.
A terrifying thrill.
When I would feel it before, the secret locked away, when you would meet my eye and the breath was knocked from me, it was like holding my hand to a flame – warm and bright and beautiful but too much for me to get close to. Now that you have consumed me like a crucible and burned away my fear and ignorance, those moments, that thrill, settle me back down into myself with a sureness I've never known.
It is as if there is an entire room of myself I had not known existed, and being loved by you made that room my new home. If there were a name on the door, a little brass plate, I think it would be "Worthy". You make me feel worthy. To know your love, such a miraculous and powerful thing, surely there is no other explanation than my being worthy. You make me better, you make me know I can be better, a better man, a better person, a better lover, partner, friend. I had been denying myself that for so long, not only because I was afraid of the sting of rejection, of losing what we had together, but I was afraid that if you turned me away, it would only confirm the fear that's been buried in me like a razor all my life, that I'm simply not good enough, and never will be.
That fear and its sharp edges, they're gone now. Being yours has liberated me like nothing else ever has, not the endless sea and sky, not a life outside laws and proper society, not drink, nothing. It is only your love, of your certainty that there is something in me worth calling "mine" that has set me free from all the rigid tenets I had imposed upon myself, all the things I could not be because I had not deemed myself worth them.
And I don't want much. Wealth and finery have never held much appeal to me, as you know, but I am the richest man in the world to be yours, made precious and priceless by your want of me. That is what a marvelous, powerful soul you are, Edward, my beloved Edward, that your mere act of loving can heal and transform, cradle and nurture, give purpose and assurance. When I tell you that I love you, remember that it means all of these things and so much more.
Yours, always yours,
Izzy x
Stede dabs a kerchief at the corners of his eyes, folding the letter again and handing it to Ed. "I told you," he says, smirking, seeing the swarm of emotions behind Ed's eyes.
Ed tucks the letter into the front of his jacket, next to the silk. "Is he–?"
"He's in the library."
Ed gives a nod and climbs down to the deck, making his way to the cabin. Izzy is rearranging books in alphabetical order and grouped by subject, nervous busywork while he'd known his letter was being read. He tries not to look as spooked as he feels when Ed walks in, giving him a tight-lipped smile. Ed does not slow, crossing the small space and wrapping Izzy up in his arms, kissing him hard. Izzy startles at first, caught off guard, before melting into it, his hands coming up to grip at the back of Ed's shoulders, pulling him closer.
Ed is slightly breathless as he pulls away. "Mine,” he claims. “You are precious, you are priceless," his voice is a low, serious growl that makes Izzy shiver pleasantly down to his toes, "and you always fucking have been."