Chapter Text
“It’s for the best,” Izzy had said in that sympathetic but also condescending tone of voice he had.
Ed had nodded, slowly dialling the number Izzy had given him, the weight of giving up feeling like lead in his belly as he did. His knee had been aching like hell lately, and he was just tired.
The pub wasn’t doing well, barely earned enough to stay afloat even with the regulars. There were no new customers to liven things up, only the same sad sacks coming in to drink away their days. He’d spent a whole week building a stage up to code, hyping it up for anyone who would listen, so he was probably the only one shocked that karaoke night didn’t take off like he’d hoped.
Izzy had been nagging him about it for months, tired of watching Ed try and fail when they had been so successful before, even if it was in more illegal matters, and had given him the number of some real estate company that had been buying property around the neighbourhood lately.
So now he was here, meeting some weak-chinned posh bastard who probably didn’t even tie his own shoes, and his meek looking son who was way too overdressed, to discuss selling the pub, selling his dream, to have it turned into another block of soulless apartments. He’d grown up in those tiny things, crowded and noisy, and the thought of that being the future for his beloved pub was barely one he could stand.
But he had no choice.
It was for the best.
Ed hardly listened as the men introduced themselves, it didn’t matter to him just as he knew his name didn’t matter to them. He did dutifully reach out for their hands though, his mother taught him as many manners as she could before she passed, rest her soul.
He grabbed the older man’s hand first, then reached out to grab the other man’s, but as their fingers touched, he was gone.
Well, he wasn’t gone gone, the pub was though, so was Izzy and the older businessman, but the other man was there, and he looked at this man, somehow even more ridiculously dressed than before, and felt so in love.
Then he was thrown to the deck, arms wretched behind his back and tied with a rope, and the man, Stede his mind told him, was treated with a similar roughness, a roughness he was not used to, and Ed knew that he was frightened. He tried to convey his affection with his eyes, reached out to nudge his foot with his own, to tell him that everything would be alright, that Ed would not let anything happen to him.
And he didn’t, maybe that was his mistake. He watched himself, as another man, but really not so different, give everything he had to Stede, his soul mate, and then at the end, he was found wanting. Left alone of the dock, waiting, hoping, even fucking praying that the man he loved with his entire being would stumbled his way out of the bushes at any moment.
As the sky brightened, he knew he had to go, but couldn’t bring himself to. It would mean admitting to being the worthless wretch his father always told him he was, that he was so utterly unlovable that even in the one in a million chance he would meet his soul mate, they would leave him too.
Blackbeard stepped onto the dingy he’d stolen hours before, and Ed was brought back to the present, still holding the hand of Stede fucking Bonnet, who wore a similar shocked expression that he knew was on his own face.
Izzy subtly nudged him during his conversation with Mr Bonnet, which prompted him to drop the hand he still held hastily. He half tuned in to the conversation happening beside him while still staring at his soul mate.
Soul mate.
This had to be a fucking joke.
Ed felt a rage build up inside of him, one he hadn’t felt in years, one that he had hoped to never feel again, but this time, he embraced it. This time he wouldn’t be making sure his father laid hands on his mum for the last time, he would be making sure Stede Bonnet didn’t ruin him for another lifetime.
“Actually,” he snarled, interrupting a discussion about investments, bloody hell. “I don’t think I will be moving forward with this transaction. Thank you, but you can see yourselves out.”
He spun around and marched off towards his office, leaving the other men spluttering behind him, and not stopping when Izzy called out to him.
He made it into his office and locked the door before Izzy could chase him inside, instead, the other man tried the handle, tried his shoulder, then gave up with a frustrated cry.
“You’re a fucking prick Edward! Get your ass back out here!”
“Fuck off Izzy!” Ed shouted back, then he sat at his desk, covered in bills with looming due dates, and cradled his head in his hands.
He just needed a moment to cry a little, and also a moment to throw back a shot or two of the good rum he kept in his bottom drawer. What a fucking mess this was, why the fuck would someone like him get a soul mate?