Work Text:
It was Louis’s idea, not Ed’s, which is exactly what Ed’s going to tell Stede when Stede gets home.
Not that Stede’s gonna be pissed about it. Probably. There’re clear extenuating circumstances keeping Ed from setting Louis up with an appointment at Stede’s fancy salon, with the big guy with the cool face tattoos that made Ed question whether or not the face tattoo life was for him (it’s not. for now. but he could pull it off.).
The extenuating circumstances at hand are the fact that Louis (and a bunch of other kids that Ed doesn’t care about) suffered through an explosive lice breakout at camp. Ed has to go pick him up in the middle of the day, feeling like he’s campaigning for (Future) Stepdad of the Year, like he’s been called up to the (Future) Stepdad Major Leagues after relegating himself to the bench for too many seasons.
He shows up to the camp in his old Jeep pick-up, itinerary for the day disregarded because the plans have changed. What Ed had planned that day, since Louis was supposed to be at sleepaway camp, and Ed had a night off at the bar, and Alma was at home with her mum, was a fancy dinner or something. Clean the house and cook something with herbs on it. Stede’s eyes get big and round like butterscotch candies whenever Ed sprinkles the tiniest plume of fucking parsley on a chicken leg, so that was going to be his night. Capped off with lots of touching and kissing.
Except this happened, and this is fine. More than fine, really, because Ed’s starting to get a handle on this whole kid thing. He knows stuff he wouldn’t have fucking dreamed about a couple years ago: school schedules, which parks to go to and which to stay away from, that clarinet reeds break like edamame under Louis’s hard bite, and Alma’s big, exasperated sighs actually mean ‘I like you and I appreciate your concern.’
Fuck.
So Ed scoops up Louis and tries not to make a face, knowing the situation, when Louis sullenly drags his nine-year-old body up into the passenger side of Ed’s truck and straps his seatbelt across him. All Louis’s bags and his big shark stuffie go in the backseat, though Ed wants to take it out back and burn it all to hell. But he doesn’t. Louis likes the shark stuffie that Ed gave him enough to bring it to camp, to count it as one of his necessities. Ed couldn’t burn that thing even if his heart was set on it.
“Not an ideal end to the summer, is it? Kind of a fuckin’ bummer,” Ed says, keys in the ignition.
Louis, face ripped part and parcel from his dad’s, goes from disgusted to shocked, and Ed realizes he let an F-bomb drop, and he says, "Oops," and turns up the radio to move past it.
Normally the kid would be shouting to the clouds about any activity he did. Ed would’ve sworn Louis’d be dying to spill the beans about the intricate social infrastructure of the 9 - 11 year old crowd at Sunny Orange Sleepaway Camp. He was sort of looking forward to it.
Louis has kind of a Victorian orphan fragility about him anyway, but today, he's even more understandably sullen. He keeps quiet for most of the drive back home, letting Sabrina Carpenter and Olivia Rodrigo—then Pixies’ “Surfer Rosa” when Ed gets tired of pop radio—speak for them until he parks the truck between the yellow lines of a parking spot at CVS.
They pick up the requisite lice shampoo and a fine-toothed comb and stock up on every goodie that Louis has ever requested and then some as a hardship tax, for the makings of a rather epic fucking movie night. At home, Louis carries the CVS bags, and Ed gets the probably lice-infested suitcases and shark out of the backseat.
The luggage stays in the garage, and Ed gets Louis inside and stripped to a pair of swim trunks in his and Stede’s bathroom shower. “Shampoo time,” Ed sings, dancing the bottle on the counter, but when he turns to Louis, his hazel irises are swimming in red, and tears stream down the kid’s splotchy, pinchable face. Trembling lips trying to maintain, but that only brings the snot to his nose, until Louis is so distressed it all just bursts out of him.
“Mate…” Ed says, because he hasn’t prepared for this. He hasn’t really been on his own when one of the kids was upset—Stede had always been there as an anchor for that part, for Ed to slip into the background and let the bad feelings pass or offer support the best way he could, which was usually with clandestine sweets Stede would have a fit about. All the sweets are downstairs in the kitchen. All Ed’s got to offer Louis is himself.
“Hey, what’s going on, little man?” Ed asks him.
If he’s honest, Ed still isn’t completely used to kids crying over shit that doesn’t seem dire to him. Shit he wouldn’t have dreamed of crying over when he was a kid. At least not out loud, not on the spot. He might’ve waited until he had the safety of tenting himself under his covers at night.
But Louis, like his dad, lets it all out. Lets it be known he’s in a state or having a day. Has a bad time keeping in his spiky emotions, and Ed really loves that about him—about Stede and yeah, about Stede's facsimiled kid. His little time-traveling doppelgänger. His little 1800s poster child for milk, or something.
He kneels in front of Louis and takes him by his little bare shoulders and pulls him in for a tight hug. It’s all he can do, and fuck, he didn’t even know he could do that. Ed holds him and rubs his back and allows Louis to empty tears on Ed’s shoulder. And he doesn’t think about the lice. (He doesn’t not think about the lice, either.)
He thinks about Stede. What Stede would say. “You’re alright,” Ed whispers, because it’s what he’s seen Stede say to his kids and it’s what he’s heard Stede say to Ed when Ed’s having a rough go of it. A sleepless nightmare-ruined night or a shit morning. When Ed’s got his own angry feelings gargoyles perched on his shoulders. And it’s what Ed gives back when it’s his turn.
"I don't…want…bugs…in my hair," cries Louis. His shuddery breath makes his shoulders heave.
Ed struggles to not laugh. It’s not funny. The kid’s feelings are not funny—he gets that, but god, it’s so sincere and big. Ed almost forgets how big everything feels at that age. And Louis isn’t fucking wrong. Not even a little bit. The lice sucks. It’s gross. So Ed promises him after the shampoo and the combing through that he’ll be right as rain and Ed’ll make sure of it.
Louis isn’t convinced.
It’s a nasty situation, and if Ed knows one thing to be true about Louis, it’s that the kid does not stand for a nasty situation. Poor, sad kid in the raddest pair of bright green dino swim trunks Ed’s ever seen—a crime they don’t come in adult size, or Ed would’ve broken the bank copping a pair.
Ed changes out of his tight black jeans and Madonna tee in the bedroom, folding them with precision and setting them on the bed, and he gets into his boring black swim trunks with the giant white skull and crossbones printed across the front that mostly bunches up in the crotch, making it look fucking weird and uncomfortable.
All his long curls get pulled up to the top of his head and double-looped into a scrunchie. Shampoo in hand, Ed turns on the water and points the faucet down to Louis’s height. The water threatens a freezing temp, but hops to reasonable in an instant. He lets it warm up some, then he waves the kid in.
Louis hauls one foot in front of the other into the shower with Ed, walking the green mile as if the goal isn’t to get his head free of the tiny fucking vermin nesting and setting up shop. Louis sticks his head underneath Stede’s premium one-of-a-kind showerhead, the one he insisted upon for its NASA aerodynamics, or whatever, and lets his yellow hair turn dark golden with the water.
“You okay?” Ed asks.
Louis nods, dejected.
“Ready for the good stuff? Those bugs won’t know what fuckin’ hit ‘em.”
When Louis looks back up at him with wide eyes and a wonky spread-tooth kid grin, Ed remembers the F-bomb thing and he snickers and makes amends.
He unleashes the shampoo right on Louis’ head, which gets a giggle out of the kid and a, “Cold.”
“Sorry,” says Ed, scratching into Louis’ head with all of his might, the kid limp-limbed, standing there in front of Ed kind of helpless. Ed can’t blame him—if he had lice, he too would pretty much give up on life, he reckons.
He rinses the first shampoo out, then goes in again immediately. Louis scratches this time, too, with the kind of overzealous vitriol reserved for an ‘80s action hero against a horde of culturally insensitive henchmen. Between shampoo rounds, they draw the fine-toothed comb over Louis’s scalp, removing the bugs and their fucking luggage and their fucking shark stuffies from his roots.
What starts as distress ends up as a game. Louis starts loosening up, starts telling Ed about watching The Parent Trap and doing Disney sing-alongs at camp and about the necklaces he made for Ed and his sister Alma and the bracelet he made for his dad. And Ed tries to concentrate, but truthfully, he’s really fucking grossed out at the lice bodies and shells collecting in the comb and washing down the drain.
They do this ‘til the bottle’s empty, but, to Ed’s fucking chagrin, there’s still bugs left at the kid’s scalp. Either Ed’s not doing it right—unlikely—or the kid’s been living in filth at that sleazy fucking camp all summer. Jesus fucking Christ.
Ed shuts off the water. “Kid, we need more shampoo. Or.”
“Or, what?” asks Louis, looking fragile again. “Can we just take it off?”
Ed perks up. His words, not Ed’s.
“Your hair, mate? You wanna cut it off?”
Louis nods at that reluctantly, and Ed’s not even sure the kid really knows what he’s asking for. Ed wants to say, say less, and yank the kid out of the shower and get the one-blade going on his clippers. Give Ed ten minutes tops, he’ll have the kid rocking a buzz like aughts Timberlake.
But—
And a big but—
Stede. No way Stede’s gonna go for a non-salon haircut for his precious son.
And this is where Ed makes an executive decision in these trying times to do the deed himself and take the heat for it later. There’s only one person who needs to be comfortable with the cut, and that’s Louis.
“Mate, I can do that, but it may take a while for the hair to grow back in. Weeks, maybe months. You sure you wanna cut it all off?”
Blank-stared (first bad sign), Louis nods.
Ed sets it up: Rugs out of the bathroom. Clippers. He even gets some cool music on the bluetooth speaker—or, cool inasmuch as whatever Louis wants to listen to, which is a clean version of a Cardi B album, which is fucking cool and makes Ed feel like a cool fucking (future) stepdad.
Louis sits on the toilet set with big pouty eyes, his chest noticeably heaving from deep breaths.
“You ready?” Ed asks him, over the whir of the clippers in his hand.
Louis swallows hard, then lets out a sickly moan. Ed flips the off switch on the clippers. They grind to a halt.
“You change your mind? I need to go to the store for more ‘poo?”
Listen, Ed doesn’t want to do anything the kid doesn’t want to do, but he does think the best course of action with this is to start over. It’s just hair, he wants to say, but Ed’s the last one who can say something flippant about hair, with his hours-long Sunday Salon Night hair routine that includes a mask, homemade deep conditioner, and singing along to his curly girl playlist with ‘90s Celine, ‘90s Janet, and ‘90s Mariah.
Right message, wrong messenger.
An idea strikes him. Ed could be the right messenger, and what if he was? His heartbeat kicks up as what he’s about to suggest becomes more clear, which is:
“What if I go first? Cut it off?”
Even the kid is shook by this. “Your hair?”
“Yeah mate, could do. Why not? It’s just hair.”
There, he can say it about himself and hope Louis absorbs it through mental osmosis or something.
“That work for you?” Ed asks. “I go full egg, then—” He makes a buzzing sound, mowing down an invisible head with the metal clippers in his hand. “—your turn.”
At the very least Louis looks curious. Ed could see him saying yes then pulling the rug out from under him, but honestly now that Ed’s said it out loud, he kind of just wants to do it.
What the fuck is under there anymore? What’s his forty-eight year old head look like with no hair? His face? His eyes?
Yeah. Fuck it.
Louis’ eyes get wide again. Giving his hair a last look in the mirror, Ed must’ve said that last part out loud, he reckons. His bad.
Carefully, to avoid tangles, he releases his hair from his band and lets his curls tumble back over his shoulders. That’s Ed. That’s the guy he’s woken up to for nearly every day of his adult life.
That’s the hair that netted a few nameless guys in his past, the hair he can swish over his shoulder at a bar and still get heads turning, the hair that his mum brushes and braids at night when he goes home for visits, the hair that Stede can’t keep his hands out of. Fingers mindlessly twirled at the soft tendrils at his nape, soft scratches at his scalp when they’re catching up on fucking “Grey’s Anatomy” or whatever shit, a fist scrunching it tight at his crown when Ed’s mouth is on him.
His whole adult life. His whole life with Stede.
Now Ed really is curious. In a kind of wicked, jealous way. Jealous of…himself? He’s not sure yet. He knows he feels the sudden strong urge to meet the guy underneath and see who that guy is to Stede and to everyone else.
His jaw flexes with determination as he stares himself down in the mirror.
This is happening.
The clippers whir on again.
“You don’t have to,” says Louis, and by the time he hears Louis’s voice, Ed realizes he’s been standing in this mirror with his clippers humming for a minute.
“Nah, I’m good. just trying to…figure out how to go about it.”
Could start in the front. Bold move. No changing up after you’ve got a patch missing front and center. Could do back, revisit an undercut, or shave the sides down again—he’s done that once or twice. Hell of a grow-out.
Ed sucks in a breath and blows it out harder. Time to give it a go. He swipes his hand back on his head and carves out a clump right over his ear. Even he's shocked when he pulls away a detached handful of his famous silvery tresses.
He keeps going.
Down the sides. Little chunks because his hair is so long and thick. He has to stop and clean the clippers so much that it becomes a nuisance, but he keeps going. Louis stands right next to him, dodging falling clumps and admiring each new revelation of skin.
Takes a good twenty minutes to clear his head from his historically and empirically gorgeous fucking locks. Takes longer he thinks to recognize the new guy in the mirror. It's Ed. But it’s an Ed he hasn’t seen for fucking years. The hair was covering up a lot of shit. He’d built a lot of himself around his hair—his walk, his defense, every interaction now laid bare.
Without the hair, tawny skin is marred by the dark circles under his eyes from working his bar floor in addition to admin. (Long story.) He’s got more freckles than he remembers. More gray in his beard. More bro-ey. Which Ed isn’t, apart from his rugby love, but even that’s queer if he says it is. The lack of long hair kind of makes him want to lean harder into the skirts and makeup in his closet, for some reason. Raid a Claire’s to prepare for the impending grow-out.
The allure of touching his freshly cut head is strong, and Ed runs fingers against the grain of his short buzzcut. He leans forward and follows the swirl of his hair pattern. Traces the short bristles that poke softly into the curves of his fingerprints.
Then it’s just him and the mirror, and what’s looking back—who’s looking back—isn’t just a tired forty-eight year old guy, but a twenty year old kid with round, shrewd eyes who Ed hasn’t seen in almost three fucking decades. Twenty Year Old Ed, hiding all of his fear and anger about his life thus far and his substandard living situation and the lacking coping mechanisms he'd developed for survival behind a pretty boy sneer and a strategic pout.
Five years out from ditching his mum’s house after—after that shit with his dad that ended badly. (An understatement.) Living off gas station burritos and tall neon-colored cans of whatever was in those commercial fridges. Couch to couch to couch to shitty illegal basement apartment once he'd saved enough from random under-the-table gigs.
Twenty Year Old Ed must be confused as hell at what he’s looking at. The little creases and dips on Ed’s face. The permanent parentheses of his smile lines. The gray hairs now patched on his skull in a camouflage pattern.
He’s gotta be weirded the fuck out at his forty-eight year old counterpart’s clear eyes and the background of a nice bathroom with guest towels that Ed’s been instructed not to touch (even though guests never use this bathroom) and soaps that Ed picked out himself because they smell like lavender and are shaped like the seashells he remembered at Twenty Year Old Ed’s feet when he would go walking on the beach at nights. When he was feeling lost and like he could jump in the water and keep swimming until his arms got tired and no one would know the difference.
He must be fucking flabbergasted at this. That someone might know the difference. The nine-year-old standing in the mirror next to Ed. Looking at Ed with admiration instead of fear or disgust. (Ed’s not looking at him with fear or disgust, either, which is just as big or bigger.) To see Future Ed in the present, healthy and medicated and—fucking breathing.
And partnered. Like a real partnership. Engaged. He’s got a ring on his finger. Black chrome. And his hands kind of shake if he thinks about it too much because it makes him nervous—it fucking scares the shit out of him how much he’s in love with Stede and Louis and Alma and his life right now. It fucking rocks him to his core, leaves him trembling in his Docs how he’s bounced from rock bottom to—this, without messing it up too much. How he's happy.
Ed almost forgot about that guy. Twenty Year Old Ed.
Twenty Year Old Ed’s bad fucking choices. One of which sits permanently on the side of Forty-Eight Year Old Ed’s skull for all eternity: the fat blurred lines of a tattoo of a Homer Simpson head with a blunt that he got for shits and giggles and probably to impress whatever dim asshole he was hanging around at the time. The idea of the tat design could be cool, but it fucking isn’t. It’s bad, and it was done badly, and now Ed has to parade that around, center-stage, until his hair grows back.
A part of him wants to be embarrassed by it, but the other part of him, the twenty-year old in the mirror part of him, is laughing too hard at the sight of it for Ed to feel anything but a strange and stupid mix of pride at his past misstep. Dumb choices are Twenty Year Old Ed’s gift to Forty-Eight Year Old Ed, meant to hide behind his magnificent curtain of hair for all eternity, but now imbue him with a kind of wisdom or something. A piece of Ed he couldn’t leave behind now if he tried, and fuck it, why would he?
That guy in the mirror was pretty badass, all said and done. Smart and funny and goddamned resilient.
“You look weird. But good weird. Cool weird," says Louis, peering skeptically at Ed's reflection.
"It's a nice little cue ball," Ed says. He rubs his hand over the top and down the back. "You better hope you have as good a head as me, 'cause it's your turn next. How you feeling about skull tats?"
"Do they hurt?"
Ed smiles to himself and at Twenty Year Old Ed in the mirror. "Nah. Piece of cheese. We'll do your shark, put him on a motorcycle, give him big flames coming off it. Right here." He playfully seizes Louis by the shoulders and palms the crown of his head while Louis laughs and laughs.
Louis looks ready to step into a musical about orphans or something with his buzzcut and Ed’s old Velvet Underground shirt that hangs loose on him like a bedsheet ghost. He tries to help clean-up, but he’s making a bigger mess with all of the hair, and Ed doesn’t tell him to stop. Thinks it’s nice he wants to help. Keeps him chatting, mouth running wild over shit Ed has no fucking clue about. YouTube streamers.
Downstairs, Ed hears the front door open and close, hears the click-clack of Stede's oxfords against the hardwood as he walks toward the kitchen, hears his things clatter to the kitchen counter in a relieved huff.
“Go show Dad the new ‘do,” Ed tells Louis, and Louis darts excitedly out of the room, his flat footsteps clapping down the hallway and stairs.
Ed finishes up clean-up duty, sweeping hair and bagging it. Cleaning out the tub and tossing the empty shampoo bottle and the comb. He hears the peaks of Stede’s surprised voice, the melody of Louis explaining his day, followed by those oxfords on the stairs and coming toward the bedroom.
"Ed?"
“Bathroom,” Ed calls out in response, tying off the plastic bag of shed fur.
He clenches hands that have gone clammy in anticipation for Stede’s reaction, wipes them down the jeans he’s put back on, with the Madonna t-shirt and Birkenstock slides. Touches his palm to his head again, knowing that move is about to be his new little thing until it starts growing back out. Too weird and soft not to keep touching.
"So it was that bad, huh? The outbreak? You had to cut his hair—”
Stede stops in the middle of the bedroom like he’s seen a Christmas ghost. Mouth open, eyes failing to blink. The length of his blue tie hangs around an open dress shirt, still tucked neatly into the crispest pair of navy linen pants that Ed's ever seen. Ed doesn't know how Stede does it with the linen, but they've barely got a wrinkle to them, and Ed can't completely focus on that for how Stede's frozen himself in their bedroom like a swan ice sculpture, and Ed can't tell what emotion Stede's got on his face in order to respond to it.
He tiptoes his voice into the room. “Hey…”
"Your hair," Stede finally says, barely past a whisper.
"Yeah," Ed says, again rubbing over his velvety dome. "The lice thing was pretty bad after all, so we thought starting over was best. Next best thing. Kid got kind of scared, so…you know. Had to show him it wasn’t a big deal.”
Stede’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. First crack in the veneer. His eyes water up just after. He worries his bottom lip with his front teeth, looking as if he’s trying to straighten out his thoughts like bad linen. This wasn’t exactly the reaction Ed was expecting, but Ed doesn’t really know what reaction he was expecting from Stede. A laugh? Some mild surprise and then dinner?
Not this. Not bursting into tears—that certainly didn’t make the fucking list.
“Babe?” Ed says, powerless.
Stede’s circled the bed and perched himself on the side of it, facing away from Ed, leaving Ed standing there feeling like an admonished child. Stede’s hands cover his face, but his shoulders pumping and everything tell Ed that he’s sobbing, and Ed sits beside him with all the caution in the world, like he’s trying to feed a stray cat—doesn’t want to scare him away.
Ed’s heart is thumping hard in his chest. His hands have gone from clammy to downright sweaty thinking that he’s fucked up. Gone too far or something. Crossed a line. Or something.
It’s his body. His hair. But his defiance is moot in the face of Stede’s big, heaving cries.
“Dad?” says Louis from the door.
Ed turns. “Start the movie for us, yeah?”
Louis lingers, watching the scene, and Ed feels a kinship with that protection of his parent. He places a hand on Stede’s back to demonstrate that Ed’s also feeling protective, that whatever’s going on is going to be okay. He smiles, winks.
“Did I do something?” Louis asks.
“You didn’t do anything, kiddo. Go pick a movie. Don’t eat up all the Sour Patch Kids.”
Louis changes his mind about sticking around and backs out of the room. Ed closes the door for a minute and returns to Stede’s side.
“You hate it that much, huh?” he asks Stede, who’s sniffling and scoring his palms down his face, marbled with red.
“No. Not at all,” he manages, though his face gives him away. His face looks as if he’s trying to land a thousand bucks on a hard Jeopardy question. “I’m just not used to it, is all.”
“Well, sorry, babe, it’s gonna be a few weeks,” says Ed, a little offense creeping into his tone. “Months ‘til it’s back in ship-shape. What’s done is done.”
“No, Ed, I—”
“You’ll just have to suck it up for a while ‘til it grows back—”
“I’ve ruined you.”
Ed stops. His heart drops to his gut. “What?”
“You did all of this for— Everything I touch—”
“Babe, I’m not ruined,” Ed says through a tight throat. “You think I’m ruined?”
“I think you didn’t want to cut your hair. I think you wouldn’t have made that choice otherwise.”
“‘Otherwise’ what? If I wasn’t with you?”
Stede doesn’t answer, just returns his face to his hands. Ed takes that in with his next inhale. His defenses ease. His pulse slides into third gear. “Yeah, you’re right, I wouldn’t have,” he says. It comes out a bit creaky. “You get that I love you, right? You and your kids?”
Pressure builds behind Ed’s eyes, and he feels himself next in queue to let out some of his own emotions. Seeing himself in the mirror, so young and so fucking old and so happy. Took eighty-sixing his hair to see his own growth.
“You get that I wouldn’t just cut my fuckin’ hair off for anyone else that didn’t have to do with you? Because of the whole love thing?”
Stede’s jaw clenches. He looks everywhere but Ed’s face, which is well enough, because Ed’s about to spill any second.
"I defile beautiful things…” Stede mutters.
“What? Mate, who the fuck told you that? You think I’m defiled? You think I’m less than because my hair is gone? Fuck are you talking about, love? Mate, do I look like shit, or something?”
Stede looks up at Ed’s near bald head, and Ed feels the grip of insecurity.
“Ed, in your worst enemy’s wildest dreams you couldn’t look like shit.”
Ed smiles at that, wipes quickly at the tease of a tear on his cheek. “Then—fuckin’ what? Talk, Bonnet.”
“I don’t know,” Stede says, shaking his head and scrunching his eyebrows in hard concentration. "I’m just not used to this, is all. Any of this. I’m usually the one doing things like this. Planning big adventures, executing grand-scale proposals…”
Ed chuckles wetly at the memory of Stede’s Jurassic Park-themed museum proposal with staff and fossils present. “Yeah, you go all out.”
“Yes, I do. Sometimes to my detriment. I have a propensity for big expressions of love. I don’t want to dissect why—”
“Daddy issues.”
“Oh. Yeah, big time daddy issues,” Stede laughs dryly. “But. It always ends badly. I make it bad. So, I just never…allow it to be returned.”
And yeah, when Ed stops to think about it, Stede rarely lets Ed take the reins. Ed’s an early riser, but Stede’s up first, making coffee and breakfast the way Ed likes. Ed brings Stede a book home, and Stede has to make a fancy book jacket that feels even more special than the original gift. Ed brings flowers home; Stede plants a fucking garden.
“This is…” Stede starts.
“It’s hair, mate.”
“It’s your hair, Ed. Not just any hair. You go grocery shopping for your Sunday Salon Night. Two avocados, yogurt, eggs. For your hair. You’ve built up this whole routine through trial and error, you get your music and your favorite robe—it’s a whole to-do for you. It’s commitment and dedication and care, and you gave it all up. For Louis. For love. For me.”
“Fuck, Stede,” Ed says around a phlegm-coated throat because now his eyes are leaking tears and where it was Louis earlier, now he’s got Stede in his arms consoling his swollen emotions until they deflate and Stede pulls back with the biggest, snot-plastered frown that, like with Louis before, Ed tries not to snicker at. Weird response. He’s getting better with the earnest emotions, but there’s still dents in the bumper.
“Thing is, darling, too—I don’t think I would have thought to do that."
"To do what, babe?"
"To cut my hair. To try to make Louis feel…better in that way. I've been trying for eleven years—thirteen with Alma—and you just knew what to do off the bat. How to dad."
Ed doesn’t want the pride he feels to come at the expense of Stede’s low evaluation of himself. He knows he’s gotten better at the father figure thing, but if anything he’d been using Stede as a guide. Fuck knows he didn’t have better examples from his own life.
"I don't know what I'm doing, either, mate. But, babe, I had a shit dad—we had shit dads—so everything we’re doing is on the fly," Ed tells him.
"Alma didn't even want to come over this weekend. She stayed at her mom's. Not sure it's an opinion at this point, just a fact. If you're looking for top-shelf father material, I don’t think you’ll find me up there."
"Okay, first of all," Ed says, slightly annoyed at Stede's pity party. "You love your kids, Stede?"
"More than anything, yes. Not even a question."
"You want the best for them?"
"Yes. Of course."
"Yeah, well, there you go. You show up for them how they need?"
Stede looks at him blankly. "I…think so. I try," he says. "I could try harder. It's harder as they get older."
"Well, you used to be straight but you figured that shit out pretty quick once it hit."
"I figured it out with you," says Stede through a watery grin.
"You can figure this out with me, too, mate. I'm not going anywhere. Big fan, by the way, how you made my haircut all about you."
Stede's gaze raises to Ed's. Finally, he takes a tentative hand and runs it across the surface of Ed’s buzzcut and oohs and lets a laugh slip through.
“It’s nice, right?” says Ed.
“More than nice. It’s perfect.”
Louis chooses Scarface, which, no chance. (Not with Stede in the house anyway.) He’s nearly to the chainsaw-in-the-shower scene before Ed shuts it down and chooses something more kid-appropriate.
Halfway through pepperoni and peppers and Die Hard, Stede takes up residence on the sofa between Ed and Louis, changed into cashmere joggers and t-shirt and his big tent-like yellow robe. He floats in like crepe paper and gives Ed the sweetest, most delicate smile Ed’s ever seen on him. His face is still puffy from crying, but handsome nonetheless.
"Die Hard?" Stede says, too soft to be judgy.
"Yeah. Classic. Kids need to learn their history," says Ed.
Stede wraps his arm around Ed and pulls him into his unreasonable body warmth. Ed feels Stede's chest bounce as he huffs a laugh. Listens to that steady, dependable rhythm of his heart. Feels his fingers land at his scalp and scratch light circles into the skin.
“What’s this tattoo?” Stede asks him, moving his head to get a better look.
“Don’t worry about it, mate. I’ll show you later.”
Later, in bed, Ed can feel the conversation train pulling into the station, once Stede's put his bald son to bed and they're both under the covers, their bodies quickly heating the cool sheets.
"It’s like Old Ed’s gone somewhere, with this haircut. I don't know who this New Ed is. You look so different."
"No I don’t. Look the same. Still me. Same guy, different flavor."
"Well, I was used to the old flavor."
Ed cuts his eyes at Stede.
"And I'll get used to this flavor, too," Stede adds.
“Guess you’re having second thoughts about marrying me,” Ed pouts bloodlessly.
“No—no. I’ll marry you bald myself if I have to. I’m not letting you go.”
Ed gets all moony faced and snuggles into Stede’s arm.
"God, it's like all of your expressions are under a magnifying glass,” Stede tells him. “How’d you make yourself more beautiful, Edward Teach? I didn't think that was possible."
"Shut up…" Ed says, rolling away in pink-faced abashment. Stede tugs at his arm to pull him back, and when he can’t, he pushes himself up to his elbow so they're face-to-face. “You gonna keep looking at me like that until my hair grows out?” Ed asks him.
"Maybe. I know it's you, but—I don’t know. I feel like I'm cheating on my future husband."
"Oh, yeah? That's kind of hot."
"Me cheating on you?"
"Well, yeah, but with me. Not with some rando, that's not what I'm saying. Not that that wouldn’t be hot. That’s kind of hot, too, actually. Only if I’m in the room, though. But if you cheat on me with me, then it’s like, you’ve got a type. And your type is me. Which is way hotter."
“My type is you,” says Stede. “My type will always be you.”
Ed’s heart is full to the brim. He turns to Stede, lowers his voice substantially. "What time you think your sad, pathetic boyfriend's getting home?"
"My fiancé is not sad or pathetic, thank you. He's wonderful," Stede replies with gleeful rebellion.
"Then what are you doing in my bed, hot stuff?"
"You've hypnotized me with your large eyes."
"My large eyes?" Ed says. He cups his hand at Stede's jaw and comes up for a kiss. "You want me to be someone else tonight? Some roguish bank robber or the new guy in town?"
"You're someone else enough. I want you to be Ed. Just Ed: the man I'm in love with—who shares the same name as my fiance."
They laugh about that, tucked in and gripping each other tight in the darkness.
The hair comes back curlier than it had been when it was longer. Every shade of gray from slate to platinum. Short, little moon cycles spiraled out across the breadth of Ed’s head. For months, Stede greets him at the breakfast table with, “You better get out of here before my fiance catches us,” then gets pulled into Ed’s lap for two dozen kisses and a few bites of whatever egg dish he’s cobbled together.
When they’re standing across from each other, on a beach in front of Ed’s recently ordained minister friend Jackie, Ed’s hair is at his earlobes, half pulled back in the nubbiest ponytail he could manage, and his ring is on Stede’s finger, and Stede’s ring is on his, and Stede cries harder than Ed’s ever seen him cry before, and neither of them is focused on any fucking hair.