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The life he’s lived is one that’s honed him to catalog any given blade present in the same location as him. He can catch wind of a knife in a man’s boot from the way his trousers fit into them alongside it. Stede holds a sword to him, deadly as all the rest (if not more so due to his unquestionable inexperience), and the dread pyrate Blackbeard’s first instinct is to give him the opportunity to run him through with it.
He doesn’t know how to stop himself. He doesn’t know how to want to.
It’s equally spectacular and maddening how natural it feels to lay his life in the (uncalloused, manicured—Christ) hands of another man. He’s known Izzy for more time than he bothers to recall anymore, and, while he trusts him to watch his six, Ed would never let his first mate point his sword in his general direction. It isn’t just because Izzy knows how to use it, either.
As the blade pierces him, Ed thinks in a moment of seeming delirium that any sane man’s natural defenses would crumble to sand if a star was plucked directly from the sky and given to him wrapped in silk and cashmere, ever-glowing and warm. (It’s a miracle the world hasn’t caught up enough to fall in love with Stede yet. Selfishly, he’s glad for it.)
Even though he’s prepared to accept the blow, being stabbed feels the same as it always does—like shit. But Stede’s face is close, puffing anxious, quick breaths against his cheek, and his wide eyes look like sea glass under moonlight, and Ed feels halfway insane with how much he wants to put his mouth on him.
Removing the sword is hell—Stede’s shaking like a leaf and keeps nudging the sword up and down instead of out, but Ed keeps forgetting to complain, too focused on the iron-hot pain and the way fingers keep grazing his bare stomach over blood and fine hair—and it’s awful work forcing himself to trudge forward after the fact, his bum knee doing him no favors as he’s practically carried to the chair in Stede’s room. He collapses without a hint of grace and allows himself the rare pleasure of slipping half out of awareness, with care to remain conscious, while drawers are frantically and noisily opened and shut throughout the suite.
After a moment, Stede mutters, “Oh God—okay,” voice rising in pitch with the last word. “There’s an awful lot of blood, isn’t there?”
“Well, you did stab me,” Ed reminds him, eyes still closed. “Usually how that goes, in my experience.”
He makes an incredulous noise that prompts Ed to finally look at him, so he sees Stede move as if to touch him before stopping just before his hands can make contact, hovering anxiously. Ed forces himself to focus on something other than Stede’s fucking fingers. “Rum,” he manages. “Get it.”
“Oh!” Grateful for direction, Stede hurries to the shelf. When he picks the glass bottle up as if to pour the liquor into a tumbler, Ed hums a noise of firm dissent, extending his hand and making grabbing motions towards him and the bottle.
Stede thankfully complies, and Ed takes a large swig from it, throwing his head back. Humming again through a mouthful of rum (which aggravates a cut on the inside of his mouth from the sharp corner of some hardtack that Roach served up too early), he waves the bottle toward the modest supplies Stede had gathered: scissors, a dampened cloth that is far too high quality for how ruined it’s about to be, and some plain dressings. “Good,” he says, mostly to abate some of Stede’s nervous energy. “Now, take the cloth and wipe up some of the blood.”
With the wound cleared off, albeit still bleeding profusely, Ed can do the next step himself. He tilts the rum bottle and pours some of its content onto his wound, gritting his teeth. He’s done this enough to take it in silence, but Stede’s alarm fills the air up anyway.
“What the devil are you doing that for?” he exclaims.
“Cleans it.”
“You clean it with rum?”
Ed has to try not to laugh at his shock. It would hurt like hell right now, anyway. “The liquor does the job well enough. C’mon, then. Take the napkins—” He tilts his head to the table, where their set up from dinner is mostly cleared away except for some teacups and an assortment of clean linen napkins. “—and fold one a few times, then press it up against the wound.”
Stede’s fingers have stopped trembling so much by the time he’s gotten to trying to stop the blood. They’re a bit stained from the excess of it, Ed notes, which he somehow feels guilty and excited about at the same time. He did that; Stede’s got a bit of him on him right now. He shakes his head, trying valiantly to convince himself that those are Man-Bleeding-Out-Thoughts instead of run-of-the-mill insanity.
He looks down at where Stede kneels in front of him and touches him with more care than anyone’s shown him in so very long, and he wonders if being in love turns everyone mad.
“We’ll need some thread and a sewing needle, too.”
Stede sits up straight, his nerves returning at full throttle. “Right!” he squawks, flailing as he stands up again. He grabs a small box from his shelf and comes to sit down. It’s beautiful—stained wood and an intricate floral carving on its lid and the sides of it, leaves and petals swirling in smooth lines all over. Stede’s initials are at the center, inlaid in golden script. He blinks when Stede opens it, revealing several spools of fine, almost shimmery thread in various colors and a needlecase, pale pink with two miniature landscapes painted on both the cap and body of it, each framed in gold lacquer.
Unbidden comes a memory of his mother’s two needles and single roll of thread, kept in a small tin in their kitchen cupboard. He holds his hand out. Stede hands the box over without a second thought.
A small part of him wants time to stop for a moment so he can run his fingers over the entirety of it, from the grooves of the wood to the velvety interior, but he settles with knowing that he could do that at any time. Stede loves when Ed goes through his things, always excited to explain where something came from and what it’s made of, from lace and silver trinkets to fine glass and porcelain.
(To Stede, beautiful things are made all the more beautiful when they have a story; after the time that he’s spent with him, Ed agrees.)
For now, he sets the box aside, opening the needlecase and dropping one of them in his hand. He grabs the spool of black thread from the box and realizes as he’s about to bite off the end of the length he’s unraveled that it probably isn’t very nice to get his spit all over Stede’s nice thread.
He looks up and closes his mouth, and, though Stede is watching him, he isn’t sporting any sort of affronted look as Ed had been expecting. Still, Ed holds out the string and motions for Stede to get the scissors.
With the piece of thread separated, he pours some more rum over it and the needle. It takes quite a few failed attempts before he realizes that his hands aren’t stable enough to thread it through.
He’s stitched himself up before, a few times even, but he was a much younger man then. Izzy’s been doing it for him for years. The frustration bubbles up inside him like a storm, made all the worse by the way the wound in his side is throbbing. Stede appears to realize his struggle and takes the offending objects from him. His hands aren’t that much more still than Ed’s, but they’re probably more up to the task.
It’s nearly thirty seconds before Stede lets out a victorious “Aha!” and pulls the thread through. He looks back at Ed, then at his side, and his grin fades instantly. Ed huffs in slight amusement, taking them back. “Don’t fret. I can do it.”
“Yourself?” Stede appears unconvinced.
“Sure, I’ve done it before. It’s no biggie.” He really hopes that’s truer than it feels right now. “But you should watch. This is important shit to know if you’re gonna be a real pirate.”
Stede pales slightly but nods with determination. Ed tilts his head down to hide his unbearably fond smile behind his mustache.
He pulls the thread taut, drinks some more rum, and gets to work. The first stab through is always the worst one—straight needles are absolute shit for suturing, but it’s rare for any ship without a doctor to carry curved ones.
It goes well at first; his hands shake, but they comply after some glaring and curses. He gets about halfway through before his grip fails around the needle, tugging his skin painfully when it falls. “Fuck,” he snaps, and Stede says, “Give it to me.”
Ed looks up at his concerned face, and his frustration becomes background noise. “Can you even sew?”
“Well, I just watched you, didn’t I? That’s basically the same.” Ed’s doubt must be in plain view because he continues, “I took a lesson from Frenchie, a while back. After an art project we did as a crew. I can do it.”
Stede looks mostly sure of himself, though Ed’s too sweaty and in pain and annoyed with himself to determine whether it’s an act or not. The weight of the needle lightens as Stede picks it up and takes several deep breaths. “Tell me if I’m hurting you.”
“Mate, you’re sewing me up. It’s gonna hurt.”
“Oh. Right.”
(Ed wishes that he could stop fucking smiling so much. He’s been stabbed, for Christ’s sake.)
He hisses when Stede breaches his skin with the needle, which causes Stede to glance upward, a concerned tilt to his eyebrows. Ed shakes his head and waves him on.
It’s shoddy work, that’s for sure. Ed watches the stitches form on his skin, a little too tight and unevenly spaced. It’ll be fine, and despite it all, he infinitely prefers this to all of the times Izzy did it.
With a final snip of scissors after Stede ties the end of the last stitch, it’s done, and Ed’s head hits the back of the couch. “Hard part’s over,” he sighs, and Stede looks equally relieved.
He was right; the rest is a breeze, and Stede moves on without his guidance. He carefully pulls Ed upright and away from the back of the chair. Covering the wound with another clean napkin, he holds it still, mindful of the stitches, and grabs the bandages. After several turns about his body, Stede’s hands fix them in place around his abdomen.
“Need to change ‘em later,” Ed murmurs. “Blood’ll probably seep through for a while.”
Stede hums his comprehension. His mood has mellowed considerably, at least to regular Stede Bonnet levels of fretting and concern. “Can you sleep?”
Ed takes another long drink. “Yes,” he lies. “You can turn in if you like. I’ll be fine from here on.”
“No!” Stede winces, sits down beside him on the chair, and then says, “I’m— I’d rather wait. Until you’re asleep, I mean. Just in case.”
Ed’s heart pangs with the most awful longing he’s ever felt. He doesn’t know where to put it, so he drinks again, and then holds the rum out to Stede in silent offering. The haze of alcohol puts a fog over everything—the pain in his side, the way his heart is beating like a thumping jackrabbit, and the warmth he feels when he looks at the way Stede’s mouth looks wrapped around the bottle for too long are all momentarily distant enough that he can say, “Thank you.”
Stede blinks in surprise, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand in a way that is very ungentlemanly indeed. “I—Ed, I stabbed you.”
He huffs a laugh and immediately regrets it. “Yeah, and I told you to. All’s fair in… in piracy, or whatever.”
“I don’t think that’s how that saying goes, and I don’t think that’s true in any capacity.” He’s smiling anyway, so Ed considers it a job well done.
After the bottle is passed between them a few more times, he’s surprised to find that he’s actually starting to get a bit tired after all. When he makes this known, Stede lights up.
“Let’s get you ready for bed, then,” and oh fuck.
Stede goes to his drawer and pulls out a fine silk robe, oblivious to his internal plight. As he walks back, he says, “We’ll need to get these clothes off you,” and Ed tries very hard not to die instantly. At least with the pain and the rum, his dick’s forgotten how to work entirely, because otherwise he’d be in some shamefully hot water from Stede’s words alone.
Ed tries to help Stede out by shoving his jacket off, but after he emits a noise he can’t stifle, Stede forces him to put his arms down and let him do the rest. Helpless to it, Ed allows him to pull his garments off carefully, trying not to jostle the wound too much.
They lapse into a silence that is somehow both painful from how much Ed is trying to act normally and soothing in the presence of methodical rustling and gentle touches. Stede is smiling triumphantly by the time he’s finally unclothed. It’s so dumbfounding that when he holds the robe up, Ed automatically lifts his arms to let him put it on.
Stede slides it down and even secures the robe’s belt around his waist. He left Ed’s lower undergarments on, thank God; no way could he (or, by extension, his dick) handle that right now, stab wound and rum be damned.
“Now,” Stede says, “we can get you into bed.”
“Yeah,” Ed agrees unthinkingly, before it hits him—“Bed?” he croaks.
“Well, I’m certainly not leaving you here to sleep on the chair after stabbing you.” He looks offended at the very notion. Ed doesn’t know what to say to that, considering that is exactly what he was planning on happening until just now. “Come, I can take the chair for one night. It’s not as if it’s the worst place I will have ever slept.”
From the look on Stede’s face, it’s clear that it would definitely be the worst place he will have ever slept.
“Oh, nah, Stede, really. It’s fine. Don’t wanna put you out or anything.”
His eyes flash with something that lets Ed know his words might as well have landed in the fucking Pacific. He holds out a hand and helps Ed to his feet.
The walk over to the bed sucks shit because his knee was bent awkwardly while Stede wrapped his wound. He somehow manages to not freak out when Stede pulls his blanket back and helps Ed onto his sheets, which smell like lavender and orange flower from Stede’s soaps of choice.
Everything about it is overwhelming. He doesn’t trust his voice enough to speak. Before Ed can lie down, Stede fluffs the pillows—both of them, as if he’ll use both of them. His face is perfectly content when he goes to pull the blanket over him. It feels so incongruent with the fact that Stede is doing this for him, Edward Teach, instead of literally anyone else, that he can’t stop himself from blurting, “Don’t sleep on the couch.”
Stede’s eyebrows shoot up. “I—Oh.” He pulls away, which leaves Ed internally reeling in immediate horror and regret and hoping that it isn’t showing as clearly on his face as it is ringing in his head. “Yes, I understand that you should want your space, after that. I can, um.” He fumbles. “Go onto the deck, for a bit, no problem.”
Ed flinches hard. “No, I meant. You can sleep here, Stede. With me.” The room drops into silence for all of three seconds before he forces himself to continue, “If you want, I mean, you don’t have to—”
“Oh!” Stede says again, and this one, at least, doesn’t sound so devastated. “I suppose…” He leans back, surveying the bed, and seemingly Ed where he’s sitting on it with who knows what kind of expression on his face, at this point. “Yes, there’s certainly enough room for the both of us, I believe!” His smile is back, and it seems perfectly genuine, which is a relief.
“Just let me change, then,” he continues. He goes to get his dressing gown, and, after retrieving it, shuffles back and forth on his feet for a moment before saying, “Right, um. I’ll be right back.” And, even though he just changed Ed’s clothes for him, Stede goes to the bathroom to take off his own.
Ed can’t help the smile that crops up on his face. It’s painfully endearing how Stede feels the need for modesty in a way that is, like all his many enthralling little behaviors, so entirely different from anyone he’s ever met. When he returns, he helps Ed move to the far side of the bed and climbs in beside him.
After settling, they look at each other for a moment in silence before Ed says, “So,” at the exact same time as Stede says, “Well,” and they both stop. Stede's expression is far too gentle to be coming from a man who ran him through with a blade not two hours ago. “I’ll change your bandages when we wake up, then. Good night, Ed.”
“Night,” Ed manages, overwhelmed again and warm all the same. He closes his eyes before Stede even blows the candle out, listening as he shuffles his way down onto the bed and further under the blankets.
Stede’s breaths slow eventually, and he turns onto his side, facing Ed. After what feels like a safe amount of time, Ed opens his eyes again. With the moonlight streaming in through the window, he can see the exact moment Stede falls asleep.
It’s impossible to shut his brain off, and he’s kind of drunk, still, and definitely going to bleed all over this insanely soft and expensive bedspread, and Stede’s thigh is impossibly warm where it’s stretched out and touching his own (which is sort of funny considering his toes are freezing against Ed’s ankle), and this was a mistake, all of it, probably, and he can’t make himself regret any of it.