Chapter Text
Ed presses Send, then he freaks the fuck out.
Because who tells someone they love them for the first time over text?
And—AND—what if Stede’s running away wasn’t because of what Badminton said at all? What if he just felt like this thing with Ed was getting too intense? Like he needed space? And now Ed’s just gone and sent him . . . that?
Shit, shit, shit!
Why isn’t there an undo button or something for texting? Really, how is it that Ed’s phone actually let him send that text in the first place? There should be safeguards against this kind of thing! What’s the point of living in the AI Age, of Big Tech listening in on all your conversations and reading everything you write, if it doesn’t STOP YOU from doing shit like THIS?
BotGPT is reading your text drafts and has detected possible highly regrettable content. Are you sure you want to proceed with sending? Click yes or no.
How hard would that be to fucking program?
Ed leans on Jane’s railing and tries to catch his breath. If things weren’t already fucked between him and Stede, Ed may well have just done it now.
He squeezes his phone almost hard enough to crush the casing. Treacherous technology. Enabler of confusion, eraser of context. Not at all the miracle Ruthie thinks it—
BUZZ
Holy fucking shit. Stede has texted back.
Stede Bonnet – Bake Off
Oh, Ed! I feel the same. I really do.
Which is why I won’t stand in your way any longer. Badminton wasn’t wrong, not about this. I’ve been a distraction. But I won’t let myself keep ruining your chances to win Bake Off.
I believe in you, Ed. I’m rooting for you. Which is why we need to keep our distance for now. Please don’t try to change my mind. Please, don’t even text me back about it.
But ring me when this is all over, okay? Maybe we can meet back at the Crab & Boar.
Ed stares down at Stede’s words.
Stede feels the same way Ed does.
Stede doesn’t think they should see each other right now.
Stede texted him.
Stede doesn’t want to hear back.
Is it possible to have every feeling in the world simultaneously? Ed’s elated and crushed, wrapped up in soft fabric and run through with a sharp blade, all at once.
And, of course, he’d like nothing more than to tell Stede all about it. His finger hovers over the green call icon, aching to press the button.
But he tried ringing Stede already, and Stede didn’t pick up. He texted, laying out his boundaries. And while Ed doesn’t agree with the logic behind them—not one bit—he tells himself that, if this is what Stede wants, he can do it.
He can be patient, and wait.
It’s just a few weeks. Like Ruthie said, not all that much time in the grand scheme of things.
Though she also told Ed that she’d known, from the very beginning, that she and Felix ought never to be apart for too long. And deep down, that’s how Ed feels about himself and Stede. Like this break Stede’s asking for is a mistake.
But at least, Ed reminds himself, he’ll see Stede next weekend in the tent. And who knows what might happen when they’re back in the same room? Maybe they’ll find a moment to touch hands in passing. To touch feet under a table. To whisper “I love you” in each other’s direction.
Ed moves his finger from the call button to the power button on his phone’s side. Everything inside him screams in protest, but he gives the power button a long press, and turns the phone off.
***
It’s a rough night. The wind picks up as a storm blows through, and the boat pitches so hard that Ed gives up trying to stay in his bed. He decamps to the floor, rolling as the boat rocks, completely unable to fall asleep or to turn off his spiraling brain. He even almost vomits once. Has he ever felt this bad without being drunk? At least, Ed reminds himself, he’s not drunk.
By 3 AM, though, he’s kind of wishing again that he was. Because his brain’s giving him all the worst of it now: telling him Stede’s just letting him down easy. That Stede’s fucked off because he already got everything he wanted. Got time back on his pithivier challenge; got free private lessons with the best technical baker in the tent. Got his handshake and his Star Baker win, and got his cock sucked a few times to boot. He doesn’t need Ed anymore. Ed may have thought they were Elinor and Edward from Sense and Sensibility, but really Ed was naïve Marianne and Stede was Willoughby, playing Ed like a fucking pianoforte before he disappeared right back into high society.
Sleep finally finds Ed sometime around dawn. When he wakes after 10 AM, dry-mouthed on the hard floor with the air around him still reeking of rotten shrimp, he feels like he’s been keelhauled.
He’s also starving. He never ate dinner last night, and of course everything in the fridge and freezer is ruined. Ed hauls himself up, gulps down almost a liter of water, and checks the cupboard. There’s precious little in there: one tin of gravy, and another of soup. He pops the top off the soup and eats it cold, straight out of the tin, because he’s not plugged in and the solar array’s not yet recharged the battery enough to run the microwave. The soup is slimy, disgusting as fuck, but Ed chokes it down anyway.
Then he turns his phone back on briefly to ring Blackbeard’s Boatyard. He gets Fang on the line and tells him that that, actually, he’s extending his trip in the Pennines and is going to take another week off work. Fang sounds delighted for Ed, encouraging him to enjoy himself and promising that everything’s well under control at the yard. Ed powers the phone right back off after they hang up, without checking Discord or Instagram; without letting himself be tempted to re-engage with Stede’s text from last night.
Ed’s going to have to go find groceries somewhere, but first he needs to clean up. He spends the next hour double-bagging all the rotten food in his fridge and freezer, then rage-scrubbing. And it’s not baking, but it finally centers Ed a little. Gets him thinking rational thoughts again.
Ed knows none of the stuff his brain came up with at 3 AM is true. Even if Stede hadn’t texted last night, saying he felt the way Ed did . . . he called Ed “boyfriend” first. He talked about them being together months from now. He trusted Ed with stories from his past, with his anxieties and desires. And there was the way he touched Ed—like he was precious, like he was worth keeping. Those weren’t the actions of someone who only wanted to use him for, like, baking tips and blow jobs. There’s just no way.
So Ed scrubs, and he breathes, and he tells himself to have a little faith in Stede. To give them both space to make mistakes, like Ruthie said—especially now, when things are so new and scary.
Space for now. Ed can do that. And to fill that space this week, he’ll bake.
He pulls up anchor, fires up Jane’s engine, and starts to sail even farther upriver, toward Bath. Ed knows a guy at one of the private marinas there who’ll rent him a mooring spot at mate’s rates. Ed could go back to Bristol, but he feels like he needs fresh surroundings for a while, and Bath’s always been a happy place for him. It takes him several hours to get there, but he arrives before nightfall, strikes a deal with Bill, and finds a place to dump his rubbish bags once he’s moored. Then he gets directions to the nearest Tesco, where he stocks up on all the ingredients he’ll need for his week of practice.
It’s pastry week, and Ed’s got some pretty big fuckin’ plans for it. Bread may be his favorite thing to bake, but pastry’s a close second. He likes the technical aspects of laminating and layering, likes the engineering challenge of making a hand-raised pie stand up, or a pasty stay sealed. He likes the variety of shapes and sizes and decorative styles and the endless options for fillings, savory and sweet. Pastry is versatile, complex, and rich, and it can be made to look very beautiful. It’s also finicky and temperamental; there are lots of ways to fuck it up.
Ed’s not going to fuck it up.
Ed’s going to charge into the tent this weekend, guns blazing. Or some less violent metaphor. The point is, he’s not scared of pastry the way some bakers are, and he’s excited to show the judges what he can do with it.
Badminton thinks Ed should be challenging for Star Baker every week? Well, this week Ed’ll put himself right in the mix. He’s going to bake his arse off—and, fuck it, maybe even still find a way to chat and banter with Stede while they work. To prove to everyone at Love Productions and Channel 4 that he can do both. Maybe even prove it to Stede, that he’s not a distraction. That, actually, Stede makes Ed a better baker. That they make each other better.
He wonders if maybe, two hundred miles away in Norwich, there’s a chance Stede is thinking the same thing.
That night on Jane, Ed sets up his first practice bake. The signature challenge is a fruit strudel in two and a half hours.
Strudel can be on the bland side, so Ed’s planning a raspberry-and-rhubarb filling to really punch the judges in the face with some flavor. The challenge, though, will be to keep the filling from getting so wet that it bleeds through the very thin strudel pastry. A traditional apple strudel has bread crumbs mixed in to soak up excess moisture, but Ed finds that he doesn’t love the texture that creates. So he’s planning to experiment with different thickeners and techniques this week to get his filling how he wants it. Plus, of course, he’ll practice making strudel dough. It has to be stretched so long and thin that he’ll probably just lay all his silicone mats end-to-end on the floor and get down there to pull it off.
It's a decent challenge. The stretching of the pastry will look great on TV, and it’s a good test for the bakers, too, to get all these elements working together. It’ll certainly keep Ed’s brain occupied for long hours as he practices this week. It’ll pass the time.
Ed would rather be passing the time with Stede.
Not even in bed, or on a date, necessarily. They wouldn’t even have to talk. They could just be . . . baking, side by side. Ed imagines them working on their strudels in the Cotswolds kitchen: double ovens warming up, plenty of counter space for them both. Another Zumba playlist on low in the background, Stede bopping to it unconsciously, Ed sneaking glances at him and grinning to himself.
Stede stealing a taste of Ed’s filling, pronouncing it zangy. Their bakes sliding into the ovens, and, okay, maybe time then for a little break, hands and lips meeting. Or maybe, this time, Stede would turn the music up, pull Ed close, and sweep him around the kitchen to whatever Zumba song came up next. Without even realizing it, without even planning to, Ed would be dancing again, after all these years.
He closes his eyes. He pretty much always bakes in trainers or boots, needing the support for the hours on his feet. But in this little fantasy, his feet are bare. So Ed can feel the flour dust and dried bits of pastry under his soles on the kitchen floor as he and Stede dance, because no one’s hoovered in a couple of days. Because they can’t be bothered; they’re too happy together to give a shit about a little mess.
Please, Ed begs the universe as he opens his eyes again. He can still feel the crumbs between his toes. Please, please let us get back to that.
He returns to his strudel in silence. Or, well, not silence exactly. Jane’s windows are open, and the marina’s got plenty of ambient sound. But there’s certainly no Zumba music playing—and for all that Ed made fun of it last week, he finds he’s actually missing it now.
He imagines telling Stede this on Friday, and the two of them laughing about it together. Which only makes Ed want it to happen more. And while he’s never been much of a music-app guy, Ed’s got a nice vintage stereo system installed here on Jane. Speakers bolted to the wall, a turntable and a stash of records secured in a nearby cabinet.
His dough needs time to rest anyway, so Ed washes his hands and heads over. His collection’s carefully curated. There’s the older stuff: Joni Mitchell, the Smiths, the requisite Crowded House. The nineties ladies: Fiona and Tori and Dar. Every record Leonard Cohen ever made. And there’s some newer stuff, too: Florence and the Machine, Hozier, Frank Turner, Son Lux. Not every musician or band Ed likes presses vinyl these days, but he appreciates the ones that do.
But, of course, there’s nothing in his cabinet that even comes close to Zumba music. Nothing dance-y like that. Until Ed gets to the end of his alphabetized collection and—oh, he’d forgotten about this one.
He bought it in a record shop a few years ago because it made him think of his mum. They’d had the album on cassette when he was a kid; she hadn’t been sick yet when it first came out in ’87, and it had quickly become her favorite. She’d still been baking then, still roping Ed in whenever she could catch him and teach him what she knew. She’d pop the tape into the kitchen boom box while they worked, but they’d stop baking when her favorite song cycled on, the big single from that album. She’d grab Ed then and swing him around the kitchen, laughing and singing the lyrics off-key right into his face.
“I wanna dance with somebody,
With somebody who loves me…”
And Ed would wriggle and groan and fuss, but he’d hold her hands and keep dancing with her, because he knew that he was the somebody who loved her. And she was the somebody who loved him.
And then, less than two years later, she was gone.
Ed picked the record up because it reminded him of her. He bought it, and he brought it home . . . and then, he never listened to it. Not once. It’s still in the damn shrink wrap.
Ed waits until he’s got his strudel in the oven. Then, he slits the plastic open with a paring knife and slides it off the record. Puts it on the turntable and moves the needle into place.
The song starts up right away, it’s the first track. And sure, he’s heard it here and there over the years, playing in shops, and on the soundtracks of TV shows and movies. But he’s never played it alone, on purpose.
It only takes a few notes to hit him. Whitney’s barely said her first “woo!” and “hey yeah!” before Ed’s . . . well, he’s definitely not dancing. He’s sitting on the floor, back pressed against the record cabinet door, crying his eyes out. Missing his mum. Wishing mobile phone technology really was the magic Ruthie made it out to be and he could use it to reach not only across oceans, but across time and space. Wishing Mum could see him on Bake Off, winning Star Baker with her rēwena parāoa recipe. Wishing she could meet Stede.
Because it’s all wrapped up together now, isn’t it? Feeling the way he does about Stede—letting himself feel that way—is also, somehow, finally letting Ed feel this.
So Ed listens to Whitney sing, and he lets himself cry for the full four minutes and fifty-two seconds of the song. Lets himself want to dance with somebody who loves him. Lets his lonely heart call.
The strudel looks good when it comes out of the oven forty minutes later. But when Ed slices into it, the filling falls apart, bleeding out all over the cutting board.
Not quite right then, yet. Ed nods, rolls his sleeves up, and begins the recipe again.