Chapter Text
March, 2012
Ed needs some fucking air.
Stede’s aunt’s house smells like fake freesia and the walls are so cluttered with gilt-framed portraits of the Bonnet family that it’s almost impossible to see the green-and-white lattice wallpaper beneath. Ed imagines that if the paintings were gone, the crisscross design would look a bit like a cage surrounding the lavishly furnished living room.
Ed’s already made the rounds—said hello to the handful of relatives and family friends he’s met over the years, avoided the circle of old uncles talking politics in the dining room. Some cousin or other asked if he was still “doing that whole art thing”—like Ed hadn’t just been featured in New York Magazine last month as one of 12 young artists to watch in 2012.
He’s had two glasses of champagne and at least five of those fancy salmon-and-caviar canapés. He still needs a cigarette. And some fucking air. He ducks out through the kitchen when no one is looking and makes his way to the back garden.
It’s been a rainy, miserable March that feels like an extension of late February. There’s a weeping cherry tree hanging over the duck-less duck pond. Its branches are still bare, moving whiplike in the wind, tendrils reaching for the water and never touching the surface.
The only spot of color in the garden is a patch of bright yellow daffodils planted in evenly spaced rows along the brick wall at the back of the house. Ed leans against the wall and keeps them company while he smokes.
He idly thinks about how nice it would be to have Stede’s company out here—on a different day, in a different life. He takes in the sounds of spring in Fairfield County: The faint rush of traffic on the Merritt Parkway, the intermittent cries of a Carolina wren calling to her mate.
“Mind if I join you?”
It’s Stede, because of course it is. He always turns up when Ed’s in a funk like this—and he can always tell when Ed’s in a funk, even when Ed’s doing his best impersonation of a charming, totally funk-less guy for Stede’s extended family. It’s like Stede can read Ed’s thoughts—except for all the times when it’s painfully obvious that he can’t.
Especially the whole, y’know, Ed being in love with him thing.
Ed looks up to see Stede coming around the corner in his pale blue suit, and it’s a damn good thing Stede isn’t actually a mind reader. After all these years, the whole being-in-love-with-Stede thing has kind of faded to background noise in Ed’s brain, at least most of the time. It’s like a buzzing fluorescent light or the sound of those cars on the highway. If Ed thought about it all the time, he’d explode. So he just… doesn’t think about it. Usually.
But today, there’s something particularly magnetic about Stede in his tailored suit and crisp white shirt. The shiny gold watch that’s a tad too big for his wrist. His hair, all slicked down the way he does it when he has to see his parents. It’s a style that isn’t really him, but he still looks, well, beautiful.
Ed flicks some ash into the daffodil bed. “Thought you quit.”
“I did.” Stede says, all eyelashes and dimples as he makes a “gimme” motion with two fingers.
Ed sighs and hands over the pack and a lighter. He isn’t present as he does it, not really. He’s thinking about that other life, where Stede takes Ed’s cigarette from his lips without asking.
“Don’t tell Mary, okay?”
Ed actually takes some offense to that. “Not gonna rat you out to your fiancee at your engagement party, man! Who do you think I am?”
“I think you’re my best friend.” Stede takes the first drag of his cigarette and his shoulders get a little more distance from his ears. His whole body seems to limber up—even his hair. A fine blond wisp escapes the streamlined hairdo and flutters against his forehead. Stede makes a low, pleased sound in the back of his throat. “Mm, after this you’re definitely my best friend.”
“Shuddup,” Ed says, taking the pack and the lighter back from Stede and shoving at a piece of mulch with his own dress shoe. They spend another moment or two smoking in silence, both watching the cherry tree whip its branches against the sky.
Two months ago, Stede told Ed he’d proposed to Mary. It shouldn’t have changed anything between them. After all, Stede’s a straight guy marrying a straight woman (who Ed set him up with, by the way). And yet, something is different. Tense. Like they’ve been shuffling along a carpet in stocking feet, anticipating that first static shock.
Stede sighs, loudly, and Ed knows he’s just gonna stand there sighing unless Ed prompts him to open up. So he asks, a little reluctantly, “How’s it going in there?”
“Oh, well,” Stede rolls his eyes, as though that might be a sufficient explanation. But Ed leans against the brick wall and waits him out, knowing that Stede will eventually feel compelled to fill the silence. “The family’s happy, Mary seems fine. It’s just not the party I would have chosen.”
“Yeah? What would you have picked? Theme party? Mermaids and mimosas? Disco and daiquiris?"
Stede laughs, and it’s so good to hear Stede’s real laugh after hours of stilted chuckling with his boring, stuck-up relatives. “How about pirates and punch?”
Ed takes another drag, considering. “Pretty spot-on for a party that’s basically a chance for your family to show off their loot, don’t you think?”
Stede frowns. “I suppose so. It is just a disgusting grab for presents, isn’t it? And it isn’t like we need this stuff.”
Shit, that got too serious. Ed tries to steer him back to safer waters as he stubs out his cigarette on the wall. “You like stuff, mate!”
“Stuff I choose,” Stede huffs. “Not the decorative crystal pear Aunt Myrna picked out at Neiman Marcus.”
“Hey, you never know when you’re gonna need to make a decorative crystal tart,” Ed deadpans. That gets Stede laughing again, and for some reason he can’t seem to stop, even though it wasn’t even Ed’s best one-liner. And because Stede can’t stop laughing, Ed starts laughing, and then they’re both wheezing a little (fuck, it’s almost like cigarettes aren’t good for your lungs) and then they’re leaning against the brick wall in the back garden together, and it might as well be freshman year all over again — Ed talking to this cute, weird guy outside a Beta House party that both of them hated.
Stede sips in a breath of air and his eyebrows go all serious again. “I really didn’t see things going this way, back in college.”
Stede’s reading Ed’s thoughts again, and it’s both extremely endearing and deeply uncomfortable, so Ed does what he does best and makes it into a joke. “Which things? The lack of pirates or the extremely fragile fruit?”
“No, I mean… all of it. Marrying Mary. Doing exactly what my parents expected of me. It’s not what I thought would happen.” Stede sags into the wall, head tipping forward like one of the daffodils.
Okay, it would be perfectly normal for Ed to hate Mary a little bit, right? But he can’t, not really. He fucking introduced them, for one thing. Stede wasn’t gonna find a girl on his own, and Ed knew his parents were giving him all sorts of shit for not “taking his future seriously.” So Ed just did everyone a solid and gave Stede’s number to the only cute, straight, probably-not-evil girl in his master’s program. He didn’t really think anything would come of it, except maybe Stede’s parents would get off his back for a few weeks. But, as luck would have it, Mary was an Allamby, of the Weston Allambys, which apparently meant something to Stede’s parents. Suddenly, their relationship was Extremely Important to some sort of business merger, and they were being fast-tracked down the aisle.
“What’d you think was gonna happen?” Ed asks, to Stede, of course, and not himself.
“I kind of always thought I’d marry…” Stede looks dreamily at the cigarette stub before tossing it on the ground. “Well, I sort of thought I’d marry you.”
Ed laughs, because he knows Stede’s joking. He’s obviously joking. But it would be good if Stede would look at him right now, just so Ed could see that impish little grin and be absolutely sure.
But instead, Stede’s taking his sweet time crushing the embers into the earth with his very nice dress shoe, even though there’s no chance of a spark in the damp mulch. And he’s very much not looking up at Ed.
“Stede. You’re straight,” Ed says, heart pounding, because that is a fact and not a feeling and therefore a perfectly safe thing to say.
“Oh, yes, well, that is a bit of a barrier, isn’t it?” Stede laughs, but it isn’t like before. The static charge is back, and Ed’s waiting for the shock, anticipating the pain. “Do you remember that night we switched clothes?”
Ed swallows. “Yeah, ‘course.”
How could he forget?
Halloween party. Junior year. Too many Jell-O shots. They traded costumes in a broom closet, Ed’s Wonder Woman getup for Stede’s painstakingly screen-accurate Jack Sparrow (which Ed looked better in anyway, they both agreed). And of course, seeing Stede in those high red boots set loose a flood of still-nearly-teenage hormones in Ed’s brain, but then they left that party and walked all over campus, freezing their asses off, just talking, ignoring the thrumming house parties and the puking angels and the fear of missing out that hounds basically everyone between the ages of 18 and 22 like a fucking evil ghost or something.
Stede bought a falafel from the truck that always circled campus around midnight. They sat at the top of the hill behind the Science Library, and the damp was soaking into Ed’s pants but Stede offered him a bite of his falafel roll-up, still steaming hot with extra green sauce.
Ed said, “I fucking love you, man.”
Ed had said those words before, casually, when Stede offered him a cigarette, or gave him a ride into town, or brought him an extra-sweet caramel latte without even being asked. But that night, Ed suddenly realized he meant something else, something more.
They were so fucking tired by the time they got back to Ed’s. The Jack Sparrow costume was soaked with dew and had a bunch of that green sauce down the front, and Stede didn’t wanna walk all the way back to his apartment at three a.m. in a mini skirt, even if he did look great in it. So it only made sense that Ed would toss him a t-shirt and gym shorts and they’d crash in Ed’s bed together.
Ed scooched his whole body to the edge of the double bed, facing away from Stede, doing the thing he figured you’re supposed to do when you’re the gay friend, y’know, to prove you’re not a fucking perv. So it was surprising when Stede just scooched right in and spooned him. Just held him with surprisingly strong arms (when did Stede go to the gym?) and kept him warm and made him feel the safest he’d felt since… well, ever. And Stede stayed there, holding him, all night and into the morning.
Ed knows how long it was, ‘cause he didn’t sleep a wink.
So yeah, Ed remembers. He remembers how warm Stede’s body was, how his breath felt against his neck. He remembers how Stede’s fingers twitched a little in his sleep, and how hard it was not to laugh at the way they tickled his belly.
The brick of Stede’s aunt’s house is cold against Ed’s shoulderblades and his dress shoes are sinking into the garden mulch, but he’s also lying in a bed five years ago, feeling warm and heavy, and pretending to be asleep at nine-thirty a.m. as Stede sneaks out of his room.
Stede starts speaking slowly, like he’s been thinking about these words a long, long time. “I always felt so small, before I met you. That night, you made me feel like I mattered – more than the biggest parties on campus or the bands that were playing or whoever you could have hooked up with. God, Ed, here I am at my own engagement party, and no one’s even noticed I’m missing. That’s how it always is. With everyone except you.”
Stede lolls his head against the wall and shifts his shoulders so he’s facing Ed, and Ed does the same. Ed’s dumb brain keeps imagining things—like if someone took a photo from the right angle, it’d look like they were lovers gazing at each other in bed. A brick-y bed, with brick-y pillows.
“What’re you thinking?” Stede asks, whisper-quiet, as if that isn’t the most pillow talk-like question he could possibly ask.
“I’m thinking…” Ed starts, and then freezes as he tries to turn down the brass band of feelings playing in his head so he can get out one normal, best-friend’s-engagement-party appropriate sentence. “I think you’re a big deal. To me, anyway. You’re a big deal.”
Ed’s heart is in his throat, which is probably why his voice has come out all broken and breathy. He’s got so many more words back there in his chest, trying to claw their way out. He swallows hard and shoves them down.
Their faces are close enough that Ed sees the microscopic shift in Stede’s expression, and he swears those hazel eyes get gold flecks in them (or maybe the sun is peeking from behind a cloud). Stede’s gaze flicks down to Ed’s lips, and suddenly Ed’s heart is pounding, his blood is buzzing, and he’s so nervous his lips are numb — which is a damn shame because he really wanted to feel this if it ever fucking happened and this is probably the only time it’ll ever happen and where are his lips right now, seriously, he can’t even find them —
Stede finds them for him. And Ed feels everything. He feels the kiss everywhere, right down to the smallest bones in his fingers and toes. Ed reaches out blindly and finds Stede’s elbow, and someone must have turned off the sound of the highway because Ed can’t hear anything except Stede’s breath and the shush of fine fabric as Stede moves to grip Ed’s bicep.
It’s the sound of the shirt that wakes Ed up to where they are and what they’re doing. They’re dressed up for Stede’s engagement party. His engagement to Mary. There is no other timeline, no do-over. They’re not teenagers any more.
Stede’s lips are warm and wanting, and it’s a chaste kiss now, but it won’t be for long. The wren trills again and Ed pushes a hand against Stede’s chest and breaks away.
“Stop, Stede, stop.” His own voice is wrecked. He can’t seem to catch his breath, which makes sense, cause it’s all in Stede’s lungs now. His hand is shaking as he looks into Stede’s eyes. “We can’t.”
For a moment, Stede’s expression looks so clouded with want that Ed thinks he’s gonna blow right past that warning and do it all again. But he doesn’t. He blinks once and the haze is gone. He releases Ed’s arm and straightens up and away from the wall in one devastatingly quick motion. He shakes his head like he’s clearing the cobwebs, and then he smooths all that golden hair back into place.
“Oh my god, of course,” Stede says, and Ed notices how his voice is clear as a bell, unshaken, even if he can’t meet Ed’s eyes. “I don’t know what came over me. I’m—I’m so sorry.”
Ed isn’t sure if Stede is apologizing to him or Mary or the goddamn birds.
“Yeah, no, it’s ok, man, it’s cool. We’re cool.” Ed’s trying to mean it. He’s gonna mean it in a minute or two anyway, right? Doesn’t matter if right now it’s a lie.
There’s as squelch of mud as someone new calls around the corner. “Ed? Ed! Where are you? It’s time for your toast!”
Fuck.
Ed does a quick visual scan of Stede and then himself, but it wasn’t even the kind of kiss where everybody’s clothes are all askew. There’s nothing to straighten up, no reason to touch Stede’s lapels or his hair or his perfectly clean jawline that Ed’s just learned has the lightest dusting of invisible blond stubble.
“Did you mean it? What you said?” Stede asks. He’s looking at Ed with this jumbled up expression: concerned brow, soft eyes, lips just this side of trembling. It’s too much right now. It’s too, too much.
“Ed? Is Stede out there?” That damn voice again, shrill as the wren that won’t stop singing.
“I gotta — we gotta go,” Ed says.
“Right, yes. Okay.” Stede nods, and his shoulders shrug up to his ears again, and he turns away, back toward the voice, the house, the party that both of them can’t stand.
“Hey, Stede!” Ed says, louder than he expected.
Stede looks at him over his shoulder, blue suit shining (when did the sun come out again?).
“I meant it, mate,” Ed says, as the wind pricks at his ears and his neck, reminding him how damn cold it can be in Connecticut in March.
Stede smiles, as radiantly and as sadly as Ed’s ever seen him. And then he disappears around the corner.