Chapter Text
Stede Bonnet is a forty-something years old man who owns Barbie dolls.
Two Barbie dolls, specifically.
It’s a bit odd to explain, so he usually doesn’t, because that would entail baring a lot of himself to someone and most people’s eyes glaze over after two minutes if he dares speak about himself at any length. The thing is, these dolls are special. They represent a time in Stede’s life where he desperately needed an escape from his overbearing parents and had nowhere to go but his mind.
Long ago, Stede was obsessed with competitive gymnastics. So obsessed he wrote down statistics he found in his parents’ newspapers, his tiny but precise print filling notebook upon notebook. His mother had put him in gymnastics on a lark when he was in primary school for half a year, and he’d loved it, but she pulled him with no explanation. Still, he adored the sport. He loved watching the men and women’s teams on television whenever he could. They were amazing! He wished then, and still wishes, that he could have such control of his body. The athletes spun through the air like birds, made death-defying movements that took his breath away, demonstrated incredible flexibility and balance. He was fifteen at the height of his hyperfixation, but neither his family nor his peers were impressed so he learned to keep his interest quiet.
But then, the 1996 Summer Olympics happened—with the men’s team from New Zealand rumored as an underdog favorite, which sent the country into a bit of a frenzy. Of course, Stede could have told anyone that he knew it was coming; he’d been following the national team for years, after all. Anyone who followed New Zealand men’s amateur gymnastics knew Edward Teach was a star! Stede also predicted the national team’s final standing, and won himself quite a bit of money from his classmates.
The Barbies—a Ken variety, technically—were a special run for the Olympics. They have fully articulating limbs and flat feet, dressed in a conservative facsimile of the country’s team uniform: a wrist-to-ankle midnight blue leotard dappled with silver and red rhinestones across the shoulders, with five silver rings and the Olympic torch emblazoned across the chest, and bright white sneakers.
And they were modeled after the exceptionally handsome young captain of the team, Edward Teach.
Stede bought two from a local toy store at the time, blushing as he handed over his cash to the teller. Then he hid them, so his father wouldn’t see, and managed to forget about them for two decades. But then Mary brought over an old trunk that he hadn’t opened since university when she was dropping off their children at his new flat, a month after they finalized their divorce.
Louis and Alma tore open one of the boxes to play with the Edward Teach-inspired doll before Stede could say a word as he struggled with some overwhelming emotions bubbling to the surface of his mind. But he managed to keep the other preserved in its hot pink cardboard and plastic packaging, stored in a place of honor on a high bookshelf between a model ship and a small brass globe. Its unboxed twin tends to move around the flat, both Alma and Louis playing with it.
Stede often finds the Edward doll’s articulated limbs akimbo and his long dark hair an unkempt mess around its head.
He often had to remind himself to breathe—toys are meant to be played with, after all.
Just not the one still sealed in its box. It’s a collectible!
Mary never bought Barbies for their children, so the Edward doll is a curiosity. Both Louis and Alma take gymnastics classes at a local business near Mary’s house, so Stede supposes it’s all right for them to play with the Edward Barbie—it ties into their extracurricular education! He just wishes Alma would stop trying to jumpscare him by putting the doll in his bed or the refrigerator, legs and arms bent into a classic gymnastics position.
Sometimes, when the children are with their mother and Doug, he finds himself absently brushing the unboxed doll’s hair back into some sort of order, just because. Sometimes Stede moves the unboxed doll around his flat, too—just for fun!
“And this is why I can’t talk about you, Edward,” he sighs as he rinses the dishes from his late lunch. “I’m not sure a date would find you as charming as I do.”
The Barbie with deep chocolate brown eyes stares blankly at Stede from the potted fern in the window sill above his kitchen sink. He looks remarkably like the man he’s modeled after, or rather how he looked in 1996.
Edward Teach had done a press tour following his incredible final vault that secured the gold. Stede knew of Edward already, since he followed the national circuit in the years leading up to the Olympics; the young man had staggering talent, striking good looks, and a charismatic grace with which he carried himself. He was an artist as much as an athlete, and it showed in every competition he did and in the stats Stede carefully tracked in his notebooks.
But Edward was different looking than other gymnasts—lanky, Māori, tattooed, long-haired, even a few earrings that he had to take out for competition. Rumors followed him the moment he came of age and won his spot on the Olympic team that he was gay. It was a lot, then, and yet Edward ignored it all. Stede knows now he had a desperate crush on Edward Teach, though he couldn’t name it at the time. He watched Edward enough to see trends in his scores; judges awarded him fewer points than other men, and it was more than obvious why. He could see in the statistics detailed in his notebooks, too; he even once wrote an essay to their team coaches outlining the unfairness and provided his receipts, but never got a response. Surely Coach Hornigold and Hands knew. Stede was so angry for Edward and his teammates.
Still, the team made it to the Olympics. Stede could barely contain his excitement, watching on his father’s over-large television as Edward walked with the small knot of fellow Kiwis in the opening ceremony. And his heart swelled when—
His phone pings with a calendar reminder.
“Oh, bugger, Ed. I’ve got to pick up Alma and Louis. Watch Gerald for me, would you?”
Stede waves a vague goodbye to the gymnast Barbie and his beloved maidenhair fern, shaking his head at his silliness, then hurries out of the kitchen to find his coat.