Chapter Text
Being a TA was definitely for Lucius. Mostly because he got to be all the undergrads’ superior, while also being just casual enough to be in on the gossip. And this week’s gossip made him wish he knew more about Professor Bonnet’s personal life. Shockingly, as kind and talkative and distractable as Professor Bonnet—Stede, he asked everyone, even his students, to call him—was, Lucius had somehow never gotten down to the nitty-gritty of any of his personal business.
Lucius liked to think he was fairly good at getting to know people. But although he knew the day-to-day habits of Stede Bonnet, he didn’t know all that much else. Other than that the guy was a massive dork, obviously. And that he was married.
But today that was incredibly inconvenient, because a biker in studded leathers followed Stede’s volkswagen beetle out of the parking lot last night way too close, and everyone was betting on why, and Lucius wanted in… but he didn’t have any inside information. All he knew was the professor’s coffee order and what his schedule was from 8 am to 5 pm, 5 days a week.
“What was, like, the vibe?” Lucius asked slyly.
“Literal leather daddy,” a green-haired definitely-lesbian said, dead serious. “Like, dressed for a dungeon. I thought I’d missed the news about some kind of fetish-themed pride parade.”
Lucius squawked a laugh in delight.
“Ah, come on. He’s one of those leather bikers, the fucking scary ones,” another student said.
“Yeah, we all know that, we’re not blind, but he asked what the outfit looked like.”
“Spanish Jackie?” one kid asked.
“No, no, she’s the one who’s in charge of that biker gang of like, sapphics and trans men. This guy was one of that other group. The one you hear absolutely terrifying stories about on the news. They all dress in black and leather, it’s pretty hot.”
“Okay,” Lucius said with a laugh. “That’s an interesting way to refer to an illegal biker gang, but what do I know?”
“Well, do you know why he followed the professor home?” one of them asked.
Lucius was quiet for a bit. “All the way home?” he asked.
“Well I dunno, halfway I reckon. I left the garage after the professor and my journey is right behind his all the way up until I get home myself, so I dunno.”
“God, you don’t reckon he’s in trouble or anything, do you?” the green-haired girl asked. “Like, cause of all those jokes he makes about being in Blackbeard’s gang?”
“Is it Blackbeard’s gang with the leather?” Lucius asked, leaning in.
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“Oh boy.”
---
The previous night, Stede Bonnet had held Edward “Blackbeard” Teach gently in his arms in their bed.
“You didn’t have to ride all the way out to campus just to escort me back home, you know, Ed,” Stede said. “Really, any excuse you can get not to ride that thing is a blessing. I do worry about you on the road sometimes.”
“Me? Aw, I’ll be ‘right, Stede! I’m Blackbeard, remember? And one of Spanish Jackie’s boys was talking some shit about you. Just wanted to make sure—”
“If Jackie’s guys were gonna get me, they wouldn’t pick the road, where they’re on bikes and I’m in a car, surely?” Stede said.
Ed was quiet a moment. “I guess,” he said.
Stede chuckled. “There, you silly thing. Don’t you worry about me.”
“Oh, shut up,” Ed said, sleepily. He lay his head down on Stede’s chest and fell asleep.
---
Stede used to teach history. These days, he was the only academic at the university that knew Latin, and he’d moved to that after the last one left, and slowly but surely stopped teaching history. Latin classes were smaller every year. Not like mathematics or english literature lectures, which packed whole halls, Stede’s Latin lectures were given to about 15 students at the most at once, no matter how many (usually no more than 30) students were actually enrolled.
So his students felt a little less like he was a far-away face on a stage, and a little more like they knew him. They didn’t know much, but what they did know was that Stede was an absolute dork—his lecture slides were full of terrible memes which he made himself, often fundamentally misunderstanding the joke or the format—and that he was completely obsessed with his husband Ed, who sounded like he was both incredibly sweet, and a dork to rival their professor.
Anything Stede Bonnet said that started with the words ‘my husband Ed’ was bound to be as adorable as it was funny. So the class of students sinking lower and lower into their uncomfortable plastic lecture chairs as their notes became messier and messier, fewer and fewer, suddenly perked up with their professor looked up at one of the slides to see a smear of characters going across the lower half of the screen, sighed, and then said,
“My husband Ed sat on my computer last night.”
The TA looked up from filing his nails to let out a bark of laughter. The entire lecture hall was waiting for Stede to explain how that had happened and that it was a lot more innocent than anything everyone suspected Lucius might be thinking.
“I was on the chesterfield sofa—lovely silk velvet you know—and Ed decided to cradle Mittens like a baby again, but Mittens really doesn’t like that very much now she’s older, and he got her tangled in his beard again, which I keep telling him to watch out for because it’s very hard to brush it out without making him look like a shrubbery for several days afterward. But what I mean to say is that this somehow alarmed him, and he ended up falling on top of me while I was working. I suppose I must have gotten… distracted and forgotten to fix this.”
He clicked onto the next slide as the sniggering from the small audience subsided.
“Now uh… the word dignus will take the ablative of respect; the object of dignus will move into the ablative, so, um,” the professor clicked something, and the slide presentation disappeared, leaving only a very poorly-framed and blurry picture of a very small cat as a desktop picture behind. “Oh… oh dear, um, Lucius…” Lucius sprang up and fixed the slides. “Ah, here… tu solus amore meo dignus eras , literally translated as ‘you alone were being worthy in my love’, but an ablative—not genitive—sense of the word ‘of’ can be used to create a smoother translation, ‘you alone were worthy of my love’.”
Stede cleared his throat awkwardly loud. The next slide had a bunch of pictures of cats for seemingly no reason, scattered amongst the examples.
---
#ed-moments-💕
sammyhammy 02/11/2022
professor stede said his husband ed set fire to the stove boiling potatoes and the police called on them for all the screaming
pam (she/her) 02/20/2022
ed poured rum on stede’s pot plant and it died and he’s sad about it :((
cannelloni (gigi she/they) 03/03/2022
@maggy @amberpamber guys i’m gonna delete these messages and redirect you to #ed-moments-discussion for commentary okay?
cannelloni pinned a message to this channel. see all pinned messages .
03/03/2022
kachussy 03/12/2022
ed wore red and pink in the same outfit and stede is so upset about it lmfaooo
pacificannot today at 6:34 pm
ed got the cat tangled in his beard again, fell onto stede while stede was working.
---
#off-topic-1
PLEASE stop forgetting I am your TA (Lucius he/they) today at 7:02 pm
Wait what??
kachussy today at 7:03 pm
there were like 5 of those biker dudes hanging around in the garage for stede this time, and he drove a different way in his stupid little car but they still followed him. same guy was there again too.
PLEASE stop forgetting I am your TA (Lucius he/they) today at 7:03 pm
Did he notice them?
WHY ARE YOU TAKING SO LONG TO TYPE JUST TELL ME.
PLEASE stop forgetting I am your TA (Lucius he/they) today at 7:05 pm
Gabe, I’m gonna tell prof to fail you on that exam.
kachussy today at 7:06 pm
yeah? and he looked kind of nervous? like, he went pink and he put his hands over his face and ran over to his car and like, floored it out of the place, which is really weird cause he’s so careful usually, right? and that’s why it was so obvious the biker dudes were following him cause they laughed and ran to their bikes real fast to catch up.
PLEASE stop forgetting I am your TA (Lucius he/they) today at 7:07 pm
Should we call the cops? I'm not gonna call the cops but like should someone else call the cops?
---
Stede grinned out like his side window as Ed sped past him on his Harley. Part of him knew this game of theirs was stupid. But wasn’t it so much fun to break rules and— ah, amber light. Stede slowed neatly to a stop. Ed and the boys, however, blared through the intersection just before the light went red.
“Curses!” Stede huffed. He would not be beating them to The Revenge tonight. And he had so wanted to win for once… ah, oh well.
In any case, soon the man in the baby blue Volkswagen beetle was pulling up outside The Revenge in an argyle cardigan sweater. It was across the road from Spanish Jackie’s and five minutes from the High Seas—somewhere members of both their ‘little crews’ (as Stede would say) frequented—and as Stede went inside, Ed was already leaping over the bar with an orange in his hand.
“You want it sweet today, babe, or bitter,” Ed asked, picking up a knife and skinning the orange expertly… he’d done it just as proficiently the first time he’d ever done it, and Stede had never thought to ask how he knew how to skin that well. Well, he had thought to ask, and decided not to.
“Oh, however you make it, darling!”
“Can’t you just drink like a normal bloke, Bonnet,” Izzy groaned from behind him.
“Well, I happen to think old fashioneds are quite sophisticated, and, and manly, too! Everyone everywhere else thinks so, it’s really just you that has the issue,” Stede said.
Ed handed Stede his drink, which was warm because they had no ice box, but Stede had honestly grown to appreciate it that way. I must remember to offer Ed my old mini fridge for this place.
“Wait now, I just remembered you let Swede make you make him a strawberry daiquiri last week!” Stede said. “Now that I would think you’d complain about more than my tastes!”
Izzy seemed caught for a moment. “Yeah, well,” he spat, “Fucker brought his own strawberries! What was I gonna do, tell him he wasted four dollars?”
“Aw, Iz, you’re just all heart!” Ed said as he pinched Izzy’s cheek and leapt back over the bar, sliding an arm around Stede.
---
#leather-daddy-biker-theories
sammyhammy today at 5:25 pm
@everyone HOLY SHIT YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE WHAT ME AND @kachussy JUST SAW WTF
cannelloni (gigi she/they) today at 5:25 pm
maybe don’t @ all the people in the server about the biker stuff, some people don’t really want to speculate
kachussy today at 5:26 pm
gigi no, the prof just got grabbed by that scary leather daddy biker, the OG from the first time, and like pulled behind the fucking building /srs
cannelloni (gigi she/they) today at 5:26 pm
WHAT DID YOU CALL THE POLICE?? ARE YOU STILL THERE?? GO GET SOMEONE AND STAY SAFE YOURSELVES
WHY ARE YOU JUST MESSAGING THE FUCKING DISCORD YOU IDIOT!
maggy today at 5:27 pm
oh my god!!
pacificannot today at 5:27 pm
holy shit
PLEASE stop forgetting I am your TA (Lucius he/they) today at 5:27 pm
How long ago did this happen? I’m still on campus and I’m calling the police.
sammyhammy today at 5:28 pm
like 15 mins? we both just ran away…
PLEASE stop forgetting I am your TA (Lucius he/they) today at 5:28 pm
Like obviously you don’t want to get involved but you should probably have called someone straight away. Do you know if Stede is ok??
audio video disco today at 5:29 pm
I was in the lot just now and prof’s car is gone and so is he.
PLEASE stop forgetting I am your TA (Lucius he/they) today at 5:30 pm
Do I still ask for cops? 999 lady is getting mad…
---
Lucius Spriggs (TA)
LS 5:31
Stede are you okay???
You 5:31
Yes, just out with Ed right now after class. What’s going on?
LS 5:32
Nothing weird happen this afternoon, boss? Everything good?
You 5:31
Yes? Lucius did something happen? 🥴
LS 5:32
That’s not how you use that emoji, and I’m gonna kill those undergrads.
---
The way Stede’s entire world seemed to brighten when he saw Ed waiting in the lot for him after a long day of boring class did not compare to the thrill of joy in his heart when Ed grabbed him by the lapels of his tailored suit and pulled him behind the wall of the building to press a gentle, loving kiss to his waiting lips.
At the sound of students muttering and hurried footsteps pounding away, Ed pulled back.
“Wanna get out of here, baby?” Ed asked.
“Fuck. Yes,” Stede said with a smile.
---
#leather-daddy-biker-theories
sammyhammy today at 5:22 pm
so the day after Stede gets grabbed by that biker he has a black eye in class?? this ain’t rocket science guys…
PLEASE stop forgetting I am your TA (Lucius he/they) today at 5:23 pm
Stede said he was perfectly fine that day, I know you guys are fucking with us.
sammyhammy today at 5:23 pm
he said what? @kachussy do you know why prof would lie? is he hiding something about his business with Blackbeard’s gang?
kachussy today at 5:24 pm
dark past? maybe he’s got criminal affiliations with them or something, and shit went wrong
PLEASE stop forgetting I am your TA (Lucius he/they) today at 5:28 pm
Do you guys honestly think I’m gonna believe you lot telling stories about gangs over the prof? I’ll tell him what you say about him in here!!
kachussy today at 5:28 pm
god forbid he know we think he’s weird
also did he say how he got the bruise, if it wasn’t that biker guy that i LITERALLY watched attack him the other day?
PLEASE stop forgetting I am your TA (Lucius he/they) today at 5:29 pm
He said he was at home… doing nothing… and a statue flew off the shelf and hit his face.
kachussy today at 5:29 pm
i don’t know what he’s trying to hide about being in trouble with fucking Blackbeard , but whatever it is, serisouly dude? flying statues are more plausible than a known gang of criminals that everyone is aware are active in this city? i can’t believe you’re calling me a liar over prof telling you he has poltergeists. i respect him but that’s a fucking lie if i ever heard one.
---
Stede slammed Ed hard into the wall, shoving his knee between the other man’s thighs. “I’ve caught you now, Blackbeard! Nowhere left to run! You’re at my mercy now, pirate scum! For I am your infamous rival, a British Naval Officer, come to punish you for your heinous crimes” Stede cried. And then, quieter, whispered, “Was that good, Ed?”
“Shut up and stop breaking character. I’d tell you if I was having a problem, Stede,” Ed whispered fondly.
“Come on now, just checking in! And really, a little theatrical advice?”
“Less words, more making me yours,” Ed whispered back.
“You’re my b—mm, an, b-bitch? Now? Caught you.”
“Sure, works for me,” Ed said.
“You’re my bitch,” Stede repeated, way too lovingly for the words coming out of his mouth.
Then he grabbed Ed again and shoved him into the bookshelf, pushed him against the shelves as they shook with movement, and—
“Ow, fuck!” Stede cried as his little brass bust of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart fell off the shelf and hit him right in the face.
Ed burst out laughing.
“Ed!” Stede whined pathetically.
“Sorry, babe, fuck,” Ed laughed again. “God, you’re so hot.”
This time, Ed grabbed Stede. Gently though. And gave him a feather-soft kiss to his sore eye.
---
“The verb credere expresses its subject in the dative, so we’ve got… yes, here, ‘mihi crede!’, literally ‘give credit to me!’, but better translated as ‘believe me!’” Stede said. “And I’ve added a few other…”
Stede trailed off as three police officers entered the room.
“Officer Badminton, I’m giving a lecture,” Stede said.
“Is this about that biker beating up the professor?” a student called from the audience.
“What?” Both Stede and the cop in front of the other two said at the same time.
“Enough games,” the cop said dramatically. “Stede Bonnet, you are under arrest, and just you try to get out of it this time!”
The small audience began to murmur as the balding cop cuffed Stede much more aggressively than was necessary and had him frogmarched out of the room.
---
#leather-daddy-biker-theories
kachussy today at 11:38 pm
guys what the FUCK is this???
[hyperlink]
Area Cop Fired For Failing Psych Eval After Accusing Local University Lecturer in Case Of Twin Brother’s Disappearance.
cannelloni (gigi she/they) today at 11:38 pm
holy fucking shit that’s prof and the cop from friday
cannelloni (gigi she/they) today at 11:43 pm
read, i love that this guy has no fucking evidence? but also that’s so weird…
PLEASE stop forgetting I am your TA (Lucius he/they) today at 11:45 pm
Ok FINE. maybe something weird is going on. maybe if you guys actually study for your finals i’ll promise to ask about it for you.