Chapter Text
2000, the new millennium.
Edward Teach, 17, is slumped in his seat at the very, very, very back of the city bus that's taking him downtown. He's wearing a plain black hoodie that's too big for him; the guy he took it from was bigger, but slower, so now it's Ed's and the way it drapes over his head and hands and halfway to his knees makes him feel invisible. Pair that with the black jeans and the plain and old but clean trainers and all the jewelry he's taken off and out, and the curly hair he's bound back cruelly tight under that hood, he could be anyone.
He's scared out of his fucking gourd. His heart is going to shred itself to pieces. He can't let go of the ticket that's shoved deep in his pocket, scared that somehow it will slip right out of his hand and he'll show up at the arena and they won't let him in.
He's going to the Gentleman Pirates show.
Ed is not their target audience. Next week he'll be seeing Frenzal Rhomb with Izzy and CJ, drunk out of their minds and kicking ass in the pit. He'll be wearing his normal abundance of facial hardware, normal uniform of ripped t-shirt and much cooler jeans than these and big fuckoff boots and dark makeup around his eyes, making them bigger, fiercer. They'll share cheap whiskey and pass out in CJ's car unless the cheese are too abundant in which case they'll share cheap whiskey in Izzy's backyard and pass out in his garage where some of his squat-mates had tossed a discarded mattress.
If they knew where he was tonight they'd kill him and call it a mercy.
But Ed technically lives in a house with his mum and the shit that is technically his father, and there's a loose board under his bed and under that is a rolled-up hoard of magazines that Lads Like Him are NOT supposed to fancy. The bodies in these glossy books are not soft and sweet and feminine, no swell of breast or hip; they are toned, strong, masculine. Some of them are not clothed.
If his shit-father ever found out, he'd kill Ed and not call it anything at all.
But at the very bottom of the hole is a magazine called something like TEEN THROB and between makeup tips and this-year's-fashion-trends and how to lose 10 pounds before the summer it features big-eyed young actors, boys in fashionable clothes on stages in front of ten thousand screaming teen girls, and one of those bands is the Gentleman Pirates, and in the very front of the group, gleaming like gold, is Ed's first crush, his dearest darling, his heart's love.
Ed would never meet him and he probably wasn't gay and his name was OBVIOUSLY fake, but.
But.
So Ed had hooked money out the shit-father's pocket when he was passed out drooling, had used that money for a ticket, had told Izzy and CJ he was sick, had climbed out his window in this plain black camouflage, walked to the bus stop, and now the bus is slowing with the wheeze and squeal of ancient brakes and it’s at his stop and he’s out and headed for the arena where a large crowd mills and yells and laughs outside the doors.
The rest is just a fog, a span of time spent standing and then walking and then standing again, and then waiting in the hot dark, voices around him like the sound of crashing waves, minutes blending into each other, until.
The lights come up.
He stands in the crowd of singing, swaying, screaming girls, and watches Stede. Stede. Stede.
Stede Bonnet, young, grinning, vibrant.
Stede Bonnet, 19, singing his fucking heart out in front of a heaving crowd of girls, a million different perfumes filling the air.
Ed is 17 and gay and he’s not even really sure what that means, just that he’s kissed a girl or two and it only made him feel unhappy and sort of sour and cold but now he’s on fire inside, he wants to climb over the barricade, run up under the hot lights and kiss this beautiful boy in front of the whole world.
Their eyes meet once, Ed would swear, and he feels it like a lightning strike. Illuminated by Stede’s pure, solar brilliance.
When it ends there’s a line for autographs, but Ed doesn’t stay. He can’t. He can’t bear the thought. He buys a band t-shirt on his way out the lobby where there’s a booth, and holds it under the hoodie on the bus ride back, and it lives in the hole under his bed until a year later when everything goes to shit and he runs runs runs leaving his mum and his secret collection behind, the only two things he really loved.
And the years go by.
***
Ed gets into and out of school, into and out of trouble. Izzy sticks by him, and together they take on the world, and survive.
They get hired together at a nightclub by an old man named Hornigold, a half-pickled skinny knot of sinew and grey hair; Ed’s behind the bar while Izzy, small but insanely tough like a mean little dog, stands at the door and throws out anybody who bothers the waitresses. They do well there. It’s good.
One night he’s drunk and Izzy catches him kissing some rando guy in the alley.
They go home in silence that night until Ed, collapsed, head on Izzy’s knee, says, “I’m gay,” and Izzy says “Yeah, no shit. …I don’t care. Just don’t get the fucking clap or whatever. Drink a glass of water and go to sleep.” And everything is unexpectedly fine.
When CJ finds out they just fuck about it, CJ will fuck anything apparently, so that’s sorted.
Ed starts managing some nights. He learns to deal with money, with scheduling and inventory.
Hornigold retires - totally unexpected, Ed thought the man would die in harness, they’d find him on the floor some night cold as ice from a burst heart or a stroke - and the club is theirs, and eventually they figure out what they're fucking doing.
***
And then.
***
It's a little after midnight on a random Thursday and the bored DJ grins like there’s about to be real mischief, and a new sound comes out of the speakers.
Piano. Dark and slow, rising and falling like the tide over a compelling drum.
A voice, rougher now but still familiar, singing.
Ed freezes like a rabbit and almost drops the drink he's making.
Stede.
And Ed, he's suddenly twenty-three years younger, standing in a crowd of swaying singing screaming girls, struck dumb, dazzled by the light in Stede Bonnet's eyes, beaming down from the stage just for him.
He corners the DJ later and finds out - a band broken up and mostly forgotten, a boy grown, a marriage, a divorce; a new album, a solo career, first tour just starting. People were joking hard about it but really, the DJ says thoughtfully, it's decent. More than.
"He's here this weekend, actually,” the DJ - lanky kid called Frenchy - offers. He's looking at Ed like he sees something. "Little place across town. I've... got tickets? If you wanted."
Which is how Ed ends up sitting with Frenchie and some other guy at a little table in a little nightclub, watching a stage just big enough to hold the piano set upon it.
Frenchie and Other Guy are talking all sorts of musical jargon.
Ed is shredding a napkin.
Frenchie turns to ask him something and he grunts a reply without really listening to the question, and then the house lights dim down, and the curtain behind the stage moves, and then Stede is there, right fucking there, and Ed stops moving, breathing, thinking.
Stede.
His hair’s longer, darker. Body’s filled out a little with age, still shapely but solid, broad-shouldered. Black t-shirt, black sportcoat, black jeans, a smile, a little self-deprecating duck of his head at the audience's applause.
He sits at the bench - well, astride it, facing the audience - rubs a hand over the back of his neck -
"Thank you all very much for coming to see me," he says, with a sincerity that made Ed's jaw ache. "It's been a long time."
He talks to the audience for a few minutes, about how amazing it is to be back on tour, to come back to the world of music. He's sweet and honest and funny, gets laughs rippling through the crowd. Thanks a few people - a manager, a roadie with a very pirate-y name.
Then he turns to the piano, gives the audience a sidelong smile - Ed flushing when that moving gaze washes over him - and puts his hands on the keys.
And there’s magic.
The show passes like nothing. Stede's music holds them in thrall - well, holds ED in thrall, and who else matters? The songs are beautiful, captivating, sad or funny or achingly personal, and after the third or fourth one something breaks through Ed's haze.
Stede's watching him.
Not constantly. Not the way Ed's watching. But when he looks up to scan the crowd - smiling or nodding or just being there with them - his gaze stops at Ed. Only for a few seconds the first time Ed notices, but as the music continues, those pauses grow longer.
The music never falters, not once; but Stede looks at Ed. And then LOOKS at him, SEEING him, their eyes meeting.
It's like lightning, again.
Stede smiles. For him.
Ed feels his face move ever so slightly, with no real idea what expression he's making; it's an automatic response, beyond his control.
And Stede blushes.
The second half of the set is softer, darker. Some of his own music and some covers - Springsteen, Presley, Hozier, Buckley. Emmylou Harris? (Unexpected, but it works.) Fleetwood Mac, Landslide, bringing tears and murmurs of approval from the crowd. A few more originals.
A last tumble of notes fall into the silent crowd; and Stede puts his hands down, and smiles.
A rising tide of applause fills the room.
Stede clears his throat. "Thank you all. It's been such a pleasure being here with you tonight. I hope you'll indulge me in one last song."
He slips out of the jacket, folding it lengthwise to lie next to himself on the piano bench.
There's a little metronome atop the piano; it's gone untouched all night, but Stede touches it now, setting it into motion. Its soft ticking somehow quiets the crowd even further; like hypnosis, like magic.
With only the ticking as accompaniment, Stede begins to play.
( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izlbGQOjGd8 )
It is deliberately seductive.
Ed feels himself being seduced.
"Holy shit," he dimly hears from Frenchie's direction, but it's not enough to break the spell. He and Stede are bound up in the song together, in its web, caught as surely as though they held hands, fingers tangling, squeezing.
For two minutes it is perfection.
And then a tiny crack opens in Ed's heart.
This isn't for him.
It can't be for him. Stede is a performer and this is a performance and all that smolder and yearning and seeing is part of the play and this guy with a little talent and a lot of money is just - couldn't be -
Too much; not enough.
Ed breaks their gaze as the song ends, pushes out of his chair in an awkward rush.
"Gotta smoke," he mutters to Frenchie, and then he's in an empty alley and doesn't quite remember how he got there.
Heart pounding. Hands shaking. Alone.
He smokes one cigarette, fast, and then another. The club’s brick exterior is cold against his shoulder blades. Maybe when he goes back in the stage will be empty, Stede will be back in the green room with a beer, laughing with that pirate-name roadie, ready to head back to his hotel for the night, and Ed will be able to escape without seeing him again.
But men plan and God laughs, they say.