Chapter Text
Despite numerous opinions to the contrary, Stede Bonnet knew with certainty that he was in fact a man of several, very particular talents. While the relevance of some had faded at this point in his life, such as his ability to coordinate the perfect outfit for any occasion or throw an enchanting dinner party at a moment’s notice, others had blossomed in ways that he could never have predicted. For example, the skills of diplomacy nurtured while mediating minor disputes between his young children had become indispensable in breaking up the much more numerous but equally petty grievances of his crew. His imagination, never described by anyone in his life as a strength before, had in fact proved critical to some of their more elaborate fuckeries, and even his unflappably sunny disposition had gotten them out of nearly as many close scrapes as it had started.
But far and away, without question, Stede’s strongest and most valuable skill was his ability to read Edward Teach like a fucking book.
This was, of course, a talent honed over nearly eight years of friendship, co-captaincy, love and (most importantly) being glued to each other so inseparably that the crew began to worry if they saw one without the other for more than a handful of hours. In that time Stede had studied Ed with the fierce concentration of a scholar at their chosen subject, learning every shifting expression and telling gesture that made this ridiculous, wonderful man who he was.
Stede learned to see the tight lines across his forehead that showed up when the inside of his head was getting too loud for comfort, and the exact right temperature of bath that helped soothe the noise away. He caught the foot jiggles that meant he’d stayed in place for too long and would start crawling up the literal and metaphorical walls if they didn’t find something interesting to do right now. And, miraculously, he was able to catalog in the minutest detail the breathtaking array of smiles that a happy Ed Teach was capable of - sleepy, satisfied, delirious, content, and even blissfully in love.
All of this was to say that Stede knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that something was bothering Ed. He’d known for a few weeks in fact, noticing the faint air of distraction that followed him like his own personal cloud. This wasn’t too terribly out of the ordinary - there were times when what Ed referred to as “bad brain” could plague him for up to a few days depending on the circumstances, but after a solid week and a half Stede began to worry. Things only escalated from there, as distraction turned to jumpiness and then a nervous picking of the skin around his fingers that left them raw and even bloody.
And yet other than a brief offer to discuss anything that may be bothering him, Stede did not ask what the trouble was directly. He certainly wondered, and the urge to push and prod until it came spilling out ate away at him, but he knew that Ed would come to him when the time was right. This too was something learned from their years together - anything beyond a gentle acknowledgement that something was wrong would cause Ed to bottle up whatever it was until it festered into something much worse. No, better to wait, no matter how much it worried him.
The time finally came as the sun sank below the horizon one fine evening, two days after a successful raid when the crew was still happily occupied with accounting for and divvying up all the loot they had taken. This haul had been rich and diverse enough that Stede hadn’t even needed to step in to break up any fights yet, and he was taking the time as a reprieve for some well-earned rest. While raiding continued apace and ships presented little challenge as soon as they raised their combined flag, in truth Stede found that he needed just that much longer to recover from each one these days.
It was as he had finally settled onto the sofa with a glass of brandy and a book he knew well enough that he could skim through with minimal effort that he heard Ed’s unmistakable tread approaching their door. A smile crept over his face to hear him draw close, as it still usually did, but as Ed entered and closed the door softly behind him the smile slipped. Ed’s face was not that of a man satisfied after a good day’s work, instead written all over with the anxiety that he had been carrying for weeks now.
“Stede? Are you busy?”
Oh, fuck. It’s happening.
Smiling around the sudden swoop of anxiety through his stomach, Stede closed the book and set it gently on the cushion next to him. “Of course not, darling. Just trying to decompress a bit before we start planning for the next raid. Did you need something?”
Ed avoided meeting his gaze in favor of staring at the floorboards like they had personally wronged him. He was picking at his fingers again, a nail on each hand worrying away at dry skin on his thumbs that surely ached from the constant irritation.
“I know you’ve noticed that something’s going on with me. I’ve been trying to, to figure out how to say something, how to just get this out so I can stop fucking thinking about it all the time. And I don’t think I’ve figured it out but I have to do it now or I’m going to lose my goddamn mind.”
He started to pace in a tight line, eyes still fixed on the floor.
“Before I say it, I just, I need you to know that the last few years have been the happiest of my whole life. I love the lives we’ve made together, I really do, but Stede, I -” He paused, closing his eyes and taking a deep, shuddering breath. “I can’t do this anymore.”
Was there a bell ringing somewhere? The wind howling out of nowhere? Or water rushing in, that had to be the reason his ears were suddenly filled with roaring static matched only by the frantic thudding of his own heart. With a clinical sort of detachment Stede noticed that his hands were shaking, trembling where they rested on his thighs as he tried to think around the panic surging through him. He doesn’t mean, he can’t -
After a few seconds, or perhaps a year, Stede found his voice again, reedy and desperate. “Ed, if there’s something wrong with us, something I can change or fix, please, darling, you have to let me try. Please, we can’t just -”
Ed snapped his gaze up to finally look at Stede, and the worry in his face was taken over by sheer panic at what he saw. Stede couldn’t begin to imagine what he looked like at the moment besides possibly like he’d been gutted with a very dull dagger, but whatever his expression it was enough to have Ed scrambling over towards the sofa and dropping into a crouch that would certainly be murder on his knee to grab desperately at Stede’s shaking hands.
“Oh, shit, no, Stede, that’s not what I - fuck! Hey, love, look at me please.” He squeezed Stede’s hands in his own with a grip that would be crushing under other circumstances. “I’m so fucking stupid, I practiced this goddamn speech so many times and then I just immediately cocked it all up. It’s not you, not us. Never that. It’s just like I’ve said, it’s you and me forever, right? No getting rid of me, even if you wanted to.”
The frantic thump of Stede’s heart started to recede slightly and his tremor subsided, soothed by Ed’s touch and words. It would take a good while for the adrenaline to leave his system, but if he trusted anything in this world it was that Ed was telling him the truth. He took a deep breath that hitched only slightly and gave Ed’s hands a reassuring squeeze of his own.
“I’ll never want that, you know I won’t. But darling, if that’s not what you meant what is? What can’t you do anymore?”
The worry returned to Ed’s face, but he didn’t pull away this time or drop his gaze. “It’s…all of it, Stede. Hunting down ships, fighting in raids, fencing goods, fuck, just being a pirate. I’m tired, so tired some mornings I can barely get myself up out of bed. Whenever Buttons rings the bell because he’s spotted a ship all I want to do is go hide down in the bilge to get away from it. I know we’ve mostly kept Blackbeard under wraps but when we do have to go there and I have to put the leathers on I feel…I feel dirty. Wrong, for days after, and I just can’t keep feeling like that.”
“Ed, darling. You’re spiraling,” Stede interrupted, pulling gently on their still-clasped hands to bring him up onto the couch. Ed collapsed like a puppet with cut strings and dropped his head on Stede’s shoulder with a sigh of releasing tension. “You’ve been waiting to say this for a long time, haven’t you?”
He nodded into Stede’s shoulder, breathing in the scent of his cologne in a way that Stede knew he found grounding in moments like these. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because it’s not fair! Me dropping this on you out of nowhere, upending our whole lives because I can’t deal with it anymore, how fucking selfish am I? You’re so good at this now and here I am at the end of, of my rope, my career…” He trailed off, swallowing heavily, and when he spoke again his voice was thick with unshed tears. “I know how much this means to you, what it means to you. Freedom, adventure, living your life the way you want it. If you want to keep that, if you want to keep on going while I go somewhere and figure myself out I understand - “
“Edward Teach, if you truly think I’m going to just piss off and swan around the Caribbean without you then we need to have a serious talk about your opinion of me and our relationship. For God’s sake.”
As intended, the extra note of acerbity in his voice drew a small chuckle from Ed and he melted closer into Stede. With a small shift Stede wrapped his arm around Ed’s shoulders and pulled him in close to lean back on the sofa, Ed resting against his chest in a familiar and comforting position. They just fit like this, perfectly balanced and together. Safe, at home.
“But in seriousness, my love, there is no world in which I would rather be off pirating than by your side. The last several years have been marvelous, of course, but it’s not because of this ,” he said, gesturing with his other arm to the cabin around them. “It’s because I’ve gotten to do it all with you. Those things you mentioned, what’s important to me? It’s all you, love. You are all of the freedom and adventure I need, and my life with you is exactly how I wish to live it. Alright?”
Ed nodded again, his voice this time little more than a whisper. “Alright. God, I don’t know what I did that was good enough to bring you into my life.”
“Nothing better than what I did to bring you into mine. We’ll figure this out, darling, just like we figure everything out.”
“Fuck, I hope it’s not the way we figure out everything else,” Ed laughed with a small snort. “I’m hoping for less chaos in my life, not more.”
Stede joined him in laughter, pressing a fond kiss into his hair where it tousled slightly from the angle against him. That hair was even grayer now than when they had first met, nearly all of the remaining black strands faded with the intervening years. His beard had gone fully silver to match, and as Ed looked up at him a constellation of smile lines creased around his tired eyes.
Christ, we really are getting old, aren’t we?
He was hardly one to talk, Stede knew. The grays hid more effectively in his blond hair, but they marched inexorably out from his temples at a rate that could no longer be ignored. A bad twist years ago had left him with an ankle that now snapped and popped to match Ed’s knee, and it felt that some days someone even looking at his back wrong could leave him on the floor unable to move. Him and Ed, creaky old men on the high seas, picking each other up when they could and pausing to take a moment and rest their bones when they couldn’t.
But that was just it, wasn’t it? They were growing old together, a prospect that took Stede’s breath away when he stopped to think about it. The steady tick of years had terrified him once when all it promised was a quiet thrum of unending misery, leaving squandered opportunities in its wake. But now? Now he hardly noticed as one year melted into the next, more concerned with the daily joys of Ed and his crew, the tasks of keeping the ship afloat, the small adventures that made it all worthwhile. The days, the months, the years that brought on old age, they were a gift. No matter what they were doing.