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Ed may have made a fatal error. The sharks are circling, an ominous glint of sharp teeth in dark, besmirched waters. It’s probably best he jumps ship now if he’s honest.
He’s been standing at the edge of the room for what feels like forever, holding a red plastic cup of sticky punch. He keeps forgetting how bad it is, taking sips just to look like he’s doing something and then promptly letting it dribble out of his mouth back into the cup.
He feels oddly like Mr. Horningold is about to jump out at him and tell him off for doing something he's not supposed to, maybe dress code him for the cropped black top and leather trousers. It's stupid; Ed's forty-fucking-four and the old bastard's probably dead by now.
Ed chuckles, drinks to that, then remembers the predicament with the punch.
Nothing’s changed in all the time since Ed was last here – it’s fucking weird. The place is frozen in the past, cursed by the same dust specks on the same red curtains and the same scuffs on the same herringbone floor. Even the same damn clock that Ed used to watch when he finished his exams early hangs on the wall, though it doesn’t seem to tick anymore. That or he’s so bored out of his skull that time has decided to stand still. Rude of it, frankly; Ed's willing this night to slip away quickly so he can get back home to reruns of Come Dine With Me and watch more strangers bitch at each other. At least he’ll be snuggled up under a blanket on his sofa and they’ll be pixels on a screen rather than this shit.
Thing is, these things are meant to make you feel like a bit of a dick. And hey, alright, maybe Ed was looking forward to the drama – just a little. Maybe he wanted to find out who got hot and who’s stuck in a loveless marriage and who still has the same haircut they had thirty years ago. That’s all school reunions are good for.
Except he doesn’t remember a single fucking person here. No bells to be rung. He must’ve paid even less attention than he thought he did back then.
Sure, it’s been nearly thirty years, but people don’t change that much, do they? Ed used to be a gangly kid with a mop of black curls on his head in a school uniform that was two sizes too big and doodles on the toes of his Converse, but when he goes to his mum’s and sees pictures of him back then on the mantle, it’s still him. Same eyes, same nose, same smile despite how crooked his teeth used to be.
When he received the invitation via email he’d been sure that he would recognise at least someone. Maybe Sam or Annie, the kids he used to skip fourth period science with to roll spliffs behind the bike shed – they were the three bloody musketeers back then. He can’t see either of them around.
What he can see is some douchebag in a suit who’s probably making the rounds to tell everyone that he’s come here from work at his fancy corporate job just so he can brag his yearly income (yuck); another guy who's telling the twelfth woman in a row that wow, she’s aged so well (major yuck); and a lady in a red dress chatting the ear off of a handsome blond with the worst poker face that Ed has ever seen in his life (fascinating).
The man eventually seems to get a word in edgeways, leaving her speechless as he escapes… towards Ed. Well, shit.
“Watch out or Toni will try and sell you her two for the price of one shower gels. Who’d have guessed she’d be the type of person to fall for multi-level marketing scams? Not me, certainly.”
Ed doesn’t remember Toni, and he sure as fuck doesn’t remember the bitchy stranger talking to him – though god does he wish he did.
“Gotta say I’m struggling to remember anyone’s names here,” Ed admits. And then tactfully tacks on, “except yours, ‘course.”
He's more handsome up close and it's making Ed's brain sing like a fire truck siren.
The blond narrows his eyes at the obvious lie. “That’s funny, I don’t remember yours.” It’s scathing but Ed sees the corner of his mouth twitch up into an almost-smile.
“Fuck, alright, you got me. Not a clue who you are, mate.”
“So what is it?”
“What’s what?”
“Your name.”
“Ed.”
“Stede Bonnet,” he says, and then his eyes widen in some secret realisation. Ed watches the bob of his throat in fascination at the reaction. “Wait. Ed– Ed Teach?”
“Yeah,” he says. Smiles about it too. Thank fuck someone here knows him, he was beginning to think that he’d lost his mind. “Don’t look that different, eh?”
“You were in the year above,” Stede says instead of answering. Considering how offended Toni looked a minute ago, Ed reckons that he’s done pretty well to escape a comeback about the grey in his hair.
Ed frowns. “‘You on about? What reunion's this?”
“Ninety one.”
“Right,” Ed says. “Guessing that’s not me.”
He thinks back on the email in his cluttered inbox, the garish font advertising the reunion. He’d taken one glance at it and added the date to his calendar because, as previously mentioned – and sue him for this, but – he’s a nosey bastard who wanted to see who was doing worse than him. He doesn’t have the time in his busy days to debate what year it was that he actually left high school. Apparently it was not ‘91.
“Nope.”
“Fuuuck. But they sent me the invite.”
“Yes, well, it's– they send it to everyone on the mailing list. You just go if it’s your year sort of a thing.”
“Right. I’m not an idiot, I swear.”
“Oh, I believe you,” he says, and Ed believes him too. “You were top set for everything. I can hardly imagine what you’re up to these days with a mind like that.”
Ed gets the funny feeling it's the nicest thing that Stede's said to anyone all night. It's definitely the nicest thing anyone's said to him in a long while.
He snorts. “How’d you know what classes I was in? No, hold on, how do you – decades later, mind you – remember what fuckin’ classes I was in?”
“Well, um. You were very popular,” he says, like that’s in any way a good explanation. It’s not even true.
The newly appeared flush on his face reels Ed further into a helpless fascination. God, if he’s straight then Ed’s going to be so fucking disappointed and more shocked than he’s ever been in his life.
“Not that popular,” Ed says.
“Yes, well. Anyway.”
“Were you the one leaving love notes in my locker?”
Stede’s mouth drops open just a tiny bit. He blinks rapidly in his scramble for a response. Yeah, Ed figures that there’s no way this guy is heterosexual.
“Relax, I’m messing with you, man. I didn’t get any love notes in my locker. Alright, one or two, but unless you dot your i’s with hearts, you’re in the clear. You seem like more of a quill guy than a glittery gel pen guy.”
Stede laughs, something bright and charming that stops Ed in his tracks for a good minute. His sunshiny face is backdropped by the display boards of colourful motivational quotes, and Ed finds himself stupidly wondering what fifteen year old him would’ve done with a smile like that. Might’ve had some realisations two years earlier, that’s for sure.
“Well, it’s no wonder,” Stede says with a spark in his eye. Ed’s kind of forgotten what they were talking about. “You were very sought-after by all the girls.”
“Haha,” Ed says dully.
“Really, Ed. Heads used to turn when you walked through the corridors.”
“Heads did not turn,” he scoffs. He’s pretty sure he would’ve noticed heads turning, even with music blasting through his headphones from his Anitech mimic of a Sony Walkman.
“They did a little bit,” Stede insists.
Ed takes mercy on the guy’s frankly awful attempt at figuring out if he’s gay or not. “Well,” he says. “Maybe it’s a good job that this isn’t my year’s reunion cos all of those women would be gossiping about me. ‘What a waste,’ they’d be saying. ‘He got so hot, I mean, a real silver fox, and for what? We can’t even have a piece? Man, that fuckin’ sucks.’”
Stede giggles – like, real life fucking giggles – and looks at Ed with a raise in his brow and a glimmer of hope. Bingo.
“So there it is. You know all about me – classes and, y’know, my heartthrob status. What about you, Stede?”
“Heartthrob status, Ed? Really?”
“Yeah.” Ed winks.
“And here I was thinking ‘wow, he’s cool and humble about it.’”
“Oh, I’m cool, am I?”
“I always thought so,” Stede admits, all too soft for the clamour of the main hall, but Ed’s world has narrowed down to him and his one dimple and his perfectly coiffed hair and what he might look like considerably more dishevelled. He hears everything that Stede says with perfect clarity, the rest of the noise around them fading to nothing. “Back then, I thought it was just jealousy from how much all the girls liked you. But… considering I just finalised my divorce after realising I don’t care for any attention from women, I don’t think that was it.”
Ed’s face splits into a huge grin. “No?”
“Nope,” Stede says, gaze locked on Ed’s with a sudden kind of confidence that has the power to make a real mess of Ed’s insides. He needs to explore whatever the hell that’s about immediately.
“Well, Stede. What do you say you and me ditch class and get a drink somewhere a little less fuckin’ lame?”
“I want to do something first,” he says. “Will you be my partner in crime?”
Like that isn’t an unhinged thing to say to someone you’ve just met.
Well, Ed’s always had a bit of a thing for unhinged. Especially if unhinged is a drop dead gorgeous blond who seems to be as hot for Ed's brain as he is for his body; especially if unhinged has a glint in his eyes that threatens to burn down the entire school.
“Reckon you’re a bit of a fucking lunatic.”
It’s for that very fact that Ed follows him down the corridors of their old stomping ground.
At night time the place is dark, classrooms out of commission and soaked in shadows. There’s a haunted sort of chill to the hallways, a ghostly echo of whispers from all the history that they hold. Or it’s the wind whistling through the old brickwork. Probably the wind.
Stede walks beside Ed with a mischievous little smile playing on his lips.
“Oh shit, this used to be my science classroom.” Ed peers through the window into the pitch black lab. “Good times in there, man. Once we did this experiment where we had to chop up a frog’s insides and look at them under a microscope.”
“Yuck,” Stede says. “How is that your definition of good times?”
Ed laughs at his scrunched up nose. He decides against giving Stede the gory details of the one science lesson that he actually paid attention to.
They continue their walk through the gloomy corridors until they reach a corner of the school that’s instantly, intimately familiar to Ed.
Some days, he’d sit on a chair there until he got called in to speak to the headteacher about skipping class again (“you’re a smart kid, Edward, I don’t want to have to see you in here again”); sometimes he’d sit and wait for the school nurse (“fourth time this week, Eddie, is it really a stomach bug or would you like to talk about something?”).
The plaques on both doors have changed names by now, a new nurse and a new headteacher.
Ed’s eyes widen as he touches a finger to the silver engravings of one in disbelief.
“You’re the headteacher here?” he says, eyes darting back and forth between Stede and the ‘PROF. BONNET’ metal plaque on the door.
“Ah, no. That’s my ex-wife. She's ordered a new sign. She’s changing it after the holidays.” He unlocks the door with a bent paperclip.
“And you don’t think your ex-wife is gonna be pissed when she finds out that you’ve been breaking into her office?”
“Not when I tell her why.” He holds the door open for Ed, the most gentlemanly bitch that Ed's ever met.
“Okay,” Ed says sceptically.
The door shuts behind them. They’re alone in the small office. Stede clicks a lamp on, surrounding the small space in a warm glow.
“She might hate me for this though.” Stede opens a series of cupboards until he finds what he’s looking for with an, “Aha!”
There’s a classy gift bag, all floral instead of covered in glitter, and from it Stede pulls out an even classier bottle of wine. He dumps the bag and the ‘thank you’ card right back into the cupboard and flops onto the chair behind the desk.
Ed doesn’t so much fancy reliving his teenage years, so he sits on top of the desk, his legs dangling off the edge dangerously close to Stede’s.
And then – fuck, and then Stede rolls his sleeves up to his elbows and Ed’s mind short-circuits like a bulb crocodile-clipped to a faulty wire. The guy has arms.
Stede stabs a letter opener into the cork and pulls it out of the bottle.
From another cupboard he finds two mugs and pours the wine into them. Ed snorts when he sees Stede’s mug of choice.
“Well, do you then?”
“Do I what?”
“Have the, uh–” Ed nods at the mug in his hands. Stede twists wrist around to get a look at the print on the front. He glares at Ed when he sees WORLD’S BIGGEST COCK under a picture of a cockerel.
“Well, that’s…inappropriate to have in a school.”
Ed laughs. Stede glows bright red and doesn't answer.
“This is what you wanted to do then? Drink the ex-missus’ wine in her office?”
“Oh! No. This is what I wanted to do.”
Stede reaches an arm around Ed, and his breath stutters in his lungs. Obviously this is what they’ve been building up to, but Ed had a whole plan to impress him with some swanky bar and fancy cocktails and maybe play footsie with him under the table, be a real fucking gent and walk him home, get invited upstairs under the pretence of a nightcap, and then mess up his pretty blond curls. Stede clearly has this whole other plan wherein which he can’t even wait through all of that to get his hands on Ed and he has to have him here and now on the d–
Yeah. Yep, he’s reaching around Ed to grab something.
Bloody hell.
In his hand is a little microphone with a button on. In his eye is a terrifying flash of trouble.
He presses the button. “If anyone is the owner of a grey Honda Accord with the personalised number plate ‘CH4UNCEY’,” he says, spelling out the number plate with the same look of disgust that he had on his face when he drank the cherry punch earlier. “I’m afraid you’ve left a red brassiere on full display in the front seat, and you should probably remove it before your wife wonders what something four times her cup size is doing there.”
He takes his finger off the button and grins up at Ed.
“Holy shit, you are fucking diabolical,” Ed says, mirroring his grin with wide eyes. “We don’t like… what, Chauncey, then? Is that a name or does it mean something or–?"
“Chauncey is a grade A arsehole who’s aged like stale cheese and cheats on his wife because she can’t stand to sleep with him anymore.”
Stede downs the rest of his wine, holding the handle of the mug primly between his fingertips.
It’s probably the wrong time for Ed to think that he sort of wants to marry this guy. He's known him for approximately half an hour and heʼs got the beginnings of that Bruno Mars song chiming in his head. Debating whether they should have a classy little beach wedding with close friends and family or if they should say fuck it and throw the tackiest do in some hotel and invite all their exes along.
Ed clears his throat. “Maybe we should, uh, leave before you can say any of that to his face. As much as I would love to see that fight play out.”
He takes one more devastating little glance at Stede’s forearms.
Stede nods eagerly, flicking off the light and heading towards the door. “Didn’t you say you knew somewhere a ‘little less fucking lame’?”
“Fuck yeah, let’s go.”
Something about walking out of the headteacher’s office without the threat of a detention has him feeling like he can do anything. And what he’s going to do is seduce the fuck out of Stede Bonnet and maybe, if he’s lucky, get to find out how he takes his morning tea.
They walk down the corridor until Ed hears the squeak of Stede’s fancy brogues coming to a halt behind him.
“Ed,” he whispers loudly.
“Yeah? Oh, shit.”
There’s an angry balding man striding right towards them, and Ed doesn’t really need any of his genius to figure out that that’s probably Chauncey.
“Baby Bonnet,” he growls.
Ed grabs Stede’s sleeve and tugs him in the opposite direction.
Eleven years old on his first day of school, this place had felt like a maze to Ed. All winding corridors and identical green doors and stairways that never led him to where he thought they would.
Before he knew it the map of the building had become scorched permanently into his brain. Even at forty-four it still seems to be branded there, so he knows exactly where he is when he pulls Stede up the stairs and to the left. Chauncey’s hot on their heels, but Ed’s pretty sure that he doesn’t see which corner they turn.
This time, Ed unlocks the door with a hairpin. A lock of silver falls loose in its absence.
He bustles Stede into the art classroom and guides him to the floor so that they can’t be seen through the windows. Stede lets out an adorably unrestrained giggle and Ed’s sorry to have to shush him.
Stede sits with his back to the wall, Ed sits with his back to the desk. Their legs stretch out, just millimetres from touching.
As their laughter dies down in the quiet darkness of the room, Stede reaches a hand out and brushes the loose curl out of Ed’s face. His fingertips linger, burning the shell of Ed’s ear, and then his hand falls back to his side. Ed forgets to breathe the whole time.
The air in his lungs shudders out a second later.
“Didn’t you used to have an eyebrow piercing?” says Stede, leaning back against the wall.
Ed huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, I did. Healed over now.”
Stede pouts and stares at Ed’s left eyebrow like it might manifest the silver ring back into existence.
“Long story short, I got totally munted a few years back. Fuck, probably like ten years at this point. Headbutted the curb, had to go in for an MRI scan and they make you take all your piercings out. Forgot to put that one back in.”
“Well, if you ever decide to get it redone, I know an excellent piercer,” Stede says, as though Ed doesn’t look like the kind of guy who’s looked up every tattoo and piercing parlour in the whole city.
“Oh yeah? How come you haven’t got any then?”
“That you can see.”
Holy fuck. Ed stares at him for a second. Takes in his rolled up sleeves, his gorgeously toned arms that don’t have a dot of ink on them. Takes in his perfect curls and the lack of even a scratch on the lobes of his ears. He’d start at an earring before anything crazier than that, surely.
And the thing is that he likes Stede a lot, actually. Is really quite enjoying his company. He’s fun with a mean streak that doesn’t come to play, and he seems to have evaded death by murder of his ex-wife somehow. Ed likes all of that a whole lot.
But there’s something about him that’s still…businesslike. Well-put-together. Smart. He looks like the kind of guy who works in an office and gets messy drunk at the weekends, just enough madness to level out the mundane nine to five mask he has to put on. He doesn’t look like the kind of guy who walks into a piercing parlour, strips off his clothes and goes “stick a needle through that”.
“Haha,” Ed says. “You’re having me on.”
“Am I?”
“Dickfuck, yes.”
“But am I?”
Ed narrows his eyes at him.
Standing up with a grunt, Stede stretches his arms behind him like he’s cracking his spine. It makes his tight shirt even tighter across his chest and– Yeah. Okay. Fuck. He’s not having Ed on. He’s very much, definitely not having Ed on.
And he’s demonic enough to smirk with one more godforsaken "but am I?" as he takes a seat behind the art teacher’s desk.
Ed retracts the office job theory in an instant. He’s going to be so disappointed if he’s an office job guy, no matter how good he’d look leaning back in a leather chair, tie all askew, with Ed on his knees under his desk.
Ed takes a calming breath before standing up himself and taking a seat on the table, a perfect mirror of how they’d been earlier with the wine and Stede’s batshit tannoy trick.
“Reckon he’s gone now," he says, glancing through the windows at the empty hallway where the motion-sensor lights have switched off.
“Hm? Oh, yes. I hope so.”
Stede goes quiet for a minute, thoughtful look on his face.
Then he says, “You probably don’t remember this. But um, one time I was hiding in the toilets– I’d have been thirteen, fourteen, maybe. And you came in to smoke – it must’ve been the ones by the PE changing rooms that they took the smoke detector out of because it kept going off from the deodorant. And I knew it was you because I– I saw the doodles…on your shoes. The tentacles.”
He sharpens a random pencil until it snaps, then sharpens it again, refusing to meet Ed’s gaze.
Stede’s been a lot of things tonight but Ed hasn’t seen him shy yet. He’s made him blush, sure, but even then Stede had looked into his fucking soul and made Ed feel like he was tripping up on his shoelaces in the playground.
Ed twists his arm around to show Stede the tattoo of a skull with tentacles on his bicep. Stede smiles and finally looks at him again, and it feels like a victory.
“Wow. Very cool,” Stede says, his eyes bright again.
Ed smiles back and gives him a moment to admire the ink before he gets back to what he was saying.
“So, uh, you came in, and I was. Well, crying. Because of Chauncey and his brother, Nigel, and their friends. And you heard me and pushed a note under the door.”
It’s instant, the memory: a bathroom stall, the worst day of Ed’s life with a hundred worse days to follow, a scrap of paper and a pair of sparkly new white and blue Court Classic Reeboks.
Ed reaches across the desk, finding a yellow sticky note and grabbing the pencil out of Stede’s hands to draw as much as he can remember of the stupid smiley octopus with a pirate hat that he’d done to cheer up the faceless boy in the stall next to him.
‘You OK?’ he writes above it like he had at fifteen.
He sticks it on Stede’s forehead with a smile. Stede smiles back, perplexed as he reaches up and pulls the sticky note down. The second he lays eyes on it his face changes entirely. His eyebrows pull together and he smiles wider than ever. Heʼs beautiful in his astonishment. Itʼs making Ed think about the setting sun reflecting off diamond rings again.
“Oh, Ed,” he whispers. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
Ed shrugs as though his brain isn’t fizzing like Mentos in a Coke bottle over the idea of fate. Two cosmic kids crossing paths like stars in a night sky that’s so much further in the future than Ed would’ve dared to dream of when he was fifteen.
“Well?” he says. “Are you? Okay?”
Stede contemplates for a second, dewy-eyed as he glances at Ed then back at the lemondrop post-it.
‘What do you think?’ he writes like he had back then. Swooping and sarcastic – only Stede. Some things never change.
“Sorry,” Ed says – he’d scribbled it on the scrap of paper back then, but there’s no more space on the tiny imitation of the memory.
“It’s not your fault,” Stede says. They’re exchanging the same words but there’s so much more weight behind them now.
After a significant silence, after the two of them have just about grasped the gravity of having found each other again, Ed says, “I wish we’d have been friends then. We’d have got on, me and you.”
“I would’ve liked that.”
He smiles, albeit watery, and Ed can’t believe it took so long for him to know the smile that was on the other side of the wall. Can’t believe he even gets to find out what the smile on the other side of the wall looks like at all.
For twenty nine years he’s written off that day as a strange little mystery, a sign from the universe that he wasn’t entirely, cataclysmically alone in its vastness – a nameless, faceless sign.
And now here is Stede Bonnet; the boy-next-door of his dreams all grown up. Rakishly handsome and irresistibly dorkish. Stede Bonnet who, twenty nine years earlier, was a broken kid passing notes to another broken kid under the wall of a bathroom stall. Stede Bonnet who has always, always seen right through Ed Teach.
It's not your fault – he has no idea how badly Ed had needed to hear that back then.
On a random night in August, Ed finally sees his face, sees the man he’s become, sees the flicker of the kid he used to be in that wonderstruck little smile. Ed finally knows him, even if it feels like he’s known him all along.
It’s too much to try to put into words without sounding like a headcase, Ed is aware. And, well, Stede probably wouldn’t even mind, but it’s not really the direction that he was trying to steer their night in.
Instead he simply taps his foot against Stede’s ankle – not quite the game of footsie he had planned, but Stede leans his leg into it so it’s a win in Ed’s mind.
“You’re a far better artist than you were back then,” Stede says. He keeps staring down at the little sticky note like he’s holding something precious and delicate between his fingers.
“Fuck off. I passed art with flying fucking colours, thanks.”
“Hm. Is that what you do now then, eh? Art?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Paintings? Comic books? Shoe design?” He says the last one with a glimmer in his eye.
Ed stretches his arms out pointedly in response. Stede’s gaze trails over the ink, almost distractedly, until his eyes widen. “Oh. Oh! Wow, you do tattoos? I feel like a bit of a cunt for offering you the suggestion of a piercer now.”
“Nah, man. I liked that. If you miss my eyebrow ring so much, all you had to do was say though.”
“I think I miss the lip ring more,” Stede says, eyelashes fluttering in the moonlight as he takes in Ed’s face.
Ed grins. “I’ve still got that.”
Stede looks down at his lips, perplexed. Ed’s heart does a backflip onto one of those rock-hard blue crash mats.
“The hole’s still there, see?” Ed says, prodding his tongue behind the little hole at the corner of his mouth. “Just didn’t wear it tonight.”
“Oh,” Stede says. And fuck, Ed’s wishing he did wear it tonight now because that was a very interesting ‘oh’.
He clears his throat rather than grabbing Stede’s shirt collar and tugging him for a kiss. “So um, who is it that you know out of curiosity?”
“Ah. Do you know Jim?”
“Jiminez?”
“Yes! That Jim.”
“Fuck, their work is sick. Sorry, you’re friends with Jim?”
“Yes,” Stede says questioningly.
“I mean… Right. Like..how, though?”
Stede gestures at his chest.
“Yeah, no. You did not walk into Jim’s shop, strip your shirt off and become best friends with them.”
“Rude,” Stede says.
“Sorry, mate. I’m sure it’s a very impressive chest, but you are not Jim’s type.”
“Yes, well. Anyway. No, that’s not how we met. They were more of a friend of a friend of a friend, really. Lucius, my neighbour – my very noisy, very irritating, really, neighbour – works with one of their partners, Oluwande. One time I knocked on Lucius’s door to ask if he could please keep the music down but instead he invited me into his party. And uh, well, I had just moved out into my own place there, and I was – without sounding like a total sad prick – lonely. So I thought why not.”
“You went to the party.” Because only Stede Bonnet would go over to complain and end up dragged into a house of queers ten years younger than him.
“I went to the party. Actually go to Lucius’s parties quite often now when work isn’t too busy. Theyʼve all kind of adopted me into their little crew. Itʼs nice.”
“Thatʼs sweet. And work is…?”
“I’d have to kill you if I told you,” Stede says solemnly.
“Diabolical,” Ed accuses for not the first time that night.
Stede grins in that deranged way – sharp teeth, eyes glinting – and thank god Ed didn’t jump ship because he never would’ve gotten this.
“Are we leaving then or what?” Stede says.
“I want to do something first, partner in crime.”
He grabs the arm of the chair that Stede’s sitting on, pulling it towards him. The wheels easily bring Stede closer to him. Close enough to smell the maddening concoction of citrus and vanilla and heated skin that the overwhelming sticky cherry punch had drowned out earlier; close enough to see every starshined freckle with telescopic clarity; close enough to lean in just a fraction and be a breath away from Stede’s lips.
“Reckon you’re a bit of a lunatic too,” Stede says quietly.
Ed kisses him. Their smiles meet in the silver shadows of the classroom.
Stede’s hands find Ed’s waist as he stands to bring them even closer. Ed tilts his head up, his mouth not daring to break from Stede’s for even a second as they move.
And god, Stede kisses him back like the most gentlemanly wet dream that Ed has ever had.
He keeps him close with one hand still firm at his back. The other holds his face with so much care that it could almost be delicate if it weren’t for the purposeful graze of Stede’s teeth, a suggestion of a bite, against Ed’s bottom lip.
He gets barely a taste of the wine on Stede’s tongue when a startling crackle from the tannoy breaks the moment.
“Stede Bonnet, please make your way to the headteacher’s office if you don’t want your beloved wife to know that you’re sucking cock in one of her classrooms right now.”
Chauncey, Ed guesses – sounds like a posh prick. An exceedingly stupid posh prick who hasn't got the memo that Stedeʼs now gay as hell for leather-clad, tattooed men who may or may not be wearing fluffy socks with bunny rabbit ears on under their boots.
Still pressed close, he and Stede immediately descend into a fit of giggles. Their foreheads knock together and Ed can almost taste Stede’s laugh.
There’s still an unreasonable current of electricity flowing through his veins after such a bloody ridiculous interruption.
“Shit, I forgot to lock the door,” Stede says, his breath short and his eyes crinkled.
“Well, are the rumours true?” Ed says, his laughter betraying the scandalised act. “Is Stede Bonnet sucking cock in one of his wife’s classrooms?”
“You didn’t notice?”
“No,” Ed says, grinning. “I didn’t.”
Stede draws even closer, and Ed’s concentration bounces indecisively between the red-hot touch that’s slipping under his shirt and the hotter still brush of Stede’s lips against the shell of his ear.
Eventually his focus gets fuzzy and he gives into it, melting into Stede like a plastic biro over a bunsen burner, dizzy from the fumes.
“Believe me,” Stede says, voice rough and impossibly low. “With how far I could get you in my throat, you’d notice.”
It’s a testament to Ed’s willpower, really, that he doesn’t push Stede to his knees right then. It’s also kind of a testament to his lungs that they somehow keep allowing oxygen in, that his brain accepts the air and doesn’t decide to pass out at that very instant.
“Yeah, let’s go,” he says in a rush.
“Ah, yes, this bar you’ve been speaking of?”
“Yeah, mate, let’s go all the way to a fucking bar, and hey, on our way we can stop by the headteacher’s office and maybe back to the main hall just to say our goodbyes to everyone– No, not to the fucking bar, Stede. You are coming home with me.”
“I am?” Stede says, pleased as punch (not the gross, sticky kind).
“Don’t make me sell you on it,” Ed says, and yet still tries to sell him on it a tad just to get a reaction. “It’s no more than a fifteen minute walk, I have an assortment of good drinks, anything your little heart desires, and a lip ring that I can put back in. Couple more piercings for you to see too.”
“Yes, you’ve made your point,” Stede says, his voice back to a characteristic squeak and his cheeks pink in the moonshine.
“Great. Cʼmon.”
Ed practically drags him down the steps, through the corridors and out into the cool night air.
Stede stops them in their rush, and Ed’s definitely about to pout about it until he sees why.
From his trouser pocket, Stede pulls the same letter opener that he used on the wine earlier. It’s a goddamn stunning thing – Ed hadn’t noticed before, too distracted by arms and muscles and muscles and arms. The golden handle is twisted, vine-like, an engraved floral pattern sprouting out across the blade. It’s so very Stede that Ed can’t help but wonder what it was doing in his ex-wife’s office.
He soon stops wondering when Stede stabs it into the tire of a grey Honda Accord.
Stede beams up at him.
Oh, god. He feels crazy. He feels fucking insane. Heʼs going to end up blurting that heʼs in love with the guy any second. Head over fucking heels, glittery gel pen hearts, would go to the end of the world and back in love with him.
He hasn't even had chance to memorise Stede's features yet, to become intimately familiar with the scrunch of his nose or the freckle at his throat or the wispy-gold chest hair peeking out of his shirt collar. Itʼs so new, like...barely a couple of hours ago new, and Edʼs heart has already flopped on its back like a domesticated wildcat begging for a belly rub.
He looks up at the sky and inhales the crisp winter air. It does nothing but make him miss Stede's warm, wine-laced breath in his lungs.
A sweet orange line of clouds paints the horizon, the darkness hanging above it emblazoned with stars. Ed makes sure to thank them before he grabs Stede’s hand again.
They run past the school gates, their laughter growing louder the further away they get from the bust of a night.
Well. Can’t have been a total bust, since Ed’s currently running through an explanation to his mother about how, yes, they only met tonight, but it's the real fucking deal. He wouldn't want her to get a fright from the RSVP in the mail before he gets the chance to call, after all.
In the ruby red light of the crossing, Stede wraps an arm around Ed’s waist and presses a flurry of kisses all the way up his neck to his cheek.
The man changes to green before Ed can get down on one knee about it.
“Glad to be away from that fuckin’ place,” Ed says once they round the corner and the school building falls entirely out of sight.
“It was rather awful, wasn’t it?”
Ed hums in agreement, distracted from their conversation by the way Stede’s fingers are interlocked with his so casually.
Stede’s saying something long-winded and Ed only catches the end of it: “Y’know,” he tunes in to hear. “You’re the best damn thing to come out of that wretched place.”
“I mean, I think one guy there tonight is in the World Cup next year, mate.”
“I said what I said.”
Ed looks at him, bewildered, as they stop at another crossing.
The stupid fucking stick man lights up bright green again before Ed finds his voice to propose.
“Reckon you’re an absolute fucking lunatic,” Ed does manage to say.
“Reckon you’re into it,” Stede replies with a cheeky smile.
Way too into it, Ed thinks as he drags Stede into a brisker walk. So into it that it’s probably going to change the course of his entire life, maybe the course of human history, and he’ll forever look back on tonight and think god, you had no idea what was in store, you oblivious motherfucker.
“Yeah, a little bit,” Ed says. “I guess.”