After a while I start to cringe at my fics, it is what it is, but it means I don’t have an A03 and only tend to “publish” in Twitter threads where nobody will see them. I’m going to start posting them here instead.
This is an Our Flag Means Death short fic I wrote on August 5th 2023 before the second season. It got some crying .jpgs which I will always appreciate, waiting for that second season drop was certainly a time.
Rain. It’s always rain isn’t it, when lovers reunite, a romantic and glistening character in their story.
Not this rain. Torrential, unforgiving rain that could bruise.
Stede’s blistered hand gripping the railings of The Revenge, a knee to the deck, anything to keep himself from tumbling to the wood that darkened before him as his wounds wept.
Eyes - fierce and bright, flash in the low light. To Stede, Ed’s voice was an awaited embrace in any shape it took, but that shape was a warning, deep, filled with pain, barking into the storm.
“Get off my ship.”
A wave heaves and Stede stumbles to the ground. Wincing, he manages to stand, rain streaming down his face, his ears flooded with the echo of his own skull and over the chaos of the open ocean. He points to the sky and squawks
“Terrible weather!”
“GET OFF MY SHIP.”
“I think there’s been a bit of a mis- k-. Ahf” Stede clutches his side. “-communication.”
It’s more than a cut. The shadow has folded down his leg to colour the water. There is no romance to it.
Ed’s pointed scowl tells them to act. Jim and Frenchie stride to Stede and, without hesitation, hover their blades. Stede turtles his head away, twisting his expression as if he’d smelled something unpleasant.
“I wasn’t appropriately apprised of this m-managerial change-”
“THROW HIM.”
Stede watches as Blackbeard flicks in his direction and turns away. …the sight of him had changed. Stede’s expression wore a softness that would calm the world, while bleeding, bruised, and condemned.
Jim shoots Frenchie a glance.
“Yeah no idea,” Frenchie chirps “but fuck being on his even badder side.”
“Ok.” Jim grapples with the situation, mopping their face with a sleeve, “But walking away means we don’t kill him? Right?”
“Were we going to?”
Jim shrugs, nodding in consideration.
Stede quietly shuffles forward, moving through them, as Frenchie instinctively braces Jim from interfering, nodding to Stede.
They watch as the deck speaks in red, Stede limping to the captain’s quarters.
Frenchie winces at the sight. “He’s half dead anyway.”
The quarters Stede had designed with such attention to cozy comforts lay bleak before him. There was a haunting sadness here.
Edward had leaned over the blade-damaged desk. A single candle flickering as The Revenge lurches.
“Edward.” Stede grips the door frame, his pale face hidden.
He feels his body swaying with his own breath. His lungs heaving his chest. “…edwa-” he rests his head against the frame, searching Ed’s silhouette in candle light.
He hears the splintering crack of metal wounding the wooden desk. The rumble of thunder, the creaking of the ship, all part of the same sound chased by the powerful rolling of Edwards’s voice building like a wave.
“This isn’t a game, Stede.”
“A game?” Stede pushes out the syllables.
“There’s nothing HERE for you Stede. Go back to your countryside.”
“That’s a much- ah christ” Stede fumbles into the room “better reception than, - ‘Throw him’, - I’ll take it.”
Stede squints into the gloom, searching the barren room. Every piece deserted. His most precious things, the things he couldn’t bare to leave behind, a life in knickknacks. Stede gently brushes a shelf to be certain there’s nothing in the darkness.
“Looks like - hah. Looks like you’ve already - thrown me overboard.”
He collapses, catching himself on a knee and rests to sit against the wardrobe door. His shirt torn, wet and icy, scratching against his chest. He watches the lowlight dance on the naked fixtures, not a remnant of him, but that emptiness was nothing beside the one inside him.
He had only come here for Edward. He could finally say things he’d meant to say, in ways he didn’t know he’d always meant to say them. And there Ed stood, seething in front of him, but he knew if Ed had wanted him gone he would be dead.
Stede had lived for this chance.
His eyes fall in and out of focus, throat struggling to swallow. Watching strands of Edward’s hair flicker as if made of light. As he wished Ed would face him, Stede felt the weight buried inside begin to speak for him in gentle melancholy-
“I’ve lost so many beautiful things.”
“THINGS. Of course you came back for your fucking things.” and Edward finally looks back, locking into Stede’s waiting eyes.
Stede gazes at him with an intensity that strips away a layer of his armour. The power he had over him, the sickness in his throat, nothing had changed. His love and hatred were the same creature. His comfort and his torment. And now Stede had come back, apparently bleeding to death.
“…you dying or being dramatic?”
“- Ed. - You mh -.”
“Get a word out.”
Stede slides to the floor.
“Dramatic then?”
Candle in hand and without urgency, Ed walks across the room. His footsteps are thunder to Stede’s floating consciousness. Ed towers over the crumpled heap of a man. This sad thing had hurt him.
“I know you were always playing a game, gentleman. Always wondered it was. A test of luck surely. How long you’ve managed to live is impressive.”
Ed catches the movement of Stede’s fingers reaching out to him. He and crouches, tilting his head to meet Stede’s unblinking eyes and hisses
“Did you win?”
Jaggedly inhaling, Stede lifts the only hand he can and reaches toward Ed’s face.
Edward recoils, but not so soon that Stede hadn’t already gently brushed against him.
This moment was Stede’s.
A fraction of longing lifted, Ed’s lonely rage numbed for a moment, his brow releasing his eyes as he locked into Stede’s gaze, and Stede softly presses his palm to Edward’s cheek.
A new frown descends on Ed’s face. An urgency rustles around them. He drops to hold Stede upright, Stede not releasing this touch as if once broken this chance would shatter.
Curled in Ed’s grip, they live in time stood still, and Stede so comfortably brushes his thumb over Ed’s lip. With love burst alive at his fingertips the last of his fight decays and Stede’s body relaxes from every pain, his hand falling away.
Ed catches him, arms folding around him clutching, electric despair rushes through him, fumbling to find Stede’s wounds in the dark.
Had he won? Stede’s mind swims through sensations and finds focus with his face in Edward’s blood/painted hands, their foreheads pressed, held in love. Stede releases a whisper, devoured unheard by the roaring night.
“Yes.”