Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ed has not thought about this.

Maybe in the beginning he had. Dreamt up a thousand daydreams, lost himself in the endless possibilities. He’d dreamt up sunsets and sunrises and torrential downpours, crowded marketplaces, desolate beaches, smoke rising off the deck of warships to reveal a shape stepping out into the glittering sunlight like—

Like a stupid fucking fantasy, that’s what. Ed’s not a child.

He’d stopped thinking about it as soon as he heard that Stede Bonnet was dead. Definitely stopped. Tried to definitely stop. No point, was there?

Except Stede Bonnet isn’t dead, so it turns out that Ed’s just. Really fucking unprepared.

Doesn’t seem fair, that. Izzy’d say it’s entirely unprofessional. Men who are dead ought to stay dead. Anything less is just—whatever. Needlessly confusing.

So he’s confused. And he’s a little drunk, because he’s been a little drunk for the last month or however long, and he’s a little uncoordinated in the sun because fuck, it is bright, and he’s a lot angry, he’s so angry, he’s furious and he’s hanging onto it like a cat on a rope because if he’s not angry he’s going to be something else and he can’t be the something else right now with Stede Bonnet standing right there and looking at him with those eyes because if he lets himself be something else he’s going to crack up into a million tiny pieces like shattering into a raincloud which would be real fucking drag right now when he’s trying to be, like, cool.

He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.

“Ed,” Stede is saying, and Ed can’t fucking breathe.

He raises his sword again. Lunges, thrusts, jabs, Stede blocks them all. “Fuck you,” Ed says, “I didn’t ask for you to be alive.” Not true, actually, not that that was any of Stede’s business. “I didn’t ask for you to come back.” Also not true, still not Stede’s business. “I didn’t fucking ask for any of this, so why don’t you just. fuck. off!”

Their swords clash together, then ring as they slide off one another. Stede lets Ed lead him around the deck, and Ed can tell Stede’s letting him and fuck him, honestly, for letting him. He’s not even fighting back—he’s just blocking Ed from getting a cut in.

Ed’s not really trying to get a cut in.

He sees his openings here and there. Stede’s improved, but not by that much. He sees the moments he could carve Stede to bits and he can’t bring himself to swing his blade into a single one of them. The something else under his ribs, the thing that isn’t anger, aches too much at the thought of Stede’s blood spilled across the deck.

“I have no intention of fucking off,” Stede begins, dodging a jab.

“Well, that’s pretty fucking rude, because this is my ship—”

“It’s my ship—

“No, because you abandoned it,” Ed snaps, and by this point he’s mostly just whacking the blade around in the air. “And that’s not even stealing, that’s generally accepted maritime law, the man who finds the abandoned vessel gets to keep the abandoned vessel and even if it were, I’m a bloody pirate, mate—”

“I didn’t abandon it! In case you forgot, I was rather tied up with the English—”

Ed growls, hangs onto his anger like a lifeline, swings his blade against Stede’s and steps in so that they lock together, steel shivering between them. He bares all his teeth.

“You abandoned it when you fucked off instead of showing up that night on the dock.”

Stede falters. “Oh, Ed.”

Because Stede can hear it, can’t he? The something else that’s choking Ed from the inside out, the way it changes his words into an accusation, the way it changes you abandoned it into you abandoned me. He can see it in the horrible wetness in Ed’s eyes, which is just because it’s so fucking bright out here and not for any other reason, and he can feel it in the way Ed swings his sword again and again and isn’t really trying to hurt Stede at all.

Stede has always been able to see something else in Ed.

Something almost like the truth.

“Fuck,” Ed says, he’s fucking choking. “Fuck.”

The next slash of his arm goes too wide, and Stede doesn’t block it—he ducks instead. The force of the unchecked swing half-drags Ed after it, leaving him stumbling. He can’t breathe and he can’t see and the crew is watching like this is a tragedy instead of what it is, which is just two idiots too bound up in something else to have a proper go at killing one another and then Stede finally takes his chance to bear Ed down to the deck, flat on his back, sword skittering away.

Stede peers down at him. “Do you yield?”

Ed glares. Tries to, anyway. “I’d rather you just run me through.”

A grimace crosses Stede’s face, displeased. Good. He ought to be fucking displeased. He can be fucking displeased all the way off Ed’s fucking ship, if he doesn’t like it, but if he wants to stay he’ll have to finish the job.

The blade twirls in Stede’s hand, ridiculously elaborate, and then he draws his arm back like he means to shove that blade right through Ed’s stomach—

The strike never lands.

Instead the sword drives down into the deck next to Ed’s body, a full five inches away, well of out danger. Ed’s breath shakes out of him. He can’t decide if he’s disappointed or something else and he decides angry really is the safest bet right now.

“You can’t fucking yield.”

“I can if I like.”

“You can’t, that’s not how it works! I’m flat on the floor, look at me!”

Stede huffs. “You could get up right now and go after your sword if you wanted,” he points out. “It’s not my fault if you’re very bad at trying to win a fight.”

“No,” Ed insists, teeth clenched. “No, you won, you fucking won, you beat me, I—” am the world’s biggest idiot, Ed realises, because that’s exactly what Stede wanted, isn’t it. He never said he was yielding; he was baiting Ed to it.

“Well,” Stede says, “if you insist.”

Jesus fuck, and Ed’s walked right into it like a cow led to slaughter, if slaughter is wearing a pink silk jacket over a rough linen shirt and looking down at the cow with an expression most probably identifiable as radiantly self-satisfied.

He’s yielded. He heaves an appropriately dramatic sigh and falls back, hitting his head on the deck, and then hitting his head one more time just for good measure. He’s fucking yielded.

“Yeah, fine,” Ed grits out. “I fucking insist.”

And Stede—Stede grins, blinding. “Very well then,” he says brightly. “I accept your forfeit.”

Fuck.

After a moment of not feeling sorry for himself because he’s Blackbeard and he’s never sorry for anything, Ed sits up. Rubs the back of his head. Glances over at the crew, who are now nudging each other with significant-looking elbows. Frenchie says, loudly, “Oh, mate, would you look at that,” and points to fuck-all nothing off in the water behind them; they all turn, looking relieved to have something else to watch for a moment.

Izzy hesitates, opening his mouth to protest, but only for as long as it takes for Jim to grab him by the shoulder and manhandle him around to face the sea.

Ed wishes he were facing the sea too.

The sun is still too bright in this direction, and there’s still too much salt in the air or something, stinging at Ed’s eyes. Stede is still there, alive and not dead, here and not gone, smiling like the cat that got the cream and also a half-dozen rubies while he was at it and the something else rises up in Ed’s chest and it fucking hurts because it’s been fucking hurting this whole time, and that’s what it really is, isn’t it, that something else, it’s just hurt, this horrible, spine-deep, gut-wrenching, soul-obliterating fucking hurt that’s been tearing Ed apart for weeks and weeks and here’s Stede, looking like it hasn’t mattered to him at all, and—

Ed sniffs, long and ugly, and wipes a forearm across his face. He’s sweating. It’s definitely due to the sweating.

“You won,” he says again, flatly. He doesn’t quite look at Stede; instead he looks somewhere over his left shoulder. And then over his right shoulder, when Stede tries to sway into his gaze, and then back over the left again. “We agreed the winner would name their prize, so name it.”

He’d intended to name his prize as ‘Stede Bonnet Fucks Off Forever Into Whatever Circle of Hell He Spawned From, Thanks Ever So,’ but somehow he doubts Stede had the same plan in mind.

Stede thinks. He hmms. He channels Shakespeare right there on the deck and runs a three-act play using only his eyebrows over the space of about thirty seconds, and then he says, “Can I kiss you?”

Ed stares at him. “That’s your fucking prize? A kiss?”

“Only if you allow it.”

“Not really how winning a prize works, mate.”

“It’s my prize,” Stede says, like he’s being the reasonable one here. “I’ll win it however I like. Can I?”

“No,” Ed says, thready. He does not think of a beach at sunset. He does not think about skin under his hand, a soft breath against his cheek, a clumsy, gentle pressure against his mouth, a taste, an impression, a promise, a hope. He doesn’t think about any of that and he doesn’t breathe either and honestly, he’s going to pass out if this keeps up. “No, you can’t fucking kiss me.”

Stede nods as if he expected this.

“All right. Then I want to join your crew.” He pauses. “With my crew. I’ll be a deckhand, even. And with nobody left marooned or left behind or thrown overboard or starved or—”

“All right, all right, I fucking get it.” Ed slumps back down to the deck, hits his head again, just to make doubly, triply sure that he’s not dreaming, but he doesn’t seem to be. It’s just a deeply, deeply disturbing reality, turns out. “Fine. You lot can join my fucking crew.”

Stede beams, and offers Ed a hand to help him up.

Ed doesn’t take it.

Chapter Text

The problem, obviously, with allowing Stede & Co. to join his crew and stay on his ship is that then Stede & Co. have joined his crew and stayed on his fucking ship. Ed really should’ve thought that through.

Some of them he can deal with. Wee John, for instance. Not the brightest star in the sky but he’s good with explosives and he’s intimidatingly tall: so, fine. Ed can use that. Roach is another one. Ed would never say it to his face, or at least, he wouldn’t now because he doesn’t fancy being poisoned, but christ, he’s missed Roach. Ivan simply does not have his skill in the kitchen.

Oluwande he could give or take. Oluwande’s a nice guy, which is annoying because Ed would really like to be not-a-nice-guy right now and Oluwande’s making him look bad in comparison. He’s also so irritating around Jim—fluttering eyelashes, simpering little smiles, worrying when they aren’t together. Jesus, Ed spends half his time thinking about tossing Oluwande in the brig just to make it stop.

Not worth it though. Jim’ll just break him out.

He wonders if they used to be as annoying as all that. Ed and—

Anyway.

Things have largely gone back to normal, so there’s no use fussing about it now. Well, not normal normal, nothing about this crew is fucking normal, but normal for them. The kind of normal a bloke might feel about Bedlam when you wake up there every day for months on end.

So it’s normal, or normal enough, but it’s still different.

Stede is different.

Which is a stupid thing to think because of course Stede is different. He’s a deckhand now, not a captain, and he’s not as bloody bad at swabbing decks as he used to be. He only has the one silk jacket and he doesn’t stand about drinking cups of tea out of fine china. He works with the crew and he sleeps on deck with the crew and he sings and laughs and stands with the crew and he talks to Ed hardly at all, not that Ed’s avoiding him, obviously, thanks, he’s just—busy.

But Stede is there. He’s there, in the rigging and the mess and on the stairs, he’s there with his curls and his smirk and his eyes that seem to follow Ed around the ship sometimes. Oftentimes. All the time, actually. He’s there even though Ed’s more or less loaded Stede off onto Izzy so they could, he didn’t know, annoy each other to death, because even though he’d told Izzy that Stede’s just another member of the crew, Stede isn’t just another member of the crew, and Ed might as well have strung himself up and keelhauled himself to Hell and back if he’d thought it was actually going to work like that.

Ed realises this very slowly, until he suddenly realises it all at once, walking into the mess one night and seeing Stede laugh over the dinner table. He stops in the doorway, watching Stede tilt his head back, watching the lines of his face, his eyes, and says, “Fuck, I’m an idiot.”

“Aye, Captain,” a voice says.

And never mind whether Ed has got a bit used to talking to himself these days because that’s none of anybody’s business and besides, not why Ed startles so badly he nearly falls right over. That is because Buttons has appeared at his elbow like a ghost, wide-eyed and strange as ever, and anybody would be unnerved by that.

“The fuck did you just call me?” Ed says, trying to regain his composure.

Buttons blinks, unperturbed. “Not anything, Captain. Only agreeing. Mayhap it’s your own self you ought to reprimand.”

Ed remembers why they didn’t keep Buttons even though he’s a bird guy and Ed’s always wanted a bird guy: he’s half-riddles and all bonkers. Not so much a few sandwiches short of a picnic as he’s just packed a totally different meal in the hamper.

There’s teeth thing too, now that he remembers them.

“You think I ought to reprimand myself?”

“If you like,” Buttons says, noncommittally. “Personally I think you ought to give yourself a break from all the reprimands, really, but you’re the Captain. Up to you.”

That’s fucking nonsense. He’s not reprimanding himself, that’s—that’s stupid. He says so.

Buttons only shrugs. “Can only report what I see, Captain. I see you standing here and him sitting over there—” he nods significantly at the table, which in theory could mean anyone sitting around it, actually, he’s making a pretty presumptuous assumption. That Ed knows he means Stede is entirely irrelevant. “And seems to me like you’re punishing the both of ye.”

Stede doesn’t look very punished. Instead he’s halfway though a plate of stewed meat and veg and hardtack—and all right, he should’ve kept Roach all along, so sue him—and laughing brightly at something Lucius has said.

“Right,” Ed says dryly. “He looks real devastated about it, let me tell you.”

And then he feels like a dick, because he doesn’t actually want Stede to look devastated about anything and he definitely doesn’t want Stede to actually be devastated either which way, but, you know. He could maybe be a little devastated.

Not that Ed is. Obviously.

But come on, you know? If Ed has to be haunted by the fucking ghost of Stede fucking Bonnet come back to life, Stede could at least have the good grace to look like he’s having a bad day now and then.

Buttons turns those unnerving eyes on Ed and says, dead serious, “His heart yearns for ye.”

Stede is now having a miniature knife fight with Jim, armed with a fucking bread knife, and losing quite badly. He’ll be nicked up and down all his fingers at this rate. If he’s yearning for anything, it’ll be a bandage.

Doesn’t matter. Ed’s pissed about being haunted by this not-a-ghost Stede Bonnet, but he’s not yearning. Sounds like a bad gastrointestinal disease, if he’s honest, and anyway: “He’s the one who left, Buttons.”

“Don’t know about that,” Buttons says, in the neutral, benign way someone delivers a real punch to the fucking throat. “Seems to me I can see him sitting right there, can’t I?”

New rule, Ed thinks: no taking advice from the bird guy.

He finally takes his seat at the table, down on the far end. There’s enough room for two people between him and the Swede, who still isn’t talking to Ed on account of almost having been eaten while they were marooned, despite everyone agreeing that they’d really only been marooned for about twelve fucking hours. The Swede still curls a protective hand around his plate and turns further away.

Fine. Ed doesn’t want to talk to him either.

Oluwande and Frenchie are arm-wrestling over something that might be a pack of mint leaves and might be the sort of leaf that leaves you flat on your back for ten hours tasting fucking colours, Ed doesn’t ask. Izzy’s hovering in the corner looking like he’s daydreaming gruesome and painful deaths for the whole lot of them; he seems awfully pleased with the thought of it.

Once Jim is victorious with the knives, Stede starts recounting, yet again, his miraculous escape from death and Barbados while Roach wraps his fingers. Ed wonders, not for the first or the second or the hundredth or, probably, the millionth time, about the part of the story Stede doesn’t tell: the days between Ed leaving and Stede dying.

Ed died too, during those days.

All right, whatever, that’s a little dramatic, it’s not like anyone can hear Ed thinking it.

From down the table, Stede meets his eyes, almost as if he can.

Ed looks away quick, but there must not be a god in residence on the Revenge right now because after another moment or two, he hears Stede make his excuses, clapping Lucius on the shoulder as he climbs out of his spot, bending to whisper back in his ear a little—Ed’s not jealous, why the fuck would he be jealous—before he slips into the seat across from Ed and says, “Hello.”

Hello. Like it’s that easy. Like he’s still all prim and perfect, like his cheeks gone red with sun and windburn ought to make Ed’s mouth go dry. Ed’s mouth can go dry all on its own, thanks much.

“Hi,” Ed grunts.

Great. Ed had been worried he’d say something suave and dashing and aloof the next time he had to speak to Stede. Good thing he’s got that out of the way. Dodged it. Fuck.

Stede smiles, which is terrible because it’s the sort of smile he smiled in the moonlight, once, folding a scrap of red silk, and it makes Ed feel like his stomach is tucked away in a tureen somewhere. He looks at Ed. Ed looks at him. They both look away, then back at the same time, and it’s so awkward Ed spends the next few seconds seriously considering stabbing himself just to cut the tension.

“Look, I—”

“Ed, I have to—”

They both stop, exchange small, chagrined smiles. Ed thinks maybe stabbing isn’t painful enough to rise above whatever this level of painful is. “It’s fine, what were you—”

“You were say—”

They stop again. Ed puts down his fork so he doesn’t put it through his eyeball. “Go on, then.”

“Oh, erm, not at all, Captain,” Stede baulks. “You first—”

“Stede,” Ed says, sighing hard. “Just fucking say whatever you came over here to say.”

Stede sends a rather panicked look down the table to where Lucius and perhaps Oluwande and sure, why the hell not, it turns out, when Ed sneaks a glance, Frenchie and Wee John are all watching with encouraging grins. He visibly steels himself, straightening his spine.

“I just wanted to say. Now that we aren’t, erm, fighting one another. Swords and all. Not that I mind sword-fighting with you, actually, I’d like to do it again sometime, although maybe with a little less—well, anyway. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

Sure, Ed thinks. Normal. Just another day in fucking Bedlam. He picks up his fork again.

“You said that,” he answers, spearing a bit of potato. Possibly potato. Might be a rutabaga. “During the sword-fighting.”

“Ah, yes, I did. But under the circumstances I thought it might be good to renew the sentiment now that there are fewer weapons.”

Definitely rutabaga. Definitely not a heart attack happening under Ed’s ribs. There’s nothing happening under there. There’s nothing down there at all. “All right.”

Stede blinks. “All right.”

“Yeah. All right.” Ed shrugs. “S’what you want me to say, isn’t it? That it’s all right? Sure, Stede. It’s all right.”

It’s not, but it’s not like Ed can just say that. He’s being cool about it. Super cool. Ice cold. Got to be, with the crew all sat here pretending like they aren’t listening in. They’re definitely listening in. Frenchie looks like he’s even taking notes.

But Stede doesn’t laugh or smile or fuck off the way Ed thought he would, having now received what he wanted. Instead he looks very pained, possibly more pained even than Ed felt, which is pretty impressive, except that it reminds Ed that he really didn’t actually want Stede to be in any kind of pain.

The whole thing is a bit of a bummer. Ed wishes it was over.

“Look,” Stede says, leaning in over the table. “I know you’re angry, and you’re right to be—”

“Damn right I am,” Ed snaps, and there goes the good fucking ship Cool, Calm and Composed, anchors away and all.

“I know,” Stede says.

“I know you know,” Ed tells him.

“Then we’re all on the same page of knowing. Good. I just wanted to—Ed, it was just, I’d ruined everything, ruined my family, ruined you, and I wasn’t—I know running off seemed like a good idea at the time, the only idea, really, but—but there were things—things I had to take care of—”

Ruined you. Oh, that’s nice. Ed understands that part at least. He feels like a ruin. Glad to know he looks like one too. He snorts instead of panicking about it. “You think an awful lot of yourself, don’t you?”

“I, well.” Stede frowns. “I mean, bit warranted in this case, isn’t it? You wouldn’t have been captured and sent off to the privateering academy if it weren’t for me.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I just didn’t want to hang out with fucking Captain Hands.”

They both turn to glance at Izzy, who’s lurking in the corner, making a little sawing motion with his hand like he’s pretending to saw Stede’s head clean off.

“I wouldn’t blame you,” Stede says slowly. “But then after I, well—”

“Didn’t fucking show up?”

“Yes. That. I suppose I don’t know for certain but it does seem like the crew rather got the impression that everything that happened after that was at least somewhat related—”

“They’re idiots. Mercury was in retrograde.”

Stede ignores him; Ed starts to wonder if he should really just stab the both of them. “And then there was that rather dramatic and somewhat emotional sword fight when I finally found you. I know that to assume makes an ass of you and me, but I really don’t think I’d be too far off in thinking that perhaps my leaving had some unintended consequence.”

Dramatic and somewhat emotional. Ed’s never been dramatic or even like, a little bit emotional a day in his life.

To prove this, he takes a bite of what is definitely rutabaga and shrugs. “Fine. I accept your apology, whatever, mate. I don’t give a fuck.”

Stede gives him a Look. “I think you do.”

“I don’t,” Ed lies, glaring. The lie is also probably pretty glaring but, shit, what else is he going to say. “Just goes to show that you don’t know shit about me.”

Stede sits back and looks at Ed with those big huge puppy dog eyes, which is worse than arguing with him, and sighs like Ed’s breaking his heart. Pretty rich of him. Ed’s kind of got the monopoly on heartbreak here.

Fuck. Hell.

He swallows against the rutabaga, which must have got stuck in his throat. Ed hates rutabaga, and also Stede Bonnet, and also this conversation.

“Maybe I don’t,” Stede says quietly. “But maybe I do, a little.” He pauses, and then adds, because he’s a horror and a wretch, “I missed you.”

And that’s just really unfair, you know? That’s really fucking unfair, because Ed has missed Stede so bad he thought he was going to die with the missing of him, like he was just going to bleed out or throw himself overboard or, fuck, throw someone else overboard, he guesses. It’s unfair because Ed’s been missing him this whole time, even though he’s here now, and he misses the way things used to be but they’re different now and they’re never going to get that back and it’s his fault as much as anybody’s and he can’t even bring himself to apologise for it because what then, eh, what will he be then, when he’s sitting here like a puppet with nothing but regrets and apologies for strings while Stede laughs and plays games and wears his one silk jacket and sleeps on the deck like Ed’s not fifty feet away missing him like a ship that can see a lighthouse but can’t get to shore, and—

“Christ, Stede, what do you fucking want out of all this?” Ed’s throat is tight, his face hot, he aches down to his teeth. “You come back here, and you say all this stuff and act like it’s just like, all right for you, that everything’s different, except then you say that and just—just—just tell me what you fucking want.”

Stede’s face is all crumpled up. He looks like he has no idea what he wants. He looks, maybe, like he wants so much he can’t decide what to say, or maybe that he just doesn’t have the guts to ask for it.

He looks at Ed for a long, long time, a pause made a trillion times worse by the fact that they’re still in the mess and now the crew isn’t even pretending not to be listening in, and then Stede says, “Can I kiss you?”

Ed puts his face in his hands, digs the heel of his palm into his eyes. “Fuck, Stede.”

Stede makes a noise in the back of his throat, like he agrees, like he understands. “You did ask.”

“If I say yes, will you fuck off and leave me alone again?”

“No,” Stede says, and he says it softly but also helplessly, a vow he can’t break. “I’ll never leave you alone again. Not unless you ask me to.” He hesitates. “Are you asking me to?”

Yes. No. Promise me you won’t and never will; promise me you’re already on your way out.

For having made such a bold demand, tell me what you want, Ed has no idea what he wants for himself. He wants to want to say yes, to watch Stede leave and to know that it’s over; he wants to say no, and to give Stede the kiss he’s been asking for, to tell Stede everything he can’t say out loud in that secret language of breath and touch.

No. Yes. Whichever answer won’t hurt.

Whichever answer will make him brave.

In the end he doesn’t answer at all. He holds his hands over his eyes until he can breathe again without choking on it, and then he takes his plate, tells Roach never to use a rutabaga again, and goes—alone—to bed.

Chapter Text

Ed gets the whole story eventually.

The crew, in fact, seems really fucking determined that he get the whole story.

Lucius, annoyingly unbothered by being shoved off the ship, corners Ed no less than three separate times, spouting little tidbits from Stede’s fucking journals. Ed threatens him once or twice, just ‘cause it seems like the done thing, but Lucius doesn’t even blink before reading out a line or two in Stede’s unflinching words, which all seem specifically designed to make Ed feel like a fucking twat.

Bit personal to be sharing, actually, these journal entries. Maybe somebody should tell Stede.

Not Ed, obviously, but you know. Somebody.

Oluwande has had a little more grace about it, but that ends up being worse, because he treats the information he hands off like it’s something fucking precious. His stories tended to start more like, “Funny thing about Stede, really—” and end with something tragic.

Admiral Badminton in the barracks with drink on his breath and a gun in his hands. A hole in his head. The panic, and the guilt, and the long walk in the woods—the self-imposed punishment for having dared. The lonely childhood that had turned into a lonely marriage and a lonely fatherhood and finally, a certainty that nothing he had ever done had ever mattered—and the reality, when he’d gone home, that the best thing he’d ever done for his family was to leave them.

Yeah, it’s a real fucking comedy, this one.

“He told you that?” Ed frowns, looking at Oluwande.

“Not as such,” Oluwande admits. “But he’s not big on himself, if you really pay attention. Talks a lot, never really says anything.”

Ed’s been fucking paying attention, but he hadn’t—there hadn’t—well, that’s not true, is it, there’d been moments, he supposes where Stede had seemed a little reticent, where he’d withdrawn a little, but he’d always seemed to let things go so easily. To smile and nod and just—

Change the subject.

Blackbeard doesn’t miss things that are right in front of him.

But maybe—maybe some things can look like ducks and walk like ducks and sound like ducks and yet not, in fact, be fucking ducks.

Like how something can look like jealousy—a grim smile and a disappearing act midway through the night when Ed was winning with those posh fucks—but turn out to be wariness. Or like how going back to the ship and heading to bed early might look like judgmental party-pooping, but really be an act of self-preservation against a top-notch fucking arsehole of the first order who’d apparently pissed on Stede’s shoes and jabbed a thumb into every bruising insecurity Ed couldn’t fucking see.

Maybe what had looked like unrealistic dreaming about an escape and a protest about distance had really just been—terror.

Just breath-stealing, sweat-drenching, pants-shitting terror, and Ed had been too busy falling in love with the veneer of boldness and flamboyance and recklessness.

Well, isn’t that peachy.

Maybe if Stede had talked it through as a fucking crew, Ed would’ve known some of that.

“Even the whole faking his death thing,” Oluwande goes on. “Sure, it kept the British off his trail for a bit, but it was for them, really. His family. Reassurance that there’d never be a question of him coming back again. Gave them all his money and got out of their lives for good.”

He pauses, looking Ed over, and then says, “Do you know,” and it’s the tone of voice he uses when he’s going to say something casually devastating that will make Ed want to crawl back into the auxiliary closet and have a cry for an hour or two, “when the first guy died, I asked Stede. I was trying to shock him, I guess, but I asked, do you want to live, and he said, I don’t know.”

Ed remembers Stede in front of the English firing line, in that fucking white blindfold, hands tied, voice shaking. Then, he’d been so clear: I don’t want to die. “Wonder what changed.”

Oluwande stares, brows raised like he can’t believe Ed is so fucking thick. “Jesus, it’s like having two brick walls on board,” he says, shaking his head before he wanders away.

Pretty fucking rude, but Ed lets him go. Leans on the railing, searches the sunshine for familiar lines of Stede’s body, up in the rigging. Wonders what a man like Stede says a thing like that for.

Do you want to live?

Ed knows what it’s like to not know the answer to that question. Terrible fucking question, too, when you don’t know. He’d not known the answer for, shit, it must have been years.

But he knows what changed for him.

It doesn’t take long to find Stede. He and his crew have been on board a month now, and Ed’s getting used to the way they divvy up the work. The crew sings a shanty, lowering the sails in time with it, and Ed spots Stede alongside the Swede and Black Pete on the mizzenmast, stripped down to a linen shirt that’s seen better days with this ridiculous blue scarf wrapped round his waist, like he thinks it might make him look more fucking pirate-y.

It kind of does, at that. Never mind.

Ed can’t imagine Stede as anything less than full of life. He’s always been so full of it he’s been bursting with it, living some storybook daydream with his fancy fucking outfits (gone now) and his fancy fucking furnishings (gone too) and his marmalades (eaten, which at least wasn’t a waste). And sure, he is a maniac of the first degree, wilder and more reckless than even Ed had been in his younger days sometimes—but he can be surprisingly gentle too, when he wants to be, in a way no one had ever been with Ed before.

Like forgiving Ed, no questions asked, no hesitation, for planning to kill him.

Like he’d understood what it might be like, to want Stede Bonnet to die.

Do you want to live?

It sours Ed’s stomach, is what it fucking does.

Ed suddenly wishes he hadn’t heard the story from the crew, and he feels like a fucking idiot because Stede’s tried to tell him, been trying—when he’d first come on board, mid-swordfight, the lunatic, and that night in the mess, barely a week later—in the middle of the last raid—when they’d docked at the last port—when Ed had stumbled out of the captain’s cabin at midnight for some air and Stede had been on watch—and Ed hadn’t wanted to hear it. Stuck his head in the fucking sand.

Now, watching Stede start to make his way down the mizzen, disappearing in the rigging, Ed wants to hear everything.

He wants Stede to finally say everything he hadn’t said before, wants Stede to stop apologising and just talk to him, wants to know Stede. Wants Stede to know him. Ed can hear him laughing, wherever he’s hidden by the sails, and he wants to laugh too, he wants to be in on it, in on that delight and joy and he wants Stede to trust him the way he hadn’t, apparently, before, and he wants—

He wants to love Stede again.

He’s tired of not loving Stede.

This is a pretty fucking inconvenient realisation to be having right there on deck, out in all the sunshine where any fucking body can see him.

Frenchie, in particular, seems to have forgotten to mind his own business—Frenchie, who’d sewn Ed’s stabby hearts onto his flag and has probably just been waiting for the chance to say I told you so. He grins at Ed across the deck and adjusts his lute from a jaunty shanty into something more like a lullaby, or maybe a ballad. A love song.

Ed shoots him a glare, to which Frenchie only grins like a madman, they’re all madmen on this ship, it’s a fucking travesty, and goes to meet Stede where he ought to be coming down the ratlines, and yep, sure enough—

“Ahoy, Captain!” Stede calls when he comes back into view, hanging onto the ropes and swinging himself out to wave. “Full sail and on our way to Tortuga!”

A month, and he hasn’t let Ed’s terrible mood bring him down yet, and Ed’s thought it was awful, of course it was awful, how dare Stede come back to him and be happy, how dare Stede look at him without his heart ripping in two the way Ed’s has been, but now Ed looks at him and wonders if Stede’s heart has been ripped up all this time and he just hadn’t been too keen to share about it.

Stupid fucking Stede Bonnet.

“Stede,” Ed calls back, and even he can hear how plaintive it sounds.

This is evidently a surprise to Stede, who clearly hadn’t expected much of a response; he fumbles his grip on the line, misses his next footing, oh, fuck, he’s flailing, Ed’s heart is suddenly huge and whole and in his throat, “Stede, Stede, hang on, don’t—!”

Stede grabs wildly at the lines around him, finally gets one in his hand; the relief in his frame is palpable, “Not to worry, Ed! I’ve got it!” but Ed can see what he can’t—it’s not part of the ratlines, it’s not a secure line at all, it’s just a hanging rope that shouldn’t be there—

The sudden weight makes the line swing hard, taking Stede with it.

Stede shrieks. Ed doesn’t, and nobody’d testify to it in a court of law. He rushes forward anyway, trying to get his hands on something, anything, fucking anything, the crew clamouring around them, calling out tips and hints and useless shit like, “hang on!” and “what’s he doing out there?”

“I’ve nearly got it!” Stede calls down, shrieking again as he swings wide over the sea, even as he slips down the line, slips further, further, halfway down the mast, too far, he’s slipping too far away from any hand-holds—Ed’s hands burst into sweat, his heart bursts in his chest, it’s dangerous, all these lines, the sails, the ropes, Stede’ll hang himself if he doesn’t—

He swings back around, straight toward Ed, and then the stupid senseless silly little idiot lets go.

“Stede!”

But—jesus dickfucking christ in a shitbucket—Stede’s timed it just right, got the angle just right, he’s further down the line than Ed had thought, and instead of plastering himself into the deck or into the sea, he lands mostly on his feet, nearly bowling himself over as he wrangles with his balance and his momentum, before he comes to a stop right in front of Ed.

“That,” Stede says, heaving in a breath as he laughs, grin splitting his face, “was awesome! Did you see that? That was some properly swashbuckling stuff!”

He’s all right. Fucking Hell, he’s all right. Ed is going to walk straight off this ship into the sea.

“Good,” Ed croaks. “Good, glad you’re—” he gestures, vague, turns to go.

“Oh, hang on, Captain, quick question—” Stede leans in, so close Ed can feel his breath on his cheek, and says, with the most god-awful wink Ed’s ever seen in his life, “What do you say? Can I kiss you?”

It takes Ed by surprise: the answer he thinks first.

The dark wave of fear has receded and Stede is firmly back on the deck, not tangling in the rigging or caught with a rope around his neck or drowning in the sea, he’s not even bleeding from rope-burned hands, he’d got a pair of gloves from somewhere, thank fuck, and when Ed meets his eye and the last of panic drains out of him, all that’s left behind is golden and bright and wanting.

Wanting to reach out. Wanting to lean in. Wanting to curl his hand into Stede’s shirt, to pull Stede close, to feel the heat of him, to smell the sweat on him where he’s been working in the sun, alive, alive, alive, wants to say—

The shock of the word startles him away. The light in his chest goes out.

“No,” he says, defences surging, and he makes himself think about that night on the dock, sitting alone; he makes himself think about the weeks that followed, heartbreak battling anger for room in his own chest. Stede’s here, and he’s smiling, and he’d made Ed believe he was dead, the way Ed had wanted him to be once—

“No,” he says again. “No.”

He tries to sound mean, or at least dismissive, but he can tell it comes out choked and almost pleading, don’t make me, don’t make me love you right now, and Stede’s smile fades a little as he lets Ed shift back and put some distance between them.

“It was worth a shot,” he says, smile gone sad around the edges, and steps away.

Chapter Text

Ed’s going to fucking kill him.

Yep. Nothing else for it. He’s looked at all his options, and he’s good at options, right, he’s good at seeing how everything can all line up, running through scenarios in his mind, playing things out to their logical conclusions, and it is what it is. He’s going to fucking kill Stede Bonnet.

Just as soon as he finishes dragging him out of the fucking ocean.

Rain lashes down across the deck. The storm is a disaster, a tempest, the whole nine yards—churning seas and howling winds, a sky that looks like a death omen, towering waves that crash over the rails again and again. Just stepping out on deck nearly takes Ed off his feet.

Took Stede off his.

One shout and he was gone. One shout, and over the wind it sounded like it might have been Ed’s name, and then he was just gone, and all Ed had left was the fucking lifeline and the chance that Stede was still attached to the other end of it.

“Heave,” Ed shouts, and he has to trust the crew on the line behind him can still hear. “And heave! And heave!”

Hauling a lifeline is the fucking worst. It’s just you and the rope against the entire fucking ocean trying her damnedest to keep her prize. There’s no leverage, no safety net, if you lose an inch you’ve lost the life and you can’t do any-fucking-thing about it except haul, hand over hand over hand over hand, and Ed hasn’t fucking prayed since he could stop the hand that beat the words out of him and Ed doesn’t hope because hope is just a wish so all he’s got are options, possibilities, lining up one after the other after the other, playing out to an inevitable conclusion that makes him feel like the knife is already lodged all the way through his throat.

The sea doesn’t give her bodies back, they say, but Ed’s a fucking pirate and he’s not asking—he’ll take what’s his, and Stede fucking Bonnet made him a fucking promise.

I’ll never leave you alone again.

Ed’s going to hold him to it.

“Oh, I just saw him!” Lucius yells. “He’s there—oh god—keep going!”

Everything tastes like salt. Ed keeps trying to breathe around the ache in his lungs, the fist under the shield of his ribs that hammers on him from the inside, a snarled knot of anger and outrage because Blackbeard doesn’t feel fear and he can’t, he can’t, the something else can’t be here right now when he needs to concentrate on this.

“Heave! And heave!”

Black Pete had caught the line right behind him; Roach and Wee John are there too, pulling in time. Lucius, pale and green-tinged at the edges, clutches at his own lifeline and watches the waves, trying to spot Stede in the water, come on, boy, find him, fucking find him—

“He’s up, he’s here, keep going!” Lucius shouts, and then, “God, he looks bloody awful, shit.”

Ed heaves with the crew two, three, four more times, then rushes to the railing and reaches for the body that’s dragging up the side of the ship.

Stede’s heavy in Ed’s hands, water-logged. Limp. The blue scarf is missing from around his waist; his shirt’s been torn to fucking shreds from being battered up against the hull. As he lays Stede out on the deck, Ed can make out a deep, terrible line across Stede’s forehead, something wet and dark as ink welling up faster than the rain can wash away.

“Fuck you, Stede, you fucking idiot,” Ed chokes, gasps, shaking him. The storm thrashes the ship like a damned toy, waves soaking them over and over as they crash into the sides, they should move him inside but Stede isn’t, he’s not— “He’s not breathing. Roach, he’s not fucking breathing—”

Roach’s hands are all over Stede’s chest, pulling his torn shirt out of the way. Stede’s skin is unnaturally white with the cold, like some deep sea creature that’s been pulled up from leagues below where the sun never reaches, where the pressure keeps shape and form and life intact. His shoulders are freckled.

“Give me your hands!” Roach shouts over the din.

Ed does, and Roach clasps them around each other, forms them into a fist, and pushes their joined hands hard into Stede’s sternum again and again, like they can pump the water up and out of him. “Lock your elbows, keep your arms straight—as hard as you can, right here,” Roach tells him, looking up to meet Ed’s eyes as he shoves their hands down. His face is intense, but sure. “You keep doing that and do not stop, all right?”

Roach lets go, turns his attention to Stede’s head, but he doesn’t look at the wound or try to stem the bleeding, he doesn’t even slap at Stede’s cheeks, he doesn’t do anything, he just watches Ed pump Stede’s chest for-fucking-ever, lips moving like he’s counting, why isn’t he doing fucking something—

Then Roach takes a deep breath, tilts Stede’s head back and pinches his nose shut, and—

Ed’s mind goes blank. His hands go still.

Roach’s mouth presses down hard and open over Stede’s. The intimacy of it is a shock, to see Stede with his eyes shut, his mouth tipped open under someone else’s, and Ed thinks about a kiss on a beach and whether Stede had been as dead then as he is now, because that’s what a person is when they aren’t breathing, they’re fucking dead.

Ed gasps and gasps, but the breath goes nowhere.

“Keep going!” Roach shouts at him, when he comes up again. He slaps at Ed’s arms. “Don’t stop!”

“What the hell are you—”

“Do you want him to live?” He slams his hands down over Ed’s, pumping them for him, once, twice, until Ed’s hands start moving on their own. “Then keep fucking going! Harder!”

Ed looks down at Stede, at his blue-tinged eyelids and his still, slack face, and thinks about never seeing him laugh again. Never seeing his eyes light up. Never letting him have—

He keeps fucking going.

It lasts forever. It feels like it lasts forever. Roach breathes into Stede’s mouth and Ed’s fist pumps at Stede’s chest, but he doesn’t move, he still doesn’t move, he doesn’t take a breath on his own or reach up to grab Ed’s wrist or blink open his eyes or anything, he just lays there and gets colder and colder, and Ed’s blood is pounding in his ears and he feels the pump of his hands in his own chest, and he gets it. All of a sudden, he gets it.

He’s not pumping water out of Stede’s lungs.

He’s pumping Stede’s heart.

The realisation wrenches something in him. The words rise up in his mouth, helpless and terrified and jealous and sick with fear, watching Roach work air back into Stede’s lungs, watching his own hands work blood back into Stede’s heart, and fuck—

“Come on, Stede, you gotta breathe, you gotta breathe—come on, you fucking bastard, breathe!”

It doesn’t even matter if Roach can hear him, it doesn’t matter, Ed keeps going, keeps pumping, teeth bared, arms screaming, and maybe Roach can take this demand down into Stede’s body for him—

“Breathe, come on, breathe, breathe—you gotta breathe because you promised me, Stede Bonnet, you promised you wouldn’t leave!”

The ship rises on a swell, falls into a valley. Thunder rolls across the sky, and Roach breathes just once more for Stede before the lightning follows it, and—like answering the ring of a bell—Stede moves.

Well, he convulses, more like, and coughs, seawater surging up, it’s fucking disgusting. Roach and Ed both yell, half-victorious, half-horrified, rolling him onto his side so he doesn’t drown in it all over again because it just keeps coming. Half the fucking ocean must have gone down his throat.

Finally, when Stede retches up no more than spittle, Roach says, “Let’s take him down, then. Careful his ankle, I think it might be broken, and his head—well. We’ll take him and lay him out in the mess.”

“No,” Ed says, already gathering Stede up. “No, he’s going to my room.”

The thunder that rolls down over the sea lodges like a stone in Ed’s chest, like a scream; he holds it inside until he gets Stede onto the bed and he can let it move up into his throat, his mouth, his eyes, they’re all fucking soaked anyway, it’s only a fucking cyclone out there.

Roach gets to work.

The rest of Stede’s shirt comes off, revealing a wicked scrape up his side, and Lucius, when the fuck did he get here, hands Roach a rag and a bottle of spirits and then starts cutting away at Stede’s trousers with a pair of shears.

“Woah, hey—”

“Do you want to pull them off over this fucked up ankle? I didn’t think so.”

“I need more light, guys—”

Ed fumbles for another lantern, fumbles for a flint, everything’s so fucking wet it takes forever to get it lit. He comes back to Roach feeling all along Stede’s ankle, twisted at an unnatural angle, Lucius piling blankets over Stede’s body, and this is like, a fucking hate crime, actually, to have Stede finally naked in his bed like: most of the way drowned, battered and bruised and broken, on the verge of a death Ed’s already mourned once.

He’s not going to do it again. He can’t. He can’t.

The cut, the blood, the ankle, the bruising, the scraping, the ache Stede must have in his lungs, his stomach, his throat, Ed sees it all and it’s the fucking options again, the possibilities, places things could go wrong, conclusions he can’t help but draw.

He can’t.

Roach breathes in, breathes out, and takes hold of Stede’s foot; Stede whines, grimacing in pain; Ed shouts, yells at Roach to be careful; Roach shouts back that Ed’ll shut up and let him work or see himself out, but like fuck Ed’ll be doing that, and if Roach can’t do this without causing Stede so much pain maybe someone else ought to—

—no, Ed doesn’t know how to set an ankle, but—

—well, fuck if he knows, mate, fine, fine fine fine fine, here, use this—does he need more bandages than that? Laudanum? Ed’s pretty sure he’s got laudanum in here somewhere—

—and christ, hang on, his head is still—yeah, Ed knows that a head wound bleeds a ton but fucking christ, Roach, it’s everywhere, it’s—there’s too much, Roach, no don’t touch him, it’s—

—no, Ed can’t fucking hold him down, what the fuck—

—except Ed can hold Stede down when he has to, when he needs to, he can hold Stede down across the shoulders, grip his face in his palms to hold him steady, shout with him as Roach takes a needle to his flesh, as Roach stitches him back together, as Stede groans and gasps and holds onto his wrists too tight, and he can talk to Stede while it happens and he can do it all without trembling because Roach needs him to and Stede needs him to, and—

—and this is so stupid, if he hadn’t let Stede come back none of this would ever have happened, if he’d been paying closer attention to the sky and seen the storm coming, they might've beat it to a safe hideaway and maybe they wouldn’t be here right now, working by candlelight and lightning flashes as the storm lashes against the windows, and maybe Stede’s eyes wouldn’t be closing and his hands wouldn’t be going slack and it’s all so fucking stupid but Stede can’t leave him yet, Stede can’t leave when he’s still got so much to say and he needs more time to figure out how to say it because he’s a fucking idiot, all right, he’s an idiot and he doesn’t know how to do this and he’s sorry, he’s so, so fucking sorry, he’ll listen to whatever Stede wants to say, he just can’t leave now, he can’t, he promised—

“I thought it was you,” a tiny, splintered voice says.

Ed lands back in his body like belly-flopping into the fucking sea.

The chair nearly gives way underneath him, but even if it did it wouldn’t be because Ed had like, startled or anything, it would be because Roach had commandeered about half of it to use as a makeshift splint for Stede’s ankle. That had been ages ago, days, weeks maybe, who knows—okay, more like three hours, who’s counting—and Ed has been waiting extremely patiently and with a totally and completely normal amount of worry about whether Stede would ever wake up again.

“Stede,” he breathes, and Stede opens his eyes.

They’re tight around the corners, and he’s got a bandage around his head and he looks like he’s been put through a ringer and scrubbed up a washboard, bruised up, scraped out, pale as curdled milk, does his hair really look like that when it dries naturally?—but Stede opens his eyes and fuck, Ed’s never seen anything so good in all his life.

The ship has steadied. The rain has calmed into an even thrum upon the windowpanes. Buttons is a bloody madman but there’s no denying he’s good at the helm; he’d gotten them out of the storm as quick as anyone could, and looked downright relaxed while doing it. Last Ed saw, he was even fucking whistling.

And now Stede is awake, looking at him.

“Here, don’t move,” Ed says, definitely not panicking, reaching for a cup of water, and then, quick after it, a slug of rum. “You’re banged to shit, mate, what the hell were you thinking? No—ankle’s broken, leave it where it is. You want some laudanum? We’ll make port tomorrow, probably, bring you to a proper doctor—”

“I was thinking,” Stede repeats, “that it was you.”

“That what was me?”

“The—” Stede tries to gesture with his hand, wave toward his mouth, but it pulls at the long scrape on his side and shoulder and he winces instead. Ed takes the hand in his own, keeps it held between his. Just so it doesn’t happen again, obviously. He’s a real nurse, Ed Teach is. “The breathing. I thought—might’ve been you.”

Could have been him. Should have been him. It should’ve been him, forcing air back into Stede’s useless lungs when they wouldn’t do their own fucking job. Instead he has to shake his head.

“Wasn’t me, mate. Roach knew, you know, he could—he did it.”

And he isn’t even going to be mad at Roach about it because that would be ridiculous and Blackbeard didn’t do ridiculous and he definitely didn’t get mad at people for saving other people’s lives, unless of course he’d ordered that life specifically not saved, and if he’d ever ordered something like that about Stede Bonnet it’s obviously been rescinded, and anyway, point is, he’s not going to be mad at Roach for sending air back into Stede’s lungs when Stede hadn’t any.

If he tells himself that enough times it might even end up being true.

Stede hums. His eyes slip shut again, but the corner of his mouth twitches. “Had to come back and check. Wouldn’t have wanted to miss that, if it’d been you.”

Ed chokes, on a sob or a laugh he can’t tell which; he has to bend his head to the mattress, press his forehead against the join of their two hands to feel Stede’s skin against his. Ed almost lost him again, he’d almost broken his promise and gone, and here he is, flat on his back and cracking jokes about it, honestly, fuck this guy.

“Stede.”

Stede makes a low noise in his throat, and Ed feels him move, turning onto his side—his good side, Ed reminds himself, it’s okay. He feels Stede’s other hand, resting gently on the back of his head, carding through his hair, probably a fucking rat’s nest right now, windblown and wild and he’d let it dry like that, but Stede just hums, touches Ed gently, like it doesn’t matter.

“They call it the kiss of life, you know,” Stede says. He’s curled so close Ed can feel his breath on his temple. “What Roach did. Would you have done it too?”

Ed looks up sharply. “Would—what the fuck kind of question, would I have, of course I would have.”

Of course Ed would have. Even at his lowest, he would have. Even at his angriest. Even with his eyes painted black and his sword in his hand and what he’d thought was hate giving him the world’s worst fucking heartburn, Ed would have done it. Didn’t Stede know that?

Didn’t he?

Five inches, maybe six. That’s all that separates them. Ed hasn’t been this close to Stede since—since. Stede looks back at him evenly, entirely unruffled beneath Roach’s row of neat stitches at his hairline, studying him like he’s trying to see if that’s really true.

Ed lets him see.

“And now?” Stede asks, so quiet that even this close Ed can barely hear him. “Can I kiss you?”

And Ed—

And Ed feels like an idiot about it, an idiot and a tosser, because it’s Stede who’s hurt right now and it’s every regret Ed’s felt these last three months, but he can’t, he can’t do this for him, because three hours ago he had pumped Stede’s heart to beating with his own two hands against every possible conclusion in his head that said Stede should be fucking gone, gone again the way he said he’d never be.

And Stede can’t promise that. Not really. It’s always going to end this way someday.

Stede is always going to leave, in the end, and Ed’s heart aches like it was his the sea had tried to steal.

He has to look away.

“You’re half-dead, Stede Bonnet.”

“Is that your only objection?”

The crack of thunder is back in Ed’s chest, back in his throat, huge and devastating. He remembers the dead weight of Stede in his arms, can’t stop thinking about rumours out of Barbados, out of Bridgetown. He presses his forehead back to their clasped hands. 

“Don’t joke about it.”

Stede hums, shuffles a little closer. Ed holds his breath as Stede nuzzles his nose into the hair at Ed’s temple, presses a kiss right at the end of Ed’s eyebrow. He tips his head against Ed’s, careful of the stitches, and breathes out.

He’s alive.

He stays like that until there’s a crick in his neck and Stede fucking Bonnet is asleep with his head tipped against Ed’s, holding himself so so so still so he doesn’t bother the new stitches, so he doesn’t wake Stede up, so he doesn’t make Stede roll away.

So he can feel how alive he is right here, right now, breath warm across his cheek.

He’s alive.

Chapter Text

Ed figures he hits rock bottom right around the time he starts feeling jealous of Izzy fucking Hands.

Izzy’s a major pain in the arse. He’s a dramatic little shit with a weak stomach for storms, a propensity for whinging, and a shirt he wears buttoned all the way up to the top like he’s still in His Majesty’s fucking Navy. He’s mad for rules, obsessed with authority, and probably hasn’t had a good day since 1688.

But he also has no fucking imagination.

Ed would love to have no fucking imagination.

He would love to walk around the ship and think about fuck all except who’s going to fix the line on the top main sail. He would be fucking delighted to go to bed at night and bobble off to dream about bangers and mash or whatever. He would be thrilled to have a brain full of nothing but hardtack stores and shot inventory and the bloody cleaning rotas.

But no. No such luck.

Instead he’s swamped under the weight of the million things his imagination spouts off at a moment’s notice, memories and scenarios and phantom touches, questions circling him like sharks around blood in the fucking water—what if he said and how does it feel to and what would he sound like if and if I were a worm and does he now, does he still—

It’s getting to be a real fucking drag, if he’s honest.

Anyway, it’s fine. It’s not like he’s sulking. Sulking is a thing an eight-year-old does over a sweet. He’s just—thinking. Brooding at best. He’s having a quiet moment of silent contemplation and deliberate rumination on theories of life, the universe, and everything. The sort of things you think about while rubbing your chin slowly, gazing out  into the horizon, the very picture of deep, profound—and a little bit sexy—thought.

“You look like an eight-year-old pouting over a sweet.”

Nobody appreciates art on this fucking ship.

“Fuck off,” Ed says, reflexively, but he still makes room for Jim to join him at the rail. Jim does, elbowing him a little too hard in the side and looking out over the horizon he’s been studying, which is completely and totally empty—not even a cool sunset going on. Miles and miles of fucking nothing.

“God, no wonder you’re having a sulk, the view up here sucks.”

Ed tries to elbow them back, but they’re quicker, dodging it, so instead he has to go back to stroking his beard like that was what he meant to do all along. “You know, the quarterdeck’s typically reserved for the captain and officers only.”

Jim snorts. “Yeah, ‘cause this is a real typical ship. You don’t even have officers.”

“Izzy’s first mate, that’s an officer.”

“Izzy’s only called first mate because he pouts when he’s not.”

“He’s good with a sword.”

“Not exactly a people skill though, is it?”

“Keeps you rats in line.”

“Eh.” Jim waves their hand back and forth, so-so. “Pretty sure Oluwande keeps most of them in line.”

Fair point. He hates when other people make fair points. “Did you want something, actually, or are you just here to torment me?”

Jim grins at him sideways and takes out their knife. “Gotta keep your torments regular, Captain. Keeps you on your toes.” They turn their back to the rail and slide down to sit on the deck, doing a few tricks as they go—flipping it along their fingers, tossing and catching it by the handle.

Ed watches them for a bit, wary—he’s within stabbing distance and if they really got a hankering for his achilles tendon he’d be fucked—but eventually they take out a bit of cloth and start polishing the blade. He figures it’s safe enough and goes back to the horizon.

Still very empty. Still very boring.

It’s hard to get back into the groove of brooding with an audience. Jim’s driving him to distraction, just sitting there, not saying anything. They must have something to say, right? They can’t have come up here just to sit with him, right? God, he hopes he’s not that pathetic yet.

Ed waits.

Jim says nothing.

He waits some more.

They continue to say nothing.

Maybe they’re waiting for him to say something. Oh, Jim, how did you and Oluwande—yeah, no, he’d rather just jump directly to the stabbing portion of that question.

Maybe they’re just waiting for him to say all right, go on, spit it out, and he’s actually really tempted on that one because Jim won’t pussyfoot around it. They’ll just fucking say what needs said, no mercy. They’ll probably sigh, tell him to get his shit together and stop with the drama king act. That he can’t expect Stede to wait around forever, and it’s not fair just because Stede would. That the only thing keeping him and Stede apart is himself. That yeah, the question is so fucking weird, but he’d still love Ed if Ed were a worm, what the fuck.

That he can’t keep fucking doing this.

Maybe they’ll ask him what he’s fucking waiting for.

I’m not ready, he’ll tell them, and they’ll ask why not, and he’ll say, because—because—

Well, that’s the thousand dubloon question, isn’t it?

And he feels like a twat about it, because Stede‘s obviously ready, been ready, and here’s him, not even able to put it into fucking words. It’s all wrapped up in all this stupid nonsense, it’s just nonsense, like the way his mum had looked at him when he’d come home after what he’d done that night and the way Jack was always gone at sun-up, the way silk just runs right through your hands like water and the way Stede speaks but never says anything. It’s in the way if Ed could have anything at all he’d have a little plot of land with a house and a garden even though he doesn’t know the first fucking thing about gardening and he doesn’t really even like dirt as like, a concept, but he’d do it and he’d love it because he just wants a little life with little comforts and a long, drawn-out future where he doesn’t have to be fucking terrified that one day he’ll watch his own heart swing at the end of a rope.

It’s in the way where if he says yes, he has something to lose.

Jim says, “He’s keeping watch on the main top.”

“Christ, are you still here?” Ed says, without jumping a mile and putting his hand to his chest like some fucking granny. Jim grins lazily up at him. “What?”

“Stede,” they say. “He’s on the main top. Since you’re looking for him.”

“I’m not—what—” Hang on. Hang the fuck on. “You let him climb to the main top? You let Stede Bonnet, the guy with the head injury and the broken fucking foot, climb to the main top!?”

“He’s fine. He only slipped like, one time.”

Ed’s heart seizes in his chest. “He slipped—”

But Jim laughs, rolls their eyes. Takes an orange out of their pocket and tosses it up to him. “Calm down, hombrecito, I’m messing with you. We sent him up on the seat, Pete even went up with him to make sure he got off all right.”

The amount of relief Ed feels is, frankly, absurd, and he won’t discuss it. Instead he jabs Jim’s thigh with the toe of his boot, says, “Right, well, you’re insufferable,” and stalks off toward the mainmast as they giggle behind him.

It’s actually a good idea, this. Assigning Stede to keep watch. The sky is so clear for so far that there’s no real need to put anybody up in the crow, and putting Stede up here makes him feel like he’s got something to do without running himself ragged. He wonders if Stede’s figured out he’s been managed, decides not to tell him, and hauls himself over the edge of the main top.

“Oh,” Stede says, surprised. “Hello.”

And then he smiles. What the fuck. Ed forgets every word he’s ever known in his life.

“Hey,” he finally manages. He sits at the edge of the platform, rolls the orange Jim gave him across to Stede. “I, uh, brought you a snack.”

It’s the first thing he’s really given Stede since—since. Not counting, you know, the night in Ed’s bed—alone, with Ed sleeping in the chair on the other side of the room—and a pretty hefty dose of laudanum. Stede takes it with the same reverence he used to use to pick up silver platters and leather-bound books and silk jackets.

He looks up again, meets Ed’s gaze. Tips his head at the space next to him. “Split it with me?”

Ed can tell Stede doesn’t really expect him to say yes, and that, more than anything, makes him say: “Er, yeah. Okay, yeah.”

Stede digs his nails into the orange as Ed scoots to sit next to him against the mast. The smell of citrus fills the air, reminds Ed of buttery croissants and marmalade and an early morning, the realisation that he wasn’t ready to let this absolute madman go.

He’s still not ready to let him go.

He might be ready to let him stay.

It’s quieter up here. Not the deliberate, trapped-in-his-thoughts kind of quiet he’s been wallowing in for days, just—it’s simple. There’s nothing but the sound of the wind in the sails and Stede’s fingers peeling open the orange and for the first time in weeks, Ed feels his mind sputter to a blissful, peaceful stop.

“Here,” Stede says quietly, passing him an orange segment.

They work their way through the orange slowly, silent but for the odd little noise Stede makes in his throat to get Ed’s attention to hand him another piece. Stede pauses in between each pass, like he’s really savouring the orange or maybe just this moment, even, and by the time the orange is gone, the sun is finally starting to set on the horizon, washing everything with gold.

Everything except the dark scab on Stede’s forehead. He’ll have a silver-pink scar there soon; it will probably never fully fade.

“You could’ve told me, you know,” Ed says, without really meaning to.

Stede shifts to look at him. His eyes are dark and steady; he doesn’t ask what Ed is talking about. “I know.”

“You should’ve. You should’ve come and told me what was going on. If you were worried or—or scared, whatever, about your family, your kids, about Blackbeard, even, you could have come and just. Just fucking said something, you know?”

“I know,” Stede answers seriously. Ed studies his face, looking for proof that he gets it. He’s got new lines at the corners of his eyes and a scrape healing across his cheek and his hair doesn’t do that curl thing at the back anymore, but he still looks like a dream that might disappear with the sun.

Stede must see that feeling rise in Ed’s eyes, though, because he reaches out a hand and puts it on Ed’s arm, making him focus. “Ed. I do know. I’m done running away, all right?”

It’s not that Ed doesn’t believe him. Ed does believe him. It’s just that that’s not all there is to the question.

If they’re going to spend their lives together, Ed wants to spend their lives right.

“All right,” he says. “Yeah, all right. Ground rules. Number one, no running off without saying where you’re going. It’s bad manners, mate, come on. Number two, you gotta talk it through as a crew. No—” He wags a finger in Stede’s face at his grimace. “None of that. You set the rule, you gotta follow it too. And number three, and this one’s non-negotiable: you already had your go at it once, so now you have to promise that you’ll let me die first.”

Stede pulls a face. “Absolutely not.”

“No more swords to the gut,” Ed goes on, ignoring him and counting off on his fingers. “No more being swept off deck. No more—I don’t know, what can you die of? No yellow fever, no wasting disease, no typhoid, none of that shit. We’re gonna live to be old fucking men, and when I pop off of a heart attack in the garden or whatever, you can die at your leisure.”

“If you die in the garden, I’ll lay down right next to you and together we’ll fertilise the rutabagas.”

“I’m not growing fucking rutabagas.”

“I like rutabagas.”

“Grow them yourself.”

“I suppose I’ll have to.”

Ed sighs, put upon, but the laughter fades when he turns his hand over to capture Stede’s. Stede’s hand is big and warm, and yeah, there are those calluses Ed keeps thinking about, wondering what they’d feel like on him. Next to him, Stede goes perfectly, impossibly still as Ed touches them, tracing them gently and wondering whether there’d been blisters, whether they’d broken open. Whether there’d been pain.

“I think you would, too,” he muses, tracing the lines on Stede’s palm. The life line, thick and bold. The heart line, the way it trembles across his hand. “You’d follow me right off this ship if I asked, wouldn’t you?”

Stede doesn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

“Build a little house with me somewhere. Plant a garden. Never go back to sea, if I asked you.”

“Yes.”

“Or you’d follow me to China for real this time.”

“Anywhere you want to go.”

Ed nods. He expected as much. “And would you tell me if you didn’t want to go? Or if you were freaking out? If you were missing your kids?” He looks up again, meets Stede’s gaze and holds it. “Would you tell me if you weren’t happy?”

Stede opens his mouth automatically, but the word stops before it can come out. His brow furrows; he hesitates.

Yeah, that’s what Ed thought.

“Because the thing is,” he goes on, twining his fingers around Stede’s. “I don’t really want to be your captain. I don’t need another guy to take orders, I need someone who’s gonna tell me shit. If you—if you think I’m wrong, or you have a bad feeling, or a better idea, whatever, I want to hear it, I want to know what you think. Or what you—feel, what you want. I want to be in on whatever’s happening with you.”

The wind has died down a little with the growing dark, and the main top is quiet again for a long moment. Below, they can hear the general ruckus of the crew taking shifts for dinner, Pete laughing and Wee John doing the foghorn impression again, the squawk of Olivia chiming in.

Stede leaves his hand in Ed’s as he thinks. And considers. He does a little contemplation, gets almost all the way to ruminating, before his eyes fly up again.

“Oh,” he finally says, soft with realisation. “You want a co-captain.”

Something in Ed’s chest cracks a little. His voice does too. “Yeah. Yeah, I reckon I do.”

Stede nods. “Right.” And almost to himself, again, “Right. Right, well.”

He takes a deep breath, raises himself up to his full height, throws his shoulders back, just like Ed taught him to do when he’s interrogating somebody, and says, “I don’t want to go to China.”

Yeah. Yeah, that’s a fucking feeling, isn’t it? The something else in Ed’s chest flares bright, and he can’t remember when it started to feel less like a ghost living alongside his bones and more like the sun burning fog off the water. Like a candle, beating back the dark. He fights his smile, but the way Stede looks at him, he thinks he’s probably doing a shit job of it.

“No?”

“No. It’s too far away, and none of us speak the language, and—” Here Stede hesitates, but Ed gives him a little nod, go on. “And I’d like to be able to see my children, now and again, if I can swing it. And I’ve no desire to give Cape Horn a go.”

Ed hums. “All right,” he says easily.

“All right?”

“Yeah. All right.”

Stede’s smile is relieved and wide and so full of affection it makes Ed’s chest ache. “And I was afraid, when I went overboard. Terrifying stuff, but I think the scar will make for a good story.” He puts a hand up, imagining a title. “The Gentleman Pirate versus Poseidon—he lives to tell the tale, and he does it with style.”

Ed huffs a laugh. “Stede.”

“What, I’m being serious! Erm, let me see, what else. I had a shit father. I was a shit father. Trying to be better, though. I miss my silk jackets. I’m not a big fan of chocolates.” He pauses, looks at Ed; the laughter in his eyes fades into something more sober. “I’m not ready to retire yet.”

“I know,” Ed says, because he does, he really does. “You know, you don’t have to tell me everything right—”

“I want to kiss you again.”

Ed looks at him.

Ed looks at him, and he can see how it would go—how Stede would lean in just a little bit further, how he’d lift a hand to cup Ed’s cheek, how he’d fit their mouths together more gently than Ed had done the first time, more gently but with more heat behind it, with possibilities blooming out, all the ways a kiss can start and end and continue, all the ways a kiss can turn from mouths to hands to skin to heat, and Ed wants that—he wants all of that, he wants to feel Stede close and to know that he’s real, wants to lean into Stede’s palm, to feel Stede’s breath on his mouth, to feel Stede’s nose rub briefly against his own, a hello and I missed you and you left and I came back—

“Can I?” Stede whispers, so close Ed can feel him there.

Ed wants to say yes. He wants to let him. He wants all of that.

But he takes a deep breath, and he still says, “Stede, I—I’m not—”

Stede lingers a moment, so close that for a moment Ed thinks he might anyway. Then he falls back, takes a breath, and another, and for the first time, Stede looks disappointed, crestfallen even—maybe a little heartbroken—and Ed realises that Stede’s always felt this, that he’s felt this every time. Every single fucking time.

He’s just letting Ed see it now.

“Sorry,” Ed says quietly. First time he’s said it since Stede came back, and Ed has to say it again just to make sure Stede knows he means it, he means it for everything. For everything. “Stede, I’m sorry.”

Stede looks away.

“I’m sorry too,” he says, clearing his throat. “You’re right, ’course you’re right. We should work on, you know, all of that. What you said. I suppose that’s what I should’ve been doing all along, shouldn’t I have?” He gives a thin smile. “I won’t ask again, Ed. It’s all right.”

“Hey,” Ed says, keeping hold of Stede’s hand as he tries to draw it back. He lifts his fingers to his own mouth, kisses the skin there. Stede goes pink, eyes bright. “I’m not there yet, but you could, maybe, someday, ask me one more time. If you wanted. Not right now, but—someday.”

The smile is a little more genuine this time, a little easier. Stede’s fingers tighten around Ed’s. “All right. Someday.”

The sun is gone, now. There’s nothing left but the barest blush of a dusty rose, fading into lavender, into violet, into indigo. Early stars start to peek through the velvet of the night, and together Ed and Stede sit for a long time, hands entwined.

Most romantic thing to happen to Ed in his whole damn life.

“Ed,” Stede whispers.

“Mm.”

“I don’t think I can climb down from here.”

Ed laughs, squeezes his hand, and finally starts to shift off his bum—totally numb, of course. “Yeah, all right. I’ll go get somebody to send up the seat.”

Chapter Text

It gets easier.

Not like, right away. Pffft. Right away it’s fucking weird. Ed’s a genius, but for a genius he can do some really stupid shit sometimes, and thinking this would be fine and zero percent awkward or tense or anything is probably top of the list.

Because it is awkward. And tense. And a little like he’s forgotten, all over again, how to breathe.

But there’s also this like, relief, too. Like he can let his guard down a little bit. Knowing Stede isn’t going to ask, Ed feels like he can meet his eyes again, step in a little closer. The conversations aren’t going to end in a question, so even when Ed doesn’t know where they’re going—and with Stede, he never fucking knows—it’s all right.

They’re all right.

Stede still smells like fucking lavender. Ed breathes in.

*

“All right, you lot, listen up,” Ed says over breakfast. At the other end of the table, Stede looks up with an encouraging grin; Ed, not at all disarmed, is totally cool and chill as he drawls, “Stede’s co-captaining again. So, you know. There.”

There’s a hefty little silence after that, during which Izzy’s stomach seems to throw a sudden and extravagant tantrum; he looks like he’s experiencing five distinct stages of grief one right after the other—disgust, anger, homicidal intent, whatever you must feel when you’re swallowing your own toe, Ed couldn’t guess, and finally a commitment to quiet seething. Ed supposes that’s as good as it’s going to get there.

The rest of the crew does a bit better. Oluwande says, “Uh, great, then,” and the rest of the crew breaks into murmurs of cool and congrats and fucking finally, which Ed decides he didn’t hear.

And then the fucking Swede raises his hand. “Does this mean you’ll be sharing the captain’s cabin again?”

Bad question. Terrible question. Ed glares, makes a mental note to learn the Swede’s actual name before the burial service, and reaches for his knife—

“Ah, no,” Stede puts in quickly, saving both Ed and the Swede from an unpleasant morning at the taffrail. “No, nothing like that is going to change.”

The crew erupts, murmurs forgotten. “Oh, come on!”

“You can’t be serious!”

“Is it mutiny if you lock your co-captains in the hold together? Asking for a friend—” That’s Roach, that one is. Ed can’t wait to see what horrible thing Izzy’s cleaning rota can dig up for him.

“Is there a reason or are you two just—”

“It’s an announcement, not a fucking Q & A,” Ed shouts over everyone.

“We’re not taking questions at this time,” Stede says, backing him up. He raises his eyebrows in that expectant, bitchy way he has, like they’re all a bunch of very disappointing children. “Or criticisms. Or suggestions. Or speculations, dramatisations, fireworks displays, notes, messages, codes, interferences, or any other sort of sneaky conspiracies. Got it?”

The crew grumbles, but Stede just waits with those eyebrows until they go back to their plates.

It kind of drives Ed crazy, that bitchy thing. The way Stede can make a fucking eyebrow look disdainful, the way he can use his fucking manners like a knife when he wants to, calm as you please.

Stede meets his eye across the table, and that eyebrow softens into something a bit more earnest, and that drives Ed crazy too—it makes Ed feel the same way he’d felt watching Stede goad a shipful of hoity-toity French fucks into setting themselves on fire and then turn around to pull that scrap of silk out of Ed’s hands so, so gently, to put his hands on Ed’s chest, his eyes in the moonlight, the way Ed had wanted—

All right, okay, these are not exactly breakfast-table thoughts.

It does illuminate the problem though.

Now that Ed knows Stede’s not going to ask to kiss him, he kind of wants to be fucking kissed.

Fuck.

*

The Revenge sails on, and on, and there are bedtime stories and raids and drills, sword-fighting lessons and dancing lessons and how to tie a knot lessons, card nights and craft nights and jam nights. There are days when Stede goes aloft and stays there for ages, wind whipping up his hair, just watching the horizon as he daydreams, and there are days when he comes to Ed in the captain’s cabin and they sit and plot and do terrible impressions of Izzy or Buttons and it’s different, of course it’s different, but it’s still—it’s still—

They’re still Ed and Stede.

As much as Ed’s missed being in love with Stede, as much as he’s still a bit ripped up about that—he also misses just being fucking friends.

And they do make good friends. Ed likes Stede, is the thing, likes trading ideas and planning fuckeries with him, working alongside him and the crew when the wind is tricky, listening to him wax poetic about his books or bugs or whatever the hell else. Stede’s fucking nuts, and he’s fucking funny, and Ed just—likes him.

And Stede likes Ed.

It feels weird and a little conceited to just say that, but it’s hard to ignore. Stede looks for him on deck, cracks jokes to make him laugh, saves an extra bit of pastry for him in the mess. Waves at him in the middle of a raid on a Dutch vessel, brandishing a sword as he taunts sailors sulking in their binds—he’s a fucking lunatic.

God, but Ed’s a little bit gone on him.

The raid is a good one; Ed knew it would be. The Dutch always have the best shit, including the best insurance, and by the end of the day the Revenge is sitting lower in the water, chock-full of spices so fragrant they smell hot and dusty even in their casks and laces so fine and delicate they feel like spiderwebs to Ed’s hands.

“Found you something,” Stede says, once they’ve set sail again, leaving the Dutch drifting aimlessly behind them. It’s fine, someone’ll get their hands free of their ties eventually. Probably. “For special occasions, really.”

He holds out his handkerchief, wrapped around something small and slight; Ed takes it carefully and unfolds the fabric to find a single earring—a long, thin drop, gold inlaid with a dark plum enamel, ending in a pearl.

“You like purple,” Stede says, easy-breezy, like it’s not the silliest true thing someone’s ever said about him. Blackbeard, fiercest fucker of the seas, likes purple. “And you ought to have something nice.”

And it’s not that Ed doesn’t have his own nice shit, because he does. It’s just—well. We’re not those kind of people, Ed’s mum had said.

And here’s fucking Stede Bonnet, who’s seen at Ed from his best to his fucking worst and concluded, apparently, that he just—didn’t agree.

“Stede,” he says, voice thick.

“I also got you this!” Stede exclaims, before the moment turns too tender, and he presents Ed with a great big honking knife. Not even one of those fancy things with the delicate ivory hands or whatever. This is a real working knife with a wicked blade, and it fits perfect in Ed’s hand.

“And here I thought I’d be left stabbing folks with this.” Ed gestures with the earring, not in the least choked up about it. “Thanks, mate.”

“You’re more than one thing,” Stede shrugs. “And I appreciate your idiosyncrasies, Ed.”

Just like that. Like Ed hasn’t spent the last few months or years or maybe the last decade trying to sort out all the pieces of himself. Like the boy on the dock and the man in the dressing gown and the myth rising from the fog are all just—him. Just part of him.

Like that’s enough for Stede.  

Ed breathes out. It’s getting easier to breathe in.

*

They fall easily back into teaching one another, and there’s still plenty to be taught—Ed doesn’t feel the need to learn how to be a gentleman anymore, not with the same urgency he feels to teach Stede how to be a pirate, but he still wants to know what Stede knows, wants that insight into Stede’s life. He wants to know all the rules about how to stand and what to say and how to be so he can coax Stede into breaking them.

“Really seems like more of a spoon affair,” Stede tells him, making Ed laugh again as he tries to teach him how to carve an eye out with a watermelon that Roach has sculpted a surprisingly realistic face into. “Bit of an awkward angle for a knife.”

“You going to carry a spoon with you on raids then?”

“I could do,” Stede says brightly, and fuck, Ed can just picture him, frowning in his over-exaggerated way, threatening some poor sailor with an etiquette lesson. Wouldn’t be the first time Stede had demanded a captain lay out his silver for their benefit. “Maybe get a terrapin fork? A melon spoon’d be nice too.”

“Which one’s the fucking terrapin fork?”

“Bowl like a spoon but with tines at the tip. Usually for a chunky soup and the like—have you ever had turtle soup? It’s nice. A melon spoon’s just got a serrated edge.”

Ed considers the options. “Melon spoon might be more useful, but it’s not got as much flair.”

“No,” Stede agrees, twisting his wrist again, trying to get his knife into the place he wants it. “Terrapin fork would give you more of a stabbing action, which would be handy. Maybe I’ll carry the melon spoon and you can carry the terrapin fork, what do you say? Room on that belt for one?”

Ed might just find the room. Imagine whipping out a melon spoon in the middle of a raid—they’d lose their shit.

“May do,” he says, noncommittally. Got to have some surprises, hasn’t he?

Stede just grins, wide and sunny, and then he stabs his knife through the watermelon-eyeball and twists, ripping the rounded bit out with a chunk of extra flesh attached, dripping watermelon juice everywhere.

“Ah, there we go,” he says, pleased. He holds it up, inspects it a moment, and then shrugs and takes a bite of the substitute eye. “It’s sweet. You want a bite?”

He passes the knife up; Ed takes a bite out of the other side—gets juice all in his beard—and right at the same moment Stede says, “I’ve missed this, you know. Doing things like this with you.”

Ed almost stabs himself in the fucking face.

“What, stabbing fruit up?”

Stede laughs. “Learning new things. Exploring new ideas.”

“Yeah,” he manages, when he’s swallowed his bite of melon. His instinct is to brush it off, but Stede looks up at him, and his face is so fucking sincere and so fucking beautiful, and Ed just—softens. “Yeah, mate. I missed it too.”

The hold fills and empties, the sails rise and fall. The weeks pass. The rhythm of the sea, of the crew, of the way he and Stede move around one another—it steadies.

It’s not that Ed ever forgets, because he doesn’t. Stede still makes his chest feel like it’s cracking open half the damn time. Sometimes it all just gets to be a little too close to the surface, a little too easily bruised, and Ed has to take a step back out of sheer fucking self-preservation. Spend some time on his own, nursing his fledgling heart.

It’s fine, Ed tells himself. Some nights are dark, still, but it’s getting easier to face the dawn.

It’s getting easier to come back.

*

He does start to wonder, a little bit. You know. If Stede is ever going to ask.

Not that he’s like, super-duper focused on it or whatever. It’s not like he sits around getting weird about Stede’s hands or his mouth or his calves, right, it’s just—you know. It’s been a good while, two, three months, and they spend all these long hours together again, shut up in the captain’s quarters, pouring over maps together, editing Izzy’s insane cleaning rotas, comparing notes in the logs, confirming inventory, they’re getting on, they’re settling in, they’re good, it’s good—

Ed just wants to know whether he’s fucked it, that’s all. If he’s just seriously underestimated how long Stede might wait for someday or if Stede still—if he no longer wants—

Anyway.

Stede starts a coy little collection of things on one of the lower bookshelves in the captain’s cabin, and Ed tries not to read anything insane into it—like, for example, whether Stede might mean one day to move back in. It’s nonsense stuff, books, little figurines, a lace-trimmed silk handkerchief. Ed’s not sure why anyone would make handkerchiefs out of silk when you’re just going to wipe your sweat or snot or what have you on it, but he still nips away one night when Frenchie’s on watch and asks if he could stitch an S and a B into the corner.

“Stands for son of a bitch,” Ed says gruffly, when Frenchie gives him a knowing look.

“Silk’s not really my favourite thing to embroider,” Frenchie says, instead of anything too incriminating. “But I could cut him one fresh from the bolts we picked up last raid.”

“Whatever, I don’t care.” Ed pauses. “Better be fucking nice though.”

It does turn out nice, and when Ed gives it over—a very fine linen handkerchief, with Stede’s initials embroidered into the corner on either side of a skull and crossbones—Stede grins, and exclaims, and fuck, Ed just needs to calm the fuck down. It’s good, this thing they have going. It’s good to not have to worry about questions or answers or coming or going or falling or catching hold.

Ed knows where he stands.

But he is thinking about it, a little bit. Questions and answers. Heat and pressure, skin and breath. Not like, excessively, or anything, just—it’s there, a little, in the back of his mind.

He breathes in, breathes out. Waits.

*

The day is a little gloomy, the seas a bit choppy. Ed’s knee isn’t telling him shit but the skies are telling him there’ll be rain, later, and Stede’s sat at the desk with a cup of tea and a collection of maps, plotting their course and trying to see if there’s a lovely little island with a sheltering cove they could make for before there’s any danger of a storm forming up.

“We’re a little too far south for the one you like with the waterfalls,” Stede says regretfully, dancing his fingers across the page. “We’re about a week out, if the winds cooperate.”

“Nah, we want something more in the two to three day range,” Ed says from the new settee, where he’s fitting his knee brace on. He’s going to have to go up on deck soon and get Buttons and Izzy the new bearings, help them with the rigging until they’ve got it where they want it. “And we’ve got more of an easterly wind anyway. Anything in that direction?”

Stede frowns. “A few little things. Nothing much to say about coves.”

Ed wanders over. Braces one hand on the back of Stede’s chair, leans over his shoulder, studying the map spread out on the table. They’re a little closer to Hispaniola than he’d like, but if they aim a little more south-east than true east there’s a few options, provided they miss the Spanish.

“Here,” he says, tapping a finger.

Stede frowns harder. “That’s a picture of a, erm—”

“Shark,” Ed supplies. If nobody understands his vision, that’s on them, not his drawing skills.

“Ah, of course, and it’s lovely. And we would want to go into shark-infested waters because . . . ?”

“Oh, I’m sure we don’t,” Ed says flippantly. “I’m sure we’d definitely want to avoid it, and if this map ever fell into anyone’s hands but yours and mine, they’d know too exactly where we wouldn’t be.”

One beat, two, and then Stede’s face lights up with a little gasp, understanding dawning like the fucking sunrise. “It’s a pirate code!”

God, Ed fucking loves it when Stede does that—that ridiculous delight in being a pirate, in just living the life he’s chosen, like there’s something magic in survival. It’s a little naïve, sure, and a little foolhardy, but it makes something in Ed’s chest feel big and achy in the best way, like there’s something pressing on him from the inside, and why shouldn’t they let their lives be fun?  

“Our code now, mate,” Ed tells him, grinning. “You’ll like this place, it’s good. It’s not got the waterfalls, but there’s fresh water, fish, fruit—good beach. We can hunker down for a day or two.”

“And then perhaps a vacation day, when the weather breaks? Roach has been wanting to do a barbeque.”

Ed saw that coming a mile away, but he still has to huff a laugh about it. “Yeah, sure. You think you can get us there? Plot the route for Buttons?”

Stede looks down over the map again, traces his fingers between their current position and the shark Ed had inked on the page. “’Course, yeah, it’s all right here.” He looks up at Ed, grinning. “I’ll be up in maybe half an hour with it, not to worry.”

“Hm. Sounds good, eh. I’m gonna go do a round on deck.” Ed bends, gives Stede a quick kiss on the mouth, claps him on the shoulder. “See you in a bit.”

“See you.”

He picks his jacket up off the back of the chaise, slings it over his shoulders. He’s got to check in with Izzy and Oluwande, get the measure of the crew. Get them to start pulling the lines the way he likes, if there’s going to catch the easterly wind going in a bit more of a south-easterly direction.

Ed steps out into the hall, pulls the cabin door shut behind him, makes a note to have Lucius and Pete bury something for Stede to dig up—

—and stops.

Oh, shit.

Oh, fuck, oh shit.

Chapter Text

It’s incredible, actually, how fucking tiny the hall outside the captain’s cabin is when you’re having a bit of a fucking emergency in it.

Okay, be cool. Ed can be cool. He can be so cool, he can be like, glacial. Look, he’s still standing and everything—good start, standing, Ed’s not the biggest fan but he’s managing it just fine, seems pretty good considering he can’t feel his toes or his knees or his—his—his fucking mouth, christ—and his brain feels like it’s been dunked overboard, just popped into the sea and swished around a bit before being tossed back in, clueless and drenched.

Did he—

No. Surely not.

And Stede—

No. Can’t have done. Right?

God, what the fuck.

He stands completely still for a while. Concentrates hard at it. He’s the fucking king of standing still. He could stand still here all day if he needs to, counting his own heartbeat as it hammers against the inside of his eyeballs.

There’s usually this super shitty highlights reel that kicks in right about now—he’s standing here waiting, the anticipation is killing him, fuck—a line of fucking stupid thoughts that always leads back to how it felt to sit on that dock waiting for someone who wasn’t coming and how he’d said too much and been too much and that his hands are too slick with blood to hang onto anyone, that one day he’s going to open a door and find himself alone again, and christ, he is so fucking sick of those thoughts when he knows—

It’s silent up in his head, though. Or, as silent as it gets anyway. 

Ed waits and waits, but all he can think is that he’s here, standing still, and he knows.

He knows he could open that door a million fucking times, and Stede will always be on the other side of it.

Yeah, all right, it’s a fucking metaphor, obviously, but in all the ways that matter—yeah, Stede’ll be there. Stede’ll be there until this ship fucking rots in down in the locker, until all the lightning in the sky has worn itself out. Until his bones creak and his hair’s gone stark white and his hands get all gnarly like a tree root, and even then Stede is gonna be there, his own knobby fingers grown old around Ed’s.

All Ed has to do is let him.

All right. All right.

He breathes in. He breathes out.

Ed turns back to the captain’s cabin and opens the door.

*

Stede’s there.

Big surprise.

Ed almost laughs at how the relief blows through him, even though he just fucking left. He feels like there are sails caught inside his lungs, full and aching, because there’s a rug he didn’t pick out and a plant he definitely wouldn’t have kept alive on his own and half the shit in the bookshelves he doesn’t even remember seeing before right now, and there by the desk, already on his feet, eyes wide, cheeks pink, chest heaving—is Stede.

“Sorry,” Ed says, standing in the doorway, “but did I just—”

“Yes,” Stede says instantly.

“Oh. Huh.”

There’s an ink spill the size of a jellyfish on the arm of Stede’s shirt, spreading its tendrils as it soaks in. He’ll be pissed when he finds it later but he’s sure as shit not finding it now, not staring at Ed the way he is. His eyebrows are doing a thing again—not the bitchy one, a different one, an earnest one. A wanting one. One that makes Ed feel all scooped out.

He steps into the cabin. Shuts the door behind him.

Watches, heart pounding, as Stede steps forward.

“You know,” Stede starts, clearing his throat. “That was a bit of a double-standard, that.”

He’s trying to pretend he’s playing it cool the same way Ed’s trying to pretend he’s playing it cool. They’re both fucking bad at it, honestly; if Stede can’t see the cartwheels his stomach is turning right now Ed’ll take him to be fitted for specs, first thing next port. 

“Yeah? How do you figure?”

Ed steps forward. Stede does too.

“Well, here I am, asking all these questions for months, you know, being the gentleman, and here’s you coming along and stealing that, quick as you please.”

Fuck, if he makes Ed laugh right now he’s going to explode. “Pirate, mate. Pillaging’s kind of my thing.”

Stede makes a considering noise, takes another step forward. Ed steps forward too.

“I suppose I did know that,” Stede concedes. “Be a bit of a rug-pull for me to lodge a protest now.”

“Bit late, yeah. You’ve already signed the waiver.”

Ed’s heart is going wild in his chest; his knees are going weak at the hinges. It takes forever to eat up the distance between them, step by step, until finally Stede’s just right there, no more than an arm’s reach away, and Ed’s pretty sure he’s stopped blinking or breathing or anything, waiting as the moment stretches out, pretty sure he’s going to disintegrate if Stede doesn’t say something, anything—

“I’m a bit—afraid,” Stede says suddenly. He laughs, with that fucking self-deprecating little laugh like he thinks he’s ridiculous. Ed might’ve laughed too, if he couldn’t see the panic waiting just behind Stede’s eyes. 

“Don’t have to be. I’m right here with you, mate.”

“What if I do it wrong?”

“Then we’ll try it again.”

Stede’s voice drops to a whisper. “What if you—what if you say no again?”

“Wouldn’t be standing here waiting if I was gonna,” Ed whispers back.

“What if it’s too soon?” Ed can hear the panic in Stede’s voice now. “It was just an accident, it doesn’t have to mean anything—”

“Stede,” Ed says, and Stede finally looks up, eyes gone all gold and dappled and dark, like sand under the water, right at the edge of the shallows, just where the sea drops off, right before you pull free. “It does mean something, all right? Means this, you and me, it’s just—easy. It’s just like fucking breathing.”

It is easy. So fucking easy. It’s easy because Stede stayed and he waited and because they talked and listened and fucking worked at it, for it. It’s easy because Stede rolls his maps the way Ed taught him and because Ed dances with his hands where Stede showed him and because they’ve learnt to move together, in step, in time. It’s easy because Ed’s gotten better at asking questions and Stede’s gotten better at answering them and because they’ve both learned to sit with the silences, because Stede always looks to Ed right before he blows out the last candle at night but also because Ed’s always there to look back, because Stede knows how he likes his tea and his eggs and Ed knows which books to save and which buttons are best and because Ed didn’t even know he could laugh like this, live like this, love like this.

It’s easy because Stede would wait a hundred years more if he’d wait a day, and because Ed doesn’t want to wait another fucking minute.

He reaches out, takes Stede’s hand. He’s always loved Stede’s hands. He breathes in, nice and slow, and breathes out, until Stede matches his pace, and then he tugs Stede just that tiny bit closer.

“It’s all right,” he says, quiet, gentle. “I’m right here. Ask me.”

It’s easy. It’s so easy.

“Can I kiss you?”

Ed knows he’ll have to stop smiling for it, but not yet. He closes his eyes, lets the grin take over. Gives Stede a bigger target, whatever. Doesn’t matter. All that matters is—

“Yeah. Yes.”

*

Ed’s thought about this one. He’s actually thought about it kind of a lot, got a bit of a running list, which would be a little embarrassing except—he’s pretty sure Stede’s thought about it too.

Stede steps impossibly closer, so close Ed can feel his breath on his cheek. On his lips. His eyes are still doing that big earnest sincere thing and his hand comes up to cup Ed’s jaw all gentle like he’s that kind of person and Ed closes his eyes and pushes into it a little and hopes to fucking god Stede doesn’t get distracted by the inkblot on his sleeve right now and wonders if it’ll be hard and fast and hungry or small and soft and chaste, if Stede’ll taste like tea or marmalade, if Stede’ll think it was worth waiting for, but it’s here now, it’s here, it’s happening, it’s finally, it’s theirs—

“Just breathe,” Stede says, for both their benefit, and then he kisses Ed.

It’s easy.

Ed breathes.

Stede’s warm. He’s warm, and he’s sturdy, and he smells a bit like sawdust and vanilla and he kisses Ed like he can’t quite believe he’s kissing Ed, careful and measured and still a little hesitant maybe, like he’s giving Ed space to pull away.

Ed doesn’t want to pull away. Ed never wants to pull away again.

One kiss, and Stede leans back a touch to say, “Was that—” and Ed answers by kissing him again, kissing him back, wrapping an arm around his waist to keep him close. Ed answers by changing the angle of his jaw and the part of his lips, answers by touching the words to Stede’s lip with his tongue, by tasting, by inviting, by curling one hand around the nape of Stede’s neck and kissing him again, pushing just a little harder, just a little faster, wanting just a little more and a little more.

And Stede gives it, gives him everything, tells him everything he’d thought when they were apart and everything he wants now that they’re together by pressing it right into his mouth, and Ed kisses him, is kissed by him, until his chest is too tight and his pulse is too heavy and his eyes are hot with something fucking stupid probably and he doesn’t even care because this, this is, this is everything.

He chokes on the next breath like an idiot, but Stede gets it, of course he gets it. Presses one last kiss to the corner of Ed’s mouth, wraps his arms around him. Presses their foreheads together and breathes.

“If you say something sappy right now I’m gonna lose it,” Ed manages, voice cracking. He’s probably going to lose it anyway.

Stede smiles, soft and easy, and because he’s the fucking worst, he says it anyway: “I love you, you nut.”

Nothing to do about it but to kiss him again. That’ll show him what for. That’ll show him up against this desk in a minute, if Ed can get himself together enough to make the move, or maybe all the way to bed, is that too fast? It doesn’t matter, Ed’s sick of slow, he kisses Stede harder, he’d climb right inside if Stede let him, nips at his mouth, grips his hip, his hair—

Across the room, the door opens again. “Boss, you got that new route plotted or—ah, jesus fucking christ—”

“Mm—” Stede finishes kissing Ed with what can only be described as a flourish, what the fuck— “Really, Izzy, you ought to learn to knock.”

Ed laughs.

*

Part of Ed wants to say fuck it—let the crew fend for themselves. They can always re-orient themselves later, right? And he’s got a situation on his hands that’s pretty fucking important and becoming pretty fucking urgent, thanks very much, if you don’t fucking mind.

But there’s also something weirdly comforting about pulling apart with one last kiss, a few more quiet words, splitting up for afternoon duties. Like—they can take the time because they’ve got the time. They can part now because they can come back together later.

Because Stede will still be there. Because Ed will still want him to be.

Plus, Izzy’s gone this fascinating olivey-green colour and Ed suspects they’re going to need another hand on deck in a minute.

And it’s fine. It’s good, even. He likes the familiar work of being on deck, keeping an eye on the rigging, laughing with Frenchie and Roach, taking Izzy a tin mug of water. It’s good. All good.

Ed feels settled, finally.

He knows Stede is in the cabin with the maps, plotting their route; knows he’ll be up on deck sooner or later. He knows there’ll be a tomorrow, and a day after that, and a day after that. It’s satisfied something deep inside him, steered away from fizzing, white-capped frenzy into calmer waters. Smooth sailing.

Yeah. It’s fucking good.

Stede comes up to the quarterdeck about half an hour later, talking Buttons through the route; he only looks at Ed a dozen and a half times, which seems pretty restrained considering that Ed doesn’t look away from him at all.

By the time Roach rings the dinner bell, Ed has drifted away to the taffrail, watching the wake the ship cuts through the water. Most of the crew goes below to the galley, but he’s hopeful at least one will stay on deck with him. A specific one, not just any old one—he’s gone rather picky in his old age.

“Captain,” Stede says behind him.

That’s the one.

Ed smiles up into the sky, catches a beam of light that’s opened through the clouds. “Captain.”

“I’m afraid I have some terribly urgent business to speak with you about.”

He’s got his posh, formal voice on. Ed doesn’t turn around, but he can see Stede standing there with his feet turned in just the most polite manner, with his hands held in the most appropriate way. Ed wonders idly if he’s got a terrapin fork hidden in the sleeves of that pink silk jacket.

“Do you now,” Ed says easily, reveling in the show of it. “S’pose we’d better take it to the captain’s cabin then, haven’t we?”

“I’ll put the kettle on,” Stede promises. “See you there in, say, five minutes?”

Ed nods shortly. Doesn’t dare to look at him; knows he won’t last five minutes if he does. “See you there.”

*

Longest five fucking minutes of Ed’s life, and he really only waits three.

“You better not have really put the kettle on,” Ed says when he opens the door to the captain’s cabin, and he’s across the room and hauling Stede into his arms before Stede can even start laughing. “Fucking hell, Stede.”

Stede’s feet are bare. The kiss is all heat and eagerness, addictive and sweet and it sweeps through Ed, makes him clutch Stede that much closer. He feels solid and real under Ed’s hands and now that Ed gets it, now that he understands, now that he realises how fucking easy it is, he wants everything.

“Of course I didn’t,” Stede says, and he probably means it to sound waspish but it comes out breathless instead. Breath, who needs breath? Ed would rather grow fucking gills or something if it meant he could keep kissing Stede like this.

He does well enough without them, though.

Kissing Stede is one hell of an experience—he’s not super great at it, for one, and there is a lot of tongue and spit before he starts picking up what Ed’s laying on him—and for two, he doesn’t really know what to do with his hands, so they’re everywhere, kind of, and not always in the places Ed expects either.

The thing about Stede fucking Bonnet, though, is that he’s a fucking madman.

Which is to say: a little enthusiasm goes a long way, and the enthusiasm Stede’s unleashed practically knocks Ed off his damn feet.

No, wait—it actually does knock Ed off his feet, after a minute or maybe ten or maybe a hundred years, who’s counting, it’s not long enough. He’s had Stede’s fingers at the nape of his neck and in the dip of his elbow and tucked into the notch at the base of his throat, clinging from his collarbones, feeling out the shape of him, his fucking ears, his fucking armpit, even, where it’s warmest, the fuck, so he’s not really been paying attention to Stede trying to walk him around the cabin because he’s got his own shit to focus on—Stede’s mouth is a great start, right, but he’s also got shoulders and hips and all that fucking hair, his tiny little arse and his thick fucking thighs—

“Oof,” Ed huffs, landing heavy on the edge of the bed. Stede bullies his way between Ed’s knees without so much as a by your leave to keep kissing him, bending down just a touch now to reach instead of the other way around, and christ, that’s compelling, that is, that could be fucking habit-forming. “God, Stede.”

“Mm,” Stede hums in agreement. One of his hands finds the outside of Ed’s thigh, squeezes hard enough makes him groan. “What do you think, mm?”

“You can’t actually be expecting me to think right now.”

“I was hoping you’d think at least a little about helping me get this shirt off.”

Jesus. Ed’s hands curl into the fabric of Stede’s shirt of their own volition, pulling at it until the hem slips free of his trousers. The hint of Stede’s skin underneath is almost too much to bear, hot and smooth and untouched, and one hand slips underneath, splays across Stede’s lower back; Stede arches into it, breaking away in a gasp.

“You good?” Ed asks, stopping Stede from diving back in, holding him with a hand on his hip so he can find a bit of distance between them again. “Stede, hey. Listen.”

Stede stops, looks at him. He looks a little stupid right now, kiss-drunk, red-lipped, flushed. The aching golden heavy-hot thing that’s been making suggestive swoops up and down Ed’s thighs finds a spot to rest right at the juncture; he’s suddenly so aware that he’s hard he almost shoves a hand onto himself to relieve some of the pressure.

“Ed,” Stede says, quite carefully. “I did not walk you over here and sit you down because I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“Oh,” Ed says, like a fucking genius. Stede’s so solid between his knees, so warm, he thinks it’s erased most of his brain. “Okay, yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhm.”

“Just because I’m ready, darling, doesn’t mean you have to be.”

Darling. Ed hasn’t been in a church in probably thirty-five years, but that word rings in his chest like a bell in a tower, echoing down the nave Ed’s made of his spine, to the altar Ed’s made at the end of it—for Stede, only for Stede. It’s been Stede’s since the day they met and every day since, from can you keep a secret and all way through it’s my prize, I’ll win it however I like, and every question has been its own little candle, lit for a prayer, can I kiss you, can I kiss you. Will you let me love you, darling?

Ed doesn’t pray. God never answers anyway. 

But Stede—Ed had wanted him to come back. To not be dead. To bring Ed home.

And now he’s here. 

He heard. He answered. 

Ed tilts his head up, meets Stede gaze, dark in the shadows of the cabin. He rubs his thumbs over Stede’s hips, presses his ear to Stede’s chest to hear the heart beating inside—the only litany Ed will ever respond to.

“Ask me,” he says.

“Ed. Ed Teach.” Stede kisses the top of his head, then he guides Ed’s head away from the warmth of him so he can kiss his forehead, the bridge of his nose, the lids of Ed’s eyes when they flutter closed. His cheek, his jaw, the rounded end of his nose, before he stops, so close Ed can feel the question on his own mouth. “Can I kiss you?”

Fucking hell. Stede Bonnet’ll be the fucking end of him.

“Yeah.” 

Stede does, and he asks again—“Can I kiss you here,” tapping at the side of his neck, pulling Ed’s hair just enough to expose the line of it—and again—“Can I kiss you here,” smoothing a thumb over his chest, stopping to circle his nipple—and again, fuck—“How about here, can I kiss you here,” nuzzling his nose into the fine hair just below Ed’s belly button—and again, delving his hands into even more secret places, pulling Ed’s shirt off and kissing the lines of tattoos Ed had forgotten he even had, undoing his trousers and kissing the line of his hip, the length of his legs. He does weird shit to the insides of Ed’s knees and leaves Ed gasping over what he does to his fucking calves, for fuck’s sake, and he asks, and asks, and asks, can I lay you down, what do you need for your knee, can I touch you here—

—fucking shit, you can touch me anywhere.

“Language,” Stede says with a laugh, with that prim voice that drives Ed so crazy, as he closes his fingers around Ed’s cock. He’s so slow, he’s so delicate, Ed’s burning up with yes and yes please and yes, jesus christ, yes yes yes, but he finally straddles Ed’s thighs—naked, and there’s so much of him, the hair on his body’s coppery more than blond, there’s divots in his shoulders and a curve to his stomach that drives Ed crazy, he’s got no arse to speak of but calves that Ed could probably put together and fuck if he wanted to and it’s beautiful, he’s beautiful, Ed wants to touch him, wants to taste him, wants to reach out and hang onto him and never let go—

“Wait,” Ed finally gets out, hips jerking into Stede’s hold, and Stede stops, hands-off, which is worse, fuck. “No, I just—”

“Tell me,” Stede says, and it’s more of a demand than an ask but Ed turns into it, grasping at it like a lifeline.

“Together.” He slips his own hand down their bodies for Stede’s cock too, he’s fucking gorgeous, proud and hard and heavy in Ed’s hand. “Shift here, together, I want you to—”

He breaks off, tries breathes through the jolt the thought sense through him.

“I’m here,” Stede reminds him, leaning down over him, bracing himself on one hand to kiss his reassurance down into Ed’s mouth, and the cover of him, the protection of him, the heat of him, makes Ed feel safe and wanted and kept, and Ed kisses Stede back, tries to kiss his understanding and his own reassurance back into him—that he wants Stede there, that he wants to keep him, to keep him here, safe, close. Fucking closer. “Tell me what you need.”

“I want to feel you against me,” Ed says, and fuck, he’s not crying, he’s not, he’s just spilling over everywhere, over the fucking boundaries of himself as he reaches for Stede—

Stede kisses him, puts him back where he belongs. Rolls his hips to line them up, chest to chest, hip to hip, until their cocks press flush against one another and Ed can feel him, can feel his pulse and his breath and his fucking want, matching his, stroking against his, and Ed’s hand is trapped between them, trying to press their cocks closer together, though it’s a bit much for just a handful; the friction’s good anyway, tight and hot and he’s wet, he’s pretty sure it’s him anyway, leaking a little too much, Stede doesn’t seem to mind.

“Like this?” Stede nuzzles into Ed’s cheek, into his nose. He rolls his hips again. “Can I make love to you like this?”

The answer cracks out of Ed, like it’s being pulled from some dark, bloody, hideaway place and into the light, like he’s giving over something he’s never given before, something small and vulnerable and still beating. “Please.”

Stede kisses him.

And kisses him.

And kisses him.

His hand finds a way under Ed’s neck to hold him as Stede kisses him, kisses him, holds him, body stretched hot and taut and deliberate over him, as he rolls his hips again and again, fucking against him, rutting against him, his cock sliding through Ed’s own slick against him, his eyes dark, mouth open, shoulders broad, pressing into Ed again and again until Ed can hardly breathe for how much he needs it, until he’s practically gasping into Stede’s mouth, taking air from him, sharing it back again, until he has to pull his own hand back so he can clutch at Stede’s back, at his hair, at his waist, pull him closer, faster, harder, until he wraps his legs up around Stede’s hips and tries to wrestle himself off the bed into him, into him, into him, until his thighs are so tense they hurt and his spine can’t stop arcing up so hard he feels like he’ll break, driving him up into Stede as Stede drives down into him, slipping against each other with how badly they want it, want it now, want it now, and Ed thinks he knows everything now, every vein in Stede’s body, every nerve in his hips and his cock and his neck and his heart, and then Stede gets his own hand back between them and wraps around the both of them together and strokes—

Ed comes.

It’s like being struck with St Elmo’s fire before the storm even starts, like the sound of a cannon when you’re still half-asleep and suddenly you’re fucking awake, like hearing a match light up in the dark and watching the fire take, and take, igniting him like the tinder frame of a ship.

Stede kisses him, jerks against him once, twice, goes stiff all over, he’s beautiful, trying to kiss Ed through it as they both burn, as flames race through the hull of his ribs and cracks him open just in time for the gunpowder finish, a stroke and a shot and light burning on the water, blazing glory and sparks all the way through to the very end.

And then there’s nothing but quiet and warmth, and Ed breathes. 

“Darling,” Stede says, after, later, maybe sometime entirely out of time itself, after he’s collapsed over Ed, sticky-warm and sweat-slick, after he’s reached out of bed into the fucking abyss or something, Ed doesn’t know, for a cloth to clean them up with, after he’s shifted Ed under the sheets and slid in next to him, gathered him up. He pushes the hair off Ed’s forehead, out of his eyes. The candle’s burned low; Ed doesn’t care if they never light another one again. “Are you still awake?”

No. Maybe. He scrunches his nose, considering it, decides he’s awake enough for Stede.

“Darling,” Ed repeats. He slurs it a bit, forces his eyes open. Traces a finger over the line of Stede’s nose, his bottom lip; Stede smiles. “Don’t leave your darling, darling.”

“I won’t,” Stede promises. “Can I tell you one more thing?”

“Mm. Mmhm.”

Is it a kiss, the way Stede says it, or does Ed just dream it that way later? He’s never sure, when he tries to remember, but it doesn’t matter. He hears what Stede says. He knows what he means. He’s sure Stede hears him say it too.

“I love you.”

That’s not news, Ed wants to tell him, and maybe he does, just like maybe this whole conversation happens inside the next kiss, a story told in a different dialect, nothing but breath and movement, words passed from tongue to tongue like secrets.

I love you.

Ed already knows. He knows it down to his blood, down to his bones. Knows like it’s settled right into his marrow, gone and put itself to bed in his heart.

That’s cheesy as hell, Ed thinks, tucking himself back in against Stede’s chest. Top-tier ridiculous, the sort of fairy tale thing folks don’t really say in real life. Life is too hard for talk like that, they’d say, and if love like that existed at all, it’d be rarer than diamonds, more precious than pearls.

Bully for them, then. Ed’s a fucking pirate—treasure is kind of his thing.

And Stede is still here.

*

“And they lived happily ever after.”

Stede always finishes a story as dramatically as possible, letting the statement hang in the air before he closes his book. Tonight he uses his pause to find Ed’s gaze across the deck, to give him a soft little grin, as if to say, what do you think? Shall we?

Not the most subtle, honestly, but Ed’s in fucking love with him anyway.

The crew goes through their evening routines while Stede watches from his usual perch on the capstan, chatting with the Swede about whether he’s likely to have been cursed by a witch. Roach starts collecting any mugs left lying around, passing half of them to Ivan to take them down to the galley. Buttons goes up to the fo’c’sle to undress; that’s none of Ed’s business. Frenchie takes up his lute and starts strumming a lullaby as they all slowly make their way to bed.

Something about the cadence of their habits, their rituals, makes Ed’s chest go all warm and loose, tension unspooling into the growing dark. They’re together, the whole lot of them—they’ve made it. They’re safe.

Ed wonders when they started making him feel safe too.

He’s pretty sure it’s got something to do with the soft ridiculous clever contradiction of a brilliantly beautiful man that’s slipping Ed a private smile as he makes his way forward on deck amid the flurry of blankets getting settled.

“Everybody ready for lights out?”

There’s a general murmur of agreement. Stede starts dousing the lanterns one by one, working his way aft on the starboard side; Ed takes the port side, and waits at the last lamp for him to catch up.

And it’s easy. It’s so fucking easy, when Stede turns and sees him, to tip his head at the captain’s cabin. To hold out a hand for him to take.

“Captain,” Lucius calls. “Aren’t you coming to bed—oh!“

He’s sat up, of course. Spotted Ed and Stede hand in hand, god, if he cries Ed is going to make a break for the cabin—and then Jim and Oluwande pop back up from below-decks, and Ivan rolls over to see and Fang sits up and, oh, yeah, yep, there goes the waterworks.

Yeah, definitely time to go.

Any second now.

All right, fine, fuck, he guesses he doesn’t mind so much. Not when he’s, you know, maybe kind of sort of a little bit a tad a touch to some very extremely limited degree—really fucking happy.

He’s happy.

It’s the easiest thing Ed’s ever been.

“Will someone pass Fang a handkerchief, please?” Stede calls back steadily, but he’s grinning like a loon too, practically glowing in the light of the last lamp. “Goodnight, everyone.”

“Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” Ed adds.

Stede elbows him. “Our ship does not have bed bugs.”

“Every ship has bed bugs. It’s part of the whole pirate thing.”

“Are you getting bed bug bites? If that’s the case I’ll continue out on here, I haven’t had any at all and I’ve no desire to start—“

He pulls away, teasing; Ed pulls him back in again. Lucius squeaks like a bird that’s been struck out of the sky; Fang’s tears start anew. “’Course we haven’t, but we’re the fucking captains. Little buggers know better.”

“Well, in that case—“

“Are you two going to fuck already,” Roach says loudly, interrupting, “because I’m still willing to lock you both down in the hold if need be.”

“I don’t think that’ll be necessary, thank you, Roach,” Stede answers. “I’ve already had it quite handled.”

And he pulls, pulls Ed over and twists him down and dips him back over that arm until he’s nearly level with the floor, sending Ed’s stomach flying, his hair’s everywhere, and he doesn’t yelp but he does laugh and Stede’s got him, he’s got him, and then Ed’s being kissed to within an inch of his life in front of the whole crew and Izzy and everyone.

The deck erupts, whoops and hollers and congratulations spilling over the rails and across the water.

Ed barely hears them.

He wraps his arms around Stede’s neck, tries not to laugh too hard into his mouth, and kisses him back.

*