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There’s a hole in the roof. Ed hasn’t been able to fix it yet, got too spooked by Stede almost falling and breaking something last week, but it’s been needling him. He’d have it fixed up already if this were the Revenge, but he’s still new to this life on land, not as steady on his feet.
Fix it, Ed thinks as he stares up at the roof. If we were back at sea, I would have already fixed it.
“Did you mean it?” he blurts out.
Stede looks up from the shirt he’s mending, must see something in Ed’s face because he sets it immediately aside. “Mean what?”
For a moment, Ed just blinks at him, not quite sure what he meant either; then, in the same way as that night with the moonlight and the silk, it all finally clicks into place. “That this can be—whatever we want it to be.”
“Of course I did,” Stede says, brow furrowed in gentle concern, leaning forward in the rocking chair like he’s considering coming over to join Ed on the bed. “Whatever we want.”
Even soft, Stede’s eyes are so intense, like Ed will fall right into them. He has to look at his own hands instead, the stupid spiders and the neatly-trimmed nail beds. “But what if what we want is…different?”
“Well, then we talk it through,” Stede says. “Is that…something you’re worried about?”
“No,” Ed says automatically, then sighs. “Yes? It’s not—I’m not worried about us. Or, I guess—I love you. And I know you love me. That’s not it.”
“Okay,” Stede says slowly, sort of the way Ed imagines he would’ve talked to that old horse of his with the kind eyes. Archer or something. “But it’s something else?”
“Sort of. It’s just—” Ed huffs. “Can you come over here? It’s weird having you so far away.”
He can hear the creak of the chair as Stede stands, gentle footfalls against the wood, feels the bed shift with his weight. He’s left a few inches between them, and Ed almost closes the gap, wanting to be pressed right into the safety of Stede’s neck, but something holds him back.
“I love what we have,” Ed says at last. “I really do. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever had before. We can play all these stupid games, and talk for fuckin’ hours without getting bored, and I like getting to—to touch you, you know, cuddle in bed or hold hands or, like, that one time you braided my hair, that was really nice.”
Stede hums lightly, and Ed can tell he wants to offer to do it again sometime but doesn’t want to interrupt. It makes him smile, to know all that from just one noise. “But you also make it feel okay to, well, feel things. Cry or talk about my mum or whatever. You see me, you know? We see each other. We can be—be ourselves together.”
Embarrassingly, his voice cracks at that, eyes suddenly stinging with tears. It’s not even that he doesn’t like crying around Stede, because honestly he sort of does; it’s cleansing, somehow, the raw catharsis of being so vulnerable, and especially the way Stede never leaves him to cry alone.
Talking and crying, though, is a whole other ball game. Ed hates how fucking long it takes to get his thoughts out when he’s crying, how every word feels like some overdramatic cry for help even when he’s trying to sound levelheaded. Makes him feel pathetic, small, and frustrated as all fuck.
Thankfully, though, Stede is more patient than Ed. He just sits, listening to Ed’s awkward sniffles and aborted attempts to speak until he finds his words again.
“You know how after we got here, I said I needed some…time,” he starts, voice still a little unsteady, “before we had sex or anything like that again? Just with…” He waves his hands uselessly to indicate the trauma surrounding our first time and the trauma of the couple days after and the trauma of me leaving the only thing I knew how to be for decades even if I really did wanna become something else. “Everything?”
“Yes, I remember,” Stede says, gently.
“Well I—I haven’t had that, before. The option not to have sex. Or—fuck, that sounds worse than it was,” he adds hastily, feeling Stede tense beside him. “I just mean I haven’t fucked anyone and not had it be, like, the thing, you know? The point of it. The thing that holds it all together.
“So I expected it to feel weird, to have all that suddenly off the table,” he continues, then swallows. Brave. He can be brave. “But it…wasn’t. H-Honestly, I didn’t even miss it? Not that—not that I thought what we did before was bad, I loved it—”
“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” Stede promises, equal parts reassuring and teasing, and Ed lets himself lean in at that, bumping Stede’s shoulder in mock reproach.
“All right, all right, don’t get too big a head about it,” he warns, taking the moment of levity to swipe at his eyes. “Anyway. It was sort of nice, not to have sex or make out or whatever. To just…be with you, without the expectation of oh, I’ve got morning wood, guess I better wake Stede up, or man, it’s been a few days, we should really have sex again, even just a quickie.”
“Well, you never have to do anything with me,” Stede says, and Ed can almost hear the frown in his voice. “You know that, right?”
“I know.” Ed glances at him with a reassuring smile, gets half-blinded by those soft fucking eyes in return. “Wouldn’t have been able to ask for a break if I didn’t trust you to let me say no.”
Stede’s eyes go even softer then, a mix of fondness and protectiveness. “That’s—that’s good. I want you to feel…safe, with me.”
That makes Ed wanna take Stede’s hand and—and shake them around or something, squeeze all his love into their fingers like an excited kid, but then he remembers what he was gonna say next and feels like he’s been doused in seawater instead.
“But,” he begins, trying to ease Stede out of the moment, not scare him off with the tone switch, “this wasn’t meant to be a forever thing. It was meant to be a—a shore leave, basically, and I’m…I’m sort of scared I don’t wanna get back on the boat. But I’m supposed to, right, like, I signed up to be on the fuckin’ boat, and you didn’t sign up to sail all on your own while I stand at the docks—”
“Ed, whoa, hey.”
Ed realizes, belatedly, that he’s tearing up again. “Sorry,” he mumbles, wiping them away. “Sort of a stupid analogy.”
“It really isn’t.” There’s a pause, then Stede says, with the sort of gentle firmness only he can manage, “I’m not upset that we’re not having sex, Ed. Or that we don’t kiss very often. Maybe I think about those things more than you do, but I also think about—antique armoires more, and that’s never been a problem.”
“But…but you liked kissing me.”
“Yes, obviously. But I didn’t sign up just to kiss you. I signed up to—to talk to you, to eat breakfast with you and make you laugh and learn things together.” He lets out a breath, eyes drifting away for a moment as if in memory before coming back to Ed, clear and bright. “I wanted all that long before I realized I wanted to kiss you, certainly before I knew I wanted anything more than that, and I wasn’t any less happy to be with you then.”
“But—but you had more,” Ed says, unsure where he’s going with this except that it feels true. “You had all of that stuff and the kissing and the sex, and then I took it away.”
Stede lays his hand on Ed’s knee, a gentle cutoff before Ed can spiral any further. “Hey, you didn’t take anything from me; we agreed to put it aside. You asked, and I said yes, because—well, first of all, because it’s your right to say you don’t want something, but also because if you don’t wanna be kissed, I’m not gonna enjoy kissing you. Same with everything else.”
Ed sits with that for a moment, tries to make himself believe it even with the swirl of but but but in his chest. “You’re really okay with it?”
“Ed,” Stede says. Ed can feel the request in it—not a demand, but a request—and, after a moment, lifts his gaze again. Stede’s head is tilted slightly, eyebrows drawn together, eyes so full of love Ed swears he can feel it overflowing between them, filling up the air. “If we never did any of that ever again, I would still be happy. As long as you’re here, and I get to love you, that’s all I need.”
“Fuck,” Ed replies, because he’s crying again, and he still can’t figure out how to respond to such utter devotion. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Stede says. “Could I hold you?”
Ed nods, a little pathetically, and then Stede is hugging him, warm and safe and familiar, and it’s not like the weight is gone, far fucking from it, but in that moment, Ed can feel it…shift, a little bit. Like it’s giving him room to finally breathe.
—
Days pass, then weeks, and they…well, they mostly just continue as before. They still hold hands and cuddle and share a few chaste pecks when Ed is particularly excited or sappy, and Stede does in fact braid Ed’s hair again, though it takes twice as long because he clocks almost instantly that he can turn Ed into a puddle by scratching right at the nape of his neck.
And yet Ed feels it, still, that heavy, twisting sense that he’s slowly disassembling a ship he and Stede built together, something that would sail so much better if Ed left it alone. That every time he says yes it’s proof that all his no ’s were him taking something away. That he’s getting away with something, breaking an unspoken rule, and yeah, maybe no one’s gonna punish him for it but he knows, right, he knows it’s not supposed to be like this.
And then, one day, Ed realizes—or rather finishes realizing, the way the little sprouts in their garden finally popped up after weeks of Ed waiting impatiently to see them, when all the while they were just growing out of sight—that maybe it’s not him that’s not supposed to be like this.
—
At first, Ed plans to bring it up in bed. During one of their mid-afternoon lie-ins, maybe, when there’s either not much to be done or they can’t be arsed to do any of it. Then they’ll have as much time as they need, no interruptions from hungry bellies or half-built projects, and hopefully the closeness will smooth the way too, reassure Stede even before he starts that Ed’s committed to this, to them.
Instead, they’re sitting on the porch chairs, the old rickety ones that came with the house and they couldn’t bear to throw away for some reason. Ed spent a few days after that initial “make the inn survivable” period fixing up the wobbly legs and the splintery bits as best he could, and Stede found some cushions in town with intricate paisley patterns, and now they’re sort of comfy, but mostly they’re a symbol of how old things can get fixed up or something vaguely poetic like that.
Point is, they’re sitting in them, and Stede’s thumb has been idly tracing circles into Ed’s palm for about ten minutes now, and Ed wants this, forever, no caveats, no broken rules, so he just says it.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Mm?” Stede says, turning from where he’s been watching the water, which is as much gold as it is blue this time of day, very Stede sort of colors. His thumb doesn’t pause its ministrations, but it does become more focused, intentional. “What about?”
“Well, you know the conversation we had…whenever that was. About sex and shit.”
Stede just nods, sitting up a little straighter in the way he always does when he’s trying to listen closely, and it loosens the last bit of nerves catching in Ed’s throat, lets him explain everything—the worry and the frustration and the dangling expectations he can’t seem to get away from, how loving Stede is easy, it is, but everything else makes him feel like a stowaway sneaking around a boat he’s only now realizing isn’t his own.
“So what if…” Ed tries to continue, then hesitates. Stede squeezes his hand, eyes shifting to one side like he knows Ed needs this moment to be without scrutiny. Ed looks away too, not really towards anything, just vaguely forward, gathering his courage. “What if this could really be whatever we want it to be? That we could—could throw away all the expectations, all the rules, decide for ourselves what it means to be in love with each other. Build something that’s ours, nobody else’s.”
He feels Stede’s other hand cover his, looks down at the familiar tangle of fingers and then up at Stede, who looks back at him like a sunrise, familiar and new all at once, and says, “I would love that.”
Then there’s a moment where they just kind of smile at each other, wordless and love-drunk with the sun half in their eyes, before Stede adds, “Where did you wanna…start?”
That makes Ed’s neck flush suddenly with embarrassment, because in all his imagining of how he’d bring up the conversation, he’d sort of forgotten to imagine how he’d…well, have the conversation. It had been more of a vague image, a talk it through as a crew where they nodded and held hands and maybe cried and then it was all okay, assuming it didn’t all go to shit instead, an alternative Ed has been working really hard not to focus on now that he’s entered his healing era.
“Well—uh,” he says, just to get his mouth moving. “I mean, there isn’t that much I want to be different? Like, everything we’ve been doing already with spending time together and touching and sharing a bed and saying we love each other, I still want that. If you do too,” he affixes on the end, because that seems right for a back and forth like this, and because who knows, maybe Stede doesn’t—
“Absolutely,” Stede says. “Yes to all of it. But what about the things we…set to the side? How are you feeling about those?”
Despite himself, Ed feels his gut twist up a bit, but Stede’s thumb sweeping back and forth across his hand makes it a little easier. “I don’t know. Like, I still don’t really miss them, but I also don’t want to take them off the table entirely, you know? Just in case the mood strikes me. Same way I might want—” He searches for a comparison, grasps at the first one he finds— “a giant slice of tiramisu, or something. It’s not part of my, uh, diet or whatever, but nothing wrong with a little treat.”
“Definitely not,” Stede says, lips quirking to the side in amusement before settling back into something more serious. “Do you want to control the pace on that? Not have me ask?”
Ed frowns, though he knows what Stede means. “I don’t mind you asking. I like it, actually, that—that you want me, even if I don’t wanna do anything right then. Feels nice.”
“All right, good. Just don’t want you to feel…pressured.”
Sensing a more powerful wave beneath that undercurrent of worry in Stede’s voice, Ed shifts to better face him, squeezing his hand tighter. “Hey, you’ve never pressured me. It’s all the fuckin’ junk in my head that’s causing the problem, not you. Promise.”
Stede offers a soft, slightly wobbly smile, his chest rising and falling in a deliberate breath. “Sorry about your head, then.”
“Eh, I’ve got a much better hold on it nowadays, I think. Certainly better than when I was on all that rhino horn.”
Stede’s nose scrunches up briefly in a mixture of distaste and concern before he schools his expression back into his listening face, and something about how well he’s taking this makes Ed feel like he needs to explain more, somehow. Make sure Stede really does get it.
“I mean, to be clear, it’s not like I didn’t enjoy kissing you or, or having sex with you in the moment,” he says, stumbling over his words in his haste before he forces himself to take a breath and slow down. “It just got all tangled up in the expectation and the rules and the, the feeling guilty that I didn’t want it all the time. So who knows, right? Maybe I’ll end up wanting it more when it doesn’t come with all the bad shit too.”
“Mm,” Stede hums empathetically. “Well, I certainly know how pressure can ruin something that would’ve been good otherwise. I spent a long time wondering if I could’ve loved Mary better if we’d…met some other way, maybe, no acreage or legacies or expectations. Of course, there were perhaps some other issues than our marriage being arranged,” he says, mouth quirking up into a brief smirk, “but I think I understand what you’re saying. Expectation and want getting all tangled up, can’t tell what’s what.”
“Yeah,” Ed says, feeling a little bare at how well Stede seems to get it, like the warmth of the sun just before his skin burns. “Yeah, that exactly. It’s like, I can’t figure out which came first, if I want it because of expectation or if the expectations are holding me back from what I want or—ugh, it’s a mess.”
“I can tell.” Stede shifts and puts his other hand over Ed’s, cradling it. “But you don’t need to worry about expectations with me, I promise. I mean—I’d prefer we stayed together, obviously, but other than that, I’m a clean slate. Whatever you want, or don’t, I’ll be okay.”
The words should be comforting, but they tug at something in Ed’s chest instead, something not quite settled, and after a moment he realizes it’s because it’s a familiar feeling. He had it the night Stede kicked Jack off the Revenge, and when Stede practically bolted from Ed while he folded socks at the academy, and watching Stede nearly drown himself in drink at Jackie’z while Ed could only think of drowning. The feeling that says I want Stede to have everything he wants, but I can’t give it to him.
It’s not exactly a fun feeling to bubble up under the surface when he’s in the process of rebuilding his whole relationship in the hopes of making it more seaworthy, and Ed’s instinct is to do what he’s done most of the time he’s gotten sad these past couple months, which is curl into the safety of Stede’s arms about it. Except that feels like he’s running away from the conversation, even though he’s not trying to, so he says, carefully, “Would it be weird for us to cuddle right now? Or should we wait until we’ve, y’know, figured shit out?”
“I think cuddling would make the conversation even better, personally,” Stede replies, smiling. “Plus, who says we can’t?”
So they move to the hammock, the nice new one they set up on the porch with reinforced ropes after the first one snapped under their weight. It’s big, soft, still a bit of a tangle to get two grown men in there, but Ed likes it that way, likes that the natural state of it is to be pressed right up against Stede’s body rather than having to build up courage to close the distance. Likes the gentle sway of it, too, an imitation of waves without the seasickness or the, you know, death and fear and shit.
As they get settled, Ed half on Stede’s chest so he can feel his heartbeat but can’t see his face, Ed tries to untangle that feeling from a moment ago, figure out where the root of the knot is. It’s not that Stede will leave him, he doesn’t think, but it’s not…not that, either. That Stede will wish he has the option, maybe, or that his world could be bigger than what Ed can give him. He’s never even kissed another man, as far as Ed’s aware, and as much as he’s viciously proud to be Stede’s first, he also feels sort of bad that falling in love made Stede’s first also his last.
It’s with this in mind that Ed blurts out, “Do you wanna fuck other people?”
“Um. What?”
Yeah, okay, that’s fair. “I just mean, like—you figured out you liked guys, what, less than a year ago? And as far as I know, I’m the only guy you’ve been with since then—”
“Well, obviously—”
“—and like, I don’t exactly plan on giving you up ever again, which I know complicates your ability to go fuckin’—slut it up or whatever, but I don’t wanna take that away from you entirely, if you want it. I’d hate for you to wake up one day when we’re all wrinkly and old and think, ‘ah man, I never even got to try any other flavors.’”
Ed was sort of hoping Stede would laugh at the silly old man voice he put on, but instead Stede’s arms tighten around him, almost protective. “Ed. You are more than enough for me. You make me happier than anyone, sex or no, you don’t have to—”
“I mean it, though,” Ed says, injecting as much sincerity as he can into the words. Is open to talking about it, anyway, and isn’t that the whole point of this? “Like, I know sex was all weird for you with the fancy fucks, but with pirates it’s—well, okay, it’s definitely still weird, lots of trying to act tough and double-checking nobody has any secret knives, but it’s not…I don’t know, like how you talked about it being with Mary. This sacred thing you have to save for knocking up your wife lest God smite you or whatever the fuck.”
That gets a little snort out of Stede, who relaxes a little, one hand going to curl in Ed’s hair while the other rests warm against his back. “Fair enough. And obviously I know some pirates are fine with…sharing, for lack of a better term, considering most of the crew feels that way, but they’re already so different from normal pirates I wasn’t sure.” He pauses, but Ed knows he’s still working through something by the finger tapping thoughtfully against his shoulder blade. “So you…don’t mind it? The idea of me being with someone else?”
“I don’t think so,” Ed says, then considers. “Well, okay, if you’d asked me back when we were first sailing together I would’ve been jealous as fuck about it, but that was because I hated the idea of someone getting to touch you when I couldn’t. And I dunno, I’m still a bit…possessive of you, like people to know you’re mine—”
“Because I am,” Stede interrupts, which makes Ed wanna purr.
“—but if it’s something where we talked about it and I know you’re coming home to me, that doesn’t feel too bad? Same as if you went to visit the crew without me—like, I’d miss you, maybe be bummed I’m not involved, but I’m not exactly mad you’re having fun.”
“Why would I visit the crew without you?”
“Not the point of the comparison, babe,” Ed teases lightly, poking his chest. “And you still haven’t answered the original question.”
“Because I’m not sure I know the answer,” Stede says, though he sounds more nervous than uncertain, like he already knows the paths his mind will go down and thinks they’re the wrong ones. It makes Ed frown in sympathy, cuddling closer as if to physically defend Stede from all those voices that still tell him he’s not allowed to want.
“Then talk it through with me. Crew of two, right?”
“Right,” Stede says, voice just as soft as it is every time Ed says that, like it makes him all melty-sweet to imagine them that way. Ed can relate. “All right. So—to start, I guess, there’s definitely no one I’ve, you know, had my eye on or anything. Don’t think I’ve wanted sex with anyone specific until you, actually, just sort of…vague wanting, staring, that sort of thing. And I’m not sure I’m ever going to want someone the same way I want you, because—well, I mean, you’re my first. First love, first person to make me understand what loving and being loved even is. There’s no finding that twice.”
Well, all right, now Ed’s about to cry. “Oh,” he says quietly, practically a peep of a sound. “Yeah, um—me too. Making me know what love is, I mean. What it can be.”
He feels lips press to his hair, fingers soft against his scalp, and then Stede pulls away again to speak. “I won’t pretend I’m not…curious, though, about what it would be like to experiment a little. See how it’s different with someone else, find out what I like outside of ’anything Ed does,’ try—” He laughs a little, which makes Ed’s lips quirk in fondness and confusion. “I mean, honestly, any kind of casual sex would be new, seeing as I don’t think there’s a bone in my body that’s capable of being casual about you. Might be fun to know what it’s like to have sex and not, you know, discover eighteen new colors in the process.”
Ed snorts and blushes into the crook of Stede’s neck, stomach twisting with the force of Stede’s affection towards him even while talking about fucking other people.
“Would that be…on the table then, do you think?” Stede adds after a moment. “For me to have sex with other people?”
“Obviously, man, it’s why I brought it up,” Ed says lightly, but even as he says it he realizes oh, maybe that twist in his stomach isn’t just butterflies. Something about Stede not being able to be casual about him? Even though objectively that’s great, because Ed feels exactly the same way, so it makes the intensity of Ed’s whole deal less—ah.
“I maybe am a little…nervous,” he admits after a moment. Stede hums, leg curling over Ed’s comfortingly—not panicking, not assuming, just waiting for him to continue, and Ed loves him for that, loves that he can tell how Stede’s reacting without seeing him and trust that he means it. “Part of me is sort of thinking, I don’t know, what if you realize you like this random hookup more than me, or you—you realize you actually really like being casual, that being with me is kind of a lot and you’d rather not have all that baggage.”
“But,” he adds when Stede makes a noise of protest, “logically I know that’s just me being…” He fumbles for a moment, then waves the hand not trapped between their bodies vaguely. “I know you still love me, and I know you wanna stay with me. Just hard not to think you might…I don’t know. Enjoy the easy path more than the work.”
“Ed.” Stede sounds very serious, though not angry. “Do you think I renounced my wealth and worked at Jackie’z for months because I wanted easy? I love doing the work to be with you. I love knowing I can feel so much for someone, that someone can love me that much in return. It makes me feel alive, reminds me why I left my old life in the first place.” He kisses Ed’s hair again, harder, like he’s trying to press his love directly into Ed’s mind. “So I could build a life I loved, hard work and all.”
Fuck, okay, yeah, Ed’s gonna cry. Hides in Stede’s neck to do so, reaches awkwardly for the hand on his back at the same time, and thankfully Stede gets the memo quickly, intertwining their fingers against his chest as he makes that gentle humming noise against Ed’s crown, the one that means take your time, I got you.
In the very early days of their relationship, this sort of treatment had felt—not condescending, because that would imply Stede had been anything but perfect about it, but…it had made Ed feel young. And feeling young usually meant feeling helpless, weak, talked down to.
(Ed, perhaps, has a lot of stuff to unpack about what it means for him to cry.)
But then Stede revealed he loved getting to hold Ed in those moments, a little shyly like he expected Ed to be upset about the admission; said it made him feel useful and trusted, for Ed to be so vulnerable around him, to ask Stede to bring him comfort.
So Ed lets himself cry until the tears have run out—only a minute or two, but longer than he might’ve let himself without that silent permission—and then pulls back with one last sniffle to kiss Stede’s fingers in his own, a thank you and a we can keep going now.
Stede still double checks Ed’s okay, of course, then picks up where they left off. “So, in the spirit of making sure you remember—both of us, really, that we’re all in…what if we made sure there were things just for us? Something tangible to remind us that no matter who else might be in our lives, we’re still each other’s person.”
“I know that already, I promise,” Ed says, squeezing Stede’s hand, but Stede shakes his head.
“No, really. What’s something I can do to make you feel special? Something that’s not for anybody else?”
Ed still sort of wants to protest, but he knows how stubborn Stede is, and it’s not like he doesn’t want to feel special; he just isn’t used to feeling like he’s allowed to ask for it. So he thinks for a moment about their months together, the yearning of the months apart, and eventually says, “This is kind of silly, but I did like that you wrote me all those notes. In the bottles, I mean.”
He feels Stede nod against his temple. “Write you more love letters, got it. And this time I can just hand them to you, instead of throwing them into the ocean and hoping.”
Ed frowns, despite himself, at the reminder of how many of Stede’s lovely letters are being enjoyed by fish and seaweed instead of him. “Might be nice.”
“Honestly, I’ve been thinking I should get back into that anyway,” Stede continues, “but we’re so low on paper, and I tend to get distracted by being able to tell you all my lovelorn thoughts out loud the moment I have them.”
“Well, you don’t have to stop doing that,” Ed says, frowning deeper, and Stede laughs softly.
“Don’t plan to.”
Ed fiddles with their hands, tracing the writing callus on Stede’s middle finger, then says, “What about you? What can I do to make you feel special?”
“Oh,” Stede says, and he sounds sort of surprised that Ed asked, the hypocrite. “Hm, I—I suppose I do like the things you call me. Babe, and love, and, um, I think you said sweetheart once too.”
Even without seeing his face, Ed can tell Stede is blushing up a storm. “Aw, you could’ve asked me to call you pet names more often. I was trying to keep it casual, honestly, in case I accidentally stumbled on something weird you and Mary used to call each other.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that,” Stede huffs lightly. “The only affectionate thing we ever used was darling, and honestly it was so formal I don’t think it would sound at all the same if you and I used it for each other.”
“I see,” Ed says, putting on a bit of a fancy accent. “Then consider all pet names property of Stede Bonnet, effective immediately.”
Stede giggles, an extra lovely noise so close to Ed’s ear. “I love you.”
“Love you too.”
They bask in that for a moment, then Ed feels a shift; Stede getting unsure again. “I feel like I should say, though,” he says, “that I...I don’t think I would want anything very serious with someone else, can’t even really imagine it. But I also know there was a point in my life when I thought I’d never be in love like I am now, so I—I just want to make sure you’re okay with that possibility. That we could talk it through if that came up.”
Even ten minutes ago, those words would’ve unsteadied Ed a little, the same way the first steps back onto port always made his legs all wobbly, unused to the ground not swaying beneath him. But now, gentle rocking of the hammock aside, Ed feels steady. Safe. “Yeah, I think that’d be all right,” he says. “Since I know I still matter to you, that I won’t get...I don’t know, pushed aside. That I’m still your person, your boyfriend, whatever.”
“Always,” Stede promises. “Speaking of, though, do you...want a different word for what we are to each other? I know you said you liked boyfriend, but—”
“I do,” Ed says, then immediately has to backtrack. “Or, I mean, I definitely like it when you call me boyfriend, but sometimes it feels sort of weird when other people think of me that way. Not because I don’t want them to know we’re together, but they just won’t...get it? Which I know is stupid—”
“No, that’s not stupid at all. Maybe we could use a different word with other people then?”
“Like what?”
Stede thinks for a moment. “Partners?”
“Mm, not bad, but it’s also sorta stuffy. Like we’re business guys in fancy vests.”
“Significant other?”
“That’s so fuckin’ long, and also sort of weird.”
Stede huffs fondly. “Could always go back to co-captains. Confuse everyone when they ask how we’re captains without a ship.”
“Co-innkeepers, maybe,” Ed says, playing along. “Co-owners. Co-conspirators. Co…creators?”
Stede does an unsexy snort-laugh at that, which of course gets Ed going too. Nothing makes him laugh quite like making Stede laugh first.
“Maybe,” Stede says at last, voice still a little breathy with mirth, “maybe we can just figure it out as we go. Don’t see a lot of people right now, anyway, and they all already know how much we mean to each other.”
“True. Like, I think every person in town knew I was obsessed with you before we ever said a word.”
“Who needs words anyway when we’re…what was it Lucius said? So stuck to each other that—”
“—that it made Frenchie believe magnets were real,” Ed finishes with a laugh, their words overlapping, and pops his head up to grin at Stede from mere inches away. “We’re certainly not proving him wrong right now.”
Stede frowns dramatically, locking a leg around Ed’s calf. “Who said we were trying?”
“God, I love you,” Ed replies, because it feels so big in his chest he has to just blurt it out sometimes, release some of the air before he pops.
“Mm, I suspected as much,” Stede says, smile soft but no less blindingly bright. “Can I kiss your forehead?”
Ed takes a beat to think about it, heart clenching despite himself at the question, then nods. Stede is gentle, of course, doesn’t linger, all his love concentrated into a quick press of lips, and it makes Ed feel all fizzy and pressurized again, like he needs to chant I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you until his voice gives out.
Instead, he repositions again so he can rest his head on his arms—the hammock supports creaking with the movement, but thankfully holding fast—so he can look up at Stede without craning his neck so much. There’s a beam of sunlight across his hair and forehead, not quite enough to make him squint yet, which means Ed gets to see all the flecks of color in his eyes. He could look in those eyes forever.
When the thought occurs to him, it feels simple—so simple, in fact, that it catches him off guard, because a thought like that should be anything but simple.
Stede, of course, clocks him immediately, hand following just after the breeze to brush back a wayward lock of Ed’s hair. “What is it?”
The weight of Stede’s eyes, even gentle as they are, make Ed sort of wish he was hiding back in Stede’s neck for this, but he’s already made it this fucking far, right? “I was just thinking that what we’re talking about is sorta like…family, maybe.” Stede’s eyebrows raise a little in soft surprise, which makes Ed’s shyness instantly flip over into rambling nerves instead. “Which is—weird, obviously, because both of us had some pretty fucked up families, and honestly the whole concept is maybe fucked because of it, but I don’t know, I was just thinking about what people say family should be, that sense of belonging and security and commitment and—and love, I guess. Forever love.”
Stede’s hand, which had been hovering by Ed’s face for all that, lands against his cheek, the backs of his fingers stroking slowly back and forth. “I know what you mean. What I have with you, it’s obviously nothing like what I had growing up, or with Mary and the kids. Honestly, even the crew feels different—there’s that sense of belonging I didn’t have as a child, the loyalty and affection, but I still hired them. We didn’t choose each other so much as they learned to love the lot they ended up with.
“But you and I—we did choose each other,” he continues. “And something about that does feel like a type of family, or what family could be, maybe. Even if I haven’t really seen it that way before.”
“Seems like everything we do we end up doing in a way no one else does,” Ed says, and he means to make it sound at least a little teasing, but instead it’s drenched in fondness, the kind when you want something so much you’re yearning for it even when you already have it.
“Yeah,” Stede says, like he understands. “Nobody’s quite like us.” Then he frowns slightly, hand falling to rest atop Ed’s. “So I don’t know, maybe family isn’t the right word to capture the—everything about us, but I do like the sentiment at least. Taking the word and making it ours. Very piratical.”
Ed quirks a smile at that, leans his cheek against their little pile of hands so he can hear Stede’s heartbeat a little better. “I don’t think it needs to define the whole of us anyway, like, what fuckin’ word could do that? Or even a whole bunch of words? It just seems like, eh, we find it or we don’t, not that big a deal.”
“Oh?” Stede says, and Ed belatedly realizes how weird that sounds when they’ve just had this entire conversation about exactly how big a deal words are.
“Not that—not that they don’t matter,” he starts, shifting awkwardly against Stede’s chest and swallowing against the sudden lump of uncertainty in his throat. “It’s more like—there are words that feel straight-up wrong, obviously, and I do like being your boyfriend, your person, your family; those words make me feel good, like—like I can talk about what we are a little easier, hold it in my hands, make it a little more tangible. And if it matters to you to find the perfect word, of course I care. But also, I don’t think words were actually…the point? They weren’t what was most important to me coming into this.”
“Okay,” Stede says slowly. “So what was most important to you?”
“Making sure we were gonna be okay,” Ed says immediately, a little surprised at the words as they leave his mouth, but he knows they’re true. “Not that I thought you were gonna leave me or something, but I just—” He sighs, eyes darting to Stede and away again. “I spent so long trying to figure out what we were, how to make it last, and when we settled here, I thought I finally had it all figured out. And then when I learned all… this about myself, it made me feel…god, scared feels like a stupid word, but sort of…not secure, I guess. Like that ‘us’ we both spent so long trying to build was going to unravel if I didn’t hold on tight enough.”
The arm around Ed’s back squeezes tighter at that, Stede’s eyebrows furrowing in that way that means he wishes he could be closer. Ed hears the silent promise in it, I’m holding on too, offers a little smile before he continues.
“Talking about this has helped a lot, and, yeah, all the words have been part of that, but what I really needed was for you to tell me it was gonna be all right, even if things changed. Even if I don’t have the words for it anymore.”
“Oh, Ed,” Stede says, free hand coming to cradle his face. “Of course it is. I’ll love you the rest of my life, no matter what words I use to say it.”
“I know,” Ed replies. “And I think that’s all I needed. To know.”
Stede’s face crinkles up in a smile, lit up with sunlight and love, with something softer than words could express. “You feel okay, then? Like we’re gonna be all right?”
Ed feels…not quite like the moonlight and the silk, because—well, because he’s not pining anymore, for one, but also because even with everything bringing him to this moment, it didn’t just click all at once, I love him or I know what I need. But something has settled into place anyway, something all the more secure for its slowness. Grounded, the way he could never fully feel at sea.
Here, he can barely hear the lap of waves against the beach, and that’s okay. If he just leans a little closer, ear to Stede’s chest, he’ll hear something even steadier.
“Yeah,” he says. “We’re gonna be okay.”