come_sailaway | I'll tell you a tale of the bottomless blue

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I'll tell you a tale of the bottomless blue

Who: Stede Bonnet and you!
What: New Shipmate Shenaniganry
When: End of April, beginning of May
Where: Everywhere
Warnings: None yet

I. Welcome to the World of Tomorrow
There is very little about this new world that Stede understands. It's all baffling to him, some of it downright incomprehensible. So if you see a flickering of lights coming from a nearby room, you might find the gentleman pirate turning the lightswitch on and off again.

"Would you look at that? Amazing! And so bright! You could read all night with something like that. But how does the fire extinguish and go back on so easily? Or burn without heat?" He glances at whomever found him. "Listen... you don't think we're dead, do you?"

II. Sign-ups Here
Stede is a professional at these things by now. He feels disjointed in this strange world and the best thing to do when you're disjointed is to seek the familiar. So he has a deckchair and a little table-managed to procure a pen and paper from somewhere and accosts anyone who passes by.

"Hello! Would you like to sign up to be a pirate? No pay just yet but adventure and glory and a cut of any treasure we come across. You wouldn't say no to some nice booty, would you?"

III. Room-Mate [locked to Gogol]

Somehow or another Stede has found his room, but when he pushes open the door his expectant face falls.

"Please tell me this is a closet."

Then he notices the room is occupied.

"Oh, sorry, is this yours? It's a very nice closet. You could do a lot with it."

IV. Hit him up with anything. He is down for adventure.

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"Let's hope not. I don't think I'm ready for another duel quite yet." He still wants to patch up from the last one. But as Ed continues, he cant' help but smile a bit.

"I'd love your help. Most attractive infamous celebrity I know." And they wouldn't look at him if the Blackbeard was sitting there. But Stede would rather be overlooked with Ed sitting by his side than without. At least for now.

"Listen though! Sit, sit, I've got great news." He pulls over a chair and with enthusiastic hands on Ed's shoulders fairly sits him into it before taking a seat himself and leaning forward.

"I found this lovely man here. He's a doctor! Which, between you and me, we need. And what's more he reads for fun! Do you know how rare that is? Most people just think those kinds of books are for boys or inconsequential, but not this one. It's amazing! In fact I think I'm a little bit in love." He laughs, though it's mostly a joke.

It's such a refreshing change of pace!

"Oh?" He plops into the chair he's directed to, leaning in to match. Stede's enthusiasm gets his undivided attention and his ego feels pleasantly puffed from the compliment and agreement to his help.

He digests each nugget of information only for it to sour in his stomach. Fucking pansy-with-a-mustache doctor probably can't even take a stab to the gut and survive, for all his classy knowledge. What do they need a doctor for anyway? They get along just fine without one--Lucius cut off his own finger, for fuck's sake! And look--he turned out just fine!

Ed slouches back--one elbow against the back of the chair, the other arm draped between his semi-spread legs. Posturing for sure. Manspreading well before the term had been invented. He glowers out at the deck and anyone who happens to walk by as if daring them to come to Stede's little pirate recruitment drive.

"Cheers for you."

Stede is pleased to be the center of his attention as always-- thrilled even. For a little while at least. But he watches as the interest dulls from Ed's eyes and he leans back all sullen and surly but still dangerously attractive.

It reminds him suddenly of Mary, especially when they were first married and she would pretend for a moment to be at least interested before her eyes would grow glassy and her attention would drift. He supposes it's better than Mary now who goes glassy from the start when he talks about anything he's excited about.

It makes sense, though. Ed has probably had more exciting adventures than Stede has ever read about and likely finds books dull now that the novelty's worn off.

"It's just a joke, Ed." He turns back to his papers and pretends to rifle through them as if looking for something interesting. "Despite what people may think I'm still a man, you know. Lain with Eve in the garden and all that." More than five times. It's never been a particularly pleasant experience but he's come to see that's normal for married people regardless of how they feel about the opposite side.

He doesn't want Ed to drift away completely though. After all he's come so far and they've become great friends. Or at least friends.

"Maybe we don't even need a doctor." And he hates how he feels that that's a friendship he needs to hide but that's on him for not being quite brave enough to give up one for the other.

"But we'll definitely need some sort of crew. People who are ready to really loot and plunder..."

"No skin off my balls." He shrugs and slowly his gaze drifts back to Stede, hearing the 'just a joke' for the peace offering it is--even if the latter part kind of twists the knife again. But. Whatever.

He can tell he's upset Stede and that bothers him almost more than his own unhappiness. It nags at him as he watches the fruitless paper arranging. They have a good thing, don't they? A good deal between them, the two of them, sharing shit and learning shit from each other. The doctor was going to get in the way. But. Stede likes the doctor. He's smart. A doctor is useful--if a bit of a touchy profession. And he could read--which meant Stede and the fancy doctor could talk about books.

And if he got to be too much of a pain in the ass, Ed could pull an Izzy and challenge him to a duel. He's a fucking doctor--how much could he possibly know about sword fighting?!

Stubbornly, as if he's had to pull it up out of himself like an anchor from the bottom of the lowly depths of his soul-- "If you want the doctor, let's sign him up."

"No, no, it's fine." The last thing he wants to do is to get a concession from Ed. It's one thing getting him to stand down-- but this-- Well, letting this kind of thing go doesn't seem like a very Blackbeard thing to do and it worries him a bit.

"He's probably not all that interesting anyway. And what kind of doctor reads fiction? No kind of doctor I'd want around me."

This decided he shuffles the paper together and taps them into a neat pile.

"What about you? Meet anyone interesting?"

"Yeah," he agrees with a wrinkle of his nose. "Lame. Besides, you'd probably have to listen to all sorts of stories about disease and guts and blood and pulling musket balls out of people." Ed makes an exaggerated face like this would be disgusting or off-putting, never mind that he's got plenty of his own gory tales to tell--and has in fact had Stede pull a blade from his body. "Doctors probably make for shit company."

Not that Ed is exactly witty, pleasant company himself, but he's motherfucking Blackbeard. He's better than some dumb doctor, isn't he?

Right?

He shrugs a shoulder. It's almost tempting to make up some lurid tale about a ultra interesting person who Stede might take issue with--Ed is not above being that petty--but instead he goes with the truth. "There was that chick without a face. Sure she qualifies as interesting."

"Yeah, boring, gory, don't want that." He wrinkles his nose. "There's much more interesting company to be had." And maybe others also enthusiastic about books and reading. Only who was to say it wouldn't end up exactly in the same place?

And while he can and probably will talk to Dr. Watson when he can be sure Ed isn't around, it's not going to feel as good as it was a few moments ago.

Oh well, he prefers Ed anyway and he's trying to be a pirate not someone who sits inside and reads all the time. That's what he left to get away from, to do instead of just learn of other people doing.

He thinks to tell him that they're apparently part of the history books, but then maybe that won't be that interesting either. After all it would be more surprising if Blackbeard didn't end up in some book some two-hundred years later.

The mention of that woman pulls him out of the doldrums a bit.

"Yeah, but I don't want her on the crew. She gives me the creeps just looking at her. Why doesn't she have a face! It's just gone. You look at her... and there's no face. How does she eat? How does she see? Can you imagine that looming over you in the morning?"

Something is bothering Stede. He can tell. They've spent more than enough time together and had more than enough heart-to-hearts that he has a eye for this, Ed thinks. Friendship, maybe. He'd kind of like to pull Stede from this funk, but then they're talking again.

Her looming over you in the morning is a frightening thought, and Ed has had Izzy looming over him in the morning. "Oh, you were looking for recruits. No, yeah, don't want her. Besides, doesn't she already serve this ship? Not sure looking for someone to jump ship is gonna work with this crew."

What they need is some free thinkers, some creative and daring people, someone willing to kick some serious ass. "It'd probably be best to draw from people like us--people who don't want to be here." Stede doesn't want to be here, right? Ed...isn't entirely sure, what with this place and its literate doctors who read fiction and have nice mustaches. "Pirates are usually people who want to escape something else."

Were they? He supposes so, though he liked to think of it as running to something rather than away from it.

"Well it's they're own business why they're running. Past is past, it's the present that matters... And once they're part of the crew..." He rests a gentle hand on Ed's knee, to include him without words. "...They're family."

He glances furtively at Ed and then away as he says this. Family is something deeper and than crewmate after all. Families can care for each other and hurt each other at the same time. Sometimes more the latter than the former, true...

And with family you know someone has your back-- and what family hasn't wanted to kill one another at some point? Whether it be violent mutiny or out and out murder?

The point was that family stuck with one another even during the hard times or at least until you looked up one day and realized that you were trapped in this life that you weren't yourself and the important people didn't like who yourself was anyway and you had to get away before you drowned in the dark depression that was slowly crushing you from the inside.

"Shall we take a walk?"

Good fresh air that was what they needed. And perspective.

The touch sends a tingle radiating up from that knee.

Family. He wasn't sure he wanted to be family-- Family were the people you were forced to exist with, by birth or by adoption. They were some of the first to fuck you over and left the most lasting scars. They were supposed to stick with you--but sometimes they shouldn't. Sometimes they needed to leave the pathetic, abusive shit-sack monster before it destroyed them too. Family was an anchor of responsibilities and inescapable connection that dragged people under the waves.

They were better than all that.

"Sure," he agrees, happy to put the thoughts behind him and more than glad to leave recruitment for another day. Ed wasn't sure he could suffer through Stede making eyes at another attractive doctor-type. After rising to his feet, he offers his co-captain a hand to help him up. "Where to?"

"Good question..." He cannot handle a handhold right now, even as a brief show of camaraderie between co-captains. It's just too much and his sorts are all over the place. So he diplomatically pretends he can't see it and busies himself with getting the papers in order and folding them up inside his coat as he rises.

"I don't know. Anywhere. There's so much on this ship I couldn't tell you of a single destination."

Right. Well, Ed could tell when he was being turned down. He put his hands on his hips because he wasn't going to stand there like an idiot offering something that wasn't reciprocated.

"Better that way, honestly. Knowing where you're going can get kind of boring." He doesn't have a better answer than that. Wandering around with Stede would be better than wandering alone. "Anywhere is good. Maybe we'll find some books for your cabin." Or maybe that was a bad subject. How badly had he fucked this up already. "Or a tailor. You're gonna get tired of wearing the same thing every day."

It's heartwarming really. Just like that some of the clouds fade away and it's very hard not to smile. Who would have guessed the great and terrible Blackbeard to be so conscientious? But then Ed is full of surprises.

Books are still a bit of a sore subject, true, but Ed does have a point about clothes.

"Wouldn't be surprised if there are a whole fleet of tailors on a vessel this size. Maybe we'll find a bar or a tattoo parlor." It seems a little paltry in comparison. Ed knows what he likes and he sort of knows what Ed likes, but he's not as smooth as expressing that. "I thought of getting a tattoo once, you know. But then it looked so painful I couldn't go through with it. I bet I could now." He rests an absent hand on his left side where he'd won his first duel.

"What do you think? Should I do it?"

His expression softens in the wake of Stede's smile. It's a shame tattoos are done in black--or the only ones Ed's ever seen have been--because all this talk of tailors and tattoos has him imagining Stede with arms or back as colorful and decorative as his collection of beautiful fabrics. Perhaps not the most pirate of choices, but it would be befitting a man like Stede who is as colorful as they come.

"Hell yeah. You want a tattoo, you should get one. Though, I've gotta warn you, mate. It's an addiction. You're gonna want another and another. There's just this high you get when you're being tatt'ed..." It's a rush. He can't begin to describe the feeling, but once you have a taste, you just keep chasing it. "What would you get?"

"I know that feeling..." That rush. That addiction. That pulse of adrenaline that keeps him high spirited and waiting for the next one, longing even for the next one. Sometimes he can hardly sleep at night wondering what the next day will bring-- what adventure or mishap they'll get into next. And he still remembers the slide of steel on steel up his arm and the closeness of that first dance.

He realizes he's gazing a bit too fondly at Ed's wild rugged profile and turns his gaze back to the deck.

"From reading." It's a lie. "Love a good book." Mostly a lie. Reading did fire the blood back in the day and still does now. But it's like a candle to the slowly building fire in his gut whenever -- whenever Ed's around. Because he's such a wild dashing pirate and so cool, that was why.

The backs of his fingers accidentally brush Ed's and he has a half mad idea to hook his pinky with the other man's like they are little girls at school. He clears his throat and links his hands behind him instead.

"I don't know. Hadn't really thought about it. A flower maybe. A line of poetry." And then because he realizes this isn't rugged at all. "A skull holding a dagger dripping with blood. The usual."

Ed thought he was going to say the Sea, sailing. That would have been something they had in common. But no, it's those bloody books again. Fuck, why could he not read?? Maybe if he could read, he could suggest some pretty poetic line for Stede to scrawl over his arm and it could be like--Ed helped put that there. Ed helped make him more of the pirate he wants to be, made a permanent mark on him, like he was making on Ed.

"Now you have to think about it, because now we're going to do it." Skull and dagger and blood? Nah, not at all Stede's style. Not even a mermaid or some busty naked wench. Mother's name, wife's name, something religious? The traditional were all out. "I like the flower idea. Do those yellow clustery ones--" great description, Edward, "--that are on the trees everywhere? Could get them--" emboldened by that brief touch, he chases that high again as he trails his fingertips up Stede's arm to about the middle of his bicep before gesturing over the whole arm with a flutter of his hand, "--up and down your arm, make it a whole thing."

He can see it in his mind's eye, yellow and pretty, trailing up his arm. He traces the path Ed made with his own fingertips, fancying he can still feel a bit of lingering warmth. Yes, he could get a chain of flowers...

And then what? Roll up his sleeve or get his shirt slashed for someone to see it? He clicks his tongue.

"Yes, that'll make a splendid impression. Tough pirate he is, that Stede Bonnet. He's got flowers on his arms." He sighs and drops his hand. "I need something better. Something intimidating. I am so tired of being laughed at, Ed. I'm so tired of people thinking I'm stupid or foolish or a soft little rich boy. Do you know what it's like to walk into a room and people look right through you?" Probably not.

"It's got to be something stronger than that. Something that sends a message. Something that says don't tangle- no, don't fuck with Stede Bonnet. But...you know...tasteful." Because he is a gentleman pirate after all and he wants to get something at least reasonably aesthetically pleasing.

Tastefully sending a message. Ed doesn't know what to do with this man sometimes. He's so damn baffling. So contradictory to everything a pirate is expected to be, and that's Brave and that Works and he's so immensely jealous of how Stede can just embody this exuberance for life and this kindness and unexpected way of just BEING. It's beautiful. It's so fucking beautiful and yet somehow Stede doesn't see that.

He doesn't want to see Stede painted with blood and daggers. That's not the man he is, or that's not the man Ed wants him to be, and maybe that's being selfish. He just really likes Stede in his foppish coats and his ridiculous stockings, with his perfectly coifed curls. With his library, and his ideas about the crew, and his tea-set and auxiliary closet and his fireplace. But with a sword in his hand and the ability to stab a man if need be.

"Flowers are badass," he said, lamely defending his idea. "A tattoo of a dagger won't make you any more intimidating than you are--it's just...a thing you wear. Like--" He flailed/gestured at himself. "--All this. It's just stuff. Giving up a cushy life and buying a ship and starting a pirate career because you just want to is badass. Dueling Izzy Hands is fucking badass. Telling Blackbeard to suck eggs in Hell now THAT says don't FUCK with Stede Bonnet. You hear me?"

He perks up a little under that. Giving up his cushy life-- well he didn't give up all that much of and it was either give it up or suffocate. Dueling Izzy Hands well, that was pretty badass. Not everyone could say they had did that and won no less, after being taught swordsmanship by Blackbeard himself.

At the last, though, he snorts.

"The little shit just told me his boss wanted to see me. He didn't say who it was and at the time, if I'd known-- oh I don't know what I would have done but I would have been terrified." But that was then Stede who hadn't learned some lessons and wore leather and gotten stabbed by Izzy Hands-- but not before he himself had actually stabbed Blackbeard, technically, and lived.

How many pirates could say that.

"Well as an old school master used to say, clever is what clever does. Which means that you're right. It doesn't matter what I have on my arms-- or anywhere. I'm still..." He stops to pose a moment, half jokingly, hands on his hips, tossing it his hair a bit in the wind.

"Captain Stede Bonnet. Gentleman Pirate and Badass." Then he gets an idea and arranges his face into something he hopes approaches cold and at least a tiny bit chilling. Reaching up, he coils his fingers in Ed's beard, surprised again at how soft it is, and tugs his head down a bit, though gently.

"And you can go suck eggs in hell." He smiles. "Or at sea. With me."

Izzy, that little shit, is threatening enough. Even if Stede didn't know who his boss was at the time--and that was gutsy too, not knowing who he was tangling with when he went running his mouth--he still looked that bastard in the eye and told him to send a message that was unequivocally fuck off.

Clever is as clever does, and Stede Bonnet is a clever man. He's charming and bright and creative and ballsy, and Ed's never known anyone like him and suspects there won't ever be anyone of his kind again. He's kind. Ed adores him. He thinks Stede is a fucking moron sometimes, but like attracts like, and he fucking adores him.

The play-acting isn't quite as cold or deadly as Ed has seen Stede (usually genuinely angry when opposite Izzy), but it still does something to his insides and Ed instinctively should draw his knife or pull away. But he doesn't. Stede has him by the beard, is threatening him, could have absolutely slit his throat, and everything in Ed is begging for Stede to follow through on ...anything.

If he had more self-reflection in this moment, he might have considered that Izzy had been wrong when he accused Ed of thinking of Stede as his pet.

The pet isn't the one who is holding the leash.

Or at sea. With me. With me. With me.

When the coldness melts away and he seems a little pleased with himself behind that smile--Stede's fucking stunning. Somebody really had to do something about that, and god, he wanted to be that somebody. Can't be, but want to.

Ed blinks and looks away, schooling his face into cool confusion. "You gonna suck 'em too? Seems like less of a threat if it's a group activity, but," he offers a goofy shrug from the position of a man still pinned by his beard, "whatever floats your boat."

The come back is a cool one and Stede is trying to decide whether to roll with it or not when an even better one comes to mind- one he is sure will impress Ed.

"Oh you misunderstand. You're the one going to be sucking." He gives Ed's beard a playful tug and leans in which is a horribly bad idea as the man's proximity is intoxicating, but the adrenaline of the perfect follow through keeps him going. "I'm going to be the one enjoying the show."

And then he lets Ed go and struts on ahead.

No, not struts, swaggers.

It was good. Spot on. That landing was not just stuck it was absolutely devastated.

Game, set, match for Captain Stede Bonnet, Gentleman Pirate.

The only thing that might have made this better was if the miserable little trash gremlin himself was here to witness this and curl up in incandescent rage.

Ed, slack-jawed at that comeback, tries to swallow and finds his throat dry and his mind preoccupied with the thought of Stede enjoying his sucking. Or Stede enjoying watching. Any and all of that. He can't even be sure Stede knows what he's implying--even if the man does spend time around Lucius--but Ed hopes. Oh, he hopes. Fuck it, even if Stede Bonnet somehow is straight (unlikely) or prefers handsome doctors (likely) and only teases him, the Gentleman Pirate could blueball him and Ed would practically thank him for it.

He is so far gone.

That swagger was going to be seared into his brain until his dying day, the sway of Stede's steps, the swing of his arms, his motion slightly exaggerated by the heels of his shoes. He lets out a low breath, trying to keep it from becoming a whistle or a groan as his eyes rake down Stede's backside, all the way to his shapely calves. Damn, boy. Salivating over his only friend like a dog--Ed's barely got himself a friend and already he's a bad one. He smooths out his beard, curls up his mustache, and readjusts his leather trousers. Then he gives a glance around to make sure no one might have been witness any of that, and trots along after Stede.

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I'll tell you a tale of the bottomless blue

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