Chapter Text
It had to be said that Stede Bonnet hadn’t quite been himself lately.
His life was the same comfortable monotony that it always had been. Stede woke up to a quiet home each morning and left before Mary was up to get the children out of bed. He drove to work and spent the day trying to look busy while doing very little of any significance, as his personal assistant did the same. He arrived home at seven p.m. on the dot, and he apologized for being gone so long and so tired when he got back home, using the same old excuse that his role in Bonnet Industries just required so much of his time and energy.
Mary pretended to believe him, though she knew as well as anyone that Stede’s title in his father’s company didn’t mean much of anything. Nobody needed to tell her that Stede spent most of his time at the office drinking tea and playing solitaire and reading; she was able to figure that out all on her own. It was a polite kind of lie, because Mary was a nice woman and she deserved to at the very least have a husband that lied to her properly. This was about the extent of husbandly duties that Stede had ever been able to perform after he’d throughly failed at everything else.
He’d once thought that he might be able to fall in love with her eventually, if he tried. Relationships were work, or so he’d been told, but he’d never gotten the hang of loving her, and in what felt like no time at all they’d reached twenty years of marriage with nothing to show for it except the children. There was no spark, no attraction. He knew he exasperated her, and she knew that he avoided her. They really ought to divorce.
All of it seemed like so much work. And for what? It wasn’t as though he had any better prospects as far as relationships went.
But now there was something more, something beyond that everyday melancholy. He was restless, like there was something that he ought to be doing, like he’d left the stove on and didn’t know where to find the dial. Like there was someone he’d forgotten about.
“Lucius!” he called, and his assistant looked up from his desk, where he was openly texting. “I need you over here.”
“Yes, Boss?” The boy was a good worker, believe it or not. Stede had grown rather attached to him.
“Did I forget a meeting or something like that? Somebody that I was supposed to be touching base with?”
Lucius wrinkled his nose. “I think I’d have told you that already, if there was one.”
Stede found his gaze drifting away from Lucius, toward his collection of ships in bottles. In such a large office, bringing one’s own decor was necessary to make the place bearable. And this could be passed off as a normal hobby for a man in his middle age, just as long as Stede didn’t discuss how he fantasized about being on those very ships, just sailing off into the sunset on a magnificent vessel alongside a group of strapping sailors. He’d always loved the ocean.
“Maybe I need a change of scenery,” Stede mused, unable to deny the longing in his heart, the tug of nostalgia he felt whenever he was on the beach or in the water. “I’ve been feeling very strange lately. Lucius, did you know that in the old days, doctors used to send people to the sea to recover from their agonies?”
Lucius very pointedly did not ask which agonies Stede meant, which was a nice change from his usual response to this kind of thing, which was I’ve seen your pay stubs, you don’t need to have any agonies.
“Go on vacation,” Lucius said instead. “Why not? I’m great at browsing travel websites and pretending I have the free time to go somewhere. I’ll get you an itinerary.”
Ed lay sprawled out on his couch, focusing and unfocusing his eyes as he stared out the wide picture window of his apartment, the one that looked over the sea. The weather was all right, pretty balmy with just enough wind to keep things interesting, but so what? He wasn’t in any mood to go outside. Usually wasn’t. Just moved here for the hell of it, really, always did like the ocean and once he had a decent amount of money he thought, fuck, why not, let’s live by the fucking ocean. She was moody, unpredictable; vast, incomprehensible. They had a lot in common.
“You think I should buy a boat?”
“No, Edward, I don’t think you have a good reason to buy a fucking boat,” Izzy said, not looking up from his laptop.
“There’s lots of good reasons to buy a fucking boat,” Ed countered. He knew Izzy well enough to know that he was making a spreadsheet or something and could only spare so much energy for Ed. “Getting places on the water. Fishing. Dunno, racing and shit. I could get pissed on the deck of my boat instead of in my living room.”
“You already bought a boat, a couple of years ago. And then you sold it, because you never used it. Said, hey Izzy, that was a waste of time, if I recall.”
Izzy was right about this much in his usual grating way, but Ed was in no mood to admit it. He didn’t get it; he’d never felt drawn to the sea the way Ed always had, never felt like maybe he ought to be going on adventures or having a grand old time on the water.
“Waste of time for you, maybe. You’re the one who always gets seasick.”
The real reason he had sold the boat wasn’t that he didn’t want to use it. Kind of the opposite: he had questions, and he’d bought it because he’d been looking for answers, but then when he started sailing it felt like he was getting too close to them for comfort. Since he was a kid, he’d had dreams about the ocean: living in it and dying in it. Real intricate dreams sometimes, detailed, like he was walking through an old, hazy memory. He felt nostalgic on the water—and when he heard certain fairy tales, and when he smelled lavender, and dozens of other things.
Even Izzy made him feel that way sometimes: a weird, inexplicable tug of longing, like he was getting closer to finding something he hadn’t even realized that he ever lost. The combination of the boat, and Izzy on it (clutching his stomach, losing his lunch over starboard) had been especially weird. No way to get it out of his system, so he just ended up selling the boat.
Izzy just didn’t fucking get it.
“No one sensible wants to fuck around at sea,” Izzy said, which is exactly what a guy who got seasick that easy would say. “Ocean’s for people who have nowhere else to go, so they decide to put up with the inconveniences and the shitty food and the crabs.”
“Crabs, huh,” said Ed, tugging at his hair. “Might be fun. You know, Iz, people do go on boats for fun. Rich people shit, yachts and cruises and stuff.”
“And?”
“We’re rich people,” he said. Which was obvious, wasn’t it, Izzy was the one who did both their taxes.
“Not that rich,” said Izzy, sounding pretty grumpy about that. “And nothing is guaranteed.”
He just couldn’t fucking win with this guy, could he? Izzy was a damn good business partner, not to mention the closest thing Ed had to a friend after decades of working together and almost as much time as roommates, but he was so fucking stubborn. “We’ve both got plenty. Enough to take a fucking break if you ask me.”
See, Ed was an artist. Sculpture, paint, rug making, whatever caught his fancy in the moment until he decided he wasn’t interested anymore. And Izzy knew how to make it work as a business, with all of the spreadsheets and the scheduling meetings with the kind of people who were actually willing to pay money for his stuff—real money, big money, not the kind that Ed used to make at craft shows when he was a kid. But those kinds of people were pretentious idiots, and he was fucking tired of dealing with them.
“You’re not taking a break for no reason,” said Izzy. “At least pretend to be working on something.”
He and Izzy worked together well, in professional and personal matters: when Ed brought home boyfriends that Izzy hated, Izzy put up with it; when Izzy stayed out all night, Ed didn’t ask questions. Izzy only bitched Ed’s impulsive vacations and redecorating decisions a little and Ed mostly didn’t complain when Izzy never really managed to take the stick out of his ass and find some fucking whimsy in his life. They made a good team, they made good money, and they only fought about it occasionally.
“Sorry, man,” Ed said, not actually sorry in the least. “Creative well’s all dried up.”
“You don’t need inspiration as long as you make something. You’re practically a household name around here, Edward, just do anything and put your name on it.”
“You’re boring, man, you know that?” Ed said.
“Yeah,” Izzy replied. “I do.”
This wasn’t all there could ever be to life; Ed knew that. But the spark was gone, and without that, it was hard to care. At least he was eating well these days, and drinking well, and he could do that until he figured something else out.
When he told Mary and the children about the trip, Stede said it was for business. Something about how he had to meet an important client who wasn’t able to leave his home, which just happened to be in a small, beautiful oceanside town named Portstown, and he was terribly sorry for the unannounced departure, but neither Alma nor Louis were old enough to really parse grown-up things, let alone care. Mary, at least, had graciously accepted his explanation and even driven him to the airport—though whether it was because she cared for him or because she was glad to get rid of him, he couldn’t say.
“You could join me,” Stede had said. “If you wanted. All three of you.”
He thought he was probably supposed to invite them, even if he didn’t want to, and so it came as a relief when Mary declined. She had painting lessons she’d already paid for, she explained—and only then did Stede vaguely recall that she had indeed taken up painting, and indeed that one of her works was framed and hung up in their bedroom—and the children had school and lessons and birthday parties to attend.
“Have fun,” she’d said at the airport, pressing a dry kiss to his cheek. “Enjoy the ocean for me, too.”
Mary also—she reminded him after explaining where he’d be—hated the fucking ocean.
For Stede, it was quite the opposite. They’d mostly come to a compromise over it: several rooms of their home were decorated with oceanic themes, and Stede brought some of his collections and trinkets to work, and Stede simply didn’t talk to her about any of the many books he read and movies he watched starring sailors and scalawags and pirates. Just another way that they were a poor match.
Somehow, those same movies and books that Mary would just think were silly made sense to Stede in ways that he couldn’t explain. And now he was going to Portstown, and hopefully the trip would help him make sense of… something.
They had a piracy museum! That would be invigorating, at the very least!
He brought a book onto the plane and opened it just as soon as he settled into his plush, first-class seat, but the words just didn’t seem to stay put on the page. His head was all abuzz and his chest felt inexplicably tight, like there was something he was deeply excited for, but what could cause such a strong reaction was beyond him. Frowning, he pulled up the itinerary on his tablet, a document that Lucius had carefully put together with more detail than Stede strictly required, but was grateful for. The boy was glad to “do something actually fun for once,” in his words, and strongly hinted that he was hoping to take his own beach vacation soon, or maybe that he wanted to come with Stede, or maybe he just wanted to be shirtless and drunk and didn’t care about the details. Stede wasn’t entirely sure.
The itinerary did indeed give him ample opportunity to be drunk on the beach, and he’d packed enough swimsuits that it would really be a shame if he didn’t do just that, but that wasn’t quite it. Lucius had also found him bookstores, procured a ticket to a production of The Music Man from a local theatre, and highlighted several delightful seafood options—and then, near the bottom, the very museum he’d been excited for, added without him even having to ask.
The fact that Ed was in his studio, lying on the floor, probably fucking up his knee, and listening to a podcast of all things, was a sign that things where pretty damn dire.
Of course they were; he was an artist, and not making any fucking art. Creativity all gone, dried up, dead in the water. No fucking point to it, anyway. His last real finished project was years ago, a series that combined driftwood and rope and Polaroids, and it was cool as hell—even Izzy admitted it. There’d been plenty of buzz and everything sold, but he’d been asked what felt like a thousand fucking times since then, What’s next? It was always like that: a few months passed and then all anyone cared about was what was next for Edward Teach, the closest thing their town had to a celebrity, the guy who did all that weird art that got labeled as a fresh voice and a conversation between the old and the new and all that bullshit.
Fuck. Might feel nice to jump off a rocky ledge and into the ocean, naked, and see what happened. Call it performance art.
And of course, Izzy didn’t get it. Izzy never got it. He couldn’t be everything for Ed, and didn’t want to, which might be fine except he also couldn’t shut up about when he thought Ed had a bad idea or he was too flighty or any of the other things that pissed Izzy off. Which there were a lot of.
So he couldn’t make anything and he couldn’t talk to Izzy about it and basically that left Ed doing a whole lot of nothing. And listening to a podcast. About pirates.
People around here were really into pirates. Seaside town, pirate museum a few blocks away, it checked out. Pirates were cool. Ed could get into pirates. That’s how he ended up kind of getting into Blackbeard—who was, if you asked Ed, one of the cooler pirates—thanks to this little podcast. Started from nothing and ended up a big shot, did some fun little fuckeries with fireworks in his beard, the whole nine. You could do way worse for yourself in a century before indoor plumbing.
Ed found himself lost in thought during an episode about Blackbeard and the Gentleman Pirate, some rich bloke who apparently decided to become a pirate just for shits and giggles, got himself injured, and wound up sailing with Blackbeard. It was a story Ed had heard before, and it sounded pretty damn homoerotic if you asked him—why would Blackbeard bother with this idiot if they weren’t fucking, right? Or maybe there was another reason, and they eventually wound up lovers, fascinated with one another because of their differences?
Evidentially, the podcaster didn’t agree, and provided a rather dry and uninteresting theory that the Gentleman Pirate had been taken prisoner due to his wealth. Straight historians were boring as shit. In either case, the pair of them were eventually separated, never to be reunited. Blackbeard was captured by the crown and put on trial for his crimes, imprisoned, and escaped before his execution only to never be accounted for again; the Gentleman Pirate managed to escape a similar fate and instead returned home, only to die soon after anyway.
Wild. And not exactly romantic, but that was piracy, Ed supposed. Messy profession.
It didn’t seem quite right, though.
Portstown, it had to be said, was quiet.
After a long flight and a reasonably short taxi ride, Stede ought to be utterly exhausted in his hotel room, but as he opened the windows and stepped onto the balcony he felt more invigorated than he had in years, maybe decades. Each deep breath of the salty air filled his lungs so completely that it almost seemed like what he’d been breathing at home was simply inadequate, though Stede knew that it was just the excitement that made him feel that way. He was here by the sea, so utterly and blissfully apart from all the daily frustrations and mundane troubles of his life, with nothing to do but enjoy himself.
The company would run just fine without him, whether he wanted that to be true or not, so why even bother trying to keep up?The only thing Stede was going to worry about this week was how to have the best fun.
Once his luggage safely made it to his room, and Stede pressed a handsome tip into the bellboy’s hand, the natural next step was to explore the town and all its wonders. He set the clothes he’d been wearing aside, changing into something clean and fun, and he was off. At the door he paused, considering something that would be rather naughty—he couldn’t, he thought. Shouldn’t. But it was a vacation and nobody knew him here, nobody would know, so—
He slipped off his wedding ring and placed it on the bathroom counter. Such a small thing, but it made him feel ten pounds lighter to be without it, and one day he would have to examine that feeling.
The word quaint came to mind as he slipped outside and down the road, opting to stretch his legs rather than charter a taxi. Ooh, maybe he’d be able to rent a bicycle somewhere nearby? Hard to go wrong like that, even if he would have to fix his hair after.
Compared to the large city where he and his family lived, there was next to nothing here, which was really the whole point of the trip, wasn’t it? He passed small office and apartment buildings, even smaller shops where he could buy groceries and saltwater taffy, a stand that sold t-shirts and the like, clearly overpriced for tourists, and—
Well, Stede was a tourist, wasn’t he? So he did double back and purchase a t-shirt. Hard to resist, really. Shame that the salesperson didn’t seem especially interested in chatting even when Stede praised the delightful design, a cartoon dolphin in a jaunty little pirate hat, but he wasn’t exactly unused to people not wanting to talk to him.
Soon enough he found himself at a place called Spanish Jackie’z Coffee and Tea Shop, so labeled with a hanging wooden sign that looked like it belonged in an old-timey bar or saloon of some kind. Out front was a fake skeleton and a sign that said behave yerself and Stede briefly wondered if perhaps he should have brought Lucius after all, to take some photos and make up for Stede’s own utter lack of selfie skills. The place seemed perfect to find a like-minded individual, or at least a nice atmosphere to bask in for a while. Shirt still in hand, Stede happily stepped in, finding the place to be decorated with an ocean motif, with ships in bottles and souvenir mugs bearing anchors and a menu that proudly advertised a fairly impressive list of beverage options. A perfect atmosphere for like-minded individuals to gather. Fab!
Stede was puzzling over his order (and grimacing at the realization that the tea sold here was bagged, not as classy an establishment as he had hoped) when someone else walked in, standing right next to Stede and completely interrupting his chain of thought. Curious, he thought it reasonable enough to take part in a bit of eavesdropping.
“You’ve got something for me,” said the man, a rather short fellow who had to be several years Stede’s senior, to the person behind the counter.
The barista, an androgynous person with shoulder-length hair and a hat that couldn’t possibly be appropriate for food service, nodded. “Si, si. Be patient, old man.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why don’t you have a seat in the corner and calm down?” said the barista, reaching for a cup. On it, they scrawled a name alongside a quick doodle of a knife. “You’re scaring the customers. That’s my job.”
Already, Stede disliked the man. Who was he to think he could barge in front of Stede, monopolize the barista’s attention, and have such a suspicious conversation in front of him, to boot? “I believe I was in line ahead of you, dear boy!” Stede said brightly, killing with kindness and all of that.
That only made the man scowl. He might have been handsome, Stede thought, if his brow wasn’t so furrowed and he didn’t seem like he was about to spit. As it was, he wound up looking like some kind of disgruntled little fuzzy creature, not threatening enough to cause that much of a problem but still ready to bite at any moment.
Well! Stede had his rabies shot, metaphorically speaking. And literally as well, thanks to an interesting incident with a bat in the house a few years ago.
“You weren’t ordering,” the man said. “I was.”
“I was about to! Haven’t you ever heard of taking turns?” tutted Stede, same as how he did when the children were younger and fought over toys. “I’m not sure what sort of shady deal is taking place here, but I’m sure it can wait two minutes!”
“Shady?”
“Shady!” The man looked it, from head to toe. Leather, in this weather? His clothes looked cared for, though not especially fine, and he badly needed a haircut but had opted to slick back his hair instead of getting one. And he was so damn irritable, it only made sense to assume things! This could be a smuggling operation, or a drug deal, or any manner of other operations—Stede’s mind ran wild with the possibilities. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Iggy, but—”
“Izzy,” the man growled, and how was Stede supposed to read the barista’s scrawl from over the counter, really? That wasn’t the point! Before Stede could respond, though, he was stomping away, mumbling something along the lines of stupid fucking tourists loud enough for Stede to hear.
Stede frowned. “Unpleasant man,” he said, loud enough for Izzy to hear in return.
“Don’t bother starting shit with Izzy,” the barista said, looking thoroughly unimpressed (and unphased) by the whole saga. Presumably they—Jim, according to their name tag—had to put up with such unpleasant customers on a regular basis. “Little man’s sour with just about every tourist. I keep telling him he shouldn’t bother getting work done in a tourist trap coffee shop, but—” and here, they shrugged. “Whatever. Tips well. Anyway.”
“He’s going to chase away your customer base!”
“Eh. He’s friends with Jackie. I think.”
“We’re not friends!” Izzy called from down the bar, because of course he was eavesdropping.
“You gonna order something else or what?” Jim asked Stede.
As Izzy walked away from the bar, drink in hand and still scowling, Stede found himself hoping he’d never see him again. It may have been paranoia, but this was a small town, so the chances of running into him or someone he knew felt significant, and that could ruin his escape entirely.
Izzy stomping into their apartment grabbed his attention just enough for Ed to look up from his phone for a moment, but not much else. So he was mad about something, what else was new?
“Hey, Iz,” Ed said in his general direction, knowing full well that Izzy just needed to rant about something, blow off some steam, and probably didn’t expect Ed to actually listen. He probably couldn’t focus on Izzy even if he’d tried; his brain had latched onto the story of Blackbeard and the Gentleman Pirate for some inexplicable reason, and now he was in the midst of a Wikipedia deep-dive on the golden age of piracy. Not much rhyme or reason to it, but he liked to chase those kinds of little pleasures when he could.
“Edward. Good to see you,” Izzy called back, tone even. “Thought you might end up sleeping in the studio again.”
“Nah. I’m too old to spend the night.” Ed studied a picture on his phone, what looked like scraps of a treasure map. Seemed like bullshit, if you asked him; no way pirates really buried treasure and then drew maps to lead people straight to it. “Ordered us Thai. Got some of those— fucking, uh—”
“Gluay kag?”
“Yeah, those things you like.”
“You like them.”
“So do you!”
“I fucking— yeah, whatever,” said Izzy, like they hadn’t gotten an odd number in their last order and fought over it. “Met a prick at Jackie’z today.”
“So stop going there, you keep saying you hate it. Just ‘cause Jim doesn’t care what kind of sketchy shit you do in front of them doesn’t mean you have to do business there.”
“Not you too,” Izzy grumbled. “Prick said the same thing, that Jim and I were being shady.”
“You two are both pretty weird, Iz.”
“Are not.”
“You throw knives together on your days off. For fun.”
“It’s a practical skill! You’re supposed to be on my side, Edward.”
“Mm-hmm. Did you knife the prick?”
“Didn’t need to, I saw him spill half his drink on his shirt and get too upset to ask for another one. Stupid latte with a dozen different modifications that he was ashamed to repeat. Sometimes I get what you mean about hating this fucking town, too many fucking tourists with too much money. He called the pirate museum and asked if they did private tours. Private tours, at a tiny fucking museum! And then asked if he could rent the damn place when they, obviously, said no!”
“You were eavesdropping.”
“I wasn’t fucking eavesdropping, he’s just loud as shit. No sense of the people around him that were working, none whatsoever.”
Ed snorted. Izzy’d had a flare for the dramatic for as long as they’d known each other, and Ed had gotten pretty good at figuring out the root of the problem, once you stripped away all of the bitching. It usually wasn’t that big a deal, and even when it was, Ed could usually calm him down eventually. Sometimes it was a pain in the ass, but he had to admit that Iz did the same thing for him just as often. “So some rich guy made it hard for you to answer emails at Jackie’z because you forgot your earplugs, and now you’re mad because he’s spending his money on his hobbies while you refuse to have any fun with yours.”
“Fuck off,” said Izzy, which meant he was right.
This was more interesting than the depths of Wikipedia, actually. Ed sat up and tossed his phone aside, still showing an image of some 18th century garments. “Sounds fascinating if you ask me. What the hell was he trying to rent out a whole museum for?”
“One of those fucking slumber parties they have for school kids, apparently.”
“For his kids.” Ed had to chuckle at that. Must be nice to have that cool of a dad.
“For him. Alone.”
“Seriously?” The picture Izzy was painting in his mind of this guy was honestly amazing. “So he’s a fancy man who wants to hang out in a museum, all night, alone, because he’s just that fucking horny for pirate history? That’s outstanding. I love it. I gotta meet him.”
“He was a complete manchild, Edward. If you’re that bored with your life how about you answer some of our fucking emails for once.”
“Nah, not that bored.” Ed shook his head, fascinated.
So the sleepover-at-the-pirate-museum idea had been a bust. The receptionist had practically laughed at him, actually, which really seemed completely unnecessary. Who wouldn’t want to rent it out, if they had the means to do so? And Stede certainly had the means; he had more money than he knew what to do with, and he’d be happy to use it to stimulate the local economy here. They ought to appreciate him!
He stepped through the automatic doors of the museum as a guest who was not going to have a sleepover, paid the nominal fee for entry and coat check, and took a deep breath. It wasn’t a large building, but promised to be packed full of wonders, including a number of unique artifacts. He could pretend to be a history buff if anyone asked (not entirely inaccurate) and simply not reveal the depth of his interests—the elaborate fantasies he had of stumbling into some kind of portal to the 18th century and befriending Blackbeard himself, of leaving his old life behind in favor of this time with adventure and excitement and true freedom—even with no indoor plumbing.
He willed his hands to stop trembling from the mere thought of it. This was a museum; it wasn’t that exciting. It was ridiculous, feeling such a deep connection to all of this. Who was he to be so sure that if he’d been alive back then, he’d be doing anything interesting with his life?
First on the agenda was the main exhibit: Allies Or More?: The Fascinating Friendship of Blackbeard and the Gentleman Pirate. He’d read up on it extensively already. Of course he was a fan of Blackbeard’s (who wasn’t?) and the life of the Gentleman Pirate compelled him as well. At least there was someone who once chose to live the way Stede so deeply desired, freeing himself from all the expectations that tethered him.
A rush of salty air hit him as he stepped inside. A decent budget seemed to have gone into the exhibit, which the sign explained was a passion project by a staff member called Javid Denkins. Shame that he had the room mostly to himself.
“Ooh, fab!” Stede found himself saying to nobody in particular when he caught sight of one of the items he’d been most excited for: an exact miniaturized replica of the Revenge.
Stede soon found himself lost in the displays, utterly enraptured by each and every sight. Here was a portion of a china tea set, cracked and worn; there was a recipe for a forty-orange-glaze cake that was said to have been served on the Revenge. His mind ran wild, intrigued and fascinated by everything there and his own thoughts and fantasies of what it must have been like to live in those times.
He studied each item, read each description with care. The sort of speculation was truly fascinating, and by the time he circled back to the tiny ship displayed behind protective glass in the center of the room, he’d come up with what felt like a good idea of the lives of the people in the exhibit: the Gentleman Pirate, Blackbeard, and all their motley crew. What lives the two captains led, and how sad it was that the both of them had been cut so short, with many of the details lost to history! He’d always hoped to have a memorable death himself, especially after his life had shaped up to be just the opposite.
Stede’s gaze lingered once more on the ship, on all of the details once carefully selected by the Gentleman Pirate and then recreated by a sculptor with just as much care. He found himself reaching out as though to touch it through the glass, imagining how it must be to stand on that deck, salt air in his hair and freedom in his heart. Just before his fingers met the case, he realized he wasn’t alone, and quickly drew his hand back.
What followed was the longest second of his life. It felt as though his heart stopped, like he’d found something he hadn’t known he was searching for.
Or, more accurately: someone.
On the other side of the display case was a man about his height, with his salt-and-pepper hair tied back into a neat half-ponytail and what had to be the biggest brown eyes that had ever existed. He was, Stede thought stupidly, the most beautiful person in the world, and he suddenly longed to hold him close, to dive into him and never come up for air.
“Ah,” said Stede, the words barely able to leave his mouth. He was inexplicably lightheaded; he’d nearly forgotten how to breathe. “Pardon me.”
“Oh,” said the man. “Fuck.”
