Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Edward Teach stood something about the order of six feet tall, muscular but lean. His hair was long, streaked liberally with gray and twisted atop his head. Somehow, the gray didn’t age him. He had facial hair, an equally graying beard, in well-kept curls clipped close about his chin and jaw. He wore a leather jacket tightly over a purple shirt, black pants, black boots. His phone, cradled in his palm as he frowned down at it, was dwarfed by the size of his hand.

Stede only barely recognized him from the singular picture Lucius offered. The picture was something like seventeen years old and was technically a screenshot of a scan of a photograph pulled off Facebook. It was before the beard and most of the hair. Despite this, Stede was relatively sure he was looking at Edward Teach, if only because he stalled in recognition as he looked up and spotted Stede’s van.

For lack of any better choice to make, Stede rolled down the window and yelled, “Edward?” across the street. Somebody’s neurotic poodle went absolutely bonkers at the sound of his voice and kicked off barking like a conceptual cheese-grater for the nerves. Visibly, Edward’s shoulders hunched.

“You’re the guy?” Edward yelled back as he stooped to pick up the duffle bag at his feet. “You’re Steve?”

“What?” Stede shoved his whole face and head out the window. The street on which his van was currently very illegally parked was not unbusy, despite being mostly residential. “Sorry, I can’t hear you!”

Edward darted a look both ways down the street before crossing in a sort of shuffle-run. When he reached the window, he stuck his hand in and showed Stede the image he had pulled up—his texting app with a picture of Stede wearing a rugby jersey he lost before his divorce and a haircut that he had in 2009.

“That’s you?” Edward said, tapping. “Steve?”

“Er—yeah, that is.” He briefly wondered if Lucius knew he was allowed to use recent pictures. “It’s Stede, by the way. S-T-E-D-E. Steeede.”

“Oh, for real?” Edward locked his phone and pocketed it. “I thought that was a typo.”

“It’s—er, a family name.” Scrambling only a little, Stede threw open the door to the van, forcing Edward to stumble backwards into the middle of the street. He didn’t seem to mind very much, giving Stede a very obvious head-to-toe once over as Stede clamored out of the van. Stede held out a hand. “Stede Bonnet! And you’re Edward?”

“Ed,” he grunted, taking Stede’s hand to shake. His grip was firm, almost painfully so. Stede wondered if he had trouble finding gloves that fit. “Please call me Ed. Fuck’s sake.”

“Ed, then,” Stede agreed as he turned to the sliding van door. Ed followed with his eyes as Stede wrenched it open and rummaged around. Once he had the hatch to one of the cargo bins open, he gestured to it. “You can put your bag here, if you like, so that it’s not rolling around. We’ve a long drive, and I—”

“Eh, pass.” Ed rounded the front of the van and popped open the passenger door, hefted first his duffle and then himself into the pilot seat, and shut the door again with a wham that set the poodle off again.

“Okay. Well—okay.” Stede slid the hatch cover back in place, closed the door and lifted himself back into the driver’s seat.

Ed, no seatbelt in sight, drummed his fingers onto the dashboard and said, “Alright, mate, let’s get the lead out.”

“Well, hold a moment, I need to get the sat-nav all set up.” Stede’s thumbs seemed to be made of gelatine as he performed the harrowing task of pulling up Google Maps and setting their destination.

6h 49m, Google Maps gleefully informed him, was their estimated travel time. Stede took a steadying breath.

“Okay,” he breathed, fumbling his phone onto the dock mounted to his windshield. “Alright, here we go.” Glancing at Ed, he found him still sans seatbelt. “Were you, erm, going to put your belt on?”

Ed glanced at him, eyebrow raised.

“I would—” Stede cleared his throat. “Could you put your seatbelt on, Ed?”

Ed clenched his jaw and yanked the seatbelt around his body. With a click and a squeak of leather, he was secured in the passenger seat, and one of his feet hit the glovebox with a thump that rattled the steering wheel. He gestured violently out the windshield.

“Fuckin’ drive, bro,” he said.

Stede fuckin’ drove.

Five months ago, Israel Hands was driving home from work when a sleep-deprived college student fell asleep at the wheel, jumped the median and drove his father’s Yukon SUV head-on into Izzy’s 2005 Toyota Prius. Izzy survived the crash, the whiplash and the concussion, but lost his leg, which was crushed in the caved-in footwell. Ultimately, due to catastrophic injury and the risk of infection, the leg had to go.

By the time Stede saw him, driving him home from a post-op appointment several weeks after the initial accident, Izzy seemed uncharacteristically accepting of the whole situation.

“Aren’t you upset?” Stede asked, despite himself knowing that he might well be pushing buttons that shouldn’t be pushed. Especially when it came to Izzy. The man went through life wearing an expression that varied from ill-concealed disgust to Why Won’t This Paint Dry Faster, but Stede had also seen him wearing that same exact expression with something in his eyes that could best be described as homicide. Izzy was never more than a handful of seconds away from delivering utter retribution on anybody he perceived to have wronged him.

“’Course I’m upset, Bonnet,” Izzy spat, his usual acerbic tone almost comforting under the circumstances. “I lost my fuckin’ leg, and that twat who caused this walked away from the whole fuckin’ mess. Of-fucking-course I’m upset.” Izzy’s arms crossed, his shoulders hunched. “But there’s not fuckin’ much I can do about it now. Can’t bring the leg back, can I?”

“No, no. That, you can’t.” Stede took a long curve in the road silently as Izzy brooded beside him. After a moment, and quietly so as not to interrupt whatever inner monologue Izzy had brewing, he said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t be here for your surgery. It isn’t easy to go between islands in this thing, and I was so far away in the first place—”

“What good would you being here have done?” Izzy muttered rhetorically. From anyone else it would have been a stinging jab, but coming out of Izzy’s mouth it almost sounded like absolution. “John was here. And the students. I had more than enough butting in.”

The students, Stede knew, were a group of people whom Izzy had become acquainted with during his tenure at the university. Izzy was a scholar of rather niche subjects within the greater spanning topic of eighteenth century piracy, and the classes he taught tended to be of a very high level and designed to function only with extremely small class sizes. Stede was given to understand that most of them had imprinted on Izzy due to him being the catalyst for the formation of the group, rather than any individual affinity for Izzy himself. In fact, some of them seemed to have nearly as much fear for the man as respect. Despite this, and despite all of them being well into their thirties and also no longer students, Izzy still referred to them almost exclusively as “the students” and spoke about them as one might expect of a particularly onery but benevolent uncle.

“Well, I still could have done something,” Stede said, taking a hand off the wheel to wave it airily. “Cooked, or graded your papers—”

“Two hands on the wheel, Bonnet,” Izzy snapped, his tone encouraging Stede’s hand to return to the task of steering at a speed that actually hurt. “I think one catastrophic fucking wreck is enough for the year, don’t you?”

“Yes, yes, of course, Iz.” Stede shot him a placating smile, which Izzy of course did not return. He was hunkered down against the passenger side door, arms crossed straight over his chest. Izzy was of a height that some would call diminutive, standing at only just over five and a half feet tall. His fashion sense was that of somebody who was in deep mourning for the concept of summer—almost always black, almost always knit, almost always layered. He spoke with a sort of hushed, gravelly voice that seemed to imply that he’d just gotten done shouting for quite awhile, though the number of times he had actually raised his voice for more than a few words could likely be counted in the single digits. Izzy was not the sort of man who needed to raise his voice. He enjoyed rum, excessively rare steak, and collecting eighteenth century muskets. Stede had known him for nearly his entire adult life and had found him to be one of the constants therein. The years went by, the lines on their faces formed and grew, but Izzy was Izzy.

“I really am sorry,” Stede said. He tried to inject some of the spinning emotions he’d felt the last few weeks into his tone, hoping Izzy might understand how genuinely he meant his words. He might not believe them otherwise. “I should have at least been…when Oluwande told me you’d been in an accident, that you would lose your leg…I was so worried for you. I hope you know that.”

Izzy fixed him with a look. It was that look of mild contempt that he wore so often, and when he said, “I know, Stede,” it was said with a tone of absolute disaffection.

Stede smiled.

Returning his gaze to the window, Izzy fell into a deep silence that carried on for almost the entirety of their drive. When the off-ramp leading to the street Izzy lived on was in sight, he tapped a finger on the window and said, “You know, people don’t actually see their lives flash before their eyes. I didn’t, anyway.”

“…Oh?” Stede said, cautious. “What was it for you?”

Izzy was quiet for a very long time. Stede eventually became satisfied that Izzy simply wasn’t going to reply and let his thoughts wander. He had to grab the topic by its meandering tail and bring it back to himself when Izzy did at last respond.

“I thought about my brother,” Izzy said. “Edward. Haven’t seen him in twenty years. I thought about him.”

Given that Stede was an only child (And had genuinely thought until about two seconds ago that Izzy was too), he didn’t entirely know how to respond. He didn’t have very much of a reference point when it came to siblings. Even so, he had to guess that going two decades between meetings with one’s brother was abnormal.  Tentatively, he ventured, “You two aren’t…close, then?”

Izzy made a scathing little noise like an irritated dog in the back of his throat. “No, we’re thick as thieves. Prolonged absence is our love language.”

“Well—okay, you don’t have to be—well, why?” Stede turned into the driveway of Izzy’s townhouse, jerking the van into park as the punctuation on his question. “Did one of you…burn down the other’s house? Twenty years is a long time for anything less!”

Izzy shrugged jerkily. “We fought. Can’t remember what about. I told him never to speak to me again. So far, he hasn’t.”

“Izzy! You can’t even remember why you fought?”

“It was twenty years ago!” Izzy swept his hand out in front of himself as though to shoo away Stede’s incredulity. “How am I supposed to remember? Something bloody stupid, he was always a little shit—”

“Is he dead?”

“Fuckin’ no he’s not dead, Bonnet—"

“You said ‘was’!”

Izzy brought his hand down hard against his own thigh, movements jerky with his own frustration. “You fuckin’ know what I mean, you twat. Was—as in, when I knew him. Which I don’t anymore.” He huffed, squinting out the window at his own garden. It was small and typically neatly kept, but the lawn was starting to encroach. Stede made a mental note to help him find someone to mow for the time being.

“We were never close,” Izzy muttered, under his breath like every word was being physically torn from him. He had never been one for vulnerability or the softer emotions. “Or maybe we were, I don’t know. Hard to tell with kids. He’s ten years younger than me. I never really knew what to do with him.” He dragged a hand down his face, scratched his beard. “He’s the only family I’ve got left. Suppose that’s why I thought about him. I was laying there, waiting to die, and I was wondering if anybody would even know to tell him.”

“Oh, Iz,” Stede sighed. He reached out to pat Izzy’s hand, thought better of it and gripped awkwardly onto the armrest of Izzy’s pilot chair. “I’m sorry. Family is…it’s hard. Maybe you thought of him because you regret what happened? Perhaps you should reach out?”

Izzy grimaced, shook his head. “No. No, he wouldn’t want to hear from me.”

“Aw, you don’t know that. Twenty years is a long time.”

Rubbing his eyes, Izzy grunted, “Ugh, Bonnet,” and Stede knew to shut his mouth. Izzy fixed him with a bleary look, eyes slightly unfocused, and Stede also remembered just how much pain medication Izzy was on. Unmedicated, Izzy very likely wouldn’t have revealed any of this information at all. “Just help me get my ass into my damned house.”

So Stede did. With Izzy clumsily maneuvering on crutches he was still learning to use and Stede following with his arms outstretched, they navigated him up the two porch steps, over the threshold and into his bedroom—which through some godsent coincidence was on the first floor. There, Izzy thumped heavily atop his duvet and hunched to take off his shoe. Stede could not help but stare at the empty pantleg hanging limp where Izzy’s calf had once been.

“Take a picture, Bonnet,” Izzy grumbled after a moment. Stede’s eyes rocketed to a bare patch of wall.

“Sorry. Sorry, I just…Sorry.”

Izzy yanked off his shoe with both hands and sent it spinning somewhere in the direction of the closet behind him. He sighed, rubbed the back of his neck, and said, “Not that I’m not…grateful for your assistance, Bonnet, but I’m fuckin’ knackered.”

“Oh!” Stede tapped his own forehead. “Yes, of course. I should leave you be.” Despite this, he spent another moment lingering at the foot of the bed, twisting his keys on his finger. “Will you be alright?”

Izzy twisted to lay on his back. “Do. Not. Hover.”

Stede held up his hands, palms out in surrender. “Fine, fine.” He backed his way towards the bedroom door. The Students would be around, he knew, and Izzy would be in good hands. Inserting himself, for all that it would calm that nervous part of him, was a useless and somewhat selfish idea. It would only serve to assuage his own guilt about running away from yet another hefty obligation—which was all he wanted to do. He wanted to get himself out of this situation so badly that his teeth hurt with it. Nursing Izzy back to health was something that Stede wanted to want to do, but the idea of it also made him want to run screaming.

Before he left entirely, Stede cleared his throat and waited for Izzy to crack one eye open again.

“You should try to get in touch with your brother,” he said in the gentlest stern tone he could create. “You thought of him when you thought you were dying, Izzy. You must miss him awfully. Perhaps he misses you, as well.”

Izzy huffed and rolled over, putting his back to Stede and the door.

“Goodbye, Bonnet,” he growled into a pillow. Stede took his leave.

Presently, several months later, Stede attempted to surreptitiously dart glances out of the corner of his eye at Ed so as not to be caught staring. They had been driving silently for the better part of three hours and had only spoken twice. Once when Ed asked how long they would be traveling for and Stede told him (A little under seven hours to the coast, then the ferry, then another two hours to Izzy’s house). The second when Ed asked how to adjust his chair and Stede told him. Ed did so, settled, and leaned himself against the window of the car where he set to quietly scrolling on his phone.

When Izzy mentioned a brother, the first thing that came to mind was—well, to be honest, it was an Izzy clone. Stede pictured them standing beside each other, dressed in the same black pullover cardigan and wearing the same unenthusiastic expression on their identical faces. After being told that Ed was ten years younger, Stede wasn’t sure what to imagine. A younger, though still middle-aged, version of Izzy. Perhaps without a beard. Perhaps wearing a color.

Certainly Stede could not have brought to mind Ed, even given the advantage of time and a broader imagination and several monkeys with typewriters. The long hair, the dark complexion and the tattoos were all elements that he never would have considered. His nails were short and neatly painted matte black. There was a delicate chain around his neck, resting in the hollow of his throat. The aforementioned tattoos seemed to be everywhere, peaking out from under his sleeves and over the dipping collar of his shirt, artful and eye-catching. Stede had truly no idea what to make of him.

In the third hour of their drive, Ed finally spoke again. He asked, “Do you mind?” while holding up a vape pen. Stede shook his head in the negative and Ed cracked the window. He was then absorbed in that activity for the better part of twenty minutes, only occasionally moving to shift his body weight or check a notification on his smart watch. He had the presence of somebody with a lot of nervous energy but didn’t seem to be that nervous. In fact, the ease with which he sat in the van of a complete stranger would almost speak to a certain laissez-faire attitude. This, more than anything, threw Stede off when he compared Ed to the person he thought he might be, and the person he knew Izzy to be. Izzy was a lot of things, but easy going was certainly not one of them. To put it in terms that Lucius had once used, the poor guy’s clenched asshole had never had a break once in his entire life.

On his fifth or sixth glance toward the passenger seat, Stede found himself staring directly into Ed’s rather intense gaze. He jumped, barely managing not to jerk the steering wheel with it. Knowing he’d been caught, he fumbled, “Sorry. I was just—”

“You can ask, you know.” Ed turned, leaned his weight against the armrest and crossed his long legs.

“Ask what?” Stede stuttered.

“Whatever it is you want to ask. You’ve been staring at me this whole time, mate, so I know you’re thinking something.” He swept his arm grandly towards himself. “Ask away, I’m an open book.”

“Well, er…” Stede cleared his throat, his hands sweaty on the wheel. “You and Izzy are brothers?”

“Half-brothers.” Ed drew from the vape pen and blew it over his shoulder towards the cracked window. “We share a dad. Shared. He’s been dead for years.”

“Oh, I’m sor—” A glance at Ed’s face caught Stede’s words behind his teeth. It was not the face of a person who was interested in condolences. Stede cleared his throat. “Well.”

“He was a bastard.” Ed set his jaw, spun the vape pen between his fingers. “He beat Izzy’s mum for years, cheated on her with my mum and knocked her up when she was only nineteen. When Izzy’s mum found out, she finally left him. He married my mum, beat her for years, then died when I was fourteen. Happiest day of my life, up until that point.”

Stede felt his heart sink—not just for Ed and what he must have gone through but for Izzy as well. Intellectually, he knew a childhood that had spawned somebody with Izzy’s temper and neuroses was probably not charmed. Izzy, however, had neither confirmed nor denied it by virtue of never speaking about his family or upbringing whatsoever. Obviously the Secret Half Brother who currently sat in Stede’s passenger seat was not the only piece in the puzzle.

“My dad wasn’t great either,” Stede said after desperately searching for some serviceable reply. “He was…honestly, he was a shit. I don’t miss him.”

To his surprise, Ed grinned. He reached across the console and delivered a friendly punch to Stede’s shoulder. “Fuck yeah, bro. Shitty dead dads club.”

“Oh, mine isn’t dead. I just don’t miss him.”

Ed burst out laughing. He fell back against his seat, hands on his stomach and laughed for almost a full minute. When he was done, he pointed a finger at Stede and said, “I like you. You’re the weirdest guy I think I’ve ever met.”

Stede threw him an incredulous glance. “Weird? I’m—what’s weird about—"

“Well, for starters—” Ed held up one finger—his pinky, which was interesting. “You roll up here in this—what is this, some sort of camper? There’s, like, a kitchen in the back of this thing—”

“This is my house! I live in it!” Stede’s tone was somewhere between defensive and convivial. “It took me a lot of money to fix this van up. I think it’s nice, don’t you?”

“Yeah, sure mate.” Ed twisted his seat to better look into the living area of the van. Stede resisted the urge to ask him to turn it back around while the van was moving. “You’ve got, what…a bed, a fridge, a stove…and a whole bookshelf. Yeah, this is nicer than some of the flats I’ve lived in. This is nice.” His words could have been sarcastic or mocking, but Stede realized with a thrill that he was being earnest. It was clear that Ed thought the whole situation hilarious, but also did genuinely think highly of Stede’s little ‘house.’

“Do you want to see something neat?” Stede asked, shooting a grin over his shoulder.

“Fuck yes, mate.” Ed spun the pilot chair full around. “I’m dying to see something neat.”

Stede reached up and pressed a button on the overhead consol. The queen-size bed, which was currently taking up most of the back half of the van, slowly rose until the top of the mattress was only barely touching the van’s ceiling. Stede then flipped the switch next to it, which folded down the dining table.

“Tah-dah! Full service dining room.” Stede gestured somewhat wildly behind himself at the sofa behind the driver’s seat. “That sofa can convert into two benches for the dining table. Also, they each have storage inside of them.”

“Fuck off!” Ed, to Stede’s surprise, was still not feigning his enthusiasm. “That’s fuckin’ mental.”

“There’s also storage all through the floor here, and in the side panel.” Stede thumped his hand against the lid of one of the cargo bins he’d previously offered to Ed for his duffel.

“Fuck off,” Ed said again. He slid the lid of one of the cargo bins to the side. Stede, strangely, didn’t really mind. Ed had chosen the bin where Stede had stored all his summer linens when the weather started to cool, and where his heavier quilts and blankets were stored in the summertime. Next to it, in a separate but connected hutch, were several tightly-secured bottles of expensive alcohol. Ed, with great care, slid them out one-by-one to examine them.

“See anything you like?” Stede asked jauntily. He could almost tell by the tone of the bottles which ones Ed was lifting out. Courvoisier XO; Glenfiddich 21 Grand Reserve; Four Roses Single Barrel.

“Nah, mate, I’m an alcoholic,” Ed muttered. He squinted at the label of a pint of Beefeater gin. Stede, personally, could not stand gin; he kept it around in case any guests had a hankering for a martini.

Ed also happened to be the first ‘guest’ he’d ever had in the van.

“Oh.” Stede felt something a little like shame trickle down his spine. “I’m sorry, are you okay…?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ed slid the gin back into its fitted holder and turned his attention to the next cargo bin. This one held extra pillows and most of the items Stede used for laundry. “Been sober for…er, seven? Yeah, seven years. Don’t even like the smell of the stuff anymore. Hey, this is really soft.” He pulled out one of the pillows, which Stede had already covered with a lightly perfumed satin pillowcase so that it was ready to use. “Is this silk?”

“It's silk satin.” When Stede looked over to see which particular pillow he had in his hands, he discovered Ed very gingerly touching the corner of the pillowcase to the apple of his cheek where there was no beard covering his skin. Stede felt an affectionate pull twist around his heart. He and Ed were of an age, both of them in their mid-forties, but there was something boyish about him in that moment. It made Stede feel slightly, strangely protective over this man he’d only just met. “It’s to keep your hair from frizzing or tangling while you sleep. Helps maintain length and prevent hair loss. You should try it out, with as much hair as you have.”

Ed tugged on a strand of his own hair that had fallen loose from its twist. He fingered it absentmindedly as he placed the pillow back in the cargo bin. “Huh. Yeah.” He slid the cover back over the bin and spun his chair around again. “You’re a bit of a posh motherfucker, aren’t you? A weird, posh motherfucker.”

“I have an interest in the finer things, yes,” Stede said, frowning, “But I wouldn’t call that weird—”

“Oh no, mate, you misunderstand me.” Ed waved his hands in front of himself, as though to dispel the misinterpretation. “I love it. I think more people should be like you. Do you know what I would give to just—just hit the road, take anything I really liked with me and leave everything else behind? You don’t have anything in this van that you don’t genuinely want in here. You’ve got 200-dollar bottles of whiskey rattling around next to your satin pillowcases and your laundry pods. Your sofa is your dining room and it has, I dunno, shirts in it. Everyone should live like this. You’ve broken life down to its essentials. Things you love, a roof over your head and a way to get places. People are lucky to have just one of those things these days.”

“Oh…well, thank you.” Stede felt a blush rise into his cheeks. He didn’t think he had ever received such genuine praise in his life, and certainly not about this particular lifestyle choice. When he’d told Mary, she’d first laughed, and then when she realized he wasn’t joking had fixed him with a look of such concern and confusion that Stede almost couldn’t stand to look straight at her face. The closest thing to an endorsement she’d ever given was to sigh I suppose I can’t stop you.

Raising an eyebrow, he added, “You seem to enjoy a bit of finery yourself. Your jacket, that’s very nice. I personally can’t really do leather justice, but it looks very nice on you.”

Ed looked down at his own chest, brushing a hand down the lapel of his jacket. A soft smile, almost hidden in his beard, crawled onto his face. “Ah, this old thing. Had it a long time.”

“You’ve taken good care of it,” Stede said gently. “That’s what matters.”

The moment their eyes met, something passed between them. Stede didn’t know what to call it. An understanding, or perhaps just a shared emotion. Ed’s face and way of speaking were honest and expressive in a way that Stede rarely saw in other people, let alone people he’d only known for a handful of hours. It caught him off guard. It did not help that Stede was, just on a physical level, attracted to him. Stede had had very few dalliances with his preferred gender of partner in the years since his divorce, all very perfunctory and none with men so…swashbucklingly alluring as Ed Teach.

“Do you—” Stede started, not quite knowing where the sentence was going to go, but a noise from the undercarriage of the van interrupted him. The steering wheel jolted and an almighty growling sound erupted from somewhere in the area of the back driver’s side tire. Stede yelped and clenched the wheel hard, whipping his eyes to the sideview mirror to see a cloud of smoke emerging from the wheel well.

Only once Stede managed to pull the van to the shoulder and bring it to a shuttering stop did Ed slap his hands onto his thighs and say, “Well. That didn’t sound great.”

Stede swore violently under his breath as he extracted himself from the van. The median was uneven and gravely; he stumbled on the pebbles as cars whipped past him on the road. It was obvious even from all the way at the front of the van that the tire had blown. Shreds of it trailed back to the middle of the road. What was left of it hung limply off the rim. At the back of the van, Ed rounded the bumper and sighed at the sight of the damage.

“That’s fucked, bro,” he said, and tsked under his breath as he squatted beside the wheel. He spent a moment tilting his head, examining the tire, then looked to Stede and said, “I don’t think it damaged the rim. Where’s your spare?”

“You know how to change a tire?” Stede asked. “Oh, thank God.”

Ed smirked. Stede’s stomach hammered into the backside of his heart. “Yeah mate, I’m a regular knight in shining armor. You got a jack?”

As Stede watched him change the tire, he resisted the urge both to watch Ed’s arm muscles any closer than strictly necessary, and also to ask how Ed knew how to change a tire if he didn’t even have a driver’s license.

This was what Lucius told him, anyway, two weeks ago when he sat down across from Stede at a crowded McDonalds and showed him that seventeen-year-old picture of Ed pulled off Facebook.

“I found him,” Lucius announced triumphantly, tapping the screen with emphasis. “Edward Teach.”

Behind Lucius, Pete was examining the overhead McDonald’s menu with an intensity usually reserved for standardized tests. Over his shoulder, he called, “Babe! The pumpkin pies are back.”

Lucius spun around. “That’s so great, babe, I love that for you.”

“Will you share a twenty-piece with me?”

“Sure, babe. Could you get me a Diet Coke?”

“Sure thing, babe.”

Lucius turned back around, eyebrows raised. “That man loves pumpkin pie. Any-who, this is definitely Izzy’s brother.” He tapped the screen again. “It’s crazy what you can find on the internet with a little bit of digital literacy these days. Managed to find him through alumni profiles on their high school’s website. Apparently, he owns a very successful tattoo shop.”

Stede pulled the phone closer to himself and leaned over it, examining the photograph Lucius offered. The man pictured looked to be in his late twenties at the time of capture, squinting against the sun as he posed next to a canon presumably located at some tourist trap on the coast. He had his hands in the pockets of a gray windbreaker. His curly black hair spilled onto his forehead, his jaw was square and his mouth was pouty and heart-shaped. He had a striking appearance that surprised Stede, what with how…nondescript Izzy was. Izzy was the kind of person that could command a crowd when he wanted to, but otherwise your eyes might slide straight over him. Edward Teach had the look of somebody that drew gazes wherever he roamed.

“You’re sure this is his brother?” Stede asked. He couldn’t keep the tone of doubt out of his voice. “Izzy said he was ten years younger, not thirty.”

“That’s an old picture,” Lucius said. Stede raised an eyebrow. “What? It was the only picture on his Facebook.”

Stede sighed and massaged one of his temples. “How do you know this is Izzy’s brother? Plenty of people graduated from that high school—"

“Pete called him.”

Stede’s jaw dropped. “He did not.”

“When you Google his name, the first thing that comes up is the tattoo shop. Pete called the number on the contact page and it turns out it’s just this guy’s personal mobile number.”

“Wha-what—what did he say?” When Stede told Lucius about the Secret Brother situation, he did it with the thought that it might lead to help convincing Izzy to reconnect. At no point did Stede genuinely think that Lucius and Pete would take it upon themselves to reach out on Izzy’s behalf. In the same thought, he realized that he should have thought of this possibility when Lucius was involved.

Pete, who was now pushing a tray with nuggets, two drinks and no less than four pumpkin pies onto the table, said, “He seemed really into the idea of coming over here to see Izzy, so that’s pretty cool. Here’s your Coke, babe.”

Lucius took the drink with a smile, but there was something strained about his expression. He flicked a nervous glance in Stede’s direction, like somebody waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Well that’s…good,” Stede said, keeping his eyes carefully on Lucius. “We can talk to Izzy and tell him his brother is interested in reconciling—”

“Well…” Lucius scrunched his face, baring his teeth and tilting his head. “That’s not…exactly what we had in mind.”

Stede looked frantically between Lucius who was doing his best to look apologetic, and Pete who was putting the entire front half of a pumpkin pie between his teeth. “What does that mean. What did he say? What did you say?”

“He said he didn’t think Izzy would answer his calls,” Pete said, mouth completely filled with pastry. “And I figured he was totally right. So I suggested he just come down for the Christmas thing we’re doing and he said fuck it, let’s do it.”

“That is actually exactly what he said,” Lucius added, his hand moving with nervous energy along the tabletop. “He said, “Fuck it, mate, I’m in,” but then Pete told him where Izzy lives and he said he didn’t know if he’d be able to make it because he doesn’t have a car or a driver’s license.” Lucius punctuated this statement by widening his eyes and sucking in his lips, bracing himself for Stede’s response.

Oblivious and energetic, Pete added, “And I said that’s fine, because we have a friend who’s got a van and he can drive you.”

For the second time in as many minutes, Stede’s mouth fell open. “You volunteered me to drive him? Has the man never heard of the bus?”

Pete shrugged. “There’s no direct bus route between here and there. I didn’t feel like it was fair for him to spend, like, fourteen hours on a bus with a bunch of strangers—”

“Oh, but inflicting a stranger on me is perfectly peachy!” Stede was beginning to realize why Lucius had insisted on a public venue for this conversation. They were beginning to draw glances from the other customers as Stede’s voice went shriller and higher. Trying to force himself into a sense of calm that was increasing in obscurity, he rubbed his eyebrow again and muttered, “Okay. Okay. How far away does he live?”

Pete and Lucius both became very quiet. They exchanged glances, arguing with their eyebrows. Lucius gestured emphatically towards Stede with his head several times, hair flying. Finally, and possibly to forestall Lucius giving himself whiplash, Pete sighed and turned back to Stede.

“Nine hours,” he said reluctantly. “Give or take. Without traffic. But! But—” He held out a hand against Stede’s darkening expression. “To be fair, I figured, you live in your van, and you don’t have to do all nine hours at once, and if you hate him and can’t get along with him, we’ll all pitch in to buy him a bus ticket back.”

“Aaand you’re the only person we know who has a car,” Lucius added.

“Yeah, that.” Pete nodded to his husband. “Most—mostly that.”

Stede, flabbergasted, could not even think of a response in that moment. He sat there with his mouth agape for over a minute as Lucius sipped on his drink, wearing an expression like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth, and Pete ate an additional pie.

“Also,” Lucius put on the guilty squint again, “he lives on the other island. So you’ll have to take the auto-ferry.”

“The auto-ferry?” Stede exploded. More skeptical glances from the other denizens of the McDonald’s. He leaned in and furiously whisper-shouted, “The auto-ferry takes six hours by itself!”

“Yeah but, like, you don’t really have to stay in the van while you’re on the ferry, right?” Lucius offered this as though it was the saving grace of the entire situation. “You can walk around. And if you don’t like each other, the ship’s quite big—”

“Why don’t you think we’ll like each other?” Stede demanded. “This is the second time you’ve mentioned that!”

“Uh, well, y’know.” Pete rubbed the back of his head. “He seems kind of…particular. And you’re kind of…particular. In a different way. And your different particularities might not be…uh…compatible?”

“Yes, yes.” Lucius gestured with satisfaction to Pete’s words. “Exactly. You might find each other a bit much. But who knows? Maybe you’ll be fast friends. And Stede.” He reached across the table, taking both of Stede’s hands in his own. “Just think. You’ll be doing this for Izzy. For that strange little man we all love. It’s only nine hours.”

“Fifteen, with the auto-ferry,” said Pete.

“Fifteen with the auto-ferry,” said Lucius. “And what’s fifteen hours and a two-hundred-mile boat trip compared to breaking twenty years of brotherly animosity?”

Of course, due to being an absolute push-over, Stede agreed. Not immediately, and not even with great willingness, but a promise had been made. The idea of going back on it filled him with prospective regret, despite how enticing it was.

Stede came out of his recollective stupor as Ed finished bolting the spare to the van. It was just a donut, significantly smaller and thinner than the tires that were ideal for the van to drive on. As Ed lifted the busted tire into the spare-bag on the back of the van and zipped it in, he said, “You’ll only be able to go about fifty miles on that thing.”

“Oh, right.” Stede breathed unevenly out his nose, feeling the stress of the situation start to pulse at his eyebrows. They were due to embark onto the ferry in five hours, which was more than enough time to drive there but possibly not enough time to drive to a tire shop, wait to get the tire changed, get it changed, and then drive to the docks. To top it all off, the sun was rapidly going down. He knew he should have gone with a full spare when he was outfitting the van.

Stede gargled some of this out to Ed, slightly hysterical as he half-sat, half-squatted against the sidebar of the van. Ed listened with an unreadable expression before pulling out his phone. He spent a moment tapping his thumbs, frowning at the screen, then pocketed his phone again and sighed, put his hand on his own neck, kicked a rock on the ground with his boot.

“Look,” he said. This tone was almost angry, his body language saying that he did not want to be saying the words that were coming out of his mouth. Stede braced for the worst. The jig was up, he imagined, and he’d come all this way for nothing. Ed was going to ask to be dropped at the nearest bus station and forget that any of this ever happened. Never mind that this was maybe the only chance he’d have to speak to his own brother ever again. Never mind that Stede almost couldn’t bear the idea of walking away from yet another failed venture. Never mind that Stede had felt such a genuine connection with him, and had thought that the feeling was so very mutual.

“Look,” Ed said again. “It’s a little out of the way, and I’m not really…I don’t really know how good of an idea this is…” He groaned, hanging his arms from his neck. “I know somebody who, I reckon, might help us out. We’ll have to backtrack, and I don’t know if he’ll actually do it, but I reckon this might be the only way that we can get this done in anything even close to five hours.”

This is how Stede found himself pulling up in front of Calico Jack’s New and Used Tires approximately twenty minutes later. It was a squat building with three bays and a parking lot so cracked and pitted that it almost didn’t qualify as paved anymore. Parked in seemingly random areas of the lot were several cars in various states of decay and disrepair; a couple propped up on jacks, one with the front bumper and hood completely removed, and one sitting up entirely on cinderblocks. Attached to the main business was another smaller building that looked like it might be an office. Its windows were covered over with yellowed blinds and the screen was peeling off the storm door. There were no lights on in either building.

“It looks like they’re closed, Ed,” Stede muttered as he pulled up. The sun had mostly disappeared underneath the horizon and the headlights of the van cast strange shadows into the dark lot. The shop was down at the far end of a dead-end street that connected to the main road some seven or eight miles back. Ed had navigated them here verbally and said very little else aside from Turn left. Turn right. The convivial attitude that had abided in the van prior to the tire bursting had completely disappeared. Ed’s nervous energy had increased tenfold and he could now barely keep still, shifting constantly in his seat. He’d let his hair down and put it back up three different times.

“He’s here,” Ed said, sounding almost resigned. “He’s always here.”

The moment Stede put the van in park, Ed was out. He flung off his belt and opened the door simultaneously, landing with a loud thump against the crumbling asphalt of the parking lot. Stede wasn’t entirely sure if he should follow or not; the location alone was enough to set his teeth on edge, not to mention that he didn’t know the proprietor of the shop, barely knew Ed, and knew nothing about the area including the name of the street they were on. Despite this, something in his gut told him he shouldn’t leave Ed alone in this. He felt something almost like a thrill as he dismounted from the van and jogged to catch up with Ed, whose long legs had carried him almost entirely across the parking lot in the time Stede was debating himself.

Ed did not go to the door of what Stede had assumed to be the business side. Instead, he went straight to the door of the office side and hammered on the vinyl hard enough to make the whole thing shudder on its hinges. The sound of it was like thunder in the cricket-chirping quiet of twilight.

“Jack!” Ed hollered. He paused about five seconds for a response, then pounded again. “Calico! Open up!”

It took two more rounds of knocking for any signs of life to show from within. First a light flicked on, glowing yellow against the blinds. Then the blinds themselves moved in a quick flicking movement that told Stede someone was peeking at them from inside. Finally, after another minute of waiting (Ed standing next to him panting like he’d just sprinted from the other side of the street), the door finally opened.

It revealed a man who Stede imagined to be Calico Jack. He was a man more or less their age and taller than Ed, wearing an off-white tee and a pair of gray sweatpants that had obviously been pulled haphazardly atop tighty-whities. He had a very impressive horseshoe mustache and a great deal of chin-length sandy brown hair that was certainly not neat but couldn’t quite be called unkempt. More like he’d just woken up and perhaps hadn’t combed it the day before, either. He, like Ed, was dotted with tattoos. Stede almost thought he recognized the artistry on some of them.

“Oy, Jackie,” Ed said, soft and slow in contrast to his recent bellowing. He’d schooled his face into a mask of casual nonchalance that was almost convincing. “Long time, no see.”

Jack grinned. “Oh Eddie. I knew you’d come back. You always do.”

Ed clucked his tongue, clearly irritated or discomfited or both. He took a large step back from the door, hands going in his jacket pockets like he was trying to shrink himself back into the shadows of the parking lot.

“I’m not back, Jack,” he said.

Jack smirked. “Come on, Eddie. You do this every time.”

Stede cleared his throat, and it was at this point that Jack seemed to notice him. The grin flew off his face, replaced by a look of confrontation. Still looking at Stede, though clearly talking to Ed, he said, “The fuck is that guy?”

“Jack Rackham, Stede Bonnet,” Ed sighed, gesturing vaguely between them. “Stede, Jack. Look, Jackie, we’re in a bit of a pickle and we could use—”

“Whoa, whoa, Eddie baby.” Jack reached out his hands and pressed them to Ed’s biceps, squeezing in a way that made the leather squeak. “Slow down, let me look at you. Feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.”

Stede, unable to stop himself, grimaced.

Ed pressed against Jack’s elbows, attempting to dislodge his hands. “Don’t start, mate, I’m not—”

“You’re looking good,” Jack said, heedless to anything that Ed was trying to say. “Little bit of gray in that hair that wasn’t there before, but that’s alright—”

With a suddenness that made Stede jump, Ed slapped both of Jack’s hands off himself and pushed him back against the screen door. Seeming to remember that Stede was there at the last moment, Ed flashed him and almost apologetic look as he held Jack against the door with a hand hard on his chest.

“Fuck off with that shit, man,” Ed snapped. “I’m not here for that, I’m not here for you. I’m here to get a new tire on this guy’s van—” he jerked his head towards Stede, “so that he can get me to see my brother, who’s just lost his fuckin’ leg. Fuck your shit, Jack.”

Jack pushed him back, and Ed stumbled off the low concrete slab that served as a stoop to the door. He swore under his breath, catching himself with a hand planted on the gravel ground just before hitting his knees. Not for the first time, Stede noticed the brace around his left knee, black and almost blending in with the color of his jeans.

“Fuck, Eddie, don’t make me do that shit,” Jack spat, trying to step down off the slab himself. Without really even thinking about it, Stede threw out an arm and caught Jack across the chest.

“No, no, I don’t think so.” Stede cleared his throat, working against the flash of adrenalin and anxiety trying to create a bubble in his voice box. “That’s, er, not going to happen.”

Jack slapped his arm away with the sort of indeterminate roughness that told Stede he didn’t particularly care to know his own strength. He pointed a finger in Stede’s face and said, “Watch it, Steve.”

Ed returned to the stoop and pressed a hand against Stede’s chest, gently moving him back from Jack’s hand, which somewhat comically continued to simply float there. The warmth of Ed’s hand seeped through to Stede’s chest as he left it there for a moment and said, “Let me handle this. Don’t get involved. You don’t need to make him your problem.”

Stede, feeling chagrinned, stepped back further and off the stoop, leaving just Ed and Jack framed in the dim light from the porch light like some Shakespearean confrontation.

“You owe me, Jack,” Ed said. “I’ve dug you out of more than enough holes over the years. All we need is a tire.”

Jack almost seemed to pout, eyes going to the van idling in the middle of the lot. “C’mon, Eddie, I don’t even know if I have a tire for that thing.”

“Go check.” Ed’s voice was insistent, hard. “It doesn’t have to be new. Or even in great condition. It just has to get us to the ferry.”

The stare-off continued for a moment. Jack’s chest was puffed, his body one solid and very confrontational line. Ed’s posture was almost casual in comparison, hands in pockets and leaning back on one leg, but one could see even in the dim light from the porch light that he was completely rigid. He was holding himself so carefully that he looked almost snappable.

“Fine,” Jack said at last. The relief was short-lived, because he immediately added, “I’ll do it in the morning,” and started to turn as though he was heading back into the building—which, Stede had realized, was not an office at all, but where Jack seemed to live.

“No,” Ed said, “You’ll do it tonight. Right now. Because you owe me, Jack.”

Jack stopped and turned back to Ed, something deeply bitter in his eyes. Stede didn’t know even a little bit about their history, and he only had a few more hours’ acquaintance with Ed than with Jack, but he could tell that whatever favors Ed was calling in to get this done, they weren’t savory.

For some reason he didn’t care to examine at the moment, it sent a thrill through him.

“Fine,” Jack said. “But this is a one-time thing, Ed.”

Ed shrugged. “Only need it done once, mate.”

Looking dissatisfied with that response, Jack turned and slammed back into the building. Stede could hear him opening and shutting drawers and cabinets from where he stood several yards from the building. Ed didn’t move a muscle, waiting for Jack to reemerge. When he did, he was wearing a pair of work gloves and steel-toed boots in addition to his sweatpants and still-bare arms. He muttered to himself as he crossed along the building to the business side and unlocked a door which he then disappeared through.

“Alright,” Ed sighed, seeming to relax a little. “I think he’s actually gonna do it.”

“How long do you think it’ll take him?” Stede asked, cautiously throwing a glance at his watch. If they got back on the road within the next hour, they would just make it to the ferry on time.

“Not long, if he knows what’s good for him.” Ed sighed and kicked a particularly large piece of asphalt, sending it skittering toward the road. He lowered himself slowly onto the stoop and rubbed slightly at his knee, which again made Stede wonder if he’d hurt it in his stumble. After a moment, Stede approached the stoop. When Ed didn’t protest, he settled down next to him, their shoulders brushing together.

“You alright?” Stede asked, gesturing towards his knee. Ed looked down and seemed almost surprised to see his own hand rubbing at his leg.

“Oh, yeah.” Ed quirked his lips and shrugged in dismissal. “Old injury. Sometimes it helps to wear the brace when it acts up. ‘s fine.” He folded his arms across his knees and looked into the distance, unfocused and in thought. Stede, who couldn’t think of anything to say, didn’t.

With a thump and a slam, Jack emerged from the building after several minutes. Swearing loudly, he rolled a tire across the parking lot by kicking it repeatedly with the heel of his boot while tugging a jack along behind him. Stede and Ed watched in silence as he wedged the jack underneath the van and pumped it up off the ground. After doing so and squatting down next to the tire, he swore again and turned over his shoulder.

“Hey!” he yelled. “I need your stupid wheel lock key!”

“Oh,” Ed muttered, and pulled it out of his pocket where he’d apparently put it after putting on the spare earlier. He sighed and stood from the stoop, crossed the parking lot and handed it to Jack. Jack said something in a sort of furious whisper that Stede couldn’t make out aside from hearing that it was happening. Ed didn’t respond, but on his way back to the stoop he made eye-contact with Stede and rolled his eyes extravagantly.

“What did he say?” Stede asked.

“He’s jealous,” Ed muttered, “and making an ass of himself about it.”

“Jealous?” Stede asked. “Of whom? Me?”

“Well…” Ed waved a hand, hedging. “He sort of noticed the same things I did. And he doesn’t think it’s as cool as I do.”

Stede sighed. “He thinks I’m a weird, posh motherfucker?”

“Yeah,” Ed said, but smiled and patted Stede’s leg. Stede determinedly ignored the sensation it sent through his stomach. “But he’s just a motherfucker, so you win. He also…” He muttered something quickly and under his breath.

“He thinks I have too many pants?” Stede said, utterly confused. “How does he know—”

“He thinks,” Ed said, a little louder and slower, “that you’ve been in my pants.”

Stede reeled back and sputtered. “That’s—well, why—I mean, when would I have had the chance?”

Ed threw his head back and cackled. Over by the van, Jack looked over his shoulder and shot them a scowl sour enough to curdle milk.

“He doesn’t realize we’ve only just met,” Ed chuckled after calming himself. He rubbed between his eyes, looking at once cheered but still frustrated and fatigued. “And I don’t care enough to tell him otherwise. I don’t owe him anything anymore.”

Stede carefully ventured, “But he owes you?”

For a long time, Ed didn’t respond. His eyes went unfocused and he leaned back on his elbows, almost laying against the cold concrete of the stoop. Overhead, the stars were popping out as the sky finally blackened completely. Stede felt something rise up in him—a sort of wanting, soft emotion that he almost couldn’t recognize for how seldom he’d experienced it in life. He thought that perhaps it was what he was supposed to feel when he and Mary were still young and getting acquainted.

“I’ve known him since we were kids,” Ed said at last. “His dad sucked too, so we bonded over it. I had a few other people in my life, but he’d pretty much been hung out to dry by the time he was eighteen. All he had was me. When he left town, I went with him…mostly to make sure he didn’t kill himself. I was only seventeen, but I felt so fucking responsible for him…mostly, I guess, because I was in love him.”He glanced at Stede, almost as though to gauge his reaction to that admission. Stede, who had come to that conclusion independently, just waited patiently for him to continue. “We were together off and on for years. We weren’t…good for each other. Alcoholism makes it so you can’t realize that sort of thing.”

“I see,” Stede murmured. He pulled his knees to his chest, hands around his calves. It was shivery cold, his breath clouding out in front of his face and floating ghostlike up towards the porch light. The chill of the concrete under his thighs seemed to be seeping into his bones. Ed watched him pull into himself, face soft, and Stede felt very perceived.

“When I got sober,” Ed said slowly, his eyes returning to Jack as he bolted the new tire in, “I realized that he wasn’t…a good person. I didn’t even know if I was a good person. But I knew I couldn’t be a good person with him.”

“So you left,” Stede said, nodding. There was something terribly familiar about the story.

“Yeah,” Ed said with a sort of humorless chuckle. “Three years later.”

“Ah,” Stede said softly. “That’s…ah.”

“He owes me for dragging him kicking and screaming out of the bottle,” Ed said. “And for being stupid enough to come back every time he said he’d changed. And for giving my fuckin’….youth to his ungrateful ass. At some point, I had to make my peace with the fact that some people don’t need alcohol to make bad choices.”

Ed went silent and pensive then, his eyes going back to Jack at the bumper of the van. The donut was off now, leaned against the sidebar of the van as Jack bolted the replacement tire in. It was clearly not a new tire, but Stede had to have faith that it would do the job of getting them to Izzy’s house tomorrow morning. Afterwards, Stede would be buying a new one—and a full-size spare to replace the donut he had so erroneously equipped the van with.

As Jack neared what was clearly the finish line of the job, Stede reached out a hand and set it on Ed’s shoulder. Ed, looking vaguely surprised but not offended, flicked his eyes to Stede’s and raised his eyebrows.

“You’re a good person,” Stede said with confidence. “A bad person wouldn’t have tried. A bad person wouldn’t have even wanted to.”

“I didn’t want to,” Ed said, a humorless chuckle running under his words. “Christ alive, I didn’t want to.”

“But you did it anyway.”

Ed offered him a smile—melancholy and small, hidden in his mustache. He tapped a hand on top of Stede’s and seemed to be trying to say something with his eyes. Stede wasn’t sure he picked up on it accurately, but he thought it might be gratitude.

By the van, Jack stood up and ejected some wordless monosyllable to get their attention. Once both of their eyes were on him, he gestured emphatically to the newly-affixed tire. “It’s done.”

Stede popped up immediately, brushing the dirt from the front and seat of his pants. “Thank you, Jack. How much do I owe you?”

Jack fixed him with a challenging glare and bleated out a number that even to Stede’s inexpert ear sounded exorbitant. From behind him, Stede heard Ed make a warning sound in his throat as he also rose from his supine pose on the stoop.

“Jack—” Ed started once he was at his full height.

“No, Ed, it’s alright.” Stede held out a hand, forestalling the argument that he knew was about to start. Without saying another word, he crossed to the van and yanked open one of the rear doors. In a void formed by the bottom of the hardware for the moving bedframe and the backside of the kitchen cabinetry was a small cubbyhole. Inside the cubbyhole was a safe unlocked by entering the six digits of his daughter’s birthdate, and inside the safe were several envelopes with important documents, a pair of diamond cufflinks, the 24 carat gold ring that Stede used to wear as a wedding band, and a significant amount of cash money in both large and small denominations. Stede emerged from the back of the van holding a handful of large bills equaling nearly twice the already outrageous price Jack had named.

“That should cover it,” Stede said, handing off the money. As he knew it might, the excessive compensation only seemed to further frustrate Jack. Stede took a single beat to appreciate the barely-contained fury darkening Jack’s already ruddy cheeks before returning to the van.

When Ed hopped into the van after him, he had a look on his face like someone had just handed him a particularly longed-for present. He waited until the van was exiting the parking lot before throwing his head back, crowing.

“That was cold, bro!” Ed reached over and punched his shoulder, perhaps just slightly too hard. Stede grinned back at him anyway. “Did you see his face? That was great. That was so se—that was great.”

He calmed after that, but the ease had returned to his body. Stede felt heartened by the relaxed lines of him and the softening of his brow. He glanced at the time remaining on the map.

3h 19m

This time, Stede felt no dread.