Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The shop is a bit of a guilty pleasure, really. 

He’s walked by it dozens of times on the way home from work on Tuesdays when he has to cross the city for weekly meetings. He’s seen its frontage in bright summer and dull, grey winter, looking like any other charity shop on the high street he has to pass, another day weighing heavily on his back. He’d likely never have given it a second look, but this afternoon, something on a curio shelf snags his eye—a small, patinated sextant, its glass horizon shades winking in the flicker of a streetlight.

Let it not be said that Stede Bonnet is not a sucker for a bit of nauticalia. 

The instrument has a pleasing weight in his hands—it’s heavy in the way that important objects often are. He imagines other hands holding it—capable, clever ones who couldn’t rely on satellites to chart their course or keep them safe. The people who once staked their lives upon this finely made contraption of brass would probably scoff to see a man who routinely gets turned around in his local Tesco holding it now, but he pushes that thought aside and takes it to the till.

“This one didn’t have a tag, I’m afraid,” he says to the intense looking fellow with the long, lank hair and bushy beard behind the counter. “Could you tell me how much it is?”

The fellow’s eyes don’t leave Stede’s as he inclines his head back toward the shelf on the wall which holds a taxidermied seagull. After a moment of silent consultation, the man nods, more to the bird than to Stede.

“Aye, I think so too,” he says in a thick, Glaswegian burr.

“I’m sorry?”

“Fer you, fifteen pound.”

Stede’s eyes flick down to the lovely artifact in his hands.

“Are you sure? This is a very nice piece. And this is a charity shop, isn’t it? I’d hate to short change...erm—which organization does this benefit again?”

“Sea,” the man answers cryptically. 

“Do you mean…like, the lifeboats?”

“Boats,” the peculiar fellow confirms. 

This doesn’t really clear anything up for Stede, but, fishing his wallet out of his pocket, he pulls out a twenty pound note and places it on the counter.

“Please keep the change for, erm, the sea,” he says pleasantly. “And the boats.”

The man nods solemnly, slipping the bill into a rusted cashbox.

“Karl thanks ye for yer generosity.”

Most people, in Stede’s experience, don’t refer to themselves in the third person, so his eyes are drawn instinctively to the seagull, who seems to be taking his measure through bright, glass eyes.

“Karl is…the bird?”

“Karl is the bird.”

That night, Stede stands on his balcony, puts his eye to the sextant’s telescope and turns expectantly toward the horizon. 

Chapter Text

The next Tuesday, Stede casts a subtle eye into the window as he passes, not really expecting to see anything noteworthy. The sextant (which now sits pleasingly on the mantle next to a model of HMS Victory) had certainly been a one-off find. One simply didn’t have that sort of luck twice at a—

Stede’s head stops suddenly, although it takes his feet another few steps to get the message, bringing him to a clumsy, stumbling halt in front of the shop. 

Sitting in the window between a terrifying Toby jug and a pink, silk women’s housecoat is a bell. A ship’s bell, to be precise. It’s old—the brass finish green and white with corrosion. The metal is so worn from years exposed to the elements, he can’t even make out the name of the ship stamped into the side. 

The next thing he knows, he’s inside and the bell is heavy in his hands as he takes it to the till. The clapper’s long gone, but he can hear the tone resonating in his head, clear as it rings out over the deck to signal the hours.

“Karl’s been expecting ye,” the man behind the counter says. 

“Oh—has he?” 

Stede looks warily at the gull behind the counter and could almost swear its head is in a different position than it was last time. He’s not sure why he’s indulging this fellow who seems to under the impression that he can talk to a dead seagull, but it feels easier than trying to wrap his head around it. People are delusional about all sorts of things—in the grand scheme, this particular delusion seems relatively harmless. 

“Aye,” the Scotsman answers solemnly.

“Oh. Well, that’s—erm—it’s nice to be…expected?” Stede manages. “Although putting this lovely piece in the window was pretty much guaranteed to bring me round again. Do you know where it’s from? How old it is?”

“One does nae ask after the provenance of gifts. Especially from the sea.”

“Ah, yes,” Stede says, remembering their first meeting. “The sea. That’s what this shop is for, isn’t it? Does the sea have a price in mind for this bell?”

“Fer you, fifteen pounds.”

“Oh, now really,” he begins, reaching for his wallet, “You can’t let something this beautiful go for such a small amount. Shops like this are meant to make a profit!”

The man sniffs and shrugs. 

“If ye say so. ’Tis still fifteen pound.”

Stede tries to come up with another argument as to why it would be folly to charge such a pittance for the antique, but fails as the bell’s clear peal reverberates through his head once more, bringing with it the half-remembered sting of ocean breeze. He sighs and pulls out another twenty pound note.

“As you like. Have you got a carrier bag or a box I could put it in? It’s a bit heavy.”

He exits the shop with the bell wrapped in newspaper and safely ensconced in a sturdy old RSPB tote bag feeling the weight of the seagull’s glass eyes on his back. 

Stede stops for a tin of Brasso and spends the evening rubbing the oily wool into the metal. It’s too far gone for a shine, but some of the golden color emerges from under the corrosion. The ship’s name, alas, is worn to no more than a few nonsensical lines, but he likes to imagine what they might have spelled out as he scrubs the polish off his fingers under the tap.

He orders a mounting bracket, locates the wall stud nearest the mantle and hangs the artifact. It looks marvelous next to the Victory and the sextant. They make the flat feel a little more complete than it has in the year since he bought it after the divorce.

When it gets dark, he turns out all the lights and lies on the couch before the fire. As his eyes close, he can feel the sway of a hammock and the piercing, clear sound of the bell above, but he can sleep a little longer. 

It’s not his watch yet. 

Chapter Text

He doesn’t have a chance to pass the shop the next Tuesday—the weekly afternoon standup is held in his own building rather than the offices across town and for the very first time, he’s a little disappointed about it. He even finds his mind wandering during the meeting to what he might find waiting for him in the window this week. A cutlass? A pewter tankard? 

But, he’s letting his imagination run away with him. The astonishing luck of the past two weeks is certainly just that—luck. He’s come away with two stunning pieces of maritime history—wishing for a third is verging on greed and greed is something he’s desperately careful of. He worries sometimes that it might be woven into his DNA—a relentless hunger for more, no matter what the cost. He wants to put as much distance between himself and the gilded circles he was raised in as he can, so he often finds himself afloat in a sea of self-loathing. In some ways, he’s afraid of wanting things—as if the notion itself can irrevocably taint his soul and turn him into his father’s cold, covetous doppelgänger.

But it’s different when things just fall into your lap, though, isn’t it? says the part of him that’s quietly humming with curiosity.

Yes, another part says sternly, but making a trip that you don’t need to across the city on the off chance there might be something interesting waiting in the shop window is purposeful. It’s a choice. 

He doesn’t particularly care for this side of his brain, but he finds he can’t argue with it. He does the sensible thing and walks the four blocks to his flat after work, but it puts him in an ill temper for the rest of the evening.

That night, he dreams of a storm at sea.  

It’s not just the violent pitching of the deck or the lash of rain on his face that pushes the tide of disquiet higher in his chest, but rather the feeling that he’s looking for something. And time’s running out too, because he can see a colossal wall of water off the starboard bow, rolling closer with every second. He cast about wildly, hoping for some sign of whatever it is he knows he’s got to find, but the wave’s upon him, towering over the ship as if it’s a bath toy at the mercy of some vengeful child.

He wakes twisted in his sheets, silk pajamas soaked through as if the fury of the storm has followed him into the waking world. Peeling the damp material from his body, he pads to the bathroom to rinse off the fine layer of sweat. The cool water reminds him of the dream, so he goes about it quickly before toweling off and stepping into a pair of soft, cotton loungers.

Stede finds himself back in the living room, settling on the couch before the mantle with the comforting weight of the sextant in his palm and the faint voice of the bell lulling him to sleep with the assurance of smooth sailing until morning. 

When day breaks, his fingers seem to know what to do before his head does and he finds himself tapping out an email to his team that he’ll be in late—he’s got an errand to run on the other side of the city. One benefit of nepotism, he supposes—as long as he keeps his flight level and below the radar, he’s unlikely to be targeted by an opponent with considerably more firepower. 

Exiting the Tube station nearest the shop, he realizes he’s neglected to check the opening time and as it’s still quite early (especially for an establishment that sells other people's discarded items) he pulls out his phone to conduct an internet search. But it’s not until his thumb is over the keyboard that he realizes he doesn’t know its name. In fact, he can’t recall ever actually seeing a sign on the frontage.

Well, it’s a charity shop, isn’t it? he reasons as he sets off down the pavement. No need to waste money on words on an awning or lettering above the door. 

The stern, unhelpful part of his brain bullies its way to the front of his attentions as he walks.

What exactly do you hope to accomplish here? What do you think is going to happen that going to make it worth being late for work?

It’s just idle curiosity, he assures it. 

Always did have your head in the clouds, it mutters. Looking for meaning where there’s none. 

He grits his teeth. 

Kindly shut your mouth or I’ll stick a meat skewer through my ear. 

The voice has nothing to say to that. 

As he turns up the street the shop occupies, he glances around for a place he might be able to get a cup of coffee as he’ll undoubtedly have to wait until it—

But the lights are already on in the slightly streaked and grimy window.

Stede tries to control his excitement but his pace quickens until he’s peering in, scanning the display anxiously. The feeling of the rolling ship deck comes back to him, but unlike in his dream, the feeling that he’s looking for something vanishes almost instantly, because he knows he’s found it. 

The oval-shaped box is a little less than a foot long and about six inches wide. The ironwork, which rounds the top and stripes the sides, has the same green patina as the bell, but the dark, weathered wood its made of seems remarkably well preserved. The keyhole plate is shaped like the tip of a spear.

His hands are shaking as he turns the doorknob, trying not to think too hard about why he’s here or how he knows he’s got to have the little chest in the window.

“I was beginnin’ tae wonder when you’d show up,” the man behind the counter says. 

The seagull’s sitting next to him on the till. Stede now knows it’s in a different position than it was the first time he set foot in the shop, but he doesn’t really want to waste time thinking about it. 

“The box in the window,” he says breathlessly. “How much?”

“Afraid I cannae sell it to ye.”

Stede’s mind hits a brick wall. 

“W-what?”

“I cannae sell it,” the man explains, as if it’s the most easily understandable thing in the world. “It’s no’ mine.”

Panic rises in Stede’s chest and he thinks again of the towering wave.

“But…if you can’t—why’ve you got it in the window?”

The fellow rolls his eyes.

“It’s waitin.”

“I don’t understand!” Stede blurts out, his voice sounding shrill and anxious to his own ears.

“I said I cannae sell it,” the man explains patiently. “But as it ain’t mine, it might as well be no’ yours.”

He tilts his head toward the seagull, listening intently, before giving a little chuckle. 

“Aye, took him a minute, didnae?”

Stede wants to make sure he’s got this right.

“So…are you saying you want to give it to me?”

The man shrugs.

“Ain’t mine to give. But it ain’t mine tae keep neither, so you might as well.”

Keeping an eye on the shop owner, Stede walks slowly over to the display and picks up the box, holding it out in a gesture that says, ‘is this alright?’ The man nods as if he’s granting him absolution. 

Stede holds the old thing in his hands, turning it over for any clue to its origin, but when he tries to lift the lid, he finds it locked tight. He hates to ask another question as he’s just been gifted (or perhaps just been given custody of) this artifact, but he’s got to know.

“Have…have you got the key?”

The man shakes his head. 

“Like I said, ’tis nae mine.”

“Oh, yes,” Stede says, disappointment settling in his gut. “Of course. Well…it’s a beautiful thing nonetheless and I should be honored to look after it.”

“Karl reckons you’ll do just fine.”

Stede straightens, feeling strangely like he’s been given a rare stamp of approval—not something he’s used to. 

“Thank you, Karl,” he answers, meaning it and not thinking at all about the strangeness of talking to the stuffed bird.

“Do ye want something to carry it in?” asks the man.

“No,” Stede says, clutching the box to his chest. “I think…I think I’d like to keep it close.”

“Good lad,” he hears the shop keeper say as he heads out the door and onto the pavement, now busy with people about their morning journeys. 

As he sits on the Tube, the box held tight against his pounding heart, he sends another email to say he’s feeling under the weather and takes the rest of the day off. 

Chapter Text

He is not prepared for the knock on the door when it comes.

He’s spent the morning since returning from the shop sitting on the couch, staring at the box on the mantle and then getting up to do some task or another and suddenly finding it cradled to his chest--realizing he’d picked it up without meaning to. He can’t explain the draw he’s got to it anymore than he can explain the rightness of the bell and the sextant, but the small, locked chest belongs with him. He knows it down to his bones.

He even finds himself talking to it—narrating his mundane tasks like making a cup of tea or getting the laundry started. (Maybe the peculiar man at the shop wasn’t quite as mad as he seemed for talking to his mostly deceased seagull?) He realizes it’s the first time he’s heard his own voice for any length of time in a good long while. Who would he speak to? He’s got no friends to speak of and as for dating, well—knowing who you’re attracted to after half a lifetime doesn’t mean you’re any better at doing anything about it than you were when you were twenty years younger, so his voice has stayed locked away. 

At least, until this morning. 

In fact, when the knock like cannon fire comes, he feels a vague sense of irritation as it interrupts him mid-sentence, telling the box about a lovely, speckled moth he saw flitting around a hanging basket the other morning on the way to work.

Stede frowns. He’s not expecting anyone. He doesn’t think he’s ordered anything. And he’s fairly sure building maintenance said wouldn’t be able to send someone round before Friday to take at the leak in the bathroom tap. 

They must have found a moment to fit me in after all, he thinks as he walks to the door. He feels oddly reluctant to let anyone else into the flat at present, but reasons that the sooner he can get the constant drip, drip, drip fixed, the sooner he’ll stop having maritime nightmares.

But when he opens the door to the flat, it’s not building maintenance. At least, he doesn’t think so.

The man standing outside his door looks a bit like he’s been plucked from... somewhere else. The smell of the ocean on him is almost overpowering—a veritable blast of salt, brine and a fast headwind. He’s got light brown skin and is dressed in black leather—a little like some of the ballsy bike couriers he sees in the city, dodging cabs and buses—but the ensemble is worn to the point of softness and likely wouldn’t protect against road rash, especially as the jacket’s missing a sleeve, showing off an armful of tattoos. He’s got long, salt and pepper hair, half pulled back from his face, where he sports a short grey and white beard. But it’s his eyes that quite literally steal the breath out of Stede’s lungs—warm, chestnut brown and framed with long, black lashes, softening the vaguely menacing aesthetic. 

“Hello,” Stede says, although it comes out as more of a squeak than a greeting.

“Uh…hi,” the man answers.

“Have you come to fix the tap?” Stede blurts out.

The man’s eyebrows crease with confusion. 

“Tap?”

“In the bathroom. The bathroom tap.”

The man in the doorway looks as if he’s running some sort of internal translation program, trying to parse out Stede’s words.

“Uh, no, mate. I don’t think I have.”

“Have…have you got a parcel for me?”

“No. D’you think I could come in?”

Several different scenarios flash through Stede’s mind. While it’s true there are a lot of pornographic films that begin this way, (and he supposes it speaks to his immediate attraction to the man that it’s where his mind went first) there are also a fair number of horror films that begin this way as well.

“I…I don’t even know you.”

“I’m Ed,” says the man, as if that should clear up any confusion.

“Do…do you have some ID?” Stede asks lamely. “Isn’t that what we’re meant to do, when strangers come to the door and want to come in?”

Ed puts his gloved hands on his hips as if to argue and then stops to consider Stede’s point. 

“Suppose that’s sensible, yeah,” Ed admits as he begins to pat his pockets. “I could be some complete fucking lunatic.”

“Are you?”

“What?”

“A complete fucking lunatic?”

“Been a while since I undertook that kind of self examination,” says Ed, now searching the inside of his jacket, revealing a soft, purple shirt that shows off a pleasing strip of belly at his waist. “But yeah, I suppose I might be. I reckon I’m the sort of likable kind, though. Ah, here we go!”

He pulls out a weathered piece of paper and unrolls it so Stede can see what’s printed on the other side. 

It’s a poster, done on an old printing press. The picture is a linocut that he supposes, if he squints, looks a bit like the man before him. Below is an impressive list of crimes with an equally impressive bounty offered for his capture. Ed holds the poster up beside his face, pointing between himself and the linocut as if to say, ‘see?’

Despite the man’s only form of identification appearing to be an 18th century wanted flier with really quite a staggering list of malfeasance on it, the words he finds tumbling from his lips are,

“Would you like a cup of tea?”

When Stede emerges from the kitchen, he finds Ed sitting on the couch, studying his surroundings in a way that suggests he doesn’t really understand them, but isn’t particularly worried about it. Stede sets the tray on the coffee table and notices the way the other man’s eyes flutter closed with pleasure when the steam from the first flush Darjeeling hits his nose. 

“One of my favorites,” Stede says, pleased to have a fellow appreciator of a fine cuppa present while he pours. “Lovely notes of grape and cardamom—very delicate. It’s one of the best blends from—“

He cuts off as Ed begins to spoon enough sugar into his cup for the brew to be what Stede can only imagine is crunchy. 

“So, Ed,” he begins, trying to keep a look of distaste from his face, “What brings you to my door?”

Ed, who’s drained his teacup in all of three gulps, sets it back on the tray.

“You’ve got something that belongs to me.”

The words send a shiver up Stede’s spine, especially as he remembers the list of the man’s misdeeds printed on the poster.

“Have I? How do you know?”

Ed shrugs.

“How do you know the sun’ll rise in the morning, mate? Just do.”

Stede follows his eyes to his mantle and feels a kick of dread when Ed rises to his feet and makes a slow, reverent bee-line for the box, drawn like a moth to a flame. A wind stirs the curtains and the bell rings out full-throatedly as the man’s fingers brush the ironwork, a pained look crossing his handsome face.

Panic flares in Stede’s chest when he thinks of losing the feeling of rightness and certainty the old relic’s brought him, even for the very few hours he’s owned it—a feeling he’s never had before in his entire life. If Ed’s identification was anything to go by, he was more than capable of simply taking it but—

“No!”

The volume of his voice surprises him. But then, he’s never really raised it. 

The breeze stirring the curtains abates and the last echoes of the bell die in the air as Ed turns toward him, head cocked and waiting for an explanation.

Stede swallows hard.

“W-what I meant to say,” he begins, hoping his tone’s more diplomatic, “Is…well, I’ve only just been told to look after it, you see? And it…sort of…brings the whole place together. You know, the whole…nautical vibe?”

He stiffens his spine. 

“I quite like it where it is.”

He’s not sure what he expects from Ed. Fury, maybe, at being denied? At the very least some small inkling of his displeasure. But instead, the man merely looks wistful.

“Fair. Where I come from, we don’t give back the things we take either.”

Guilt makes a heavy home in Stede’s stomach.

“Have you…have you come a long way?”

Those devastating eyes meet his and Ed nods.

“What is it?” Stede asks quietly.

Ed shakes his head.

“Dunno. But I think I’ve been without it a while.”

He runs a tattooed hand through his hair, clearly at a loss before nodding perfunctorily at Stede.

“Thanks. For the tea. I hope someone comes to fix your bathroom tap.”

Ed’s hand is on the door catch and Stede begins to feel a little frantic because as much as he doesn’t want to lose the box, he absolutely doesn’t want this to be the last he sees of this fascinating man either. 

“Wait!”

Ed turns and Stede’s put in mind of light reflecting off water.

“I mean, I’m sorry it seems to be a bit of a slog, but…you’re more than welcome to come visit anytime. Visit the box, I mean. I didn’t mean that you had to come to see me, but if you wanted to come and—“

“I may do that,” Ed says, with a ghost of a smile. “The next time I can get away.”

And with that, he’s out into the hall, leaving only a trace of gunpowder scent behind him.

Stede shuts the door after him, gathers the box from the mantle and sits down on the couch, holding it close.

He then texts the office to let them know he won’t be in for the rest of the week. 

Chapter Text

On Thursday, Stede gets an email from the C suite, telling him in no uncertain terms that his absence has been noted and that he needs to ‘man up’ and come in no matter how he’s feeling, because it makes the company look bad if the boss’s son takes sick days. What would other employees think? That they should take sick days too?  

He shoots back an icy response, suggesting that the staff turnover HR has been struggling with for years might clear up entirely if employees were treated like human beings, and, if anyone was interested, he had a number of other suggestions to improve company morale he’d be happy to share. He hits the send button before he has much chance to think about it, but what he does know is that he’d never have had the guts to send such a message to his father without the box sitting on his mantle—its presence inexplicably shoring up his foundations enough that he feels, for the first time ever, that they can bear his weight. 

To celebrate, he opens a new pack of chocolate digestives, makes a cup of tea, and sits down at the kitchen counter, the box next to his elbow. What comes out of his mouth next, without any conscious decision on his part, is the entire story of his life—words tumbling end over end into the quiet of his kitchen. The unhappiness of his childhood, the misery of his marriage, the revelation of his sexuality and the deep loneliness ever since, all of it, right up until the moment the box and Ed had come into his life. 

Ed.

He found himself hoping both that Ed would turn up at any moment and also that he’d never turn up again to re-awaken the guilt he feels at denying him something that, let’s face it, is probably his. In fact, Stede realizes with a start, that the knock on his door hadn’t really been that unexpected, although he couldn’t for the life of him say why. But he does know that he’d like to watch Ed drink another cup of too-sweet tea sitting next to him on the couch. 

With that feeling cemented in his chest, he sets an out-of-office reply on his inbox, sticks the small chest in a leather messenger bag and takes himself to the M&S round the corner to buy something nice for dinner. On the way home, he passes by a metaphysical shop that he knows most of his colleagues would dismiss as a bunch of “hippy, dippy nonsense”, but an elegant, octagonal signet ring set with a piece of stone the color of equatorial waters catches his eye. 

“Well, why not?” he says aloud to the box as he presses the latch on the shop door, determined, at last, to have some outward sign of his inner magpie instincts. 

As he slips it on his finger, the woman who runs the shop, Melody, tells him that turquoise has a grounding, calming energy and is believed, by many Indigenous peoples in North and South America, to be a bridge between this world and the next.

He tells her not to bother with a box.

That night, the ring still snug upon his finger, he dreams of billowing sails and laughter—soft leather against his own skin and soft, dark eyes by lantern light. The images dart through his consciousness like the scales of bright fish beneath the water—brilliant, brief flashes in the depths, but impossible to catch hold of. He longs for a better look, but even his sleeping heart delights in the stolen glimpses.

Until the cannonball. 

He’s on deck again. The moon is full and it illuminates the hulk of a warship off the port side. He sees the flash of the cannon muzzle before the thunderous report splits the night air and before he can shout a warning, his world is the shriek of splintering wood that seems to echo in his ears even as he gasps awake. 

For a moment he feels just a touch of relief—weak, autumn light is peeking through the blinds, so the night and the nightmare are over. 

So why does he still hear the sound of water? He knows sometimes events in the waking world can worm their way into the subconscious and the impact of the cannonball, still echoing in his head, sounded all too…real. He throws on a dressing gown and goes to investigate. 

Walking into his living room, it becomes clear that maintenance now has far more to deal with than his bathroom tap. 

The knock at the door is probably yet another person bearing tools. They’ve been tramping in and out all morning with ladders, wrenches, blowtorches and new copper piping. He’s been busy making tea for the workmen and answering insurance related questions from the building manager but all he’s really wanted to do is curl up in a ball and cry. The burst piping made quick work of the ceiling, sending a shower of dirty water and drywall into his flat, directly above his bookcase. 

The catastrophe could hardly have happened at a worse place. (Other than over the mantle, but he’s taken to sleeping with the box on his bedside table anyway) The loss wasn’t necessarily financial, although there were one or two volumes he’d sought out over the years at considerable expense. It was the ordinary books—paperbacks, edges yellowed and dog-eared, that had kept him company in secret corners during interminable family functions or perched on his desk at university, the sounds of a party in full swing just outside the window or even sitting and reading before bed with another person who was miles away, despite being close enough to touch. Those friends, those comforts, those pages with those stories—gone.

He’s so deep in his own misery, he squelches across the once beautiful rug in order to admit yet another body in a Day-Glo vest only to be entirely knocked back by the sight of Ed, who seems equally knocked back by the sight of him. 

“Hi. Me again. I came to—“

He breaks off, brows beneath the silver locks furrowing in concern. 

“What’s the matter?” 

Stede wants to weep at the sight of him—this man from Somewhere Else whose property Stede holds in his selfish hands, asking him what the matter is. 

“Oh, uh, there was just…a bit of an accident,” he says, cringing at the quaver in his voice. “Water got in and—“

“Don’t really have to explain further than that, mate,” Ed says sympathetically. “‘Water got in’ can be the beginning and end of a sentence.”

Stede steps back to let him in and tries not to let his lower lip tremble as he takes in the sodden, pulpy mess of his collection on the floor. 

“I—I know I shouldn’t be so upset about it—silly, really, they’re just…things,” he says, leaning against the doorframe. “But I suppose they’re things that saw me through.”

Ed bends down and picks up a thoroughly sodden copy of Watership Down, bits of the cover sloughing off under his fingers. Stede huffs a watery laugh.

“Devastating story, that one—beautiful, but devastating. Didn’t half give me nightmares as a kid. And I never have looked at rabbits the same way sin—Ed?”

He’s suddenly horrified to see the other man’s face twisted with grief—eyes brimming with tears.

“I’m sorry,” Ed whispers. “I’m…I’m so sorry.”

The sadness in Stede’s own heart shifts to concern and bewilderment.

“Oh, Ed…it’s alright, really, you don’t have to—“

To his horror, the other man falls to his knees on the drenched carpet, a sob tearing from his chest.

“It’s-it’s my fault. I’m so—I was just—I couldn’t—“

He breaks off again, gritting his teeth. 

Frantic to soothe him, Stede drops to his side, ignoring the moisture soaking through the knees of his pajama bottoms.

“How on earth could it be your fault? It was just the dishwasher in the flat upstairs—it wasn’t installed properly, that’s all. Just let me—“

He reaches out to take the remains of the book from Ed’s hands and it’s a little like being struck by lightning.

He’s reminded for a second of his dream the night before—the tantalizing glimpses of stolen moments—but this is so much darker. There are flashes of rage and despairing, feral loneliness. A rapacious desire to break and burn and purge laid over a feeling Stede would know anywhere—I’m not enough. I never was.

He pulls back, gasping. He’s got a terrible feeling he’s intruded on something private and painful—lingering threads of shame dissolve and snap as the connection fades. Ed’s looking at him, panicked and wide-eyed as if he’s let slip some terrible secret. He vaults to his feet with a wince.

“‘Shouldn’t have come,” he growls, making for the door. “Fuckin’ stupid idea.”

Alarm and disbelief flood Stede’s veins.

“Ed, please! Wait!”

The leather-clad man halts in the threshold, his hand gripping the doorframe so tightly, his knuckles have turned white. He turns his head so Stede can only see a sliver of his face behind his mane of hair.

“You’ve seen me now,” Ed says quietly. “You were always going to realize what I am.”

Before Stede can reach out to catch hold of him, he's gone.

Chapter Text

When Stede was about 11, he thinks, he went with his mother and father to some stately home or other for a shooting weekend. The women sat inside most of the time drinking wine, but the men were expected to hunt the estate’s fowl.

Stede had never even held a rifle before and found he was entirely horrified of it, much to the dismay of his father and the derision of the other boys in attendance. His palms were slippery round the stock and the barrel as the group tramped through the undergrowth, trying to flush out pheasant and partridge, which he would then, theoretically be required to shoot. The idea of killing a bird made him deeply nauseous, but he was determined to try to make a good showing for his father, his friends and their sons, who all looked they’d been born with the damn things grafted into their hands. 

When the gamekeepers walking ahead managed to set a number of game birds to flight, Stede dutifully lifted his rifle to his shoulder, closed his eyes and pulled the trigger, praying he’d miss. 

It turns out that hitting his mark was the least of his worries as the rifle’s kickback knocked him on his arse. Ears dulled, shoulder throbbing and backside bruised, he sat in the bracken, his whole body ringing with the force of the shot. 

It was the same concussed feeling he had now, standing in the middle of the flat with a pair of soaking wet knees, staring at the empty space where Ed had just been. 

What on earth was it he’d tapped into when he’d touched him? He can still feel the epinephrine and cortisol careening through his adrenal system—his own body reacting to the second hand…what? Emotions? Memories? Whatever it had been…Christ, he wishes the man hadn’t run before he could get to the bottom of it! What in particular had set him off about the ruined books? Some personal childhood trauma? An aversion to rabbits? Stede couldn’t say, but whatever it was, it’s left behind an aching pit in his own stomach and a deep sense of unease.

He doesn’t have any damn answers. In fact, since the moment he brought home the sextant, the questions had been piling up at an alarming rate. 

The only thing he does know is that it’s no good standing around. Shaking off the dread still swirling in his belly, he pads to the bedroom, dressing quickly and firing off a quick text to maintenance to use the building master key to access his flat. The depressing, unholy mess of wet paper will have to wait. He’s not sure if there’s any help to be had for him or Ed, but he’s got to start somewhere. 

“Ah, so you’ve met him, have ye?”

Stede’s hardly set foot in the shop when he’s hailed from behind the counter, as if he’d been expected, and he’s about to launch right into a detailed volley of queries when he stops short—the owner appears to be entirely nude. Stede tells himself surely he must be wearing underpants behind the counter, but whirls around to see if there are any other customers about. When he turns back, the man shrugs.

“Casual Fridays,” he says, by way of explanation. 

Stede doesn’t want to parse any of that, so he stands where he is—it’s not one of the questions he needs (or wants) an answer for.

“Did you know?” he blurts out breathlessly. “Did you know this would happen when you sold me those things?”

“Mibbe I did o’ mibbe I didnae,” the man says cryptically. “But ye have met him?”

Stede clenches his jaw.

“You didn’t think a “oh, just so you know, you might be in for some light paranormal happenings in and about your flat” might be in bloody order?”

The man rolls his eyes.

“Paranormal? Pscht—if ye want paranormal, I’ve go’ a cursed necklace somewhere aboot the place—guaranteed tae have blood runnin’ doon your walls i’ no time.”

“What? No, I don’t want more hauntings, I just want to understand the ones I’ve got already! The-the-the dreams! And Ed!”

“Have ye still got th’ box?”

He raises the leather messenger bag he has slung round his chest.

“Of course. I can’t…I can’t really bear to be apart from it, if I’m honest.”

The naked gentleman nods sagely.

“Tha’s no surprise.”

“What does that mean?” Stede implores, throttling the urge to stamp his foot. “Who in the hell is Ed? And what the hell is in here?”

The shopkeeper gazes thoughtfully at the seagull over his shoulder and Stede could swear he sees it blink. 

“All I ken is tha’ once in a while, the universe…gives back time.”

This statement gives Stede pause.

“Time?”

“Aye. Time tha’ was due but…interrupted.”

Honestly, with the morning Stede’s had, it’s a wonder he’s held out this long, but some over-stretched thread holding his temper in check finally snaps.

“Can’t you speak plainly, just once? Or is this just par for the course for graduates of the London Academy for Enigmatically Incomprehensible Arcane Gibberish??”

A broad smile breaks out on the man’s face as he turns to the seagull.

“There he is,” he says, nodding approvingly. “Tha’s the Captain we ken!”

His frustration causes him to take several steps toward the counter, but he remembers immediately why he’d been standing a ways off to begin with. Nope, no underpants behind the counter and now he doesn’t know what to do with his eyes. 

“Look,” he begins tersely, “Mr…?”

“Nathaniel Buttons, at your service. And ye already know Karl.”

“Yes, we’ve been introduced—hello, Karl. Mr. Buttons, it has been a bloody week. I’ve had dreams so long and vivid, I feel like I haven’t slept come morning. There’s a bell without a clapper ringing in my living room and most importantly, there’s a man turning up at my door who is clearly “not from round these parts” as you might say, looking for the contents of a box with no key. Any light you can shed on these events would be deeply appreciated.”

He’s out of breath now, but he feels he’s made his point. Buttons surveys him calmly in the wake of his outburst.

“Find th’ key,” he tells Stede, as if it’s the easiest thing on earth. “And remember. Things mibbe clearer when he comes back.”

“He will come back, yes?” Stede asks, realizing how heavily the question had been weighing on him. “Only, he seemed rather upset.”

“He cannae help it,” Buttons says, pointing to the bag. “No’ while you’ve go’ that.”

“And the key? What makes you think that I can find it? That I’d even have the first clue where to start looking?”

A sideways smile peeps beneath Buttons’ bushy beard.

“You always did know the best hidin’ places, Cap’n.”

Stede closes his eyes and takes a deep, calming breath in through his nose.

“Right. Well, Mr. Buttons, I feel like I’ve taken up enough of your Casual Friday, so, unless you have any other wisdom to impart, I’ve got a hell of a mess at home that needs cleaning up, so I’ll get out of your hair. Nice to see you again, Karl.”

“You sure ye don’t want the necklace?”

“Quite sure, thanks. Have a good morning.”

The shop door shuts behind Stede and Buttons turns to the gull.

“How d’ye reckon he knew where I went tae school?”

The flat is, unfortunately, just as he left it.

He gathers some rubbish bags and lays them out on the dining table. Carefully, he picks up the remains of his collection and lays them out on the plastic to see what can be salvaged and what can’t. When he’s got them all laid out, he looks back at the empty case and just for a fleeting second, he thinks he sees the echo of another bare bookshelf, in another place.

“Somethin’ I can help with?”

He hadn’t noticed he’d neglected to latch the door until he looks up to see Ed’s face peeking round the corner. Relief floods him and he breaks into a brilliant grin.

“Ed! You came back!”

Ed clears his throat and shrugs in an attempt at nonchalance. 

“Never really left.”

He makes his way across the carpet, approaching the table with Stede’s ruined library as if he expects it to bite him. 

Stede points to the hole in the ceiling. 

“I’m not sure what it was that made you think this was somehow your fault,” he says gently, “But, it was really just an unfortunate accident, you see?”

Ed nods, his hands jammed in the pockets of his tight leathers. 

“Yeah, I—uh, don’t know what got into me. It just felt like…”

Stede decides to go out on a limb.

“Remembering something?” 

Ed nods, frowning. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so.” 

There is a quality to Ed, he thinks, that’s rather like the box. He almost feels the pull toward him as if he was the opposite pole to Stede’s own magnet. He feels…brave with Ed nearby—brave enough to reach out and put a tentative hand on his shoulder. 

“We’ll get another rubbish bag and dump the lost causes in there. Then, I’ll make some tea and we’ll see what else you can remember.”

Chapter Text

“Where do you go when you’re not here?”

Ed’s perched on the arm of the couch on Sunday, absolutely entranced by a blue fidget spinner that Stede found in his junk drawer in the kitchen. Some company promotion from five or so years ago, he thinks, but he’s glad now that he didn’t immediately throw it out—it’s worked wonders to relieve some of the other man’s nervous energy, which seems to manifest when he stays for more than an hour or so. It seems to give him something to focus on other than the pull of—Somewhere Else.

Ed shrugs, eyes fixed on the spinning gadget between his thumb and forefinger. 

“Dunno. Can’t remember when I’m here. But after a bit it feels like…I lit a cannon fuse that I forgot about and I gotta get back there before it goes off.”

The man cocks his head, his dark eyes looking past the twirling toy in his hand.

“Wasn’t always there, though, I don’t think.”

Stede leans forward, resting his chin on his hands and fixing his gaze on the bird sitting beneath the hollow of Ed’s throat.

“Weren’t always where? Where you are now?”

“Mmm. Think I was…at sea. A sailor, maybe. Not a good one, though.”

“You weren’t a good sailor?”

Ed grins, eyes twinkling slyly.

“Oh, I was a great fucking sailor, mate. The fucking best. Just wasn’t good.” 

There’s a playful tone in his voice that warms Stede’s insides. 

“Suppose I should have guessed—what with all the bad boy leather,” he grins. 

The smile he gets back creases the corners of Ed’s eyes. 

“First impressions are important, mate. Gotta let ‘em know you fucking mean business.” 

Stede thinks he catches a sudden whiff of smoke and sulfur that sets his heart racing. Ed seems to sense it—his eyes flicking up from the spinner to gauge his reaction. His gaze drops again, and Stede can see shame weighting down his shoulders. 

“You’ve got the idea. It’s not pretty, mate. I wouldn’t want me coming round if I were you. You could just…”

He gestures at the box, sat on the side table by Stede’s elbow. 

“I wouldn’t have to bother you again.” 

The idea of handing over the box still makes Stede balk, but he finds himself asking,

“If…if I gave it to you, would you still come? To see me?”

The look on Ed’s face tells him clearly the man’s thinking about lying to him. He’s kicking himself for giving him an opening to do so, but the shrewd look softens.

“Don’t think I could. I reckon it’s how I find my way here.”

“Well,” Stede chimes in hurriedly, “It just so happens that I like you coming round. You—you just seem to…fit. Like the box.”

His heart flutters at the small, private smile that turns Ed’s lips up at the corners and the small ‘mm’ of agreement that rumbles in his chest.

After Ed disappears out the door, Stede starts to think in earnest about keys.

On Monday, he doesn’t go into the office. He gets an email around nine am telling him that if he needs to extend his sick leave, he’s going to need to provide proof of illness from a GP. He fires back a terse note saying he thinks it’s unlikely his local surgery would appreciate him coming in for what’s clearly a case of the flu that they can hardly do anything about anyway. He hopes that will be the end of it, but knowing his father, it’s unlikely. 

He idly wanders round the flat, in between visits by maintenance and the building crew that’s been tasked with repairing his ceiling, pondering the conversation with Buttons on Friday.

Time that was due but…interrupted.

He doesn’t even know where to start with that. 

Find the key. Remember.

He traces the lock plate of the box and thinks of all the keys he’s got. Clearly the ones to his flat won’t fit, nor the ones at the back of the junk drawer that don’t seem to be for anything. In fact, no modern key will do the job—the key to this box will be big and weighty, with several large prongs. 

Damn Buttons and his baffling pronouncements! It’s all very well to be tell someone to find a bloody key, but to not give a suggestion of where to start is just perverse. (And to do it while not wearing a stitch is just insult to injury.) And as for remembering…

He’d had a peculiar feeling the previous day while staring at Ed’s hawk tattoo that it was a shape he’d seen before—he’d even had resist the impulse to reach out and trace it with a curious finger. Was this memory? Just deja vous? He doesn’t know, and it sits in his brain like an itch.

He waits for a knock that doesn’t come that day. 

As he crawls into bed that night, he tries to push back the disappointment that sits in his chest like a bruise and tucks the box under his arm.

He does not sleep well. 

In his dreams, he’s looking for Ed. He’s been at it for a while—there’s a tired, quiet determination deep in his bones, ready at a moment’s notice to follow any scrap of information that might lead him back to his side.

The scene shifts and he suddenly finds himself at the top of a set of stairs leading down into a dark hold. He’s drenched in a cold sweat at the thought of what he might find there, but his legs are taking him down like he’s got no choice.

I don’t want to see, he thinks franticly, the dread ramping higher and higher. I don’t want to see it. Wake up, wake up, wake up!

And he does. His pillow is drenched with sweat and tears and he sits up quickly, pushing back wet hair from his forehead. 

Please come back, he thinks, without meaning to. Come back to me. 

On Tuesday, he sits on the couch, cradling the box to his chest and staring pointedly at the door. The bags under his eyes feel heavy and he’s strung tight with worry. When the knock comes around the same time it usually does, he almost levitates across the room toward the door.

Ed’s standing on the other side, looking worse for wear—like he’s had the same sort of night Stede has, but before Stede can stop himself, he flings his arms around the other man’s neck. He’s almost knocked back by the wave of relief that swamps him at the smell of tar and salt air clinging to Ed’s skin and the strong grip wending round his own waist. Both of their bodies gratefully telegraph, there you are. 

As the relief begins to recede, Stede realizes that he’s never actually so much as shaken this man’s hand, and here he is, clinging to him like a ship’s barnacle. (But with some pleasure, he notes Ed’s clinging to him just as tightly.) Reluctantly, he pulls back from the embrace. 

Ed’s warm brown skin is sallow and umber channels cut deep beneath his eyes, which dart back and forth anxiously over Stede’s face, looking for reassurance. 

“Sorry, I—“

“Where were—?”

They both begin talking at once, breaking off with identical, bashful grins. 

“Please,” Stede says, feeling a furious flush rising up his neck, “Go on.”

Ed’s blinking furiously as if he’s trying to hold onto some fading recollection.

“I think…It was harder to get here, I think. Kept getting fucking turned around.” 

A cold chill creeps through Stede’s bones at the thought of Ed lost and searching for a way back to him.

To the box, you mean, his brain chides. He’s here for the box. 

“Well, you’re here now,” Stede says soothingly. “Come in. I’ll make you some tea just the way you like it.”

It’s the nicest time they’ve spent in each other’s company thus far. Ed is funny as he tells only half-remembered tales of his life on the sea and Stede finds himself in stitches more than once. Remarkably, Ed seems to think he’s funny too—he thinks the other man’s giggle is maybe the nicest sound he’s ever heard.

After an hour, he notices Ed’s eyes begin to dart towards the door and knows the pull of Somewhere Else is getting stronger. His heart sinks to his shoes as he makes a choice he couldn’t have imagined only a few days ago, but knows it’s the right one.

“Ed,” he begins, “I never could have imagined anything that’s happened since I’ve come into possession of this box, least of all, you. It’s…well, turned me round a bit—given me some courage I didn’t know was rattling around inside. But it’s also given me something to look forward to, you see, when it brings you to my door.”

He doesn’t want to say the next bit out loud as Ed’s big, dark eyes are fixed on him, but the offer has to be made.

“I also understand that it doesn’t belong to me and the idea of you wandering around and getting lost trying to get back to it makes me feel completely frantic, if I’m honest. I…I don’t want to cause you any more trouble.”

Heart aching, he picks up the box and goes to offer it to Ed, but the other man recoils.

“No!”

Ed jumps up, as if trying to put space between himself and the chest Stede’s got in his hands.

“I gave it to you, you can’t give it back!” he cries.

“What?”

The other man’s face creases in confusion, as if he’s not sure what’s just been said either.

“I—I gave it to you,” he says quieter. “Didn’t I?”

“It came from the shop I told you about,” Stede answers, bewildered. “Do you remember? Buttons, the man with the seagull?”

Ed shakes his head as if he’s trying to clear it. 

“Right…fucking…seagull guy.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to—?”

“No,” Ed says quickly, but with less panic than before. “No, you keep hold of it.”

Stede follows him to the door, having left the box back on the coffee table. A deep, selfish part of him doesn’t want to tempt fate that Ed will change his mind.

“I never know what to say when you go,” he admits, cringing a little at how needy it sounds.

Ed’s face softens in a way that makes Stede weak at the knees. The man smoothes a gloved hand over his shoulder, as if to brush away an imaginary bit of lint.

“How about just ‘see you next time’?” he says fondly.

Ed doesn’t appear on Wednesday.

Stede waits as long as he can without his anxiety choking him, and when he can’t stand it any longer, he goes to the only place he can think of that he might get answers.

“He’s getting lost,” he says breathlessly as he comes into the shop, heedless of whether or not there may be other people browsing.

There aren’t, of course. In fact, he realizes he’s never encountered anyone else here but Buttons. And Karl, if he counts. (Stede has a funny feeling he does.)

“Oh, aye?” the proprietor says from behind the counter where he’s polishing something that Stede thinks look distressingly like sharp, metal teeth.

“‘Turned around’, he said, “Trying to get to m—to the box.” 

Buttons inclines his head toward Karl, who now seems to be in a pose as if he’s been caught mid-squawk—it looks a little like a warning. 

“Karl says th’ universe is made up of contradictions.”

Stede closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in through his nose. 

“That seems like a very sophisticated notion for your average seagull.” 

“Karl ain’t precisely yer average seagull. But if you want me to dumb it doon fer ye, the universe does wha’ it can. The rest is up to you. Besides, where our friend’s from, they doon’t rightly like folk just wanderin’ off—likely he’s gettin’ turned round on purpose. Made any progress wi’ tha’ key?” 

Stede wants to shout that of course he’s not made any progress—he doesn’t even know where to bloody start. Millions of keys in the world and this inscrutable oddball wants him to find one in particular. 

“Do you think,” he begins snippily, “That it will make some difference if I do?” 

The bizarre shop owner looks at him like he’s the madman. 

“Do ye think it’s the box tha’ calls to him? It’s what’s inside, ye great roaster. Bring it intae th’ light and he’ll be able tae find ye again well enough.”

“Yes, but where do I—?”

“Sure it’s hiding in the last place ye’ll ever think tae look,” Buttons interrupts sagely, laying a finger aside his nose. “Now, if ye’ll excuse me, I promised Karl I’d take him oot for sashimi.”

On Thursday, an email comes that he can’t ignore.

I don’t care how ill you are. You’ll be in front of my desk at 9 this morning. 

He’s sick to his stomach at the thought of leaving the flat. What if Ed turns up and he’s not there? The thought is entirely unbearable.

He also bristles at being ordered into his father’s office at work like he’d been as a boy—forced to endure yet another endless lecture on his, many, many failings as a son and heir. But he hadn’t had the box or Ed then, had he? 

No, he can do this. If he makes it in by quarter to nine, he can stand there for a bit and take whatever’s coming to him and then plead off again—if he’s quick, he might even be able to make it back to the flat by ten.

He wonders if he’s got anything in his extensive bathroom cabinets to darken under his eyes or pale his skin to simulate nearly a week’s worth of illness, but as he’s rifling through his various lotions, tonics, serums, concealers and creams, he catches a glance of himself in the mirror. What he sees is a man approaching fifty, desperately searching for a way to justify himself to another man who has never shown him an ounce of kindness or understanding.

What kind of a man does that?

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches sight of the box on the counter and is immediately put in mind of Ed’s warm, brown eyes, creased in laughter. 

His reflection seems different to him after that, so he takes his time. 

The Stede Bonnet who walks into the imposing glass lobby of his workplace forty five minutes later looks less like a man who’s spent the last few days tucked up in bed with the flu and more like one who’s stepped out of a GQ photoshoot. His suit’s one of his favorites—an exquisitely tailored, pale, cornflower blue with a matching waistcoat and deep, salmon tie in a double windsor knot. It is entirely not office appropriate and he carries that knowledge with him like a small, warm brazier that heats further with every sideways glance he receives as he makes his way toward the gleaming bank of elevators.

His father’s office is on the 15th floor, so he takes a moment for a few, deep calming breaths and a peek at his phone’s camera roll, where the last photo is of the box, sitting in a pool of sunlight on the couch. He also thinks hopefully of the note he’s left on the door. 

Ed—wait for me. 

The elevator doors open at 9 am precisely. His father’s assistant (and more, he knows, though the age gap and power imbalance between them makes him deeply uncomfortable) a pretty, angular young woman dressed far beyond her means, gives him a hard, unpleasant stare.

“You’re expected,” she informs him icily, taking in his ensemble. “Glad to see you seem to have gotten over the ‘flu’.”

“Thank you, Gemma,” he says, a soft, bitchy smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “Lovely necklace. It looks just like one my father gave his former assistant, Carole, several Christmases ago.”

He has enough time to see the woman’s lips go white before he lets himself into the office. 

Stede’s never understood why the wealthy all wanted the same trappings of wealth—he could hardly think of anything more boring. What’s the point of having money if you just use it to buy things that everyone else with money has? But the office, like hundreds of others in central London, is dark and wood paneled with leather accents. Ostentatious globe hiding expensive liquor? Check. Imposing carved desk? Check. Shelves of never-read books with gold bindings? Check. He hated all of it. It felt sad and suffocating—much like a good deal of his life. 

But his heart’s pumping salt water now. He’s got the wind in his veins and the bright ring of the ship’s bell in his ears. Even the sight of his father, once a larger than life figure that never failed to fill him with dread, doesn’t move him. 

Why on earth, he thinks with a start, was I ever afraid of this small, bitter old man?

“Glad you could rouse yourself from your sick bed in order to grace me with your presence,” his father growls. “I see your supposed ailment has somehow also conveniently robbed you of your sense of propriety when it comes to corporate dress.”

If he expects an anxious, weak-kneed response from his son, he’s disappointed. Stede stands before him straight-backed, calm and silent.

“Well?” the senior Bonnet barks.

“Well what?”

“What have you got to say for yourself? Do you suppose our success is built on encouraging a liberal leave policy? How does it look to your subordinates if you’re seen taking so many days in a row? I’ll tell you how it looks—it looks weak, that’s how it looks!”

Only a week earlier, a dressing down like this would have had him stammering apologies, but today, his father’s words are showers of dandelion fluff that drifts to the ground to pile at his feet.

“The last time I took a personal day was back in 2011, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t waste much guilt on a few mental health days, something you should be offering to your entire workforce, by the by, almost eleven years later.”

His father’s face twists with distaste.

“Mental health days? God, you are soft. You always have been, but this is a new low, even for you. Hiding from your responsibilities because of your feelings? I should have known, really. It’s been your solution since you were a child—all those times you’d disappear on us at the slightest inconvenience, only to show up at dinner with your tail tucked between your legs. Pathetic.”

His father may still be talking, but Stede has stopped listening—the only voice he can hear is Buttons’.

Hiding in the last place ye’ll ever think tae look.

You always did know the best hidin’ places.

Hiding.

Hiding.

Hiding. 

In a blinding flash, he suddenly knows exactly what he’s looking for. 

“Are we finished here?”

He doesn’t believe he’s ever seen his father look quite so nonplussed. 

“What?” the older man says in a small, dangerous voice.

“You and I. Are we finished? Only, there’s somewhere else I’ve got to be. Urgently.”

He knows he’s just sealed his fate, but honestly, he can’t bring himself to care, because the horizon has just opened up ahead of him, wide and blue and wild.

He’s out the office door, past Gemma and headed for the elevator before the blood can finish rising to his father’s face. 

Chapter Text

The house he’d grown up in was old.

A grand, Georgian affair in Knightsbridge--more room than a family of three would ever need, but it had been in the family since it was built and one needed to keep up appearances. 

An overarching memory of his childhood was the cold—the house was rarely ever heated enough to be truly comfortable except when guests came round, so it probably explained his propensity to heat his own flat maybe a degree above human comfort level.

The fourth story in particular had been colder than the rest, as it was only used for storage. From the hidden stairways leading from the major rooms in the house up to this unused space, Stede had concluded it must have been where the servants would have lived once upon a time. He was, of course, forbidden to set foot up there lest he break anything, but his curiosity led him there often, despite the chill.

His curiosity and his misery.

He'd discovered the linen cupboard when he was about nine after a particularly vitriolic lecture from his father on his refusal to participate in rugby at school—a full fifteen minutes on needing to toughen up, knuckle down and do what was expected or what would all the other boys think? Stede already knew what all the other boys thought—he heard their unpleasant whispers between lectures and at night in the dormitory. 

With the cruel words echoing in his ears, he’d fled up one of the servant’s stairs, small chest heaving with the effort of holding in the sobs threatening to tear their way out. He wouldn’t let them though, not where his father could hear him. 

The cupboard was at the far end of the hallway and his prey-animal heart, longing for a small hiding place, led him directly to it. The inside was dry and dusty, but there was enough space for him to sit cross-legged on the floor, so he'd pulled the door shut behind him, plunging himself into darkness.

It had felt a little like disappearing—he couldn’t even see his own hand in front of his face, though the sadness and guilt remained, unseen, but deeply felt. He went to rest his head against the door, tears stinging his eyes when he encountered a sharp pain against his forehead. Reaching up, he realized he’d knocked against a key. A key on the inside of the closet. 

It seemed like it had to be some bizarre oversight of a long-ago workman, but Stede reached up and immediately turned the key until he heard the satisfying click of the tumblers falling into place before yanking it out of the slot and clasping it to his chest. No one could get to him in here. Not his father, not the boys at school, no one . In this tiny space, he was safe . 

Over the years, his fingers had memorized the shape of the key in the dark, thumbs smoothing over its edges like a worry stone as he waited for the storm of his tears to pass. The clover shape of the bow, the long shank with its three, even collars and the intricate notches of the wards were all as familiar to him as his own hands. 

And when he finally moved out of the big, cold house that was never a home, it was the only thing he took with him.

The lock-up is further away than he remembered. He’s not been since he finally finished furnishing the flat—all that remains are bits and pieces of a life he never really cared for, but is somehow reticent to abandon completely. 

He asked the black cab to wait outside—that he’d just be a moment, but when he pushes up the folding hatch on the unit, he suddenly remembers the failed game of Tetris he’d played the last time he was here. Cartons are haphazardly stacked one on top of the other like a city built from cardboard by a careless architect—one or two spill directly out into the hall the moment the door isn’t containing them any longer.

“Bollocks,” he mutters, wading into the mess.

Was it with school memorabilia? (Why does he have that? He hated school.) Maybe with the wedding things? (Marriage was a nightmare and he’ll never look at any of those photos again. Are they doomed to just rot in the box? ) Probably not in any of the garment bags holding extra staid, dark suits for work. (Won’t ever be wearing those again. All going to the charity shop.)

It takes him almost fifteen minutes of searching before a hazy memory strikes. He recalls a frantic moment while moving out of the home he shared with Mary where he just began emptying drawers into one of the moving boxes, heedless of the contents. He can even see his own uneven scrawl on the side in Sharpie— Everything Else . 

He dives back in, sliding boxes this way and that until he catches sight of the label. He digs his nails into the tape, but no sooner is it off that he realizes how accurate a description ‘Everything Else’ was. The box is nearly full to the brim with knick knacks and odds and ends—jewelry, sea glass, rocks, feathers, leather bookmarks, paperweights, pens, pencils, stationary, ink—the beautiful ephemera he’d squirreled away like treasure as insurance against the burdensome life he’d been forced into. In frustration, he jams his hand down into the tinkling, clattering mess and pulls out the first thing he gets his fingers round.

The shape in his hand immediately brings back the smell of dust in the dark and the feeling of safety. The key is in his palm, tarnished like the brass of the bell and the sextant. He fancies he can practically hear Buttons’ voice. 

Aye, ye finally figgered it oot, ye pillock. Now hie yer arse home an' open it. 

He pockets the key, offering up a silent plea that he’s not missed Ed. He spares a glance at the mess of boxes in the unit and decides then and there to have a clearance company come it to take care of the lot. There’s nothing in here he needs anymore. 

So he leaves it all behind and hurries from the storage facility out into the morning, where, miraculously, the cab is still waiting. 

The atmosphere in the flat is charged when he gets inside. There’s a sharp smell of ozone—the air before a thunderstorm. The strangeness is potent, but he’s somehow not at all afraid.

He takes a first step across the threshold and instinctively shifts his weight into his hips to counterbalance the gentle roll of the floor, which sways under his feet like a ship’s deck. It feels like he’s known how to do this all his life.

The box is on the couch where he left it, but to his eyes, it looks different now. It’s bathed in a light that doesn’t seem to belong in the room—dappled with the reflections of water from below.

He sits and takes it in his hands, the soft undulation of the ground calming the heart rabbiting away in his chest. The key in his pocket feels heavy as he draws it out, but he doesn’t take a moment to wonder whether it will fit in the lock—he knows it does, as sure as he knows his own name.

Stede Bonnet, along with the rest of the world, holds his breath at the seamless slide of metal on metal and the inevitable click from inside the box as it prepares to give up its secret. 

For a moment, it seems to be empty—nothing’s on the inside but a torn and stained red silk lining, but it becomes clear, on second glance, that the silk isn’t lining the box. It is, instead, folded neatly inside.

There’s a swooping, lightheaded feeling between his ears—like walking a balance beam on a cliff’s edge. (But maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing to fall?) His fingers bite hard into the side of the box to keep from losing their grip. He’s so off-kilter he doesn’t even hear the pounding on the door—can’t even acknowledge it until it flies open and suddenly Ed’s on his knees in front of him on the couch, eyes wild and searching.

“You opened it,” he gasps, clasping his hands over Stede’s on the side of the box. “You fucking did it, man! I could tell the second you did. Before, it was like looking for—for a fucking grey cat in a fog and then—“

Ed mimes a bright explosion of light, a brilliant smile overtaking his face. Stede tries to smile back, but the vertigo is so intense, he can barely focus.

“Ed,” he says weakly, trying to steady himself by grabbing onto the other man’s wrist. “What is this?”

For the first time, Ed looks down into the open box at the stained silk. He sways as if caught in the same unpredictable tide, one hand grabbing Stede’s knee for support.

“It’s…fuck, I thought…”

Ed’s fingers pass over the fabric almost reverently as he lifts it. The bell above the mantle strikes the watch high and clear—loud enough for Stede to feel his eardrum vibrating and adding yet another layer to his imbalance. He’s not afraid of the fall that he can tell is coming—part of him even welcomes it, but he doesn’t want to go alone. He covers Ed’s hand, which is still on his knee, with his, gripping fiercely.

“Ed,” he whispers.

The room spins in sharp, deviant circles, but somehow he can still make out the tears in the other man’s eyes.

“I was right the first time,” Ed rasps, “I did give this to you.”

Stede can’t bear it and reaches out, his own fingers tangling in the length of silk.

They go over the cliff together. 

And they remember.

IMAGE: Ed's POV

The world is blue and grey when he opens his eyes and he remembers.

Can’t help the little wry huff that escapes his lips. In the end, he’d outsourced the big job. Or, at least he thinks he did, but his presence on this beach indicates he might even have failed to do that. 

Fuck.

And of course, with his luck, he’d just had to wash up on the shores of that dog-fucking sadist, Hornigold. Worst few months of his life so far—what’s another kick in the danglies on top of it all? ‘Just-fucking-Ben’ his arse—the soup and the shelter isn’t going to fucking make up for Felix or the scars on scars that traverse his body like a brutal roadmap of the time spent under his command.

Also, Hornigold won’t play his game properly. Edward fucking Teach can do anything, including inn-keeping, but the man’s got to be a dick about it like he was about everything. (His traitor brain reminds him that there was once someone who’d have happily played with him, and played right.) And then, of course, the man opens his sneering mouth and out tumbles the secret that Ed’s only ever told one other person. His vision tunnels and before he knows it, he’s got the bastard on the ground, the snap of his neck satisfying under his clenched hands. No less than he’s been owed, for ruin of Ed’s youth.

But then, the old fucker sits up with a shit-eating grin and, oh, something is terribly, horribly fucking wrong.

Purgatory. 

He remembers his mother once telling him it’s where lost souls and unbaptized babies went and, while it was perhaps not as terrible as its neighbor to the South, it was instead a terrible absence—a great realm of nothing. Ed fucking hates it. He’d take the drama of Hell to the void of this place any day of the week and twice on Sundays. It’s not as if he’s not been living there anyway since—

Fuck. Focus. 

Hornigold plays a game of his own to make him think. Make him reason his way back to life. The shit he comes up that he enjoys is nice, yeah, but the utter loneliness of returning to a place he set on fire with his rage makes food and warmth and sex seem pale, unimportant things.

So, at last, when he’s at the precipice and it all dawns on him, the rope and the rock make a little more sense.

The roar of the fall is eclipsed by the silence of the water. He can’t remember the last time his head was this quiet. He’s almost glad for the relentless, dragging weight—

Someone’s there.

The awareness is jarring. The quiet acceptance turns to panic. Who the fuck—?

I messed it up. I messed all of this up.

Of course. Of course it’s him. 

Ed would laugh at the timing of the universe if he could, but as it is, he strains his ears to hear.

I’m sorry, Ed. I’m so sorry.

They tell children stories about monsters from the cradle, mate, he thinks, so you know how to avoid them. Lucky escape for you, really. 

Because he is a monster. A tempest. A night sky devoid of stars. His self-loathing has devoured everything in its path—every beautiful thing he built, Ed defiled. His possessions. His ship. His crew, worst of all. 

Come back to me.

Even a monster isn’t made of stone. He is so, so tempted to kick upward toward that voice, that brilliant light—to fall down on his knees and beg for forgiveness. Even the weight dragging him under seems to lighten for a moment—as if it’s asking, “So? What’s it to be?”

What is it to be?

The truth, which he can feel down to his marrow, is that he’s tired. Even if he can make it to the surface, he honestly doesn’t know if he’s got the strength to keep his head above the water, wondering when he’ll drown once more.

Stede deserves better than that.

Stede.

Allowing himself to think the name at last after banishing it so long from his thoughts and his conversation gives him the clarity to realize that Stede’s light warms too much else for something like Ed, who’s done too much for any one person to be forgiven for, to be allowed to snuff it out. 

So, in a last act of love, Ed holds the memory of that light close to his heart and sinks into the dark, silent depths below.

IMAGE: Stede's POV

It’s a moment he’s been both dreading and aching for since the first glimpse, hours ago. 

They’re safe, for now. A world of worry awaits them once the Pirate Queen’s fleet can mobilize against them, but if there’s anything that he’s learned since being at sea, it’s that there’s value in living to fight another day, even if that day follows hard on the first one’s heels. 

Ed, it seems, lost sight of that value.

Lost sight of a lot of things, if the shell shocked crew were any indication. But he’d known, hadn’t he? Knew about the Kraken, about the dark? Of course he did. He just always assumed that he’d be there to push it back.

But he wasn’t there—his cowardice put paid to that. And now that he’s staring once more at the still, shrouded form on the cot in one of the secret storerooms, he knows for a fact he’ll never know peace from his own conscience, if he lives a hundred years.

Water from the storm sloshes round the bier, but he can’t feel it soaking through the soft cotton on his feet as he descends the stairs and sits heavily on an upturned crate.

“You nut,” he says softly, “Why’d you have to go and get yourself killed?”

His insides quiver looking at the flimsy cloth covering Ed’s face. Even now, he’s afraid, though he’s not sure of what, exactly, but his hands shake as he steels himself to pull it back. 

He was right to be afraid. Because every notion he’d had of what it would be like to lay eyes on Edward Teach again is shattered into a million, stinging pieces. The wall he’d built to survive the hours planning to take back the Revenge gives way all at once and he buries his head in his hands.

“I messed it up. I messed it all up.”

He thought he’d been prepared, but what kind of fool thinks they can prepare for the moment when a hope so big it’s drawn him across oceans is finally extinguished?

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, tears hitting the leather of the already salt-beaten greatcoat beneath him. “I’m so sorry.”

He forces himself to look up into the face that dogged his every moment since the moment he first set eyes on it. Ed looks like…Ed, only sad, beaten and sleeping. It should still be lively, this face—bright in mischief, creased with laughter and tender in its regard for him. 

It is unbearable.

“Come back to me,” he says, to no one.

When he finally gathers himself together, he takes Ed’s cold hand in his and begins to speak. He’s not going to let something as pedestrian as death keep him from saying his piece—Ed is owed an explanation, and an explanation he shall get, even if he’s beyond hearing. Words of disappointment and love and grief spill in the space between them until the last ones fall from Stede’s lips like the dregs of a poison that’s been eating him from the inside out.

Hollowed, he leans back against the wall, not relinquishing his grip on Ed’s stiff fingers, and keeps watch through the night. 

He only realizes it’s dawn when he hears Izzy’s irregular gait on the stairs. The two men regard each other—for the first time, each clearly seeing the other. The look that passes between them is a quiet acknowledgement that the pain and guilt they share means they are both too exhausted to move forward with their former enmity.

“We’re gonna have to do this, Bonnet,” he says gruffly. “None of the rest’ll touch him.”

Stede nods, his eyes feeling full of grit. He takes a last look at Ed’s face, smoothes back the blood-crusted hair from his forehead and gathers every reserve of strength he’s got left.

He’s heard the term ‘dead weight’ before, but never really understood until he struggles to haul Ed up onto the ruined deck of Revenge. No, he thinks, not Ed. Not anymore. If he’s to get through this, he can’t think of the heavy, rigid burden in his arms as the man he knew and loved—it’s just a thing he left behind. 

Izzy’s laid out a piece of sailcloth large enough for the task at hand. Stede insists he be the one to sew it up, shaking fingers pushing the heavy needle through the canvas one crooked stitch after another. He finds, however, that he can’t bring himself to do the final one—can’t bring himself to inflict anymore violence on the body of Edward Teach than he already has. Sensing his reluctance, Izzy takes the needle from him gently and thrusts the sharp edge into the canvas, through the nose and out the other side. Stede flinches at the unpleasant noise it makes and the blood on the twine, but he understands—Izzy needs to make sure, both for himself and for the crew, who Stede knows are watching, though he can’t see them. He hates it with every fucking fiber of his being, but he understands.

“Do you think—do you think we should say something?” he asks, his voice sounding remarkably steady for the maelstrom inside his chest after they’d wrestled their burden (weighted with an additional three cannonballs) onto the plank balanced over the port side.

“What’s there to say?” Izzy answers, not unkindly. 

“We commit to ye th’ clay o’ Edward Teach.”

The two men start, not having noticed Buttons approach from behind. His voice rings out over the deck with an authority like a pronouncement from on high. The old seaman looks to the two of them for permission to continue. Stede inclines his head.

“He lived by th’ sword, and he died by it. May ye have more mercy on him than any man.”

“Have mercy on us all,” says Izzy, unexpectedly, his weary eyes searching out Stede’s. 

“Have mercy on us all,” Stede echoes.

The sliding rasp of sailcloth over wood is a sound that he carries with him until his last breath.

Stede’s first dim thought is, “Buttons could have fucking warned me.” Having a forgotten lifetime of memories unceremoniously upended  into one’s mind at the very least warrants a “heads up.” But then again, he now knows the man’s always had his feet planted on both sides of the veil—this sort of thing probably happens to him and that damned seagull every day.  

He’s not allowed the luxury of a solitary second thought. Instead, it’s a landslide of feelings, images and questions—his two lives, bookended by centuries and mirrored in distressing detail. The grief of before barges its way to the front, feeling as acute as the day it made a home in him, except now—right now, Edward Teach’s pulse beats firmly, impossibly, beneath his fingers. His hand, once cold and unyielding, is warm and holds his in a grip so tight it grinds his bones.

Time that was due…but interrupted.

He slowly opens his eyes. Ed’s head is resting on his own arm, flung across Stede’s knees, while their hands remain entwined tightly round the silk and one another. Stede can remember now how he looked in the moonlight in the fine, borrowed jacket when he’d carefully tucked the piece of cloth into his pocket. He also  knows what became of it—lost to the wind and the sea. The universe, in its infinite wisdom, has let him see through Ed’s eyes in addition to his own—his fall into the dark of his own mind, his despair and his anger. He hopes the reverse is true as well—that Ed’s seen his determination to find him, to make amends and to declare himself. He supposes he should thank the universe for sparing them the need for at least a few difficult conversations.

Ed’s whole body shudders as he pulls in a deep breath. Stede hesitates, but lays a gentle hand on his shoulder.

“So,” the man chokes out finally, without raising his head, “I’m…I’ve been—“

“Yes,” Stede answers, the old anguish rising thick in his throat, “For a very, very long time.”

He silently implores Ed to look at him, but for whatever reason, he doesn’t seem to be ready. And of the all the questions he imagines being asked, the next one catches him out.

“What did you do? After?”

Stede’s face creases in confusion.

“After?”

Ed finally raises his eyes, the weight of the past written there. The man’s mouth twists with the unspoken words, after me, but instead, he says,

“Did—did you have a good life?”

Stede would honestly rather focus on the one he’s living right now, thanks very much—the one where the man who he’s been bound to for over three centuries is finally, gloriously alive and sitting in his living room. But Ed’s still back there, in the past, where it all ended so badly, and if that’s what he wants to know, who is Stede to deny him? He steels himself.

“Well,” he begins softly, “I think I had about eleven or twelve more years after…well, after. Spent some of it at sea, but the age of piracy really was coming to an end, so when we felt we were really pushing our luck, we divided our profits fairly and chose our own paths. In fact, I brought a good deal of the crew along with me in a new venture. Can you guess what it was?”

Ed gives a sad smile. “An inn. It was an inn, wasn’t it?”

Stede tentatively tucks a wild strand of silver hair behind his ear.

“It was. A little one, with five rooms, just by the sea.”

“Was there a bell?”

A watery laugh escapes him and he nods toward the mantle.

“That one. Took it from Revenge when we sold her and it hung by the door of the King Edward’s Arms ever after.”

Ed’s lip trembles and he looks down at the silk between their hands.

“I never stopped loving you,” Stede whispers, the confession hanging between them, fragile as glass. “Not for all the rest of my days.”

A little, broken sound escapes Ed’s throat.  

“You saw.” His voice cracks, pleading. “You saw everything—all the shit I did. Fuck, how could you possibly—“

“You saw everything too,” Stede interrupts. “My cowardice, my selfishness? The ridiculous circumstances I found myself in all too often because of my pride? Bloody hell, Ed, you saw it right from the beginning and it didn’t bother you one bit. What makes you think I would feel any differently?”

Stede’s chest tightens when he feels a tug on the silk, wound between their fingers. The forces of retreat, pulling from Somewhere Else, are gathering in Ed’s bones.

“It could happen again. I could hurt you.”

“I did hurt you,” Stede exclaims, tightening his grip on the piece of cloth. “And maybe I can’t take responsibility for what you did with the hurt, but I can damn well sit with you in it and love you through it!”

Ed’s eyes snap up. They’re saucers in his head, bigger than a full moon. Stede didn’t know he had those words inside him, but their effect on the other man tells him he’s on the right track, so he seizes the opening.

“I don’t know why we’re here, Ed. I…I don’t know who gave us a second chance or why or how or anything. All I can tell you is that this world--this time, is just as difficult in some ways as the one we met in, but the one thing that hasn’t changed is…it’s easier with the right person by your side.”

“A co-captain,” whispers Ed.

Stede chokes out something between a laugh and a sob.

“Yes.” He looks down to the silk again and gives a gentle tug. It slips a little further out of the other man’s loosed fingers. “I think…I think know what to do with this now. You and I…I think we could learn how to handle it properly. Together, I mean. One should expect no less from a co-captain, after all.”

He takes the key from the lock and presses it into Ed’s other hand. The man stares at it for a moment before it’s curled tightly into his fist.

“It’s still yours, of course, but…please, let me keep it safe this time?”

Stede realizes there are tears streaming down his face and he’s probably the shade of the tie that’s still knotted round his neck, but he can’t bring himself to care when he feels the soft fabric give, slipping from Ed’s hand into his. He hardly dares breathe as the sheer cloth runs through his fingers like water into a fold he’d know with his eyes closed. Hands shaking, he places it back into the box, flips the lid closed and turns it toward Ed.

The other man turns the key over in his hands as if weighing up his options and a shiver of fear runs through Stede. He can’t simply un-know the things he knows any more than Ed can, but one thing he knows for sure is that he can’t bear to lose him again.

“Please just…just do this. I swear I don’t want you to trade one prison for another, though, so even if…”

The words stick in his throat because he doesn’t want to entertain the prospect, but it’s preferable to the alternative.

“—even if you decide that this—us—isn’t something you want, we’ll still share the same time, the same stars, the same earth beneath our feet. It’ll be enough for me. Please.”

The edges of Ed’s mouth tick up at the corners.

“I reckon this might be a bigger fucking adventure than China.”

Stede grins through his tears.

“I reckon you’re right.”

Ed slides the key into the lock.

“Then I reckon I’m all in.”

With a twist of his wrist, the tumblers slot back into place, locking the box once again.

The room stops its sway. The bell’s clear chime fades to echo. Ed falls forward as if some force he’s been pulling against has abruptly vanished—the door leading back to Somewhere Else seemingly shut for good. He looks up at Stede and barks out a jubilant laugh.

“All fucking in, mate.”

The box slides from Stede’s hands onto the couch and his arms fly around Ed’s neck. He buries his face in the salt-whipped mane of curls as the other man’s inked limbs slide around his waist, hands pressing hard into his back.

“Christ, I missed you,” he murmurs.

Ed pulls back, thumbs coming up to brush the wetness from under his eyes.

“You’ve only just fucking remembered me, you lunatic.”

Stede shakes his head.

“Some part of me knew. I’ve missed you since the minute I knew what it was like to miss something.”

He’s never seen the particular smile that breaks across Ed’s face at the words—it’s not one he remembers from before. The thought that it’s new makes him giddy.

Ed clears his throat.

“So, hey, when you said I’d been…you know...for a long time—how long are we talking?”

He’ll have to rip off the bandaid at some point.

“Well…about three hundred years, give or take.”

Ed makes an impressed face.

“Three hundred years. Like, three-zero-zero?”

Stede eyes him warily for any sign of an impending mental break.

“Afraid so.”

“Ah, don’t give it another thought, mate. Three hundred years is cool. Totally cool. More than cool—the coolest.”

Stede follows Ed’s eyes as he takes in the flat and the uncovered windows with the view of the city beyond. The other man swallows hard.

“Stede.”

“Yes?”

“As cool as it all is, there’s a lot of shit in my line of sight that is freaking me the fuck out right now, so I’m just gonna take a nap about it for a few.”

His eyes roll back in his head and Stede catches him before he can hit his head on the coffee table.

He confines Ed to the bedroom for the first week. Not for any indecent purposes, (although those thoughts definitely creep to the front of Stede’s thoughts on an hourly basis) but the world outside is too loudbrightfast for someone who’s never experienced it. Lucky for Stede, Ed is incredibly brave and intensely clever and takes being a Man Out of Time in his stride, asking smart, curious questions. Where he thinks a lesser mind might split at the seams with the new information, Ed responds with things like, “Cool!” or “Fucking mental!” or (in the case of the microwave) “Can I put my socks in there if my feet get cold?” Stede tries to find as many parallels between their lives before to give Ed context, but both of them find their memories of before quickly fading into soft focus, as if painted in watercolor. Whatever power had deigned to intercede on their behalf obviously intended that they live in the moment rather than weighed down by the past. Perhaps, someday soon, he thinks, they’ll just be Ed and Stede, never having been anything or anywhere else.

Several weeks later, when he thinks Ed might be ready to leave the flat, there’s only really one place he can think of to go for their first outing.

Any casual observer would notice nothing out of the ordinary about the handsome, middle-aged couple passing them on the pavement, but Ed’s grip on his hand is nothing short of crushing.

“Holding up alright?” Stede asks quietly, almost drowned out by the noise of the traffic on the street.

“Yep,” Ed replies tightly. “Feeling extra calm about all the monsters made out of metal hurtling by and the buildings being so tall they block out the sun.”

Despite the nerves, Stede notes the slightly hungry gleam in his eye at the passing cars and resolves never to let him get behind a wheel.

“You’re doing brilliantly,” he reassures him. “Just around the corner now.”

And he’ll be damned if his stomach doesn’t turn a gleeful somersault at the smile that breaks out on Ed’s face in the wake of his praise.

The door to the shop is unlocked, but when they step inside, Stede’s surprised to see the shelves mostly bare—boxes on boxes are stacked along the walls.

“Buttons?”

A loud squawk echoes from behind the counter, startling them both. An undoubtedly living seagull shifts from foot to orange foot on the glass counter, observing them through glittering, black eyes.

“I was hopin’ you two’d catch me before I was off.”

Buttons is standing in the doorway to the back room carrying a pile of odds and ends, one of which looks like a human skull.

“Hey, man,” Ed says, stepping forward, wary of the sharp beak of the bird on the counter. “Thought we’d stop by and say thanks for…for—“

He waves his hands around in lieu of the proper vocabulary with which to describe the man’s role in the whole matter. He looks to Stede expectantly.

“—for your…facilitation? Of this whole…thing?” Stede finishes, not feeling any more eloquent than Ed. “Wait, where exactly are you off to?”

A dreamy smile spreads over the bearded man’s face.

“Ah, the sea. She’s callin’ me back. ‘ve rented a wee place jus’ next tae her doon in St. Ives.”

Karl lets out a series of trills and short cries and the smile on Buttons’ face becomes a sly grin.

“An’ Karl here informs me there’s a sweet little fixer-upper goon fer a song jus’ along th’ coast at Carbis Bay. Might be jus’ th’ sort o’ place two ambitious fellas might look tae open a seaside inn.”

A great flapping of wings precedes the next screech out of the seagull and Button holds his finger up in the air.

“Oh, right! Thank ye, Karl, I would’ve forgot.”

The man sets down the pile of things on the counter and disappears into the back again.  Ed and Stede find themselves on the business end of stares from both the bird and the skull, whose hollow sockets and morbid grin give Ed an excuse to step closer to Stede and take hold of his hand again.

Stede grins at the anxious clutching of the other man’s fingers round his own, excitement vibrating beneath his skin.

“I did say last week I thought we should get out of London,” he says, eyebrows rising in a question.

“You think this is one last “here you go, don’t fuck it up this time” from the universe?” Ed asks.

“If it is, the universe clearly thinks we need Buttons as a chaperone, so it’s a bit of a mixed blessing.”

Ed snorts in amusement, but Karl bounces closer with an indignant squawk and Stede puts up a placating hand.

“Quite right, Karl. My apologies.”

“Right, here we are!” announces Buttons, emerging from the back with a heavy, rectangular piece of wood. “Ye don have tae take it, certainly, but migh’ come in handy.”

“Erm,” Stede begins, watching the man struggle with the heavy plank, “It’s very kind of you, Mr. Buttons, but if the building really is a fixer-upper, I imagine we can order the lumber from a professional—"

But the words dry up on his tongue when he sees what the man’s carrying.

It had been raining the day he hung the sign from the iron bracket he’d had the blacksmith make to hang over the door. He remembered the feeling of the rough wood on hands calloused by years of rope and sail as he maneuvered the chains onto waiting rings to take its weight. Standing on the ground once more, he’d surveyed his handiwork. The beautiful script, edged in gold brought tears to his eyes that he’d turned to the leaden sky to disguise. 

The sign of the King Edward’s Arms looks precisely as it did on the day he’d wept in the rain long ago on a far-off Caribbean shore.

Ed’s arm steals around his waist.

“Yeah,” he says thickly. “I reckon we’ll take it. Thanks, mate.”

“Aye,” Buttons says sagely. “I thought ye might.”

Chapter Text

Ed likes the word “boutique”. It sounds fancy as fuck.

When they met with contractors and bankers (“Wankers, more like,” he noted) during the process, it was a word Stede used a lot to describe what they wanted the business to look like.

“A boutique hotel and pub on the South Coast at Carbis Bay—offering stunning sea views with a warm, modern atmosphere.”

“It’s still an inn, right?” Ed had asked on more than one occasion.

“Of course, love,” Stede reassured, “Just need to use the right weasel words to keep things moving along smoothly.”

It goes without saying that Ed also likes the term “weasel words.”

The King Edward’s Arms is a short walk from St. Ives and about seven and a half miles from St. Michael’s Mount. They both love walking into town along the shore for a pasty from the Cornish Bakery, although eating it along the seafront is always an exercise in vigilance due to the local population of aggressive gulls. Ed swears there’s one that particularly has it out for them—watching intently from the awning of the post office through surprisingly intelligent eyes before launching its bid for their lunch.

Two years in, they find themselves on the private deck of their small flat at the top of the building at sundown. Summer’s beginning to mutter things about having places to go and people to see and Autumn’s been dropping increasing hints about its intention to stay a while, so they’re both wrapped against the chill in the sea air in two alpaca wool throw blankets they’ve bought from the local farmer’s market. They're nursing two very good rum cocktails, courtesy of the new bartender-- they're a bit formidable and slightly more obsessed with knives than one likes one’s employees to be, but they make a mean drink and are softened a bit by their partner—a jovial bloke who makes an excellent front of house manager. They’re proud of their whole team really, from the head chef (who also seems to have an unhealthy interest in knives that he shares with the bartender) to their events and marketing manager (who seems to have an unhealthy interest in everyone’s business as well as spending alone time with his boyfriend in various hotel linen cupboards)

Stede would never have guessed that this place would end up feeling like home more than anywhere he’d ever been in his whole life. Of course, a lot of that Is Ed. Ed always feels like home. 

They lean against the rail of the deck, watching the gentle lap of the waves at low tide as the sky gets ready to put on its evening wear. Ed’s at his back, arms around his waist, rocking them back and forth gently as if they were standing on a ship’s deck.

Stede realizes that Ed is humming as they sway—a waltz in three/three time.

“What’s that then, love?”

“Hmm?”

“The tune.”

Ed gives a little huff.

“Didn’t realize I was I was doing it. S’ been stuck in my head all week.”

“Where did you hear it?”

“That ceilidh band we had in last Saturday night. You know, with the weird guy from the charity shop on the recorder?”

Stede snorts.

“Mister…Buttons, is it? He is a bit of an odd fish. I didn’t get to hear much of them since I was dealing with that little horror in six who flushed his sister’s Peppa Pig plushie down the loo.”

“Hey,” Ed retorts, scratching his short beard against the side of Stede’s neck, “You owed me big time after I had to deal with the teacup poodle thing.”

Stede’s face contorts into a grimace.

“Fair enough. So, the song—what’s it called?”

Ed rests his chin on Stede’s shoulder.

“Dunno. They were playing a lot of these old, sad sea songs that kind of ran together, but this one kinda stuck.”

He goes back to humming, arms tightening around Stede’s middle as the pinks and oranges of the sky fade to purple. Presently, he begins singing quietly in his partner’s ear.

Forty years since you washed ashore,

Carried out of the sea.

On the mast of a man-o-war,

That once brought you to me. 

Stede’s breath hitches unexpectedly. Ed gives him a squeeze. 

“Yeah, caught me like that when I first heard it too. Dunno why, just got me right here, you know?” 

He taps Stede’s chest over his heart in explanation, but he needn’t have bothered—Stede feels the same piercing, beautiful melancholy at the simple tune and its words. 

Throw your overcoat over a chair

And lay all your lazy bones down 

May this night keep you here till tomorrow

He pulls Ed’s arm from around him to kiss his palm, just under the new gold band—the twin of which sits on his own left ring finger. He’s not used to it yet—it’s only been a week and a half since Ed had calmly walked them to the registry office on the way back from grocery shopping, (bags in tow) pulled the two bands from his pocket and told him in no uncertain terms that they’d waited ‘long enough.’ (And also, if they were quick, they could get a coffee on the way home before the Magnums melted.)

It was the easiest ‘yes’ of his life. And the Magnums were only slightly melty.

Swaying to the achingly sweet old melody in the twilight, neither of them are thinking about why it is they can’t quite agree on how it was they met (Ed says it was at a bus stop while Stede insists they were in line next to each other at a bakery) or how they found out about the opportunity to refurbish the property at Carbis Bay or where the bell mounted outside the door came from.

But as they stand there, a single, golden image drifts through both their minds—hazy, like a dream that only lingers until you try to grab hold of it. It’s another beach, another sunset, where something fragile began—something that barely had a chance to get its feet under it before it was clinging to a cliff face by its fingernails and then gasping out its last as it succumbed to the depths.

But something about that moment and the ones that came after left ripples big enough to create a wave, capable of breaking twice on the same shore.

Stede smiles over his shoulder at the impossible man that he knows will still be here tomorrow.

“Do you ever get the feeling—?” 

“All the time, love. All the time.”