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Stede returns much more quickly than Ed could ever expect. Not that Ed’s expected Stede to come back at all. He’s dreamed it, yeah, pretty much every night since that first sleepless one on the dock – when he knew Stede wasn’t coming but waited anyway, staring up at the lightening sky in hopes of some last-minute miracle that never came – but dreams are dreams. Occasionally he’s let himself hold out hope for it to happen when he wakes up from one of those, clinging to the shreds of the warmth he felt in dream-Stede’s dream-arms … but he doesn’t really believe in it.
How can he? It’s very clear. It’s been clear. Stede isn’t a man for roughing it, for making do with a shoddy attempt at a fine thing. Stede wants and deserves the best. What can Ed give him, other than a stolen dinghy and his own battered and ugly soul? (Well, he could give him a fuckload of treasure if they went back to the Queen Anne, but Stede doesn’t know that. Maybe he should have told him. Sometimes Ed is willing to allow himself to be a little craven.)
So when Stede pulls himself over the rail, the sun at his back and his gold-glinting hair ruffled by the breeze, Ed’s first thought is that this is another of his dreams. A mostly very boring and realistic one, up to this point. A lot of them have involved this exact scenario, although usually Stede is dressed in a gorgeous silk suit in lavender or turquoise or peach – occasionally he’s in Ed’s own leathers, and once in Calico Jack’s mess of an outfit – rather than a sweat-stained linen shirt and plain dark trousers. But it’s not a dream, and he knows it.
“Ed,” says Stede in the same smiling, reverent tone he used when Ed came up over the rail himself before the British got them. Now as then, it makes his stomach do a flip and his heart pulse warmly.
He stills them both with a swig of rum.
“Stede.” His own tone is even. Steady. Not angry. The way it is when you should be most on your guard – not that he’s sure Stede is picking up on that.
A lot is happening on the deck around them: Stede’s crew is surging up over the rail behind him, one by one, all of them stunningly alive, which is … well, Ed’s conflicted about that. No! He’s fucking angry. They were meant to die, starved and baking in the sun on that rock. There’s a tiny spark of hope in his chest that everything can just go back to the way it was since they didn’t, but he smothers it viciously. This is not a possibility. This is a problem.
Olu is one of the first on the deck, and there’s a desperate look in his eyes as they sweep over the crew. He doesn’t have to search long: Jim takes two halting steps out of the crowd, their own eyes enormous and their mouth trembling, and then the two of them fling themselves at each other in relieved ecstasy.
Pete wants in on the same joy, obviously, following Olu up and looking around the deck like Lucius might be sitting coyly atop a barrel or draped over someone’s shoulder. Well, at least he’s bound to be disappointed. There’s a mingling of shame and cruel triumph in Ed’s belly about that. “You won’t find the boy,” he calls out in a flat voice. “He’s dead.”
There’s something gratifying in the shock that goes through Stede and his crew at that. Fucking finally, he gets it – he gets that Ed isn’t a toy he can put down and pick up again when he feels like it, Ed’s fucking Blackbeard, the terror of the seas. He’s a bad person. He doesn’t love and he isn’t loved. Does Stede see him now?
But Fang slipped off when Pete came up and over the side, and just as the shock is fading he comes back – with Lucius in tow. Ed actually feels his facade drop for a moment as stunned disbelief washes over him. That’s not possible. That’s not possible. He knows – he remembers –
A sweaty, pale, and bearded Lucius wraps his arms around Pete’s neck and exclaims, “Oh my god, babe!” just as Pete bursts into muffled tears. Everyone in Stede’s crew (except Jim and Olu) gathers around, patting them both on the shoulder and back. A heartwarming scene, the triumph of love over evil.
Ed turns on his heel and stalks away. Too many emotions are swirling around inside him, and he needs somewhere to process them before he does something he’ll regret. Fuck all of this. He heads off for the dark cabin and flings himself into the chair at the table, resting his forehead on his crossed arms for a break from having to look at anything.
Several minutes go by. Stede doesn’t appear. He doesn’t want Stede to appear, of course, but … he kind of thought Stede would follow him anyway. To see the wreckage of his ship, his empty bookshelves. To demand the ship back and for Ed to leave. Or worse, for him to be kind about it all so he can make Ed go soft and gooey again.
When the door opens, Ed’s head jerks up, but it’s just Izzy. He’s annoyed and he’s relieved.
“I guess this is over,” Izzy says, one hand on his cane and one on the hilt of his sword, looking at the floor in front of Ed. His voice is always husky, but there’s a new throb in it. “No more Blackbeard. You’ll be back with that ponce again. I just want to –”
“Who fucking says?” Ed can keep his voice hard. He can make his gloved hands into fists. He can grit his teeth. “I don’t remember fucking telling you anything like that.”
That makes Izzy pause. “No?” he finally says, uncertain.
Ed unfolds. Leaning back in the chair, he stretches out, deliberately languorous. His dagger comes out and he spins it with one hand.
“I need you to give him a message from me.”
It’s lovely to be back on the Revenge, and for Stede to get to watch the reunion of his crew with their missing members, and with Fang and Ivan.
It’s not exactly what he expected, no. All of his crew, from the most reliable (Oluwande) to the least (the Swede), were clear about the central role of Izzy Hands in their marooning. They were certain that Ed had nothing to do with it, might not even know what had happened to them. Might himself be a prisoner. Izzy was in charge before Ed came back, alone, from the academy – it seems possible to them that he wanted to be in charge again. That he locked Ed away somewhere (he was nowhere to be seen while they were emptying his cabin) and stranded them.
But when he arrived, Ed was walking the deck, not chained or hidden away. When he arrived, Ed looked at him with deadened, smoldering eyes, not a hopeful gaze, and he was … he was …
Stede doesn’t let himself dwell on it. A lot has happened – Ed needs a moment to work through his own feelings, of course. When Izzy planted a hand on his chest and shoved him back, his first instinct was to snap at him and push forward to go after Ed, but then his second thoughts came in: no, give him time, don’t press too hard after what you’ve done. So he sits on a coil of rope in the shade of the forecastle, and he quietly watches the reunions, telling himself firmly how happy he is for everyone else.
The sheer joy on Lucius’s face is beautiful as he embraces Pete, the others clapping him on the shoulder. And Stede didn’t even think Jim could cry, or smile so broadly; they cling to Olu like a limpet, and Olu looks like he’ll never let them go. Lovers divided, lovers brought together again.
He’s determined to be positive about this. New Stede can handle a few minutes of uncertainty.
When Izzy returns, he plants himself directly in front of Stede, arms crossed, blocking out the sun and the happy crews. “Excuse me,” Stede says pointedly.
“You can stay. He says you can stay.” That’s obviously not the whole story, though, or Ed would be standing here to tell him, and Stede’s heart sinks despite the work he’s done to fortify it. “But you’re just part of the crew now. Not,” he pauses, sneering, “‘co-captains’.”
That’s not the worst possible response, not by a long shot. “Okay,” he breathes. “I can do that. Now, if I can just –”
“And you don’t have your little tea parties, and you don’t share clothes, and you don’t fucking bother him. Do you get it?”
Oh. Now he does get it.
“He doesn’t want to fucking talk to you any more than necessary, and if you’re just one of the crew then it’s never going to be necessary, is it?” There’s a threat in his voice, not the you’re Stede Bonnet and I fucking hate you and I’m going to do whatever I can to destroy you rage that used to be there, but the more standard I’m Blackbeard’s second in command and don’t you fucking forget it bad temper he used to show Stede’s crew, because he considered himself their boss for some reason. And now he actually is Stede’s boss.
Well, that’s fine. Stede can handle that, even if he does have to bite back a retort. He can be the bigger man (an easy position against Izzy, he has to say). Because a warm feeling is bubbling up inside him, breaking through the disappointment – Izzy is here.
If Ed can find it in himself to forgive the man who caused the entire thing with Chauncey Badminton and the Act of Grace in the first place, then doesn’t that mean that Stede still has a chance?
He has lots of experience submitting to angry men who hate him, so he lets himself sink back down inside his old shell and falls in line with apparent meekness as Izzy barks at the combined crews to get back to work and stop crying and kissing each other. They don’t seem to have much respect for him still, but it’s clear that when Ed’s not around, Izzy is indeed the one in charge.
It’s not fun, working for Izzy, that’s for sure. Stede ends up on swabbing duty a lot because he can’t seem to do anything else correctly; even when someone shows him how to do the knots, he forgets which is which within the hour, and he’s terrible at taking apart the cannons’ firing mechanisms and oiling them (he lost a bit of one down the grating and had to spend an hour looking for it below), and he can’t carry heavy crates, even. The other members of the crew help him, though, which is … well, it’s lovely. There’s a part of him that’s been worried that once the trials of seeking out the Revenge were through, they would go back to being distant to and annoyed by him – and maybe it’s just that they’re willing to unite with him against a common enemy, but maybe he has actually discovered how to be likable, after all this time?
Except that now his crew (he still thinks of them as his crew, even though he’s not technically captaining them right now) likes him, and Ed doesn’t.
Stede is hopeful. He has to be hopeful, because Ed, and salvaging his relationship with Ed, is literally the most important thing in his life. He clings to the old familiar stories of true love conquering all, and every time he gets the chance to see Ed, he reimprints his face on his heart again as a kind of token. This is, when you get down to it, just like a suitor being set difficult tasks by a king to win the hand of the princess. And while many of the suitors in those situations fail, the right one – the one with a true heart – makes it through in the end.
I bet all of the suitors think that they’re the one with the true heart, grumbles a voice in the back of his head that sounds a bit like Izzy Hands. Stede pushes it down with the same irritability the real Izzy brings out in him, but he can’t quite let the thought go.
It’s a week after Stede’s the general reunion before they have another raid. This is not for lack of targets: Izzy’s brought ships in the distance to Ed’s attention and he’s dismissed all of them for various reasons – too small, too big, looks like it doesn’t have any cargo worth taking … He only agrees to this one because Izzy’s as bitchy as a wet cat about the fact that they’re not doing any “proper piracy” and Ed doesn’t feel like cutting any more bits off of him to remind him who’s actually in charge of this ship.
Ed spends most of his time in his cabin – his cabin, it’s his cabin – but he comes out when the raid’s declared, stalking across the deck to stand on the quarterdeck and overlooking the crew like a stormcloud. This is the routine on the occasions when he does get outside for a bit of fresh air, as it keeps the distance between himself and anyone else apart from whoever’s at the helm (these days, usually either Buttons or Ivan) and generally Izzy, who feels it’s his right to come up and stand at Ed’s right hand whenever he damn well pleases.
From this vantage point, he can watch everyone. Jim’s sharpening their knives on a leather strop while Olu looks on, talking in a low voice; Fang is checking over his gun before he preloads it. Stede is standing by himself and doing lunges to limber up. Ed glowers.
Of course Stede is taking part in the raid – everyone is. You wouldn’t tell a crew member that they have to stay behind unless they were a complete danger to themselves and everyone else – and if someone were that bad, you wouldn’t even have them on your crew, right? Or you’d just let them die. Problem sorts itself out.
Fuck.
While keeping up a just-checking-things-out pose, Ed sweeps his eyes across the deck. He can’t order any of his own men to subtly keep an eye on Stede – they’re the ones he can least afford to have aware that he maybe gives a shit. He can’t try Jim, either – he tries to imagine their response and cringes. There’s solid reasons against asking anyone on this damn ship. For a brief moment he considers telling Izzy to protect Stede just for the response he’d get, which would break up the monotony … but maybe there’s someone better for it.
Lucius is not much more enthusiastic than any of the potential bodyguards Ed asked in his head. He’s gotten over the whole trying-to-kill-you thing now that he’s not living in the walls (maybe a little too fast, but what does Ed know about emotions), so he’s not outright appalled, but he’s not enthusiastic either.
“Sorry, but like, what do you expect me to do about it?” He crosses his arms and practically pouts; Ed’s tempted to roll his eyes, but he can’t really afford to be caught scoffing right now. “Come on, I can’t have been your first choice.”
“Maybe you were. Maybe I’ve got a whole plan that hinges on you.”
Lucius leans back against the wall, unmistakably smug. “Right.” That ought to piss Ed off more than it does, so he frowns harder to make up for it.
“Just – stick by him, okay?” Sincerity’s the only option. “Be another pair of eyes. Don’t be a dick about it. And don’t tell him.” He walks away before Lucius can run his mouth, either to tell him off or give him unnervingly good advice.
It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. Whatever happens to Stede, that’s just – fate, or something. That’s what happens to pirates. It’s going to happen to him someday when he gets too old or slow or unlucky or when he gets tired of stopping it from happening.
He has to tell himself that because if he’s not firm, he knows he’ll slip. He deliberately leans on the rail and looks at the light sparkling on the water rather than watching Stede – watching anyone prepare for the raid. The flag hasn’t been raised, because … well, if he’s honest with himself, he wants the distraction of a fight, and he won’t get it if this brig surrenders immediately to the dread pirate Blackbeard.
Without the beard, he’s so unrecognizable that the brig really doesn’t surrender immediately.
“Dickfuck,” he growls at the behemoth that started in on him after they boarded. “Give me a minute, yeah?” The big man doesn’t give him a minute, but Ed’s not old and slow yet, and after a few minutes of furious fighting the guy’s down, though he’s still breathing. That leaves a moment for him to look around the deck and check on the progress of the raid.
It’s going well. Izzy’s keeping up, despite his limp; it looks like he’s menacing the captain of the ship now, so the whole thing will be done soon. Most of the men seem to be holding their own, even Stede’s lot. Except …
Stede’s fighting a wiry, tall sailor who’s got a pretty good reach, and Lucius, who’s meant to be doing something – tripping up Stede’s opponent, or running for help – is crunched into a space between a stack of crates and a barrel, looking at the scene with eyes wide and mouth half open. Ed’s own mouth is suddenly full of a sour taste and he freezes, caught between leaping down to put himself between Stede and this jackass who’s dared to attack him and turning away to avoid having to see what happens when Stede loses.
But Stede doesn’t lose. He seems to be doing badly, the sailor backing him up and up and up, Stede’s blade flailing and only just managing to block the blows, but then – suddenly he steps to one side, and his opponent trips and goes sprawling. Stede’s able to press his sword to the man’s throat and force him to yield. Ed can breathe again.
The breeze ruffling his curls, Stede goes to Lucius and pats him on the arm, bending slightly toward him to say something. The boy doesn’t say anything back, as far as Ed can tell, but he does look over at Ed, and then Stede’s turning his face up to where Ed’s standing as well. Before there can be any exchange of expressions, Ed turns away to deal with the captain.
“I don’t even know why you’re here,” says Stede, shaking his head at Lucius. He doesn’t mind that Ed turned away, he doesn’t mind it, Ed probably wasn’t actually watching to start out with. “This isn’t your scene, Lucius! It’s dangerous!”
“Oh, but it’s your scene?” the boy retorts shakily.
“I literally just saved your life, so yes, I think we can call it ‘my scene.’” Lucius makes a noise like he disagrees, but he doesn’t keep arguing. “Looks like everything’s done up here. Come on and help me look for loot.”
Although Stede’s not looking for the common sort of loot. By the time they get down to the hold, Ivan’s already there with Olu and the Swede, organizing the removal of some casks of wine and boxes of sugarloaves – ordinary stuff. Stede needs to find something unbearably grand and impressive, which is clearly not there, or else something small and impressive in its intricacy, which requires a hunt. He’s grateful for Lucius as a second pair of eyes when the boy uncovers a small casket buried in a barrel of fraying rope ends; taking it up, he breaks the lock with a swift blow with the hilt of his sword and opens it.
“Oh, well done, Lucius.” When he smiles, his face feels odd, and Stede realizes that he hasn’t actually smiled properly in some time. But the box is filled with jewelry and coins – the coins don’t matter, but jewelry is just right. That’s what one gives to a lover to make up for a mistake, isn’t it? Stereotypically. He sifts through it all, knocking sovereigns to the floor (Lucius jumps down to get them and then complains about his back) as he searches for something really interesting. And then he finds it.
It’s a ring, a gold band. Maybe a bit too small for Ed, but they should be able to resize it. Instead of one large stone, it has a glass cabochon covering a minutely carved ivory ship tossing on black-painted waves, bordered by garnets. The ship doesn’t look particularly like the Revenge, but it doesn’t look particularly unlike it either. It’s magnificent, a tiny work of art.
Ed will love it.
He rushes off, ignoring whatever Lucius calls out after him as the gears are busily working in his head, too busily to pay any heed to complaints or cautions or whatever it is that Lucius is trying to impart. When he bursts out onto the deck, the sudden shift from shadow to sun makes him pause a moment, squinting, but with the hand not clutching his precious find raised above his eyes, he makes out Ed, leaning against the mast and flipping his knife point over pommel. Trying to affect a saunter but only managing a slightly less bouncy walk than usual, he heads straight for him.
“Hello,” Stede tries, and Ed goes still, his last movement to catch the knife. It’s hard not to stare eagerly into his face, seek out those eyes, take in the way his beard is growing back through the greasepaint; instead, Stede flicks his eyes up to Ed’s and then away, something that feels all too familiar for some reason. “I wanted to show you – I found this.” Ed raises his eyebrows and settles his shoulders back against the mast, but when Stede holds out the ring, he takes it without a word. The sun glints off the faceted stones and the glass bezel; Stede watches Ed’s critical eyes, but all too soon he shrugs and tosses it back.
“Great. Probably get a few doubloons for that.” There’s no warmth in his voice – it’s as though he were talking to any member of his crew, offering an assessment as his captain – and Stede swallows down the disappointment he doesn’t deserve to let himself feel.
“Oh, I was … It’s for you, actually. I thought you might like it.” The intensity of his immediate knowledge that this ring belongs on Ed’s hand doesn’t need to be explained right now: it’s too much. Stede is suddenly afraid that he’s all too much.
And of course, Ed just shrugs again. He raises a hand between them and wiggles his fingers, encased in their black leather glove. “Not really my style.”
“Right. Yes. Of course.” He doesn’t know quite what to do with the ring now, so he frowns down at it, holding it awkwardly between the thumb and forefinger of both hands. He should sell it, that’s what he should do – he doesn’t have any money now. And then perhaps he could buy a proper present for Ed, something that he would actually want. But he really did want Ed to have it. “Sorry. I … didn’t think.”
“Yeah, well.” Ed shrugs. “No worries.” There’s not a trace of anything but boredom in his face or stance, as far as Stede can tell. They stand together in silence for a hideous moment, and then Ed nods jerkily and walks away, not touching Stede as he goes past. It’s certainly not the worst interaction Stede’s ever had with another man, but it’s wrenching nonetheless. He has to figure out the key to unlocking this problem – he has to. Surely it exists.
That night, rather than reading a story to the crew, Stede introduces a very neat little idea. One person starts a tale with a sentence, and then the next person picks it up and adds a sentence of their own, and so on. This is something that’s bound to be fun for all, he’s sure, but, yes, it’s particularly a pastime Ed would enjoy. Ed loves to just riff off what someone else says, and Stede knows he’d be excellent at drawing out a yarn this way.
However, after Stede explains the concept, Ed stretches, groans (at his sore muscles, Stede hopes), and announces that he’s going below, and Stede watches him go as the crew enthusiastically begin to run away with the story. He spends the night breaking up conflicts between Pete and whoever’s plotline Pete hijacked, thinking about Ed sitting in the cabin by himself.
Now that Stede’s come back to the Revenge, time seems to lurch at a crazy rate. It swings from a crawl to a sprint dozens of times over the course of a day. It was like that before, sometimes, but … maybe the swings were less wild. He’ll stand there and observe Stede at the rail, every minute feeling like an hour – then later in his cabin, he blinks and the afternoon’s gone.
Ed wants to get something out of watching Stede like this. He wants to feel like he’s winning, like this punishment is justified – but he also watches Izzy, and Izzy is obviously gloating, and being on Izzy’s side on this doesn’t feel like winning. Feels like shit, actually. It’s a kind of torture, having Stede on the ship again but not even being able to be friendly with him, having to be the grim fucking overlord all the time. It’s like Stede’s a piece of treasure on a ship he’s taken, but one he can only look at and not touch for some reason, like there’s a curse on it. On him, more like.
Maybe they’re all cursed. Stede’s cursed to be physically unable to do any kind of work, and Ed’s cursed to have some kind of compass in his heart and brain that keeps its needle pointing right at Stede anyway.
He really can’t do anything. It’s torture on another level to watch him completely embarrass himself every time he tries to coil a rope or oil a gun, because Ed can only restrain himself from running over to help for so long. He does his best – Ed, that is. Of course, Stede is probably doing his best as well, sad as that is. But Ed’s really got his hands full (figuratively speaking) trying to keep himself from letting Stede under his guard.
Most of the time, he manages to keep the urge tamped down, nailed tightly to the floor. His face doesn’t flicker while he watches Stede put his foot in the bucket while swabbing and get stuck – after practically tripping over himself three times while trying to get it off, he sits on a crate with his leg out in front of him, and the Swede comes over to tug it off. Stede happens to look up at the quarterdeck, half-grinning because he can see the humor in the situation, but his grin fades when he makes eye contact with an unsmiling Ed. Ed takes a pull from his bottle of rum for strength and Stede looks down again, lighthearted mood apparently gone, turned to ash by the stare of the dread pirate Blackbeard.
But.
He can’t do this act all the time. It can be impossible to keep up when he’s near Stede and he’s tired or his head aches or he’s just whacked his knee into something – when his guard’s down. Once Stede was hauling on a line and Ed was close at hand, close enough to watch the rope slipping through Stede’s palms and surely leaving a burn behind, close enough to see Stede wince and strain. Ed couldn’t help it – he leapt into action and caught up the line where it hung down under Stede’s arm, wrapping it around his own hands and taking the weight so that the fucking thing stopped, taut. He wrestled it into place and tied it off with a double half-hitch before he fully realized what he was doing.
The crew were looking. He could feel their stares, so he dusted off his gloves and tried to look like none of this bothered him, just for something else to do.
“Thanks, Ed,” said Stede, and he looked then because he couldn’t not look when Stede said Ed like that, slightly breathless and … and reverent, like it was somehow a special word even though there wasn’t anything special about it. One of the most fucking ordinary names there was.
“Mm,” he said, very intelligently, and walked away.
And it’s happened more than once. Ed tries not to keep track of how often, because he can see how easily that would turn into accepting it, and he can’t accept it. He has to stop looking at Stede at all, because whenever he does, it’s like a hole’s being punched right through him, anything sane and stable and happy (not that he ever feels like any of those things, he’s miserable and completely off-kilter) drains out.
Something he notices along the way while he’s decidedly not watching Stede that makes him happy, then sad that he’s happy, then angry that he’s sad that he’s happy, is that Stede isn’t just good for swabbing the deck and making a mess of things (buckets, hearts, and the like). During their time apart, he’s learned about people – and when Ed thinks about their past together, like a man pressing on a nasty bruise, he realizes that maybe Stede always had this talent – and he actually does a lot of work getting in the middle of fights, making sure everyone’s happy, organizing and that kind of shit.
So that’s nice.
The stars shine so brightly over the sea. Stede’s not sure he can remember them having ever been so diamond-like when he was on land. And the moon, too – when he went back to Bridgetown, it seemed to shrink down to the size of a shilling in the sky. Most likely it’s all down to the curvature of the earth and his proximity to the horizon, but he thinks it must also have to do with proximity to Ed.
If you can call it proximity. Ed’s hardly ever within arm’s reach these days; when Stede’s on the deck, he’s below, and when Stede’s in the mess, he’s in the maintop.
There’s a coldness that settles around Stede’s heart more and more these days. The awful thing is that it’s not at all unfamiliar to him: he became used to a very similar sensation back in his old life, a loneliness that seeped into his bones and numbed him. But there are two important differences now – one is, of course, that he has his crew still. Well, they may not be his crew anymore, since he’s not really a captain, but they still – remarkably! – seem to listen to him and include him. He’s never had friends before, and it’s quite amazing how much they really do help to make the days when things are going badly less unbearable. Even Lucius regularly stands up to Izzy for him, although he gets the impression that that’s more about Lucius taking the opportunity than defending his honor. But still.
The other difference is more nebulous, less dependable, like catching hold of a swinging rope in a storm and then losing it again. It’s that despite his general aloofness, Ed is there sometimes to help him or tell him he’s doing all right. That’s not quite the way it used to be, it’s true – but compared to the uncrossed gulf between himself and Mary, it’s a lifeline. He takes full responsibility for the mess of his marriage, because, especially in light of what’s happened between himself and Ed, he’s clearly a difficult man to deal with – still, Mary never leaped forward to help him when he was struggling, would never have told someone else off for yelling at him. That must mean there is hope, no matter how slim the chance seems at times.
He feels this particularly keenly when he hears Ed’s footsteps – so recognizable and so dear – approaching from behind him, and he grins up at that big, beautiful moon. “Ed,” he says, turning.
But Ed doesn’t seem affected by the loveliness of the night in the least. He stops when Stede turns around, like his boots are nailed to the deck; Stede can’t see every detail of his expression in the moonlight, but he can see that Ed’s mouth is tense and twisted and his eyebrows flat.
“Remember the lessons in swordplay you gave me?” Stede tries despite the warning signs. “I’d love it if you’d consider starting them up again. I could really –”
Ed shuts him down immediately. “Can’t,” he says. “No special treatment for any crew members. Policy.”
“Oh.” Stede drops his gaze, presses his lips together, swallows back the disappointment, and nods. He ought to do something with his hands. What should he do with his hands? For want of anything else, he tugs at his shirt where it puffs out from his breeches. “That’s – yes. Of course.”
They stand in silence for a bit, and the sound of water splashing against the hull as the ship bobs like a little toy in a giant bathtub highlights the fact that neither of them is speaking. Finally, Stede takes a deep breath and begins, “I –”
“Don’t.” Even though he only managed one word, Ed somehow knows exactly what he was about to do: apologize again. “I told you. Don’t.”
And it’s so unfair, Stede knows he’s being unfair and unkind and impatient, but suddenly his temper rises up and he doesn’t even try to push it back down. “Oh, come on!” he snaps. “There has to be something I can do or say to make things better between us! I know I left, but I did come back – doesn’t that mean anything?”
Ed moves forward slowly, the breeze stirring his hair, and for a moment Stede’s heart is in his throat as it looks like he might be coming to meet him. Instead, though, he walks past and stands at the rail, looking out over the dark ocean. “It’s not about you leaving,” he says, his voice low and calm. “That doesn’t matter. The problem is that we never should have started this … thing between us in the first place.”
“‘This thing’ … sorry, are you referring to our friendship?”
“It’s a mistake.” This feels wrong, it feels so wrong, even more wrong than everything that’s wrong between them. “Pirates don’t have friends. It was stupid to go along the way we were – was always going to end in a fucking disaster.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Yeah, I do.” Ed does turn to him then, and his eyes – his large, shining, beautiful eyes – are dull and dark and serious. His mouth is a line. The moonlight paints shadows down his face and body, and it feels like he’s empty.
“That’s …” Stede’s throat is dry and his voice sticks in it. “I …” It’s so unfair, but it’s not even unfair, it’s just – it’s just – Something is roaring in his ears. “I might as well go, then. Right? If that’s how you feel?” Why can’t he stop talking? He wants to stop talking very badly but the words are tumbling out and he has no control over them.
While Stede feels like he’s plunging into chaos, Ed is as calm as a stone when he blinks, purses his lips, nods. “Yeah,” he says, finally, flicking his gaze away to the stars again. “Yeah, you should. Makes sense.”
Ed doesn’t sleep that night. He feels like he doesn’t sleep for many nights after Stede and his crew leave, but it can’t be possible because you can’t stay awake that long without going mad, so he must be drowsing from time to time without noticing. Maybe he just dreams that he is on his window seat, wishing he were at the bottom of the fucking ocean, with the deepest and hollowest pit in the center of his chest, so the transition into waking is seamless.
He can’t keep taking these blows. It destroyed him when Stede abandoned him – destroyed him again when Stede came back – now it’s ruining him completely for Stede to leave again, especially because it’s his own fault. Each time things change, he longs for what he had before. Stede’s gone, he wishes for him back; Stede’s around, he wishes he would go because the sight of him is like being glassed with a broken bottle; Stede’s gone again and the bottle is being ground into the open wound.
Izzy pokes at the wound like he can’t resist it, and each time he gets a just punishment because he fucking knows what he’s doing. It’s his whole thing that Blackbeard can’t be weak, Blackbeard can’t be soft, Blackbeard can’t have any vulnerabilities – and ever since Stede came back he’s been twice as obnoxious about it. It’s like he still thinks he’s exempt from Blackbeard being Blackbeard about it, so every couple of days he needs a reminder. Ed can’t bring himself to cut off any more toes, though, so he has to make do with growling and slamming him into walls and stuff like that. It might be that Izzy realizes that and is trying to goad him into worse.
You wouldn’t have to deal with this if you’d kept Stede on the ship and kicked Izzy off, his stupid fucking brain reminds him when it isn’t dulled with drink. Would’ve solved all your problems.
Well. Yeah. But he’s done what he’s done and that’s that.
The Revenge seems to know what’s going on. It feels cold and empty even though they’ve taken on more pirates to make up for losses. Ed hardly ever comes out of the cabin anymore, but it’s full of more shadows than it used to be.
Days pass. Maybe weeks. Izzy might as well be the captain now – he comes down to the cabin, fusses and whines at Ed, then goes back out and calls the shots about what ships they take and how they do it and which way the loot’s divided. Really brings it home that Ed – Blackbeard – doesn’t have to be there, and he curses himself again for getting into this fucking untenable, unnecessary situation.
It’s actually a relief when one of Izzy’s hand-picked targets turns out to be a bit more than he can handle. The brigantine actually manages to fend them off, probably because the Revenge is a pretty small ship – and one unhappy with what it’s doing, if you’re superstitious – and they limp away from the encounter with one mast down and a hole just above the waterline.
(Maybe the ship could sink and take him down with it, Ed doesn’t-quite-hope.)
Some repairs you just can’t do yourself. Without even notifying Ed at this point, Izzy has arranged for them to put in at a shipwright on Nevis – which isn’t exactly friendly to their sort. The sensible thing to do would be to stay put, hide below until they’re ready to set sail again. Keep doing what he’s been doing, basically. But he hears the sound of craftsmen hammering and sawing on the Revenge and it sort of feels like they’re actually battering on and cutting into his own body, and he has to get out. Fresh air. Stretched legs. That’s all he needs.
Ed rarely set foot on land, even before he met Stede, and he always has a moment of surprise at how heavy and solid he feels there. The cobblestones don’t have that almost imperceptible give underneath that wooden planks do, and the sound is just – wrong, there’s no tiny echo from a hollow beneath the deck. It’s unsettling.
On the other hand, he’s walking around a busy market and from the way people brush past him or look and then glance away, not a single one of them recognizes that he’s the dread pirate Blackbeard. He’s just a guy. Just some middle-aged man with no beard, who, yeah, wears a lot of leather. If anything, they look at him like he’s beneath their notice, eyes sweeping dismissively over him from head to toe – then they walk past like the very sight of him has raised themselves in their own estimations. Well, he hopes one of the fuckers takes it a step farther so he can – can – shit, he doesn’t really want to punch anyone, get into a fight, make a scene. He just wants to feel the sun on his face for a bit.
And then.
Of course.
Standing at a booth, hands on his hips, chirpy little voice asking a clearly annoyed vendor detailed questions about the silks on display: Stede Bonnet.
And Ed’s mood just … lifts.
No no no nononononono! he shouts at himself. You fucking don’t!
He’s got to fight it. He can’t go through this all over again. Turn around, walk away, forget even seeing the man – it’s not like Stede’s seen him, he could get away with this nothing more than, oh, another gaping, oozing wound in his heart. And what’s one more of those?
But.
But.
Before he thinks any more about this, he strides up to the booth and stands a bit behind and to the side of Stede with his arms crossed. “I just want to know,” Stede is saying, also clearly annoyed, “why this is labeled ‘Indian taffeta’ when it’s obviously an inferior French copy!”
“Sir, can I help you?” The silk merchant turns to Ed almost immediately to get away from his customer, completely ruining his plan to stand there forever without attracting Stede’s attention – especially as Stede glances over as well. A beautiful display of emotional range passes over Stede’s face, from initial elation through remembering how they last parted to regret and finally ending with something best described as crankiness.
“Excuse me, but I was here first.”
“Oh, are you buying something?” Ed finds himself asking. “Actually buying?”
“I might be. I might very well be.”
Ed sweeps one arm wide, indicating the booth. “Don’t let me stop you, then. Go ahead, buy your shit.” Stede’s had time to make some more money at piracy, but Ed would bet that he hasn’t made enough to buy more than a handkerchief here.
“I haven’t decided on what I’m going to buy.”
“Chronically indecisive?”
“There are some very clear quality control issues with the merchandise,” Stede retorts waspishly. The vendor sputters and is ignored. “And I think it’s a bit much of you to call me chronically indecisive.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes, really!”
“So you running away and then running back, that was … ?”
“As opposed to you repeatedly blowing hot and cold over and over again? Do you think that’s just normal friend behavior, Ed? Hm?”
“Well, I –”
“It’s not!”
“Technically we weren’t even friends at that –”
“I’ve had quite a few conversations with people who have more experience in this sort of thing, and I now have a full and complete handle on what constitutes normal friend behavior!”
“Gentlemen!” The vendor tries to break in. “Would you perhaps be interested in taking this dispute elsewhere – perhaps a tavern?”
Ed waves him off. “This isn’t a dispute, mate.”
“Yes it is! It’s a dispute. I’m disputing.” Stede glares at the vendor, who looks to Ed for help, but Ed glares as well, because he just feels like … he doesn’t know how he feels. It’s like jumping into ice water that’s somehow also boiling. His skin is prickling just from being near Stede again and he can’t walk away.
“Nothing to dispute, is there?”
“What are you talking about, there are loads of things! What about – what about – aha, Lucius!” Stede’s finger is wagging in the air between them. Ed briefly and deliriously contemplates biting it. “We never talked about Lucius!”
“Do we have to talk about Lucius?” He should not be fucking enjoying this. He should be so angry at Stede’s gall and he should be ashamed and guilty about the whole Lucius thing. He is ashamed and guilty about it.
“What do you mean, of course we have to talk about him! You tried to kill him! Because he helped you!”
The vendor has been just barely keeping it together (Ed can sympathize, Stede makes his head spin too) and now that murder’s been invoked he’s spooked. After all, this is a respectable town. As Ed protests that Lucius made it out okay, he waves at some military men coming out of the building on the other side of the street. “Officers? Officers!”
Ed’s sure that they can talk their way out of this – rehearsing for a play, Lucius is the name of a pet squirrel or something – but then he and Stede both shut up when one of them says, “Stede Bonnet?” They both turn in baffled unison and look at the two officers, one tall and wide-eyed and the other short and sneering.
It takes Ed a second to recognize them. What are the odds? What are the fucking odds? “You guys?” he blurts out, and then he and Stede exchange a look. Time freezes. Then, like they had some way of speaking to each other mind-to-mind, they nod at each other – and run.
It kind of makes him feel like a kid again, how he used to run through the streets with a gaggle of local boys, nicking food and little things or just causing trouble for the hell of it. They’d get chased by thief-takers or housewives or shopkeepers and nearly always made it away, young legs skittering over cobblestones and around corners with a deftness most grown-ups couldn’t match. But he’s not a kid anymore – his knee is not going to thank him for this later, and he can tell he’s going to get winded in half the time he used to. This can’t be a very long chase.
Stede’s keeping up on his right. That’s good. Unfortunately, the men chasing them – not the officers that spotted them, he’s fairly sure, but some younger marines – are also keeping up. Fuck.
He runs, and trusts Stede to follow.
He doesn’t know this marketplace, which is a pretty fucking big disadvantage, but since the marines chasing them probably spend all their time sailing around with the navy, there’s a decent chance that they don’t know it well enough to set up any clever traps either. So he just takes turns as they come to him, sometimes having to sort of hop a bit on one foot to take them fast enough, hoping that one of them will be a magic alley that makes him and Stede temporarily invisible or something.
They can’t go on like this forever. Ed kicks it up a notch and starts grabbing at barrels, tables, fucking watermelons, whatever, and chucking them behind him – he tries to aim them to his left, to miss Stede, and it seems to be working. From the sound of it, the watermelon fully took out one of them, which is satisfying.
But they’re still coming. And worse, Stede’s flagging – Ed can hear the rhythm of his footsteps changing (probably not helped by that barrel that went wide that he had to dodge) – and Ed doesn’t know how much longer he can keep going.
He can’t let them catch Stede. Not after all they’ve gone through. Not now that they’ve found each other again.
The Act of Grace was a one-off. The navy won’t trust them like that again. It’ll be a firing squad this time for real. For him.
For Stede.
Stede, who’s falling behind more.
Stede, who he already watched in front of a line of rifles, shaking, in a blindfold.
With a growl, Ed half-turns while still running, reaches back –
– and Stede reaches out, and their hands touch, and Ed pulls him up, and they’re running together –
– and this time, the alley that comes up has a huge stack of crates beside it, and when Ed ducks into the alley with Stede safely in tow, the marines can’t see them, and they go on chasing imaginary targets down the street, their footsteps pounding farther and farther away.
Almost as soon as they’re in the alley, Ed uses the momentum and the hand he’s holding to press Stede up against the wall of one dreary stone building and kiss him.
It’s not like the only other kiss they shared, the one that was tentative and frightening and a little awkward. This is hot, rough, some teeth involved. This is a continuation of their bickering at the silk-seller’s stall. This is weeks of his hurt confusion and anger, and Stede meets him with exactly the same amount of passion.
This is not the time, but he can’t stop, and neither can Stede, apparently. Ed’s hands roam all over Stede’s body, greedy to finally, finally, be allowed to touch him as much as they want – to clutch at his waist, press against his back, run through his hair – but Stede’s press against Ed’s chest and then climb up his body, one resting on his neck and the other along his jaw, holding him firmly in place. He wants to melt into Stede’s skin and never, ever have to be apart from him.
But they have to break away eventually. They’re both panting, have been since they were running, and now they’re staring at each other without saying anything.
“How –” Stede starts, then blinks and shakes his head. “I mean, why –”
Ed cuts him off. “We ought to get out of here. Can’t stand around waiting for them to double back.” Stede looks troubled, or confused, or something, so Ed smiles at him for the first time in, fuck, such a long time, and it works: some of the tension bleeds out, and Stede smiles back. Then he gives a quick nod, and Ed reaches up to take his hand and pull him further down the alley, this time at a much slower pace.
They make their way silently through the streets until they hit what Ed judges to be a run-down enough area that people there won’t have much trust in the law. With the coins in his pocket, he pays off a hard-eyed housewife to let them lay low in her lodgings for a few hours, and then they head up the stairs to a seedy little room. Stede pulls the tatty curtains closed over the grimy windows, and when he turns back Ed is already on top of him – the wait was torture, but it’s over. Now he can be pretty sure he’s not going to see Stede locked up or hanged, he can breathe again, and, more importantly, he can do all kinds of things to him until nightfall. Then he can take Stede back to the Revenge and do some more things to him in that nice, soft bed.
After that first desperate kiss, they’re ravenous – starving for each other. Ed’s hands fist in Stede’s shirt like he could tear it in half, while Stede grabs the lapels of Ed’s jacket and starts to work blindly at the toggles. Wrapped in each other, they stagger toward the bed and half fall onto it, Ed throwing a hand out to keep himself from landing too heavily on Stede. He closes his eyes and goes in for more and then –
“Wait,” says Stede before their lips touch again. Ed opens his eyes, and Stede’s are so close to his own, wide and appealing and worried. That’s … fair, he has to admit, although he’s half hard and getting harder. There’s lots for Stede to be worried about. Ed hasn’t exactly been welcoming up until now. Fuck, what if he thinks this is all a mistake? What if he means, “Wait, this is stupid and I’m going back to my crew now, thanks?”
So he pushes himself up and off and sits on the bed, facing one curtained window. “Yeah?” The ache in his knee that he knew was coming is finally making itself heard, and he rubs at it a bit more vigorously than he should.
“I just … I just need to apologize properly before we do anything else. Like I’ve been trying to.” Stede’s voice isn’t quite pointed, but it’s in the neighborhood, and he pushes himself up to sit next to Ed. “I need to know that you know that I know that leaving you was completely unacceptable. At the Academy, I mean.”
Ed just stares at him.
“When I went back to Mary and the kids – Mary was my wife – it helped me realize that … well, that I’d fallen in love with you. And I think that you fell in love with me, too.”
Ed keeps staring. He forgets to keep rubbing at his knee in his confusion, and even stops noticing how hard his dick is getting.
“But I’m sure we would have gotten there anyway if we’d left together, and without hurting you. But I really want you to know, Ed, that it was all from my being cowardly and stupid and listening to Chauncey Badminton – you deserved better, and if you let me stay with you I’ll spend the rest of my life making up for it.”
When he finishes, it’s quiet. Stede stares back at Ed with adorably soft eyes, waiting for his verdict, but Ed has a hard time putting words together.
“Stede,” he finally says slowly, “what did you think was going on when I kissed you?”
Stede furrows his brow. “You said I made you happy. And that was … I’ve never made anybody happy. Maybe my crew, when I paid them, except when that made them want to mutiny against me, but –”
“Right. I was telling you I was in love with you.” Laughter is trying to bubble up inside him, but he pushes it down for the moment.
“You – what?”
“I sort of thought when you said I made you happy that you were saying it back.”
“Well, I –” Pursing his lips, Stede cocks his head to the side and stares off into the distance. “I guess …”
This time, when the laughter comes back, Ed lets it – just tosses his head back and chortles.
“Ed! It’s not funny!”
“It is! It’s so fucking funny!”
He can feel a relief deeper than the sea wash over him, sweeping him off his metaphorical feet and cleansing him to the bottom of his soul. The salt tang inside his head is invigorating – he hasn’t felt like this in weeks. Dropping back on the bed, he stretches his arms out over his head and them lets them hang as he groans happily. Stede follows him down more slowly, and then curls onto his side; Ed turns his head to look at him.
“Excellent job, man.”
“Nobody ever told me they loved me,” says Stede, just above a whisper, but he’s got a soft and happy look on his face even though the thing he’s saying is, frankly, awful. “Well. The kids – but it’s not the same, is it? When your children say it back to you.”
And Ed’s heart breaks a little for him, even though he’s not exactly much better off. “Probably not.” One hand slides down the quilt on the bed until it’s level with Stede’s, which are tucked up near his chin, and Ed reaches into the little warm knot to interlace their fingers. “And I, um.” It’s hard to start, but as he gets going he seems to ease into it. “I was an asshole to you when you came back. Should’ve let you say your piece and not treated you like shit to punish you.”
“Ed, no!” Stede pushes himself up on his elbow, but without dislodging Ed’s hand. “You had every right to be angry. What I did was – unforgivable.”
“I tried to kill Lucius,” Ed points out. “Like you said before. That was pretty fucking bad. And I marooned your crew.”
“Well, they’re all fine now. I’m sure they’re completely over it.” Ed isn’t remotely sure of that, but he can’t help but be swept up in Stede’s positivity, his warm glow. His hair’s all mussed from their running, and one curl hangs over his forehead. It’s so fucking dashing. In silks and laces and all that, Stede’s a handsome, graceful gentleman, but somehow he manages to be a different type of handsome in this linen shirt, black trousers, and ridiculous, dashing red sash. And he’s smiling – beaming – at Ed, and after weeks of keeping himself cold and aloof, Ed’s allowed to just smile back.
“We’ve got a few hours to kill, you know,” Ed finds himself saying. “’Til we can leave.” From Stede’s face, this is a bizarre change of subject, so he clarifies: “So we could, uh, take advantage of this nice big bed.”
“Oh!” Suddenly there’s a rush of movement, and Stede’s face is hanging over Ed’s, his knees pressing into the mattress on either side of Ed’s hips. “Can we? I mean, you want to?”
“Can’t think of a fucking thing I want more right now,” says Ed, meaning every word.
“I should warn you, I’m not sure I’m good at all at … these matters. Ah!” While Stede’s guard is lowered in anxiety, Ed performs a quick maneuver to flip him over and takes up a very similar position to the one he was just in, with the adjustment of pinning Stede’s wrists at about the level of his head.
“Wouldn’t be the first time I’ve shown you a thing or two,” Ed purrs, and then breaks out in laughter as Stede’s surprise gives way to a grin.
And he does indeed manage to show Stede a thing or two, over the course of a hot and satisfying afternoon.