Archive of Our Own ^beta

Stede is not good at eating.

Dining— a performance designed to display your manners, your taste, your congeniality, your refinement— Stede was good at dining. Dining had rules. How much, when, what, all the food fell under neat little rules, and there was the added motivator that if you broke the rules— castigation, ridicule, rescission of all future invitations to dine. There were rules and there were stakes and though Stede instinctively bucked at the confinement of the process when he was young, he came to find comfort in it. It was something he could learn how to do correctly.

Eating?

He never could seem to do that correctly. Eating, the private thing you did for health and constitution and figure, when it was actually about the food and not about all of the adornment circulating the food, he couldn’t make sense of this. He knew the rules: three meals a day, a rounded plate, a moderate portion, no eating between meals, no eating at night, no dessert, he knew them. 

But—

But the only thing he did consistently with those rules was break them. 

Sometimes he would come to the end of the night and realize he’d gone through his whole day with no breakfast, lunch, and apparently dinner, that he’d somehow whiled away hours and hours tucked into his library and at no point had it occurred to him to eat. He’d go to bed, stomach and mind chastising him for his negligence, certain that he’d get it right the next morning.

But some of those mornings he’d stare down his breakfast, knowing that he was supposed to eat, prying aside the cotton muffling his feelings to confirm that he was, in fact, hungry, and still not be able to find it within him to open his mouth, to ferry the spoon to his lips, to chew. There was something in it, some kind of unknown danger that would befall him if he dared to eat, and he simply couldn’t risk it.

More often— more honestly, if you’ll forgive him for leading with the more flattering of his deficiencies— it was quite the opposite. An excess. 

Stede knew he was prone to indulgence, and food was really no exception. 

And he tried to moderate this impulse, how much did he try. When he still regularly ate with Mary and the children, he’d match his portions to hers; when they started taking their meals without him, he tried to remember how she filled her plate in similar meals past and recreate it, but damn him, he could never be satisfied with Just Enough, he would so frequently find himself craving more.

And it was always the richest of foods, too, it could never be something like a beet, or an apple, or whatever it was that regular people ate. 

Buttery things, creamy things, syrupy sweet things. 

One taste of it, and he always wanted more, more, more of it. 

He’d bargain with himself, one more biscuit and then you’re done, and inevitably find himself awake, hours later, unable to sleep through the siren call of his rumbling stomach and he’d inevitably secret away to the kitchen at night for two more, three more, four. Two more bites, he’d say to himself at lunch, but you’re not coming back to the kitchen until dinner, and by two the grumbling of his rebellious stomach would have him crawling back, tail between his legs as he ate a fat slice of jam-slathered bread over the countertop. 

He knew he was soft. 

A man made of sturdier stuff wouldn’t be so subject to his own whims and impulses like this. A man of sturdier stuff would be satisfied much more reasonably. Most honestly, Stede suspected a man of sturdier stuff wouldn’t even harbor such impulses in the first place. To a man like that, food was just food, just a thing you sat down and ate without fuss and fanfare. 

Stede was always bad at doing anything without a bit of fuss.

Coming to sea was a double-edged sword. He suffered less frequently the dysregulation that caused him to miss meals, but in no way was his overindulgence tempered, and as a result there was no period of restraint to balance the ways in which he continuously overindulged. And what was worse, perhaps, was— he was the captain. Back in Barbados, Mary oversaw the grocery list, the shopping, the kitchen. Now, with minor delegation to Roach, that was all his purview.

No one to stop him from filling the hold with marmalade and bread and sugar and thick cuts of pork belly and large tins of biscuits and no one to stop him from eating any of it, all of it, whenever he liked. 

As his anxieties as a captain grew, so did his appetite, and he found himself eating between meals nearly every day, desserts after dinner just as often, and, again, not a single person, not a single reason to stop him. 

Ed’s arrival saved him, in more ways than one, in thousands of ways. Finally, a peer after which he could model himself, pace himself. What Ed ate at meals, Stede ate. If Ed wasn’t around to eat with him, he just wouldn’t. Simple. Easy. The picture of restraint, as he had so often failed to be in the past. Ed was a formidable pirate captain, a dear friend, and someone who Stede respected above all else. If anyone knew how to do this eating thing, surely Ed did, and so Stede was in safe hands.

Only—

Only the hunger never went away.

Behavior, he could marshal. 

Impulse, desire, want, hunger? 

Not in the slightest. 

Still, he would find himself clawing for more, until it spilled over, spilled onto Ed, and that was simply—

Defile beautiful things, indeed. 

There was no shortage of examples when those particular words lodged in his chest like shot, but one of the most damning was the way Stede would find excuses to introduce Ed to new treats, sharing food more often than their normal three meals a day just so Stede himself would have another excuse to eat, coercing Ed into overindulging on Stede’s malignant terms.

And back in Barbados with Mary and the children once again, all semblance of routine destroyed, all models ripped away, he was worse, if it was really possible, than ever before. Stronger than ever was the sense of urgency, the need to fit himself into the role he’d so flagrantly shirked, to act and eat and behave like the man he’d failed to be, and yet weaker even than that was his resolve. 

He simply didn’t have it in him. 

When clarity came, and really Mary deserved much more than what he left her with for that bit of kindness, with it came an overwhelming sense of relief.

He could leave it behind, those parts of him that were too much— the wealth and all the indulgence and excess that came with it, and go after Ed, his love, completely unhindered.

The vista suite was almost a kindness— flatulence-based discomforts notwithstanding. He had no money, his crew, for whom he felt more and more responsible by the day, had no money, and finally he could find purpose in moderation. The less he ate, the more his crew ate. The less he indulged, the better off his whole family would be. 

He actually— he admitted he was a little proud to say got quite good at it. He kept such busy hours at Jackie’z that he could often work all the way through lunch without even noticing it, and by the time night fell he was nearly dead on his feet and not even his insolent stomach could keep him awake. There was routine, there were rules— unwritten, true, but not unenforced— and for the first time in his life he could actually follow them.

He had finally become the kind of man that could leash his impulses and chase his own destiny unhindered by his failings, and he carried that fortitude with him— through reuniting with Ed, through re-reuniting with Ed, through the fuckery against the English, through the aftermath, and even through settling into their home.

Their home. He and Ed. Together. In a home.

Yes, Stede would certainly have to carry composure through to this new part of their lives. After all, Stede had offered Ed the new version of Stede, the one that still had an eye for a fine fabric but could handle a night sleeping on rougher sheets, the one that had a bit of mettle in him, the one that had a grip on that slippery failing of his, the one that knew how to eat. 

Stede still didn’t know how to eat.

Or he knew, but his body was forgetting.

Day by day, he felt it creeping in.

His usual routine of pacing himself against Ed and wearing himself out on repairs to the inn so that his unquenchable cavern of a stomach couldn’t keep him up at night was wearing thinner and thinner and he could feel it threatening to fray. 

Work on the inn was slowing, the pace of their lives was slowing, and it left room for other things to elbow their way into Stede’s hard won peace. 

The want was coming back. The craving was coming back. The hunger, cloying, grasping, all encompassing, was coming back, and Stede was wrong— there was no new Stede. Underneath his bravery and bravado, there was the same old Stede, shrinking into a corner as the greedy part of him that clamored to indulge got bigger and bigger and bigger, and Stede knew, he knew eventually he wouldn’t be able to hold it back.

He was right; of course he’d be right about this.

It’s night, and Ed has long since fallen asleep, curled tightly against his side, comfortable and lax and perfect, and yet Stede lays awake, stomach gnawing and mind full of grubby thoughts of biscuits and buttercream and bacon.

And he thinks— a dangerous thought, but he thinks it anyway— if I had just one taste, surely I could lay the impulse to rest and find some rest of my own.

It’s a seductive thought. One bite, right? Just one. Enough to calm that part of him, remind it who’s in charge, remind it that despite how it whinges and whines, it has been fed and it will, eventually, be fed again. 

Stede knows, even as he quietly, carefully disentangles himself from Ed, even as he pads softly to the kitchen, he knows every single step of the way that he’s lying to himself, and the shame at that fact boils blood into the apples of his cheeks and the tips of his ears, and yet, yet it is not enough to stop him.

Stede thinks, quietly, that maybe he is too much unbridled animal, too much unfiltered impulse, too much raw, greedy want for anything, anything at all to stop him. 

Still, he kids himself. He starts small. He pulls one single roll from their bread box. He splits it carefully, deliberately. He takes down the pot of marmalade from the shelf, uses a knife to spread a layer, thin but not anemic, across one half of the roll, he takes a deep breath, he raises the half to his lips, he closes his eyes in anticipation, and—

When he opens his eyes, both halves of the roll are gone and his finger is traveling from the marmalade jar to his mouth, his traitorous finger and its traitorous glob of marmalade, and his other hand is reaching, already reaching—

It finds, without guidance, without permission— cured sausage and stuffed olives and soft cheeses and the last of the bread rolls, while the other finger sits lazy in his mouth swirling the taste of marmalade around, around, around. 

And then it abandons its post and then they are, both hands, reaching, grabbing, feeding, stuffing bite after bite after bite into Stede’s waiting mouth, and he can feel that curling animal of want rolling over and absolutely purring. Tang of the olives and it rubs up against him, smooth cream of the cheese and it kneads into him, salt and fat of the sausage and it slithers down his spine and stretches, stretches Stede with him, stretches out the kinks and the tightness and the clenching want that’s plagued Stede his whole life, stretches—

Oh.

The counter is empty.

Not but crumbs left behind, and what the animal of his want has really stretched is his belly. 

Shit.

He blinks. 

The kitchen is dark, silent, and in its stillness what roils inside of Stede feels deafening.

He’s full.

He’s so full. 

It’s alien. He’d been so good for so long that he’d forgotten what it felt like, this pressing in his belly, this pressure of a full stomach, and—

And now he’s fucked it up. 

And—

And he’s not sure he can stand it.

He’s not sure he can stand the consequences of his own foolish actions.

The longer he sits with it, the greater the pressure feels, almost like it is swelling and growing in his gut, threatening to claw up his throat and tell the whole world that Stede Bonnet, surprising no one, has failed, yet again. 

He can feel it, he can feel it pressing, he can feel the guilt pressing, he can feel it all pressing, out, up, up, and he thinks, god, he’d do anything to relieve it, god, anything so he can stop holding it all in, holding it all inside—

His hands fall to his knees, bending his body into a curve, and he breathes. He breathes.

The breathing is easier, the pressure on his stomach is worse, there’s a lurch, and—

And, actually—

Why should he hold it all in?

Why should he cling greedily to that which he shouldn’t have taken in the first place?

Why shouldn’t he let it go? 

He’s already let quite a lot go tonight, what’s one more thing?

What’s one more thing let go in the bathroom, bent in two, holding back the sound of a gag but very little else, and carefully disposed of off the corner of the property far away enough that regular waste disposal wouldn’t catch it?

What’s one more thing?

Well, it turns out, not much at all.

It’s actually quite easy.

And then, body quiet, brain quiet, and teeth cleaned, he tucks himself back into bed, and Ed tucks himself back around him without even waking, and it’s like nothing even happened at all. 

Stede finds that it’s very easy indeed to keep behaving like nothing’s happening at all. He actually gets better— it’s much easier to pace himself at meals and restrain his portions when he knows that his cloying little cravings will be satisfied at night and then disposed of as if they never were. He finds that he can actually eat even less than before when he knows he’s holding out for something bigger, temporary though it may be, and there’s so much satisfaction in that, that Stede has finally, finally found the secret to controlling what he eats.

Of course, it can’t be every night, and it can’t always be the choicest foods, he and Ed do their shopping together, and Ed would surely notice the way Stede has frittered away their stores, but if Stede is careful, it really is easy. 

There are tradeoffs, he supposes. He finds himself a bit shaky in the mornings, but that is easily remedied with a stiff cup of tea (no sugar or cream). He finds his sleep more disturbed on the nights that he doesn’t eat, but he sleeps like the dead on the nights that he does, so ultimately it probably balances out. He’s cold much more often, an insistent chill worming into his fingertips and his bones, but it’s the Caribbean, really he should consider it a relief. He finds himself a tad less regular, as it were, but that makes sense. Less in, less out. His body is simply adjusting to a normal level of intake. 

Compared to finally having this, that has plagued him his entire life, under control, the drawbacks are nothing, and he can easily keep at this for— well— forever. 

Forever lasts approximately a month before Stede fucks it up, because of course he fucks it up. 

He stubs his toe against the door jamb returning to their bedroom and lets out a curse before he can stop himself.

Ed snuffles, turns in bed.

“Mmm, babe, where’d you go?” he mumbles out through the grips of sleep.

“I’m here, darling.” Stede says, instead of answering, and makes quickly for the bed, tucks himself into Ed’s waiting arms.

“Kiss.” Ed demands, one eye lazily open and his lips pursed out in a pout.

And of course, Stede would deny him nothing, and certainly not a kiss.

“All minty,” Ed muses, then asks again, “Where’d you go? Missed you.”

There’s a pit in Stede’s chest, split wide in an instant. He can’t lie to Ed. He can’t tell him the truth either, hasn’t been telling him the truth because he knows— he knows what he’s doing is shameful. He knows he should be better than this, that he shouldn’t fall hapless to his most pathetic impulses, shouldn’t be hiding the evidence of his failings from the love of his life in the dead of night. He can’t imagine what Ed would think— what anyone would think, really, and he just can’t tell him.

He settles on part of the truth, “Just the bathroom,” technically it’s the last place he was, everything else is just semantics if you think about, and Ed hums and snuggles back into him and makes for sleep, and Stede lays awake with his pounding heart and resolves to be more careful next time. 

Next time, a few days later, he lays awake half the night until he’s certain Ed is dead asleep, useless to the world barring the intrusion of cannon fire, and then waits a little longer. Eventually Ed rolls in his sleep, and though he usually would, Stede does not follow him, allowing their limbs to separate. And then he waits, lets Ed settle fully into his new position before once again slipping from their bedroom.

Once the deed is done and numbing quiet is finally sliding down his spine, he goes on light feet back to their bedroom without a candle to light his way, navigating around creaky floorboards on memory alone, and then goes to slip carefully into bed—

And bumps straight into Ed.

“Shit.”

Shit, shit, shit, shit—

Stede scrabbles back on instinct, no idea where he’s going to go, what he thinks he’s doing, but Ed catches him, two solid arms gripping solid hands against Stede’s biceps and reeling him back in. And even Stede’s addled brain knows not to resist Ed, so he goes, settles limply on the bed, blood roaring in his ears.

In the dark, Ed strikes a match and lights the lamp on their bedside table, and then his whole face— his whole, perfect, red rimmed—? tear tracked—? face is lit up in amber. 

“Where did you go?” Ed’s voice wobbles with his lip, and Stede panics.

“Nowhere— the bathroom— I—”

“Nowhere? Or the bathroom—?”

“Darling, really, it’s nothing, nothing to worry about, you can just go back to sleep—” Stede tries to bundle Ed into his arms, to soothe the furrow in his brow, the concern twisting his lips, but Ed shrugs him off and Stede’s fragile grip on himself cracks. 

And then Ed stands, and his sadness twists to something sharp.

And Ed says “Don’t fuckin lie to me, Stede.” Resigned, softer, he says “Don’t do that.”

And then Ed walks out of their bedroom, and Stede’s grip shatters.

Shit shit shit shit shit—

He grabs for a pillow, buries his face in it, and sobs.

He cries, and he cries, and he thinks oh god, what have I done.

He was supposed to keep this away from Ed, he thought he’d figured it out, he thought he could have Ed and have control and be the man he ought to be, he thought he could manage it all, and just like always, the everything that he is has swelled up with bloat and spilled out all over everyone in range and now he’s driven Ed away, just like he was always going to, just like he should have ages ago, just to save everyone the trouble and—

The bed creaks next to him.

“Sorry I left, I just got upset. Didn’t want to yell at you.”

Ed.

Stede’s selfish, messy, greedy little heart floods with relief, and he lets his ill gotten gains give him the strength to pull his face from the pillow.

Ed’s face is soft. Eyes still red rimmed, sheen of tears still on the apples of those perfect cheeks, but he’s soft. Looking at Stede like— like he still loves him, which can’t be right, but—

“Babe, I’m worried about you.”

What?

“You don’t— You don’t need to worry about me, really, it’s nothing—”

“Stede.”

Stede shuts his mouth. Has no idea what to say next. Ed sighs.

“Alright, you can’t tell me, I’ll tell you. You keep disappearing in the middle of the night, and—”

“Just the bathroom, I—”

“Don’t say it’s just the bathroom, Stede, you’re gone too long, and your footsteps don’t just go to the bathroom.”

Stede’s cheeks burn.

“And you get dizzy all the time. And you eat like you’re rationing, and—”

Well now—

“I eat as much as you do!”

“At meals, Stede, if I’m being generous, but I don’t just eat during meals, I eat all day, and you just don’t.”

“You’re not supposed—” Stede cuts himself off.

“What?”

“I—”

He can’t finish the sentence.

“You’re not supposed to? Who said that? I eat when I’m hungry, mate, I can’t put it on a schedule.”

The burn in his cheeks spreads to his ears. Because— because Ed can do what he likes, he’s not— he’s not—

“It’s different for you. You’re not like me.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re not—” He chokes on the words, on the thick, slimy coat of shame that glazes them, pushes it out in but a shred over a whisper. “Soft.”

“What the fuck. That’s fucked up. I’m not soft? So— So all the gardening I’m learning and the frilly shirts I bought and the retiring I’m doing don’t count for anything? I’m not soft?”

Ed sounds— Ed sounds mad. Indignant. Like he ought to be soft, like soft is a badge he’s trying to earn and not a brand that’s been foisted onto him—

“You— you want— soft?”

Ed grabs Stede’s hands— oh thank god— soothes raw knuckles with lithe fingers.

“Course I want soft. Love soft. Have had hard my entire fuckin life, and you came along, just so much soft, and showed me everything I was missing. I don’t want anything but soft.”

“Oh.”

“And what about you, why can’t you be soft? You’re good at it.”

Stede’s never really thought of soft as something a person could be good at, more like soft was the gap between himself and something else that he should be good at. 

In Stede’s silence, Ed presses on.

“Look, babe, I’m not— Not like, trying to argue with you. You’re not in trouble. I’m worried about you.”

“There’s nothing to worry—”

“Okay, I might be trying to argue with you a little.” he says, but it’s gentle, though there’s that note in his voice, something cultivated in captaincy and watered in retirement that says he’s not backing down. “Something’s wrong. Something’s so wrong you don’t want to tell me the truth about it, and historically—”

Here his voice catches and a brand new wave of shame breaks across Stede’s shoulders.

“Historically that means something’s really fucking wrong.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll be better, it won’t be a problem anymore—”

“Babe.” Ed loosely shakes their hands where they’re twined together. “Look at me.”

Stede’s not sure when his gaze dropped, when the weight of everything dragged his eyes and his shoulders and his heart down into the pits of his stomach, but he musters everything in them to meet Ed’s eyes again.

“I just wanna make sure I have this right.”

Stede nods, swallows nothing, tries to level himself.

“This is about eating?”

And christ, when it’s said out loud like that, it sounds so stupid, so small. What kind of man buggers up eating so badly his boyfriend has to intervene on him, like he’s been lost to an opium den or a gambling hall, and then— and then he has to lie about it because he knows how shameful the truth is.

But he’s so—

He’s just so tired.

Not the kind that sleeping can fix, either, but the kind of fatigue that lives in your bones and leaves your muscles limp where they once held strength. He hasn’t got the power in his hands to clench clawing fingers around a lie anymore.

Ed has brought his perpetual motion, his constant living in the befores and afters of meals to a standstill, and now that he is, all he can feel is that he is just. So. Tired.

“It’s about eating.” 

“Okay, cool, then there’s no better that you have to do, babe—”

Stede snorts, he can’t help the sound, even though it feels ugly.

“Of course there is, there are rules—”

“Like what?”

“Well, everyone knows—”

“I’m not everyone, so teach me, what’re the rules?”

“Well— Well—”

The thing is, it’s always been unspoken, hasn’t it? There’s the way that a man is supposed to eat, restrained and sturdy and plain, and you knew you’d made a mistake when your dinner was taken away because the cook had snuck you a biscuit at tea time and you knew you’d gotten it right when your father’s gaze glanced over you instead of landing on a glare at dinnertime. 

“Well you don’t— you don’t eat between meals, and your portions should always be restrained, and, um, dessert is only for special occasions, and more vegetables than meat and bread, um, you know, you don’t eat until—”

The words stall on their way out, echoing discordant and wrong as soon as they make contact with the air.

The ideal that has been his cross, his burden, his finish line he can never ever reach, and as he begins to say it out loud, for the first time in his life it sounds wrong.

“You don’t eat until you’re full,” he finishes quietly.

“Babe, who the fuck put that in your head?”

He knows. 

He’s not sure he can say.

“Because no one eats like that. Well, I used to eat like that, cause we were broke and scraping by and we didn’t have any other choice, and the second I did have a choice, I stopped eating like that and did everything I could to get fat and happy to make up for it. No one eats like that on purpose.”

Stede’s shoulders shake, a rattling that starts in his chest and spreads out, outward, until it claws up the raw line of his throat, and then it’s sobs, it’s all the tears and the shame and the exhaustion he’s just too fragile to hold in, and it’s wracking sobs as Ed disentangles their hands just to entangle their arms, to wrap his body, solid and warm around him.

Ed presses it’s okay into his hair, promises him we’ll figure it out, it’s okay and Stede’s brain is just too tired to fight back.

He can feel protests and terrors rumbling about in his chest, but his mind slides loose into the comforting hum of it’s okay.

He has no idea how, but if Ed, Ed, who is so hot and sturdy against him, infusing his flimsy bones with heat and strength, if Ed says it’s going to be okay, maybe—

Maybe it will be.

It’s the clawing in his gut, it always is, the beast that can never just sleep, no matter how tired Stede is, that wakes him again in the wee hours of the morning, disturbing him from where he’d fallen, curled up in Ed’s arms, and Ed senses it almost immediately, comes to quickly after, the words you okay, babe? opening his mouth even before his eyes.

“Yes, yes, fine—”

Except really—

“No,” he admits, tucked into his chest as though it can hide.

Ed pulls him closer, squeezes him in his all-over octopus grip.

“What do you need?”

He needs the echoing pit of his stomach to be muffled, he needs the thirst that shakes his veins to still, he needs the ache in his head to dull. He needs to eat. 

The thought makes him feel immediately sick with fear, and the words gum up in his mouth. He can’t think of a single thing he can ask for that will sooth this without sending him careening right over the edge again.

“What if I bring you a cup of tea, sugar and cream, just to start?”

Well—

“I’ll have one too, so neither of us has to drink alone.”

“Yes.”

“Yeah?”

“Please, Ed, thank you.”

“Kay, you sit tight.” Ed drops a kiss to his temple, shimmies from his grip and tosses on his robe. “Be back soon.”

And then he dips through the doorway and the cotton stuffed over Stede’s thoughts and fears and terror falls away.

Ed knows. Ed knows enough that— that Stede will have to stop— Stede will have to go back to just— Stede doesn’t even know what he’ll go back to because that’s the problem, he’s never once figured out how to just eat, he can’t just eat, he can’t do this, he can’t do this, what is he even going to do, what is he going to tell Ed—

“Here, babe, sit up.”

Ed sets their matching teacups on the bedside table, lights their lamp, and settles back into bed tucked right up against Stede’s side. Stede takes it, takes the support, even if Ed didn’t mean to offer, because it is the wee hours of the morning and Stede is weak and Stede is greedy, and he leans against Ed’s side, lets Ed’s body hold up Stede’s where it is failing. 

Ed reaches for Stede’s cup of tea, offers it out, and Stede reaches and then he sees his hands shake, and he sees Ed see his hands shake, and the glowering coals of shame spark flame bright against him all over again. 

But Ed doesn’t falter, doesn’t twist his face up in judgment, just extends his hands even further, murmurs here, and so slowly, so carefully, he brings the delicate lip of the teacup up Stede’s mouth. Okay?

Stede feels delicate, delicate like fine spun crystal, something you pack carefully and protect, something you display with pride, when Ed tips the cup to his lips and fills him with sweet, syrupy heat. 

Heat that trickles through him, carefully warms the dank maw of his gut, gently settles the shaking gnaw of want inside of him.

Ed carefully, slowly, softly tips back one sip and then another and then a deep, steadying breath, and then another, and he looks at Stede with those big, moon bright eyes, those eyes that say I love you in a thousand languages without breathing a word, and the thing inside of him that trembles with want eases, stretches, relaxes, and lays back. 

“I can—” Stede starts. “I can do it now.” 

Ed raises his brow.

“I want to. You— you drink yours too— Please— If you want?”

Ed smiles at him, that little crinkly thing that, before he shaved his beard, Stede wouldn’t have been able to catch save the crease in his eyes, and settles Stede’s teacup into his waiting hands, reaches for his own. Ed fits himself back against Stede’s side, and as Stede lifts his cup to drink, Ed does too, a moment later.

Quietly, together, they drink their tea, and the shake in his hands quiets and the heat in his core grows, and Ed sits by his side, matching him, steadying him, as they drink their tea.

When their cups are emptied and the silence of their room has lingered long enough to feel still and safe, Ed asks, into Stede’s hair where he’s tucked his chin, how do you feel?

“Bad. But— better?”

Ed tucks a kiss into his temple.

“Do you think you could bring me— do you think I could have some crackers?”

“Course you can. Is that all you want?”

Want.

Stede wants a lot of things, but right now he’s not sure he can face anything else, even with Ed by his side.

“Just the crackers.”

“Then you can have crackers, babe,” and then Ed drops another kiss to his temple, and slips out with the teacups, and before Stede can even work up some proper terror about it, he’s back with two tin cups of water and paper packet of crackers in his hands.

He sets the cups on their night stand and settles the crackers between them. He snags up a cracker and hands it to Stede, takes up one for himself.

“One for you, one for me.” 

Ed eats deliberately, carefully. A few bites of cracker, a sip of water, another cracker. Stede watches him and he matches him and he ignores the voice inside of him that screams simultaneously to stop stop stop and to go go go and he tastes the salty, wheaty crumb of the crackers, feels the dry grain of it soften as he chews, feels the slight tang of rosemary press into his tongue. And one by one, the packet of crackers empties between them until there’s only one left.

“That one’s for you, babe.”

Stede takes a deep breath, looks at Ed, who loves him, who loves him, and picks up the cracker, and he eats it by himself. 

When he wakes the next day, Ed is wrapped tightly around him, which is normal, but something feels different. There’s this— there’s a movement in his mind, something lighter and easier than he remembers it being, like he can reach for a thought, and though he does have to grasp for it, he can grasp for it. It’s—

His head doesn’t hurt. He carefully sits up in bed and he doesn’t have to brace himself against a dizziness liable to spin him off the earth entirely. He still feels— fragile. Emptied out. His limbs move slowly, they move without purpose, even if he has more a mind to place purpose within them. 

Ed blinks awake below him, slithers into an upright position and wraps himself against Stede’s side, and they sit together as Stede breathes.

The thing is—

It’s morning. It’s breakfast. That’s the thing that happens in the morning. Though, admittedly, Stede’s managed to whittle it down to a cup of tea and an orange most days, but—

But Stede is exhausted, and Ed will want thick toast and jam and melon and a proper cup of tea and Stede just doesn’t have the energy to watch and pretend he doesn’t want all that and more, not when there is no secret satiation of his cravings anywhere on his horizon, not anymore, but more even than that he does not have the energy to eat, to eat the way he knows he will when there is nothing to stop him, and to simply live with it. 

Stede is exhausted, and suddenly he can’t imagine even getting out of bed, even facing it all.

He’s not that kind of man.

He’s simply not up to it, any of it.

He slips down Ed’s side until he’s laid back in bed, flat on his back and helpless, staring at the ceiling and willing the threat of tears away.

Ed traces his fingers through his hair.

“What do you need, babe?”

He huffs.

“Nothing.”

“Babe.”

“Nothing, really.”

“Okay, how about this, what would you do for me if I told you I was feeling however it is you’re feeling in your pretty head?”

Stede flushes, the way he always does when Ed acts like he’s pretty— or attractive, or desirable or—

“I— I might bring you a cup of tea. Bread and marmalade. Your favorite robe. You could stay in bed all day if that’s what you wanted.”

“Perfect, then I’ve got my to-do list.”

He drops a kiss to Stede’s forehead, clambers out of bed above him, leaving a cheeky wink in his wake as he swings his leg over where Stede lays, and then he’s gone before Stede can finish the sentence he’d only managed to start with Ed—

It’s just—

Of course Stede wants nothing more than to indulge Ed. He loves him, he loves how the right cut of fabric will make him curl up and purr, the right sweet will make him stretch out and moan, the right compliment tucked into his ear will melt him right in Stede’s hands. Ed is so easy to indulge. Ed deserves to be indulged. Ed has a clever head and capable hands and a beautiful heart and Ed deserves every little thing he could think to want.

Stede—

Stede could never compare.

And yes, Ed loves him, and yes, Stede makes Ed happy, but that’s more a testament to Ed than to Stede, that Ed finds so much within Stede worth holding on to, despite— Well. All the rest. 

And Stede will never again make the mistake of disbelieving Ed when he says that he wants Stede, but that doesn’t mean that he has the constitution to stand up to it. 

Ed might want him to eat, but what happens when— What happens when Ed indulges one hunger only to see another emerge? When feeding one head of the beast only means that two more open their maws in its place? What happens when Stede never stops being hungry, because he has never stopped being hungry? He can’t possibly want Stede to eat like that, no one is supposed to eat like that, and Stede knows when he starts he just cannot stop, he can’t stop. What will Ed think then? 

What will Stede do then? 

What will Stede do when— When Ed returns to their room, tray of tea and bread and marmalade in his hands and Ed’s blue velvet robe folded over his forearm. When Ed presses another kiss to Stede’s temple, drapes his own robe around his shoulders. When Ed settles back into the bed next to him and says “That’s all for you, except my cup of tea—” which he takes up in his hands. “Stomach’s not really ready for digesting yet, but I’ll have breakfast later, so have as much as you want.”

As much as you want.

As much as Stede wants.

Wants wants want want want want want.

Shit. 

It’s just some bread and marmalade, just a cup of tea, he can see it in the corner of his eye, watching him back, and if he had the strength, if he had any control over his own traitorous body, he could reach for it and it would be so simple—

“Do you want me to do it for you?”

Want.

“Or are you not hungry right now?”

Hungry.

“Ah. Can I. Can I, would you let me put some marmalade on the bread for you, let me give it to you?”

Maybe.

Maybe. Stede can’t eat, but maybe. Maybe Ed could feed him. If—

“You want to?”

“Yes. I would love to do that for you.” 

And when Ed says it, like that, when Ed says it. Stede has to believe him.

“Yes, yes please.”

Ed splits the bread roll in his hands, his clever fingers, his delicate fingers prying it neatly apart. He swipes the knife through the marmalade jar and collects a generous glob, swipes it jewel-toned and shiny across the bread, leaves it heavy and glistening, leaves the air thick with the smell of citrus where it tangles with the earthy bite of the tea. 

And Stede has seen Ed make so many beautiful things with those hands of his. A set of chairs for their front porch, a runner for their kitchen table, little paper cranes to string across the windows. Ed’s hands make beautiful things, and Stede could never say no to the beautiful things his beautiful hands make. 

He takes the bread, and he eats it, and he feels every bite, and when he swallows it is not a boulder, but a pebble.

Eating and drinking, though he hasn’t even left the bed, leaves him exhausted, and he finds himself sinking back into the pillows, and Ed sinks back with him, automatically curling him into his arms.

“I don’t think I can do this.”

“S’okay babe, you said you wanted to stay in bed all day, you really don’t have to do anything.”

“No, I—” Stede takes a breath. It’s just something about it all, to put a shape to it, that leaves words sticking in his throat. “I don’t think I can just— eat like a normal person. I never could.”

“Good thing there’s no point in trying to eat like a normal person.”

“But Ed, you don’t—”

Frustration and shame twist around each other in his throat, demanding that he explain himself, demanding that he shouldn’t dare to explain himself, just how broken he is.

“Look, first ship I was on, I worked in the galley as a hand to the cook. It was the first time in my entire life I’d ever seen so much food in one place. And I stole so much food that if the cook wasn’t so soft on me the captain woulda had my right hand cut off in payment, but instead they just demoted me.”

“Well, you were hungry—”

“That’s the thing, Stede, it wasn’t really that bad of a place to work. Rations were good. I would steal away food just to hide it, just to know I had it, I’d come back from dinner full and fed and whatever I squirreled away in my bunk, I’d eat that too. Eventually I stopped being hungry all the time, and eventually I’d stop eating, but I didn’t stop stealing food, didn’t stop for ages. Ages, Stede, I was a captain and still waiting for the cook to leave the galley before I’d tuck biscuits back to my cabin.”

“Oh, I… I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m just saying, when your food is fucked up, especially when you’re young, it stays with you, for a long time, and you maybe never learn how to eat like any other person.”

Stede’s heart falls.

“I’m doomed, then.”

“Nah, babe, the point is, you don’t try to eat like any other person. You try to eat like you, however that looks so that, y’know, you feel strong, and comfortable, and full.”

“But I— I’ll eat so much. Ed, so much, do you even know, I’ll get so soft— ”

The panic is rising in his chest, biting against his throat like upchucked acid, Ed doesn’t understand, he doesn’t understand, however much Ed thinks he will eat there will always be more, more food, more of Stede—

“Stede, love, I’ll tell you as many times as you need to be reminded, that’s a good thing. We had our hard lives. We’re retired now. We get to be soft. You get to be as cuddleable and squishable as you want to be and I get to soak up all the benefits.”

“You want— More. More of me?”

“Stede. C’mon, mate. You’re the best person in the world, I’d be stupid to turn down more of you. More of you to hold—” he squeezes him tight, “to kiss—” drops one right into the curve of his neck, “to love.” Whispers an I love you right into the barest breath of room between them. 

Stede, he has no idea what to say, feels the graceful wave of Ed’s love crashing against his craggy shores of inadequacy, feels so much like he will never be able to be the man Ed sees him to be.

“Look, I’m not saying it’s gonna be easy. Times in my twenties there were where I thought I was losing my mind all the time I spent thinking about food, and even when I was captain there’d be nights I’d wake up in a cold sweat and have to go check the stores myself just to be sure the ship wasn’t about to run out of food. I’m just saying, it’s gonna be hard, but I promise you I’m gonna be there with you.”

“Does it— does it ever end? Am I just going to have to live the entire rest of my life fighting with myself over eating?” He spits it out, that final word, that nasty little bit of gristle that sticks in his teeth even on days that he’s not consumed a bite. 

Ed hums against him. “I don’t know if it ever stops completely. Maybe you’ll get lucky. But I will tell you, it calms down enough to be worth it. It calms down enough that you get to live a good life, to just be happy.”

“I am happy,” he says automatically. He has Ed, and their home, and friends that visit, and of course he’s happy. He has a good life. 

“Happier, then. As happy as you deserve.”

Deserve. What Stede deserves. Like Stede hasn’t already been given more, more chances, more times, just more than he could have ever hoped for. 

“I can hear you arguing with me in there, babe.” and Ed gently thumps a knuckle against his forehead, and then kisses the spot it landed. “How about this, who do you think knows better what Stede Bonnet deserves, his incredibly sexy and charismatic boyfriend with a magic dick, or whatever mouth breathing assholes got to him before I rolled onto the scene?”

This bullies a smile out of him despite, despite. Bullies a little bit of hope into him. Ed is making jokes, is smiling, is kissing him, is not hopeless.

“Do I really not have to get out of bed today?” he asks instead.

“Not for a single minute.”

Maybe it’s not hopeless after all. 

Stede doesn’t want to get out of bed the next day.

Or the day after that.

Or the day after that.

Ed says “You’re sick. You’re recovering.”

Ed says “I’ll bring you anything you want to eat.”

Ed says “I love you.”

Ed says “I’m here with you.”

Ed says “I love you.”

Ed says “I love you.”

Stede can’t really bring himself to touch anything but bread and marmalade, in those first days. The thought of anything more stirs up a terror in his chest, dull and shapeless and heavy, and the smell of anything else turns his stomach. Ed himself eats in the kitchen, and then comes back to bed to sit with Stede as he steadily eats through every loaf, roll, bun, and flat of bread they own, every jam and jelly and marmalade and preserve.

By the fourth day, they’ve run out of bread and Ed says “I’ll make more. Come sit with me in the kitchen while I bake?”

Ed says “You’re looking better, I bet you could do it.”

And Stede doesn’t want to. 

If he stays in bed and eats tea and marmalade, the radius of that which he can fuck up is all within arm’s reach, and so far he’s managed it. If you give him an inch more, he’ll stumble a mile.

But Ed believes in him, and he’s been so patient, and Stede doesn’t want him to be shackled to him, bedridden and boring, no matter how much Ed says he’s happy to do it, and so he wants to try, and so he tries.

He wraps himself in Ed’s robe, and Ed goes to the kitchen, and wobbly kneed and weak, Stede goes with him. 

Sits at the kitchen table while Ed hums to himself, pulls down their jars of flour, yeast, salt, their big mixing bowl, a tea cloth to cover the dough while it rises, while Ed hums and hums and pulls together bread like he is not standing before Stede working magic , hums and hums like he is not a miracle on two legs, the most beautiful thing Stede has ever seen. 

And the most beautiful thing Stede has ever seen is baking bread for Stede, and baking the bread is beautiful too, the deftness in his hands as he measures, the strength in his arm as he sifts and kneads, the furrow in his brow as he works, the light hum in his chest accompanying him as he goes, and it is for Stede , this beautiful thing.

And Stede thinks about every beautiful thing he has ever wanted to give Ed, how he becomes more beautiful in the having of it, and how Ed says Stede is beautiful, how Ed looks at Stede like he is beautiful. 

And Stede thinks it’s not so bad, to sit in the kitchen and be given a beautiful thing. 

The next morning, Stede shores up the strength to sit with Ed at breakfast, Ed’s eggs and blackened tomatoes and peppers over rice, and he sips his tea and he eats his bread, his bread that Ed has made him, and the bite of the spice tingles at his nose, the smokiness of the oil braces in his lungs, and he tastes raspberry preserves and hearty bread on his tongue, and he chews, and chews, and he breathes, and he swallows.

The next morning, Stede asks for eggs, two please, fried in butter, and season them how you like. And then Stede eats eggs, two of them, fried in butter, and seasoned just how he likes. 

And then Stede can eat bread and marmalade and eggs, and the world does not fall down around him.

And the next day, Stede can eat bread and marmalade and eggs and oranges, and the world does not fall down around him.

And the next day, Stede can eat bread and marmalade and eggs and oranges and sausage, and the world does not fall down around him.

And the next day, Stede does not list out in his head all the foods that he can eat without his fragile grip on the world around him slipping, he just eats them one bite at a time. 

And the day after that, Ed asks, “do you want me to make something new?”

And Stede thinks, yes. He can eat something new. And Stede says, “yes please.”

Stede sits with him in the kitchen, and Ed cooks, simmering spices and herbs and meat and cream and spinach and lemon together until the air is woven tight with the smell of heat and fat and salt and full, until Stede can practically dart out his tongue and taste it.

And Ed places a bowl in front of him, “Rice, creamed spinach, curried goat,” heavy and full, and even though Stede ate eggs and ham and melon for lunch, and then had bread and marmalade with his afternoon tea, and Ed brought him a biscuit when he was done in the garden, even though he has eaten, his mouth waters and his stomach yearns and it’s—

It’s fine.

It’s fine. 

“Of course you’re hungry,” Ed said.

“You’ve got a lot to make up for,” Ed said.

“You’re gonna be hungry all the time until one day you’re not,” Ed said.

“It’s okay,” Ed said.

It’s fine. 

And so he eats, and he loses track of the bites, loses himself in how the fat of the meat and the creaminess of the spinach and the starch of the rice stick and slide inside of him and simmer in him until they are warming him all the way through, until the bones of him thaw, until his muscles defrost and his body unclenches.

And then the bowl is empty.

“Do you want more?” 

Stede wants more.

Stede has never eaten something that felt less like eating and more like completing.

“It’s okay.” Ed says.

And he has more, and he has more, and he has more, and his body loosens and stretches and warms, and he has more, until he is done. 

They leave the dishes for the morning, and bundle into bed early. 

Not so early for these days, Stede wants to sleep so much, but Ed will come with him and read with Stede tucked up into his side until he himself is ready to sleep, and so an early bedtime is fine, Ed says, good for you even, he says. 

And that’s when it comes creeping, when Stede is in bed, tucked into blankets and safety, comes creeping into his awareness. The fullness. What was, at the dinner table, nothing but a gentle press leans heavier and heavier in his gut by the moment until it is swelling in his stomach, snaking up his throat, pounding in his ears, pushing and pulling and demanding to be let out and Stede wants to cry.

It’s just like him, to think it was so easy, that he could eat, that he could eat anything, that if he eased into it he would not find himself stumbling over the snaking tail of want that lived in him, if he fed it nibble by nibble it would never gnash its teeth and tear off a bite, and here it’s come, snuck right underneath him and swollen his belly and pressed and pressed and pressed and now, just like always, there’s too much inside of him, there’s too much, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

A sob chokes out of him without his permission, Ed’s book snaps shut, and he’s down by his side in between one breath and the next. 

“What is it, babe?”

He just sobs.

“What do you need?”

He sobs.

“What do you want?”

“It hurts.”

“Oh love, yeah, okay, yeah.”

Ed slips his arm under the blanket, places the lightest brush of his hand against Stede’s belly where it swells, slides his cool touch back and forth, back and forth.

“I can’t—” finish the sentence, really can’t say it, for all the grace Ed has given him, he still doesn’t know, doesn’t really know. 

“Yeah, I know, love, I know, it’s so much.”

“I need—” relief, release, anything, the pressure is so much.

“I know,” Ed says. 

“You wanna throw up,” Ed says.

Ed just says, like he’s known, like he knows. 

“It’s okay though,” Ed says.

Ed says, because he can make okay out of thin air and determination, because he can make okay out of Stede and every mess he’s ever made.

“I’m gonna keep you safe.”

Stede sobs.

Sobs and sobs and sobs out “I can’t do it,” and Ed holds him, and presses cool palms up under his nightshirt, strokes gently over tender flesh and says you don’t have to and says let me. 

And Stede sobs and he breathes and he sobs and he lets Ed hold him and he lets Ed keep him safe until the swelling beast inside him deflates and he lets Ed keep him safe a little longer after that just because.

And Stede has more nights like that.

And he has more days like that.

And he has mornings where Ed will cook him exactly what he asked for and he will be hungry for it, mouth watering, stomach growling hungry for it, and when the plate is set in front of him he just. Can’t. 

And he has afternoons where he is so listless and limp that he can’t even imagine what he would eat, let alone how he might do it.

And he has dinners where every single thing that touches his tongue leaves him gagging, and the gagging sends him sobbing, and the sobbing sends him crawling back to bed to hide from every little thing he cannot do. 

And Ed never goes anywhere and never stops asking him what he wants and never stops loving him and wanting him and feeding him.

Eventually Stede stops waiting for Ed to snap at him, stops waiting for him to ask this again, why can’t you just, how do you live like this. 

Stede just… Finds a way to live.

And Ed is right.

It doesn’t go away, not all the way, but those days get fewer and further in between, and one day they are shopping in the market, and Stede is adding things to the basket on Ed’s arm, candied oranges, and cocoa powder, and the good flour, light and fine, and vanilla, and rich cream, and Ed asks “what’re we making, babe?”

And Stede says, without a single pause—

“I thought I’d make dessert.”