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Ed had a love-hate relationship with the lighthouse. Mostly love, if he was being honest, but weeks like this reminded him why lighthouse keeper positions were so hard to fill.
His supply shipment had been delayed by the shit weather they were having—which was fine! It wasn’t like he was at risk of starving, but Ed had eaten through all the good stuff with only a few exceptions and man could not thrive on watered-down coffee and pasta. Even the night he’d had one hell of a crab boil thanks to the unexpectedly good haul in one of his traps wasn’t enough to keep Ed from dreaming of produce that wasn’t canned or frozen.
Ed stared out at the choppy, grey water from the relatively safety of his little cottage to prevent himself from being dive-bombed by Buttons in an attempt to get at the last of his salt and vinegar chips. After a week of being kept indoors, Ed was going stir-crazy. He was at the point where he was considering flinging himself into the sea just for something different to do, but he refrained.
He didn’t have enough detergent to be creating more laundry for himself.
There was a static crackle across the room and Ed rolled his eyes. Signal could be a bit spotty on the island, especially when the weather was shit, but Frenchie always insisted on using the old radio when communicating.
“Viceroy to Blackbeard, Viceroy to Blackbeard, do you copy?”
Ed abandoned his stand-off with Buttons through the window, chuckling at the sound of the deranged bird pecking the window in frustration. He picked up the receiver to reply.
“Frenchie, I’m literally the only person on this island. You don’t have to use call signs.”
“It’s protocol! Over.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Ed replied. “Please tell me you’re coming over with supplies this afternoon.”
He rested his head against the wall as he waited for Frenchie’s reply, crossing his fingers he might have something more than shelf-stable food for dinner.
“So long as the wind doesn’t kick up, Oluwande and I will be there as the tide goes out. Any last-minute requests? Over.”
Ed pumped his fist victoriously before responding. “I’ll do another look through the pantry and shoot you a text, okay?”
“Copy.”
Rolling his eyes, Ed relented to Frenchie’s insistence upon using radio etiquette. “Copy. Blackbeard over and out.”
“Viceroy, over and out.”
Ed hung the handset on the hook with a grin. A glance out the window showed Buttons was still staring, glaring at him with his beady little eyes and plotting how he was going to get his beak into Ed’s snacks, and neither that nor being reminded of his past was enough to deter his good mood.
“Piss off, mate,” Ed told the bird. He made a shooing motion with his hand. “It’s not happening. I know better than to bring food with me when I go check the dock.”
Hearing Frenchie use his call sign made Ed think back on the life he’d lived with that name, as it always did. Blackbeard was a remnant of his time as a captain of a cargo boat, starting when he developed a reputation after successfully fending off some idiotic modern pirate attack. Truly, Ed didn’t feel like it was any remarkable feat. He had been pissed off after a crossing filled with mishap after mishap, and he decided he’d rather try his luck at countermeasures rather than let some sorry fucks make off with the cargo that gave him so much trouble.
Word got out, and a few more pirate vessels got it into their heads to teach him a lesson. Well, Ed taught them a thing or two in the end (YES he got the joke, ‘Edward Teach’ blah blah blah) and even though he’d never lost a shipment, Ed quickly lost interest in being some kind of modern sea legend.
He turned the lens on him to good use and got more vocal about emissions and water pollution and all the shit he held his tongue on, forcing the higher-ups in the shipping industries to scramble to justify their procedures. He pushed for change and sustainability with the Blackbeard image because one, he believed in it, and two, he hoped it would maybe bother the powers that be enough they’d stop making him do press.
It didn’t.
Ed was soon fielding calls and emails and DMs from press reps left right and center, and that camera lens trained on his soon felt like a magnifying glass he could never escape. Ed was happy to push the environmentalism, but questions always seemed to circle around to him and those damn pirates. He’d all but leapt at the lighthouse keeper's posting, shoving the vessel's title into Izzy’s chest and fleeing to the remote corner of Maine’s east coast.
Now, his skin crawled with anticipation of fresh stock and a little human interaction, though Frenchie and Oluwande weren’t due for a few hours yet. Ed normally got his fill from the modest lighthouse tour groups that were ferried over by the same little boat that delivered his supplies but all tours had been canceled in light of the weather.
The tour, including the lighthouse and the entire island, barely took an hour. Most interactions he had were superficial at best, but Ed enjoyed them for what they were. Tourists tended to know who he was thanks to the locals not being able to shut up about Ed’s past, but few were brave enough to ask him about it to his face and that suited Ed just fine.
As soon as the tour group started to get on his nerves it was generally time for them to head back to the mainland anyway. After seeing them off at the dock, Ed was more than happy to retreat to the peace of his cottage. He liked the solitude, the change in pace from living on top of his crew, but too much of it made him feel batty.
You started to hear things, see things, that weren’t there. Wishful thinking or whatever, especially after extended times at sea. Now, the sounds Ed heard could be written off as that fuckhead seagull Buttons learning to imitate the sounds of human speech, but the sightings were less explainable. Flashes of warm orange-gold flickered at the edge of his vision, a bright spot of color in the dreary winter water.
Seals, Ed told himself. Walruses.
He took to carrying his flare gun with him, and his real one, preparing for any outcome. The flare gun had proven to be enough the time Ed had to square up with a particularly nosy-turned-aggressive male seal last year, but better safe than sorry.
Pushing all thoughts of rogue pinnipeds and potential hallucinations from his mind for the time being, Ed focused on preparing for Frenchie and Oluwande’s arrival. He felt like he was primping for a date, making sure the dock was up to snuff and nothing else had fallen into embarrassing disrepair after only a week of no one to answer to but himself and the mangy brown Maine Coon he’d inherited with his cottage. He cleared up the worst of the fallen branches (threw them in the water), tightened wiggly signs to signposts, and trekked his trash to the bin by the dock for the supply ship to take back.
Ed avoided looking at the water during his maintenance rounds, not wanting to feed into the stereotypical lighthouse keeper madness. He’d be right as rain (ha fucking ha) just as soon as he had some yummy snacks and a few minutes of conversation with the lads delivering them.
After his repairs, Ed took a slow circuit around the island to make a mental note of what would need to be done when the spate of bad weather finally passed them by. He pursed his lips and did his best to ignore the faint, human-sounding noises carried to him on the wind. Unlike times before, when the sounds would turn into Buttons screeching at him or simply stopping, the human-sounding noises started to become human words.
Ed stopped, hand on his gun as his ears strained to make sense of the words. It wouldn’t be the first time someone tried to use his little island as a waypoint for something illegal, but it had been a few years since Ed had to deal with it.
“Oh, bugger,” the voice said. “I’ve only managed to tangle it worse.”
Well, it didn’t sound like they were an adept criminal, so at least there was that.
Ed rested his hand on the handle of his gun and slowly made his way around the tall, swaying bulrush, trying to peer through the grassy strands to get a look at whoever was on the other side with little luck. His boots crunched on the shell gravel but the stranger’s steady stream of self-deprecating chatter covered the sound of his approaching footsteps—even if the chatter didn’t make much sense.
“Serves me right for being nosy. Now I’m going to be the first of our kind to—damn it! Oooh, there’s a hook in my fin Two! Two hooks in my fins!!”
Sighing, Ed took his hand off his gun. If the would-be criminal was tangled in a net, they weren't likely to give him much trouble. Ed might be able to scare the straight with a few growled words and a hand gripped in their shirt, especially if they knew who he was.
He crouched low, peering around the thick scrub to see the source of the glittering orange-gold that taunted him from the water.
“Holy shit,” Ed breathed,
The person—creature—froze. A man from the waist up and a fish from the waist down. The word pinged around in Ed’s mind, but even after seeing the evidence in front of him, Ed was hesitant to even think the word in his mind.
Maybe Izzy was right. Maybe Ed had finally lost it after living on this little island for so long.
The…thing… tangled up in a net littered with human detritus, slowly turned to face Ed. He was momentarily distracted by a rogue ray of sunlight as it washed over them for the briefest of moments and every freckle shined gold. Then he noticed Goldie’s strawberry blond curls framing a worried face, big hazel eyes looking at Ed with a mix of awe and terror. Their eyes welled with tears, freckled skin pebbled in goosebumps as a shudder of fear wracked through them.
“Oh no,” they whispered.
Seeing someone… something… with such a look of abject terror on their face made Ed want to make it go away. “Hey,” he said softly. “Don’t be afraid.” Goldie shook their head and did their best to lean away from Ed as he straightened from his crouched position and took a hesitant step forward. “It’s okay.”
“I–please don’t!” they bleated, bringing their hands up as if to ward off a blow.
“Easy,” Ed replied. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Goldie doesn't look as though they believe it, and Ed can’t really blame them—being a fish stuck in a net on land was a precarious situation in the best circumstances, even if only the bottom half of you was fish-like.
“I just wanted to look!” the cre—ugh, fine, the mermaid said. Merperson. Mercreature.
Ed nodded. “Look at what?”
Their cheeks flushed with color, complexion shifting under their freckled skin in a way that was much more complex than a simple blush. The pink color radiated a mesmerizing glow, hazel eyes reflecting the light in a way that reminded Ed of mother of pearl.
“Er, well,” Goldie stuttered. “I just—I wanted a better look at you.”
Ed blinked. Of all the answers he’d expected, that hadn’t been one of them. “A better look at me?”
Goldie sighed, their posture wilting like the sad basil plant Ed had tried to keep. Even their pearlescent webbed ears drooped in a way that was reminiscent of a chastised puppy. “I’m afraid so.” They frowned at him before going rigid with mortification. “Not for eating!”
“Well, thank God for that,” Ed drawled. “I’m afraid you’d have been disappointed. I’ve been living off instant ramen and mac and cheese for a week.”
“Oh did you not get the crabs?”
Ed reared back, shocked. “Crabs?”
“From that cage thing? I had it on good authority that humans used those to catch crustaceans for eating,” Goldie said, muttering to themselves toward the end. “Although, calling Lucius a ‘good authority’ might be stretching things, regardless of how many human lovers they’ve claimed to have.”
“No, sorry, I found the crabs,” Ed said, mind whirling a thousand different directions at once. “I thought the storm had just driven them in.”
Goldie brightened at that, smiling at Ed in a way that made his heart flutter in a very familiar, humiliating pattern. He smothered a groan, loudly berating himself in his own mind.
You have got to be fucking kidding me, he ranted internally. Do not fall for a gorgeous fish person! You’re probably hallucinating, Teach!
“Oh, good!” Goldie gushed. “I was worried. The little ship didn’t come like it usually does and I heard Lucius—”
“Hang on,” Ed interrupted. “Who is Lucius?”
They blushed again, picking at their nail beds with slightly elongated claws. “Er, he’s my friend. Part of my school. He has the most experience interacting with humans.”
“And by ‘interacting’, you mean…”
“Having sex with,” Goldie said.
Ed’s imagination supplied him with a whole lotta ways he and the stunning blond in front of him might ‘interact’ and he firmly pushed them from his mind until he could examine them in the privacy of his own cottage.
“Right,” Ed said, shaking his head. “Right. I think I hit my head.”
Goldie’s eyes went wide in alarm. “What? No! I don’t know human medicine!”
“You’ve got a human head,” Ed pointed out. “That bit’s probably the same.”
“Do I have a human head,” Goldie murmured to themself. They look to be in the midst of an existential crisis thanks to Ed’s words. “I’ve never thought about it like that.”
Ed took a slow step toward the fucking mermaid before stilling when their attention whipped back toward him with far more fear than Ed felt was necessary given that most of the tangential mythological lore he knew about mer-anythings was that they regularly ate plain ol’ men like him for breakfast.
For any meal, actually.
“How’d you get all tangled up in that?” Ed asked again, hoping more conversation set him (them?) at ease.
Inexplicably, Goldie blushed. Unlike a human, Goldie’s blush seemed to affect most of his body—or at least the fishy parts. Yeah, there was a nice little bloom of pink high on Goldie’s cheeks, but their ears and tail and even the webbing between their fingers went from bright, orange gold to pinky-peach.
“I—I just wanted to look at you. I’ve heard all about you,” Goldie admitted.
Ed was a taken aback. “You’ve heard of me?”
The pink color got deeper. “Oh. Um, yes. You—well. You’re quite the popular figure among my kind,” they continued.
“Me?” Ed asked, pointing to himself.
“You,” Goldie confirmed. “Blackbeard.”
Ed felt his heart drop into his stomach. Blackbeard. Even in the most remote little rock, when not a single tourist was to be found, he was still Blackbeard.
Goldie continued rambling whether or not they noticed Ed’s face fall at his words. “I can’t tell you how much better the water quality in the surrounding shipyards has become since you—”
“Wait,” Ed interrupted. “‘Water quality’?”
“Yes…,” Goldie said slowly. They were now looking at Ed as if he were the confusing one on their little length of rocky shore. “You…you’re an environmental activist? You’ve pushed for some of the most impactful change in the—”
“That’s why you know me?” Ed asked. “Not the pirates?”
Goldie’s fishy parts paled, the healthy (attractive) flush of color suddenly drowned out by a sickly wash of grey. “Pirates!?” he asked fearfully. “Are there still pirates? Truly? It’s not just a story to keep little guppies in bed?”
“Yeah, mate, there’s still pirates,” Ed replied, chuckling in disbelief. Goldie kept looking around as if a man with a hook for a head was going to leap from the ether and drag him off by the net tangled around his tail. “None around here but they’re fucking terrible now that they have machine guns and grenades and shit.”
“And you, what? Fought them?” Goldie demanded.
He looked aghast, but Ed couldn’t tell what he was most aghast about. “Yeah, mate. They were trying to take over my ship. Probably would have hurt my crew.”
“Is that why all those people come to see the island? To see you?” Goldie asked.
Ed sighed. “Yeah. Some of ‘em are definitely just coming here to gawk at me. Supposed to be a historic lighthouse tour but everyone wants to get a look at Blackbeard,” he grumbled. “More like Greybeard these days. Salt-and-pepper beard.”
“I think it’s very sophisticated,” Goldie offered, a guileless smile on his face. “Always been jealous of how humans could grow beards; ours just attract ocean life. Which sounds more enjoyable than it actually is, by the way. There’s nothing fun about waking up with a herd of seahorses in your beard.”
“Sounds brilliant. Better than bugs getting caught in it,” Ed replied. He took a careful step closer the Goldie’s tangled tail. “Are you gonna let me help you with that?”
Goldie’s lips pressed into a thin line. Ed could see he was torn between prioritizing safety and curiosity, and maybe rightfully so. He was desperate to get a hand on the shining scales of Goldie’s tail, to see if it felt as real as it looked and prove that this wasn’t some delusional bloke in an expensive silicone costume.
“I’m Ed,” he introduced, pointing to himself. “Think I’ve maybe been catching glimpses of you for a while.”
The sick, lifeless grey faded from his scales and went back to coral. “Well. That’s humiliating,” Goldie replied. “And, um, I’m Stede.”
“How’s that humiliating, Stede?” Ed asked, using some of the de-escalation tactics he’d learned in the hostile assault workshops the cargo company had insisted the crews take after the first pirate incident.
Use their name, if you can. Create a sense of a shared bond or purpose. Minimize the events and consequences. Sure, Stede was a mermaid and not a man with an assault rifle, but he was a wild card all the same. The wildest card, if Ed let himself think about it.
Stede made a sweeping gesture at the entire glorious length of himself. “Our continued survival depends on obscurity,” he explained. “And I’ve been being careless because I—”
“Because you what?” Ed prompted smugly. Descalation, shmescalation; Ed couldn’t help but poke the bear sometimes. Or mermaid. Mercreature. Whatever—it was nice to hear he was admired for something other than the image he outran.
“Because you fascinate me,” Stede said, voice soft.
Ed stared at Stede in disbelief. “You find me fascinating? All cooped up here with nothing to do and no one but Buttons to talk to most of the time?”
“Yes,” Stede replied. “You’re more suited to the sea than any human I’ve known. Seen. Any human I’ve seen. You look at it with the respect it deserves. You know how dangerous it can be and you still love it. You campaigned for it—but I’ve never seen you go in it. Why is that?”
“Hey, I thought I was the one asking questions here,” Ed chuckled self-consciously.
Stede’s head tilted in confusion. “Oh, is that a human custom? Only one person can ask questions at a time?”
“No, I was just teasing,” Ed admitted. “And I don’t go in because it’s choppy and cold as fuck right now and I don’t feel like getting hyperthermia. Or drowning.”
“Is it? I know humans can’t swim very well but this seems pretty tame,” Stede said, looking around at the grey waters riddled with white-capped waves.
Ed laughed. “Yeah, mate. People drown in weather tamer than this all the time. Now, can I help you with that net?”
“How?” Stede asked, frowning. He anxiously eyed the gun on Ed’s hip and wrung his claw-tipped fingers together as his color faded again.
“Well, not with this,” Ed assured him, gesturing to the holstered weapon. “This was in case the noise I heard over here was someone smuggling something dangerous.”
Stede’s face was endlessly animated, his brows shooting up toward his curling blond hair with comical speed. “Has that happened before?”
“Once or twice. It hasn’t happened again in a while, but that doesn’t mean it never will,” Ed explained. “Better safe than sorry.”
“I should have kept that in mind when I decided to snoop around a human’s lighthouse,” Stede said sulkily. He sighed before nodding in Ed’s direction. “Yes, please.”
Ed kept his approach slow and measured, kneeling at Stede’s side without making any sudden movements. He gently nudged Stede’s hand out of the way to get a better look at what he was working with and couldn’t help but notice the unique musculature that confirmed this was not a man in a fancy silicone flipper-suit.
Stede was slightly cooler to the touch than another human might be, but Ed wasn’t sure how long he’d been dangerously tangled up within the net. The scales were much smoother than any fish Ed had ever touched, almost like screenprinted silk, and though he didn’t necessarily trust all his senses at that point, Ed felt like the skin of his palms tingled where they rested against Stede’s tail.
Ed pushed the wonder from his mind and took a better look at the mess of tangled plastic underneath his had winced in sympathy. “This looks pretty bad, mate,” he said. “The way the lines are digging into your poor tail have to be painful.”
“They are,” Stede said, and Ed could finally hear the strain in his voice. “More than the hooks, if I’m being honest.”
There were indeed a number of treble hooks all over the net, but only two of them seemed to have made their way into the thin, fluttery-looking frilled bits. “Does that not hurt?”
“Not really. If they were on the thicker part they would. The translucent parts are kind of like hair, or nails in that way. They grow and shed, and it hurts the closer the fin gets to my tail,” Stede explained.
Regardless of whether it hurt or not, Ed wasn’t keen on pulling the hook back through the delicate-feeling fin. He took the pair of fishing pliers he kept on his belt and carefully snipped the metal above the fin, separating the book without having to work the barb back through Stede’s fin.
That’s when it hit him. Mermaid. Mermaid. Holy fucking shit, Ed was touching a mermaid. A real one, flesh and blood, right under his hands, Jesus Christ.
“So, is the myth about merpeople being able to change their tail into legs all just a story?” Ed asked, nodding to Stede’s entangled tail as his mind spun wildly.
“No, that’s true,” Stede confirmed. Ed shot him a look of suprise at his forthcoming and Stede just shrugged. “I’m quite literally at your mercy right now. Honestly feels like the best policy.”
Ed eyes blinked rapidly as he digested the new information. “Then why not change? Would it not make it a lot earlier to maneuver?”
“Not necessarily. the fins on my tail turn into the skin of my legs,” Stede explained. “I’m not sure it wouldn’t simply make it so the hooks were stuck in my skin—which is much less resilient, by the way. I’d be willing to bet his I changed into human form I’d have a lot more hooks to deal with than I do now.”
“Shit. Didn’t think of that,” Ed breathed. He took care of the second hook in Stede’s tail before turning his attention to the net. “Keep still now. I don’t want to get your tail on accident.”
Stede nodded and pulled his hands to his chest as he watched Ed work. The pliers cut through the netting with a series of sharp pops, and Ed could see the tension leaving Stede’s body with each snip—but the more net Ed cut away, the scales were exposed to Ed’s hands. The more scales exposed to Ed’s hands, the more he became convinced something about Stede’s tail was making his hands all tingly.
Ed laughed under his breath, feeling more than a little hysterical. “Can I ask you something weird?”
“Ed,” Stede said gently. “I can’t think of anything you could ask that could make this any weirder than it already is.”
“Fair enough. Does…is your tail meant to make my hands tingle?” he asked.
The color of Stede’s orange-gold tail flushed with red so brightly it turned coral and Ed worried he’d somehow injured him. “You can feel that?” Stede demanded.
“Uh, yeah. Pretty getting stronger all the time,” Ed replied, holding back laughter.
“I thought that was just a joke!” Stede said. Ed held off on prying in the hopes Stede elaborated, and his hopes were rewarded. “Lucius said that…that this happened with his lovers, but I thought he was kidding!”
Ed paused in his snipping to gauge whether or not Stede was fucking with him. “Does the tingling not happen with other merpeople?”
“I think we cancel each other out,” Stede said, embarrassed. “It certainly never felt like this when Nigel grabbed my—”
“Nigel? A mermaid named Nigel?”
Stede huffed. “Human names were quite trendy when my parent’s generation was spawning,” he said stiffly. “Though Nigel is better than Stede.”
“Did your parents mishear ‘Steve’?” Ed asked, laughing outright when Stede’s scowl confirmed Ed’s suspicion.
“ANYway. As I was saying, another merperson touching my tail has never felt… like this,” Stede said. “Some of the stories I’ve heard make so much more sense now.”
Ed had to know. “Like what?”
“Well, they took quite a lot of human lovers during the Golden Age of Sail but we’ve all been vehemently warned against it,” Stede explained. His voice was breathy and embarrassed but it was also kind of doing things for Ed in his present state. Goldie’s voice sounded as tingly as he made Ed’s hands feel, and it was an intoxicating combination. “All the advice boiled down to ‘It wasn’t worth the trouble of being sought after’, which leads me to believe that singing has indeed been a metaphor in our community all this time.”
“That’s tracks,” Ed snorted, firmly rooted right back in reality. No matter what, Ed knew he could always count on the human man to disappoint him. “Men’ll fuck anything. Not surprised human men probably harassed merpeople right into hiding just for the sake of getting their dick wet.”
Stede leaned back to get a better look at Ed. “Are you not a man?” he asked. “My apologies.”
“Straight men,” Ed clarified. “Straight cis men—or ones that are desperate to be perceived that way, but that’s getting way off topic. But yeah, I’m a bloke. Just not straight.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Stede admitted.
“Do merpeople not label themselves based on the gender they’re attracted to? Fucking fantastic of you, honestly. Causes a fuckload of mess up here, that does,” Ed explained wistfully.
Stede lips made a perfect little ‘o’ in understanding as he nodded along to Ed’s words. “I think I understand what you mean, but we don’t really have the kind of permanent sexual anatomy that humans do,” Stede explained, all blase-like. “It’s tails for us.”
“I guess it was a little hopeful of me to think any humanoid species could get away from label-based discrimination,” Ed remarked wryly. He was firmly staying away from the ‘permanent sexual anatomy’ thing until his mind could comprehend mermaids existing, let alone their potentially magical reproductive parts.
He snipped through the last of the tangled netting to an audible sigh of relief from Stede, carefully parting the cut halves so that no hooks caught on his tail. “Is it okay if I pick you up? I think it might be easier to lift you out of the mess so nothing else gets caught on your little frilly bits.”
“I quite like my frilly bits,” Stede replied petulantly.
“So do I mate, that’s why I don’t want ‘em to get all hooked!”
Stede’s posture deflated with a chagrined wince. “Sorry. Sensitive subject.”
“Don’t tell me frilly tail bits get you called a slur underwater,” Ed said, half-laughing at the outrageous notion. He motioned to pick Stede up, waiting until he got a nod of consent.
“I wouldn’t call it something so serious as a slur, but the tone they use when they describe my swimming as ‘flouncing’ isn’t nice,” Stede sighed.
Ed scoffed as he wrapped his arms around Stede’s back and under the bend of his tail in a modified bridal carry. He was halfway through the motion of straightening his spine when he heard a voice way too fucking close for comfort.
“Ed? Is that you?”
Fuck. Frenchie.
Ed had decided to remain silent and hoped Frenchie would give up the search in their direction quickly enough that he could get Stede in the water, but Stede yelped in surprise at the unexpected voice. Frenchie laughed and Ed heard his crunching footsteps pick up on the rocky terrain.
He was approaching far too quickly for Ed to get Stede into the water and for Stede to jet away, regardless of how fast a merperson could swim. Ed looked to Stede with apologies swimming in his eyes, hoping for some last-minute Hail Mary guidance.
Stede’s eyes were wide and frightened, his clawed fingertips digging into Ed’s skin with a pinch. Ed felt the tingle from Stede’s scales of flare impossibly bright for a moment before the brilliant splash of gold started to fade from his skin and melt inward until Ed’s arms were full of naked man instead of half-naked fish-man.
“Ed? Are you—OH!” Frenchie exclaimed.
Ed instinctively whirled toward the sound and Stede curled in on himself with a shiver. A lightbulb went off in his head, and not a moment too soon.
“What’s this, mate?” Frenchie questioned, eyes wide.
“Kayaker. Got caught up in some netting blown free with the storm,” Ed explained breathlessly.
He turned so that the cut-up netting was visible and Frenchie’s body language went from shock to concern, lurching forward before reconsidering and jumping back. “It’s freezing! I’ll get a head start on a bath,” he said, turning toward Ed’s cottage and taking off at a sprint.
Stede played the hypothermic kayaker a little too well for Ed’s tastes, and he wondered if turning to his human form could make it so. “I’m sorry,” Ed whispered. “It’s the only thing I could think of.”
“It was smart,” Stede whispered, his teeth actually chattering. “But now they’ll expect me to stay.”
“Will that be a problem for you? Like, will you get sick? Because you’re already shaking.”
Stede shook his head. “No. I shouldn’t. This h-happens sometimes,” he said, stammering through his shivers. “Changed too quickly. It c-can make us sick, but not like you’re thinking. D-don’t think I could manage another for a few hours if I’m honest. It’ll go away s-soon.”
“Well, I don’t know if you know about how humans deal with hypothermia, but we’re about to get real familiar with each other,” Ed told him, trying to deflect from his own lingering panic at the threat of Stede being discovered.
A weak smile twitched across Stede’s face. “When I said I wanted a c-closer look at Blackbeard, I n-never thought I’d get this far.”
“Get this close, you mean?”
“A-apparently,” Stede laughed softly.
Ed hurried to his cottage and prayed that Frenchie and Wee John wouldn’t insist on spending the night after this—or even worse, insisted he take Stede to the hospital. Buttons was perched on his roof and staring at him with those too-clever beady eyes as he swept into his cottage to the sound of water running.
“Are you good to sit with him?” Frenchie hollered.
Wee John’s head poked out of the kitchen door jamb. “Cause it might be less awkward for him to be naked with you since you untangled the poor fella.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Ed said, sweeping into the bathroom and sending Frenchie skittering out with a look. He kicked the door shut and then the toilet seat down so he could sit Stede’s naked form on the closed lid. “Are you gonna be okay in the tub? Not gonna spontaneously get your tail back?”
Stede shook his head, staring longingly at the water. “No. I think I’ll be stuck like this a while.”
Ed noticed Stede’s attention and wrinkled his nose at him in chagrin. “Don’t get your hopes up. Can’t put a theoretically hypothermic person in hot water; get the flood flowing to the wrong places.” Ed shot Stede a critical look as he pouted. “Are you sure you’re not actually cold?”
“I—I d-don’t know,” Stede admitted, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Never c-changed so fast before. Maybe I am.”
“Ever had tea before?” Ed asked. Stede shook his head, his eyes going as wide as the saucers Ed planned to serve tea on as he drew his shirt over his head. His cheeks flushed and Ed imagined the pretty coral of Stede’s tail from earlier. “You’ll love it. You like sweet or bitter more?”
“S-sweet,” Stede replied, though Ed smugly thought his stutter had nothing to do with the cold this time.
Ed nodded, hiding his smirk. “Good, because Wee John makes it sweeter than anyone else I know.
There was a knock on the door as if on cue, and Ed opened it a crack to see Wee John holding a tray laden with steam cups of tea and a cozy-covered pot. There were all manner of biscuits and treats on it that Ed had been desperate for since before the storm, and he recognized a few slices of banana bread that came from Wee John’s own kitchen.
“Thanks. mate,” Ed replied, nudging the door open enough to be able to take the tray.
Wee John nodded. “Might stay the night in the spare room just in case he needs to go to emergency.”
“Good plan,” Ed said, absolutely not thinking it was a good plan but having no other option to agree.
“I’ll get started on the stew I planned on makin’. Brought enough stuff to feed a small army since it had been so long since you had a nice dinner,” Wee John continued, absolutely taking the wind out of Ed’s sails and making him feel like the worst kind of cad. “Figured you could freeze the rest for if this ever happens again.”
Ed smiled. “Thanks, mate.”
Wee John just nodded and shut the door for him, pointedly not looking over to Stede’s nude form in the corner. Ed nudged over the stool from under the sink to set the stray on, not missing the way Stede eyed the spread in interest.
“In first,” Ed directed. “Then tea.”
Stede grumbled but allowed Ed to help him across the room. Ed very pointedly didn’t look below the waist but couldn’t help but note what a very delicious armful Stede made. All pleasant and sinful thoughts vanished from his head when Stede hissed as he slowly dipped his foot in the warm water.
“Okay, yeah, a lot colder than you’ve been letting on,” Ed declared.
“Is this not just what humans feel like?” Stede asked, curling his knees to his chest before wrapping his arms around his legs. “Is it not the cold season? I noticed my fat deposits increasing since I arrived here.”
And those ‘fat deposits’ feel amazing.
“We don’t shake and chatter unless we’re too cold. Now that I think about it, your skin’s all pink. I thought it was from the…” Ed trailed off and looked at the closed door and then back at Stede, voice lowered. “I thought it might be from changing, or like how your tail kept getting all pink, but it’s probably from being cold.”
Stede just nodded, shutting his eyes as he savored the warm water. Ed took advantage of his distraction and shed the rest of his clothes. He pushed the stool with the tray on it closer before murmuring a warning he was going to step into the tub behind Stede’s curled form.
Ed stretched his legs out on either side of Stede’s hips and urged him to lay back against Ed’s chest. “You’ll warm up in no time,” Ed told him. He carefully reached for a cup of tea and blew on it before taking an experimental sip. It was almost sweeter than ever he could stand, and the perfect temperature to drink, so he offered it to Stede with an encouraging hum.
The conversation died due to Ed’s concern, and he almost found himself forgetting the man in his tub was a mythical creature. He was thankful Stede’s shivering stopped in the time it took him to sip through his first-ever cup of tea, just long enough for Ed’s own pins and needles to cease prickling his extremities.
He didn’t notice their absence until he leaned forward to pour Stede another cuppa and the skin of his chest started to prickle. The strange tingling sensation from when Ed had touched Stede’s tail was back, a pleasant buzz of sensation each place their skin touched.
“It’s still happening. The tingling, I mean,” he said quietly.
Ed glanced down to find Stede asleep in front of him, noticing dark circles he hadn’t noticed there before. Whether it was because he was distracted by Stede having a literal fucking tail or the result of Stede’s quick transformation, Ed was hesitant to wake him.
He hadn’t asked how long Stede had been struggling in that net before Ed had found him, nor how the storm might affect merpeople. had he been fighting against the current or getting bashed about by waves before he’d gotten all tangled in that net?
Regardless, his reaction to the cold had been very real. Ed would wake him soon so they could get his story straight before dinner. He’d have to worry about sleeping arrangements and putting his supplies away and paperwork and blah blah blah. The life of a captain turned lighthouse keeper.
For now, Ed laid back and sank a little deeper into the water, taking Stede with him. Their skin hummed each place it touched in a way that made the ache in his knee stop complaining in a way Ed hadn’t managed on his own in quite some time. The sound of a gentle rain started against the roof and Ed sighed in contentment.
He was still the same sod that had felt like they were treading water this morning, looking for meaning in his life like an adrift sailor for a life preserver. But Ed thought about his easy dismissal of all the signs that had been there pointing to something miraculous on the horizon. He thought about the impossible discovery he’d made, the easy connection to someone who was more magic than man, and it made victory over the shadows he wrestled with feel much more attainable.
Ed felt a warmth settle in his chest that was only partially from the bath and the magic in Stede’s skin. Ed saw the lighthouse click on from the corner of his eye, light penetrating the closed blinds of the window over the tub, and smiled.
I’ll be my own damn lighthouse.