"I like Arthur, he had kind eyes," Stede says, feeling embarrassed.
"I get that," said Ed, making Stede's eyebrows lift in surprise. "My old Captain, Hornigold-, remember I told you about him?" Ed looks at Stede for a second to see him nod quickly. "Well, he was just like any other captain, bit of a dick, y'know? It is what it is, the crew get it. Anyway, every now and then, he'd get this look in his eyes. Like thunder and lightening brewin' up... like-," Ed looks up, trying to think how to explain it to Stede.
"I know what you mean," Stede surprises him with. "When the clouds pull together, just before a storm."
Ed wants to smile - this man knows what being at sea is like and Ed still forgets but he doesn't want Stede to think he's patronising him so he stows it below deck and nods. "Yeah, exactly. And you could feel the crew getting tight, 'cause a storm was coming but this wasn't outside the ship, all around us."
"You can't steer outta that one!" Stede says, with a dip in his brow and a stiffness to his smile that told Ed he was trying to seem like he understood but didn't.
"No," Ed says, looking down. Somehow, Izzy popped into his head, and not just one memory; years of tight smiles and heads down that spoke to bending to your captain, not understanding.
"My dad, as you know, was not the most forgiving," Stede continues, and Ed looks up; he knows Stede hates talking about his childhood so he makes sure to look him in the eyes when he does. "He always had this intensity around me... Maybe that's what he always looked like," Stede shrugged, looking down, "I wouldn't know. He looked at my mother the same, until her death, and I assumed that was how he was but one day I inadvertently walked into a meeting with his partners and he was laughing." Stede tilted his head a little and then looked at Ed. "I'd never seen that look on his face before. He was laughing but... so were his eyes." Stede laughed too, but softly, looking down and then up again at Ed, almost abashed.
Ed smiled, knowing that if he said anything about the rage in his dad's eyes now he might make Stede feel like he couldn't say anything about his life and he wanted to hear this stuff. It made him want to track down this Daddy Bonnet and slit him every which way he could but, since he was dead already, Ed could rest knowing that, without that piece of shit, this man wouldn't be in front of him, with him, right now, in bed, talking about their pasts.
Ed smiled. "Well, then I'm glad you had Arthur's eyes." He got to watch Stede's smile morph from unsure and sad to warm. Then they leaned into each other a little, before Ed asked, "Did you ride?"
"Oh, God!" Stede guffawed before Ed insisted there was a story behind it and that Stede had to tell him it.
Arthur had kind eyes and Stede was always good at seeing the kindness in eyes that no one understood. But that was okay. Ed knew that was more than okay.
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