Work Text:
I’ve never known love like this,
The kind the makes me believe that magic exists,
Like when you trace my face with your finger tips,
No, I've never known love like this.
The way you smile at shadows,
And shine in the light of the moon.
When the sun beats us down you sit on the ground
And say darling it’ll cool off this afternoon.
And you hold your silk so tenderly,
It’s weathered by salt and the sea.
You twiddle its fibres between your fingers
Then look up and smile at me.
Stede Bonnet had never known love like this. He had read about it, of course. His library was full of sweeping romances, dazzling knights in shining armor and the like, but in his actual life the situation had never before arisen. Peasants marry for love. His father’s words clanged in his mind like a broken grandfather clock, all out-of-tune and haunted. Gentlemen shouldn’t think of doing anything for love. He knew that.
The sadness he felt for his younger self, and for his wife’s younger counterpart panged in his chest as his mind’s eye looked upon them on that grey clifftop. Two graves side by side, facing an unlit lighthouse. The sun sets in the west as it rises again in the east, and he wishes he could sail the Revenge backwards through the oceans if only to let them both know that they would be okay. He would sail back far enough to the boy picking flowers in the meadow and he would hold onto him. He would stroke his hair and tell him that he was good. That he was so brave and that he mattered so much. He would whisper words of the life the boy dreamed of, the life he has memorized from the echoes of his childhood. He’d tilt the boy’s chin up and put a finger to his chest. Family will find you.
As the sea gently rocks the ship, waves of memories from his marriage wash against him. He is a pebble on the shore being moved along the sands with each pull of the tide. His mind fleets from their brief courtship, to their nuptials, to their dutiful relations, and then to their children. Even in his own head can he not call what they had a life. Mary had once told him that we only get one, and while he knows he is finally living his he sincerely hopes that she is living hers. In freeing himself maybe he has freed her too.
A caw from a seagull above and the whistle of the wind stir Ed in his slumber, and he burrows his face into Stede’s chest. The tenseness in Stede’s body melts as he takes himself out of his reverie. He looks down to see the crown of his lover’s head, silver hairs glinting in the moonlight coming through the window. He breathes in the scent of lavender soap and tobacco, and a smile appears at the corner of his mouth. Stede Bonnet has never known love like this. Gentlemen shouldn’t think of doing anything for love. Gentlemen pirates, however, could make up their own rules.
The echoes from his childhood dreams ring out now. Family has found you.