Chapter Text
In the back corner of a crowded, smoke-filled tavern, raucous and noisy with the overlapping babble of townsfolk and laborers and well-salted sailors just in off the docks, Ed Teach laid down his hand of cards with a grin. “Sorry, gents. Not your night.”
Groans and exclamations of disgust rounded the table as his companions for the evening tossed down their cards. Ed leaned forward to gather up his winnings, glancing across the room to catch the eye of the barkeep, an older man by the name of Luis who had been serving drinks in this tavern since he’d been tall enough to reach the taps. Ed raised a finger and circled the table in a quick gesture, and Luis nodded, turning to the casks behind him to begin pouring out another round.
“Swear on my mother’s arse, Thatch,” said Maurice, shaking his head and leaning back in his chair to scratch at his broad belly, “if I ever figure out how you cheat at cards, I’ll clean you out for everything you’re worth.”
“That’s no way to treat your mother’s arse,” Ed said, grinning, plucking a coin off his pile and flipping it at him. It bounced off Maurice’s stomach and clattered to the table, spinning for only a moment before Maurice snatched it up again and tossed it at Ed’s head with a sharp flick of his wrist. Ed dodged, but not quick enough; the table roared with laughter as it glanced off his forehead and rolled away between the legs of their chairs.
“Fucking hell, man,” Ed laughed, rubbing his head. “Too bad your hand wasn’t as good as your fuckin’ aim.”
“Quit throwing shit in my bar, Ed.” Luis arrived at the table and plonked down half a dozen tankards gripped between his large, weathered hands. “Or I’ll make you stay late to wash up.”
Maurice grinned. A gold tooth gleamed in the corner of his mouth. “Ooh, you know he’s not good for it. Soft-handed lad, that Edward.”
“Better than soft-headed, eh?” Ed passed a small stack of coins to Luis as the drinks made their way around the table, with a few extra for his trouble. “Cheers, mate.”
Across the table, Simón shook his head. “Somebody deal, for the love of Christ,” he muttered around his pipe, shaking out a match as he puffed at the embers.
Ed reached for the deck, but Sebastian beat him to it, slapping his hand over the cards and snatching them away. “Not on your life, Thatch.”
Ed raised his hands in surrender. He leaned back in his seat, stretching his legs out under the table and taking a long drink off his rum. The alcohol buzzed pleasantly in his head, honeyed and spiced and helping him on his merry way toward just a little bit pissed.
The windows of the tavern were propped open to welcome in the warm spring breeze, fragrant and heavy with the promise of coming rain. Luis ran a favorable trade most evenings, but today the harbor had been filled with ships, and the tavern was heaving with people, shouts and laughter ringing high into the rafters as the night wore on. Ed soaked it all in, letting the noise wash over him and through him, letting the steady stream of conversation move around him like an easy current.
The port town where he and Stede had landed some six months prior boasted six taverns of varying quality and repute, one coffee house, two bakeries, half a dozen fishmongers, and a sizable market square that pulled in traders and farmers and artisans from the surrounding countryside. Couldn’t be more than a few hundred souls all told, but the size of the place seemed to ebb and flow with the ships that drifted in and out of their harbor.
Beyond the edges of the town were thick jungles and steep mountains, untamed save for the knobbled roads and deep rivers that carved paths through the landscape. The mountains gentled into hills as they stretched out toward the coastline, sharp ridges and cliffsides easing into rolling meadows of grasses that moved like the sea. The late-winter rains had sent a flood of blossoms across every tree and shrub in the valley, and the scent of it was so thick they spent most days half-drunk on it, lazing around their cottage with the windows thrown open for the breeze to come through.
Ed liked this town. He liked this bar. He liked Luis. He liked Maurice, and Simón, and Ines, who only occasionally showed up at the tavern to pick fights and goad Luis until he threw her out on her ass. Sebastian he could take or leave—not half bad on a good night, but a snarky little pissant when he was losing, which was more often than not.
Wasn’t usually this busy, but Ed liked that too. He liked the sailors and traders coming through with their outlandish stories and their familiar, time-wearied complaints of shit food and worse company. He liked sitting with them sometimes, reminiscing, remembering. He liked it when someone brought out a fiddle or a pipe and got a little tune going, light and cheerful and floating over all the noise.
It wasn’t an every night sort of thing. It’d get old real fuckin’ quick, if they came down here every night. And even then, coming down once or twice a week for a meal or a round of drinks or a few hands of cards—sometimes it was too much. The noise, the people. It jarred him, some days, made his teeth hurt and his shoulders go tense. On those days he was only too eager to leave the town behind, to climb the low, sloping path up the hill, back to their quiet, solitary cottage overlooking the sea.
Ed let his gaze drift to the other side of the tavern hall, where Stede and his little gaggle of oddballs and gossips were tucked up in a corner of their own.
Ed smiled. Couldn’t help it, didn’t even bother to try. Stede sat with his back to the wall, angled in Ed’s direction so that if they happened to each glance up at the right moment, they could find each other easily across the room. He wasn’t looking at Ed now; right now, he was engrossed in what appeared to be a fairly intense conversation with a man Ed was pretty sure was called…Lorenzo? Something like that.
Whatever Lorenzo was saying, leaning over the table to convey his secrets to his enraptured audience, must have been pretty fucking salacious. Stede’s eyebrows leapt up, mouth dropping open to form a scandalized, “No!” that Ed was too far off to hear, but could imagine with ease. Ed chuckled to himself; he’d look forward to Stede’s thorough debrief later on this evening.
The low light from the candles and sconces and the low-burning hearth painted Stede in heavy shadow and flickering, glowing light. He looked good. He always looked fuckin’ good. Not much in the way of finery coming through this small port town, but Stede managed to put his touch on things, like he always did. Tonight was a smooth cotton shirt in a deep red, turned burgundy in the low light. Bit of a ruffle at the sleeves, gold rings on his fingers, a gold hoop in his ear that Ed had put there a few months back, at the end of a way-too-sloshed-to-think-better-of-it sort of night.
(They’d put away most of a bottle of brandy between them, loose and giggly in the comfort and privacy of their rooms, the sun long gone behind the horizon, and Stede had said, “Edward, darling, don’t you think I’d look dashing with an earring?” and Ed had said, “Fuck yeah, babe, gimme that ear.” The resultant piercing was in the right spot, which Ed counted as a pretty fine accomplishment, all things considered. And Stede did look dashing. Dashing as hell. Christ.)
The earring made Stede’s eyes glitter brighter when he smiled, some kind of witchcraft that Ed could do little to resist. He’d let his hair grow out a bit since they’d arrived, such that the very back of it could be pulled together into the smallest, flippiest tail at the nape of his neck. The hold that this little curl of hair had on Ed’s innermost soul—Stede kept hemming and hawing about getting a trim, and if Ed kept finding occasions to distract him away from the barber’s chair, well. Desperate times and all that.
Some nights, they liked to pretend to be strangers. Ed would find a seat on his own at the end of the bar, sipping at a drink all on his lonesome until a handsome, golden-haired man in a low-cut shirt caught his eye from across the room. Stede would wander over, would take Ed’s hand and press a demure kiss to the back of it, would sit down beside him and tell him he had the loveliest eyes, the loveliest hair, the loveliest smile, and wouldn’t he please do him the kindness to tell him his name? And Ed would smile, would toy a bit with the end of his braid hanging over his shoulder, would put a hand on Stede’s knee, and then his thigh.
They weren’t strangers tonight. Tonight was for Ed to play cards, and for Stede to collect the town’s gossip for the week, and for the two of them to make eyes at each other until they’d had their fill of outside company. One of them would eventually make their excuses and come to collect the other, and together they would amble their way back up the hill—or wobble up it, depending on the generosity of Luis’s pours on that particular evening.
(There had been one occasion, and only one, when Ed’s knee had been giving him fits and the long path up the hill seemed insurmountable, that Stede had made a courageous but ill-fated go at carrying Ed up on his back. They'd ended up at the bottom of the hill, panting and bruised and laughing their heads off in the mud where Stede had tumbled, and Ed had said, “Just leave me here, love. I'm a goner.” And Stede had rolled laboriously onto his side, half-draped over Ed as he planted an inelegant kiss to his lips. “Never,” he'd sworn. “I'll never leave you.”)
Ed liked spending their evenings together, course he did, but he liked this too. When they spent a few hours apart like this, it was just enough time for Ed to start missing him. Just enough time for Stede to miss him in return. Ed liked it, being missed.
Stede raised his drink to his lips, and Ed spotted the shine of his ring, his ring, on Stede’s hand, familiar black onyx and gold winking at him from across the room. A pleasing, possessive flame flickered at a low simmer. From across the room, Ed willed Stede to look, to glance his way, and like fate, like magic, he did. His eyes crinkled to find Ed’s gaze on him, a small smile tugging at his lips, and he feigned attention to whatever Lorenzo was going on about with one eye still caught on Ed’s.
“Ay.” Sebastian rapped on the table with an impatient knuckle, and Ed snapped his attention away from Stede to find a pile of cards in front of him. “You playing or not?”
“Sorry, mate.” Ed gathered up his hand—nothing impressive, but enough to make a bluff out of. “Thought you lot might want a minute to strategize.”
As he tossed a few coins into the center of the table, as the rest of the table laughed and drank and badgered each other into raising the bet, a pair of voices caught his ear, drifting over the tavern din.
“I’m tellin’ you, it’s fuckin’ gone.”
“It’s not fucking gone, is what I’m saying. It’s not like the whole bleedin’ island dropped into the ocean.”
“Of course it didn’t drop into the ocean, I’m not a fucking imbecile. But the Republic is gone. Done for. Whole place got razed to the fucking ground.”
The hair on the back of Ed’s neck rose to stand on end. Focusing on the cards in his hands, Ed slowly, casually, leaned back in his seat, straining to follow the conversation over all the shouts and carousing.
Another voice piped up. “Got a buddy who went through there, not a week ago. English navy’s taken over, installed a governor or some shit. They’ve got a blockade up, stopping any ship that comes near the island. There’s a huge fleet moving across the Indies, going port-by-port. Pirate hunting.”
“They’re givin’ a hundred pounds a head, dead or alive. Soon as the English took over, the whole lot of ‘em scattered like roaches. Now they’re busy picking them off, one by one.”
“The Republic was one of their last strongholds. Heard Blackbeard himself used to run the place, ‘fore he disappeared.”
“Republic of fuckin’ Pirates, my ass.” There was the sound of a hateful spit hitting the floor. “Republic of Rats more like. And now that the ship is sinking, all the rats are bolting out of their filthy holes.”
Maurice was saying something, telling some half-outrageous story or another. Ed worked to tune him out, tracking the thread amidst the clamor around him.
“And you heard what they’re sayin’ now, about Blackbeard?” The voice lowered, and Ed held his breath, his grip tight on his cards. “They’re sayin’ he’s still out there. Hiding. Plotting his vengeance.”
Ed’s heartbeat thudded in his ears. He forced himself to take in a deep, steadying breath. Even as his mind raced, he reached for his tankard to loosen the clench of his hands, let out a reedy chuckle in response to whatever nonsense Simón and Sebastian were laughing about.
Nothing new. Rumors and ghosts, lingering and sensational, too potent to die out completely. They cropped up occasionally, most often when the trading ships came through. Bored sailors blowing smoke, looking for a bit of attention, riding on the long coattails of Blackbeard’s legend.
It had been a while since the last. Ed had made a habit of keeping his ear to the ground, listening for any tall tales that wandered too close to home. Nothing anyone had ever claimed to know about Blackbeard had held even the faintest sniff of truth, but the Republic of Pirates…that was new.
Ed tasted gunpowder and ash at the back of this throat.
Gone. Done for. Razed to the fucking ground.
Ed liked to walk in the mornings.
Stede was not an early riser. It was one of the first things Ed had learned about him. Dawn passed him by without a stir, whereas Ed’s internal timekeeper blared a trumpet in his ears the moment the sun began to crest the horizon. Sailor’s curse; he could sleep anywhere, at any time, but he was rarely granted the pleasure of a lie-in. He’d held on to a feeble hope that it might be different, living on land, but so far, no dice.
If he was feeling good and lazy, he’d stay in bed. Wait for Stede to join him in the land of the living, close his eyes with his head on Stede’s chest and doze until the sound of his heartbeat began to quicken under his ear.
But some days, there was nothing for it but to walk. Get his blood flowing. Blow out the cobwebs of his hazy dreams. He’d slip from bed with practiced care, tuck the blankets back around Stede’s shoulders, and set out before the morning sun began to blaze too hot.
The wind was high up here, up on their hill. Always whipping and rushing, forever tangling in his hair and tugging at his clothes, urging him out and out and away. In the warm and muggy mornings, Ed liked to sit at the edge of the bluff and let the wind fill his lungs with salt air and promise. He liked to listen to the distant waves, the calls of the sea birds, liked to close his eyes and remember the top of the mainmast and the feeling of flying.
Then he would open his eyes, and the earth returned to him.
The solid ground under his hands, under his feet, was an unexpected comfort. He’d always felt unsettled on land, once he’d left it behind. Land was a cage, a trap, a prison sentence. The sea whispered her secrets to him, tempted him with her freedom, until that, too, became a prison of its own sort. He’d drifted on the wing for so long, lonely seabird longing for a nest, before finally, finally, finding a safe place to land.
There was nothing to fear here, in the home he’d built with Stede. No waves to batter his hull, no storms to tear at his sails. Here he could lie back in the tall grasses and watch the clouds drift, let his mind wander, until the warming sun bid him home again.
Stede was usually awake by the time Ed returned, perched at his vanity or stirring sugar into his morning tea, but occasionally Ed was lucky enough to make it back in time to wake him up himself. He would slip into their bedroom, shadowed and cool with the shutters still drawn, Stede a snoring lump under their pile of blankets. Carefully, quietly, Ed would pry off his muddied boots, tug his shirt back over his head and toss it to the floor, lift a corner of the blanket and ease himself back into bed. He’d curl himself around Stede’s sleep-warm body, dotting kisses on whatever bit of him was easiest to reach until a smile curled on Stede’s lips, until his hand found the curve of Ed’s cheek and his eyes finally opened.
(“You smell like rain,” Stede mumbled into the pillows, Ed cupped around his back, his hands teasing at the hem of his nightshirt and slipping underneath to run leisurely strokes up and down his thigh, up to his hip and down again.
“‘S all misty out.” Ed sucked a kiss against his neck, right at the curve of his shoulder where he liked to be kissed, and smiled at the shiver it produced. “Can’t even see the harbor through it.”
“Mmm.” Stede’s hum was slow and taffy-thick. Ed could hear the dreamy smile in it. “Up in the clouds.”)
Eventually, they coaxed each other out of bed. Opened the windows. Ate breakfast at their small kitchen table, feet bumping underneath. Sat out on the front porch, or climbed into the hammock together, closed their eyes to enjoy the familiar sway.
Their once-ramshackle cottage, an excellent home for mice but less agreeable for two grown men with a taste for life’s many comforts, was now something of a jewel box, filled as it was with a great many sparkling and sumptuous things. Stede had never once let an opportunity pass him by to adorn and embellish and spruce, and rarely had he had such an excellent canvas as this two-room cottage overlooking the sea. Once the doors were rehung, and the roof patched, and the windows repaired, and the floorboards refurbished, and the hearth swept clean—once the place was no longer in danger of blowing right off the cliffside the next time a storm swept through—Stede had set to work.
He’d made fast friends of the traders and merchants in the town market, who were quick to spot his discerning eye and ready coin. It wasn’t long before Bennett and Thatch, never one without the other, became familiar faces to every clothier, cobbler, carpenter, and antique trader in town.
From the outside, the house was tidy, simple, well-kept. Ed had fixed up all the shutters and replaced the broken shingles on the roof, and when the winter rains passed Stede had washed a fresh coat of paint over the exterior. They’d hacked back the worst of the overgrown foliage, and Stede had passed more than a few afternoons dreaming up plans for a garden, a whole mess of flowers and herbs and vegetables that would keep them busy well into the late summer.
It was the inside of their home that revealed itself to be far more than it appeared, not unlike the men who lived there. There was hardly a surface left untouched by their combined eye for color, beauty, texture, warmth. Heavy rugs covered the floors, heavy drapes over the windows that could be tied back to let in the breeze or tugged closed to keep out the prying eyes of nosy gulls. Ed strung up bits of sea glass to hang in the windows, catching the light and casting shimmering shadows across the floors, while Stede lined up books and bobbles along their shelves, forever on the hunt for new pieces to add to his growing collection. Maps and drawings and vivid paintings covered the walls, some framed and hung in a place of pride, others tacked down at each corner, to be admired or examined for a time before being replaced by something new.
Bit by bit, piece by piece, their home had transformed, and they along with it.
Six months on land had turned Ed into a creature of simple luxury. He slept in a bed with six pillows for two people. He ate three meals every day, at least, with breakfast wandering into lunch and dinner being preceded by a bit of nosh in the afternoon. There were rings on his hands, delicate strings of pearls at his throat, teardrop gems in his ears, bits of shine that Stede, magpie-like, brought back to him from the market. Stede plucked flowers from the fields around the house and brought them back to sit in the windows, reserving a few to press between the pages of his books, and a few more to tuck into the waves of Ed’s hair. Ed kept to simple clothes when they went to town, boots and breeches and linen shirts, all the better to avoid unwanted attention. But here in their home, he gravitated toward loose and flowing garments, bright patterns and deep colors, wide-legged trousers, long robes that draped and pooled, all of it soft and smooth and cool against his skin.
Ed barely recognized himself, when he caught sight of his reflection in Stede’s stand-up mirror. He relished the feeling.
Time passed strangely here. Some days wandered by, meandering and aimless with not a single thing accomplished beyond getting out of their bed, if they managed that. Others brimmed with activity, all of it deliciously unremarkable. Stede read his books, and scribbled in his journals, and took rambling walks along the cliffside, and combed reverently through Ed’s hair each night before bed. Ed read books of his own, tried a bit of journaling and gave it up for a bad job, napped while Stede went on his rambles, cooked something new for their dinner, and gave himself over to Stede’s ministrations before they blew out the candles. Ed slept with his cheek smooshed into Stede’s chest, or his nose tucked in Stede’s hair, or Stede’s strong arms wrapped around his waist.
It was blissful. It was boring, sometimes, some days. But even that was a comfort, a luxury, a privilege.
When it was boring, they sailed, or they went into town, or they bickered and griped about something stupid just to give them something to push against, something to disagree about for the pleasure of making up after. Boring could be a bit of fucking fun, turned out, if the right person was bored along with you.
Stede was right. He was so fucking right. And Ed wanted it all with him—the boring, the mundane, the tedious and the tiresome, the cranky and the irritable and the contrite Sorry, love kisses that came after. All of it. Every inch.
Lonely seabirds, the both of them. Come to roost.
“Ed. It’s your go.”
Ed blinked. All eyes at the table were on him, expectant. He looked uncomprehendingly down at his hand of cards and played a pair. Sebastian gave a self-satisfied little “Ha!” as he laid down his own cards and gleefully scraped up his winnings.
Simón, too sharp-eyed for anyone’s good, peered at Ed from behind a haze of pipe smoke. “Reckon it’s true?”
Ed glanced up at him. “What’s true?”
Simón nodded at the table over Ed’s shoulder. “Republic of Pirates. Sacked by the English.”
That caught the attention of the rest of the table. Maurice idly shuffled the deck of cards, watching Ed with a shrewd, contemplative gaze.
Ed looked sidelong over his shoulder. The table behind him was getting louder now, drawing eyes and ears from across the tavern. The mention of a hundred pound reward would do that. It was late enough and the crowd was drunk enough that most of the interest seemed to be turning toward trying to outdo each other in spinning up tales of outrageous pirate encounters. He itched to drag the conversation back, to find out exactly what these fuckers knew and where they’d heard it, but that was a foolish risk for the thin reward of a sailor’s unreliable bluster.
Still, he scanned the room, quick and calculating, searching the faces for anyone who looked too keen.
He turned back to the table. “Dunno. Might be. They’ve been fucking trying long enough. Bound to pull it off eventually.”
Simón hummed. “Must’ve been quite the showing, to drive them out like that. Always heard the Republic was the worst of the worst. Bloodthirsty plunderers far as the eye could see, an’ all that.
“That’s what they say. Never made it out that way myself.”
Sebastian looked up from counting his coins. “Did you ever run into any pirates, Ed? Must’ve done, doing trade runs for so long.”
Sailor, Ed had told them when they’d met. Retired. Sideways lie was always easier than a big one. Merchant ships mostly, little bit of privateering here and there over the years. Dull as shit, most of the time. Yeah, yeah, the tattoos—got bored, didn’t he? Long hours on the ship, nothing better to do. Little artistry, little imagination. Nah, didn’t hurt that bad. Could show you how it’s done, if you’re interested.
New faces came and went in this port town. Didn’t take much to satisfy their curiosity, to make himself out to be just another sailor who’d decided to do something better with his life. Ed kept his sleeves down, kept his stories light on detail, and before too long he was just another familiar face at the pub.
Sideways lies. Easier than the big ones. Ed shrugged again. “Few times. Only got boarded once. Bit of cannon fire would scare them off, most of the time. Not as nasty as they want you to think.”
Sebastian seemed a bit put out by that. “Never saw any of the big ones, then? Captain Kidd? Calico Jack?”
Ed had to bite back a laugh. Christ, Jack would’ve been fucking unbearable if he’d heard that. One of the big ones. “Nah. Just wannabes. Nobodies. Probably all dead by now.”
“And better for it,” Simón groused.
“The ones that aren’t might wish for it before too long, if the tide keeps turning the way it is,” Maurice said. “Hundred pounds, dead or alive. Helluva a lot of scratch to offer up for cutthroats and thieves.”
“More, I bet,” Sebastian added. “If you brought them Blackbeard.”
Maurice scoffed. “Nobody’s seen Blackbeard for months. If he’s not dead, he’ll have fucked off to the other end of the world by now, sitting on a pile of gold while the English fuckin’ navy runs themselves in circles.”
Simón said, “Doesn’t really matter then, if he’s dead or not. They win either way. Either he’s down with Davy Jones, or they ran him off to fuck knows where.”
Sebastian shook his head, bright eyed. “I bet he’s alive. Someone would’ve claimed it, if he was dead. Someone would want the credit, or the reward.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Simón said, jabbing a finger on the table. “If he’s dead, he’s dead. And if he’s alive, he’ll never turn up again, if he knows what’s fucking good for him. And if they managed to get Blackbeard to turn tail and disappear, then the rest of these curs don’t stand a fucking chance.” He shook his head, a curl on his lip. “Mark my words. These pirates are fucking finished.”
A hand came to rest on Ed’s shoulder, jolting him for a moment before he registered the familiar weight. A wash of relief poured down his spine. He looked up to find Stede at his side, gazing down at him with a tight smile on his face, a pinch of concern in his eyes. Ed smiled back automatically, attempting to convey a bit of reassurance that he didn’t feel.
“Evening, gentlemen,” Stede said, cheerful and bright, looking up from Ed to smile at the rest of the table, who offered him amiable nods in return. “I don’t wish to cut the fun short, but I wondered if I might steal Edward back from you. It’s getting rather late.”
“Rescued in the nick of time,” Maurice said with a grin. “Tide was just about to turn. We were about to win back our spoils.”
“Oh, was that what was about to happen?” Ed leaned back a bit, pressing into Stede’s hand. “Quite the strategy you’ve got there. And here I thought you were just shit at cards.”
“Nah, we had you right where we wanted you. Lulled you into a false sense of security.”
Ed gave a pointed look to the pile of coins in front of him. “Got me good, mate. Feeling very secure.”
Simón looked up at Stede. “Get him out of here, for fuck’s sake, or they’ll never shut up.”
Ed stood, finished off his drink, cracked his back, said goodnight to the lads. Stede’s hand stayed on him, light, resting just at the small of his back, like he didn’t want Ed to stray out of reach. Ed was grateful for it. He wanted both of them out and away from this bar, right this fucking minute.
Stede’s hand stayed on him as they shouldered their way through the crowd, as they gave Luis a passing wave, as they pushed out the doors into the heavy night air. Ed sucked in a deep breath as soon as they were clear, feeling the claustrophobic band ease from around his lungs.
“Ed,” Stede said in his ear, urgent and low. “Ed, what—”
Ed’s eyes darted up and down the street. There were people out. Too many people—laughing, strolling along the crooked streets, making their way home for the night or making their way out, eager to sit in a pub and drink and play cards and listen to stories about bloodthirsty pirates and their well-earned ruin.
His heartbeat pounded through his chest, caught in his throat. Felt like every fucking eye in town was on them.
Ed grabbed Stede’s hand, nearly buckled with relief when Stede returned his grip with equal strength. With a quick but measured step—don’t draw attention, not too fast, don’t run, don’t run—Ed tugged him along toward the high street, back toward the winding path that would lead them home.