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Dreams are and always have been extremely vivid for Ed; they’re vivid in quality and incorporate all his senses, even smell and taste, which Ed knows isn’t exactly the norm. This can make it hard sometimes to differentiate between what’s real and what’s a dream.
Stede doesn’t dream. He hasn’t mentioned this yet to Ed, because their differences, now that they’re together (all the damn time), have been more and more difficult to, to, reconcile, is that the right word? To bridge, with scrabbled up pieces of wood and iron spikes. Mmmhm. The matter here is that Stede doesn’t dream. He hasn’t revealed that to Ed, yet. He does hallucinate, or possibly the ghosts are real? That he hasn’t mentioned to Ed.
He damn well does dream, though, sharp, childhood and marriage and fear born soul-wracking dreams, and somehow he blanks that.
Ed knows that Stede has nightmares. They often, as often as Ed can arrange, share the bunk, or a nest of cushions on the wardrobe’s deck. He’s very vocal. Eloquent in fear. Ed usually grumbles half-awake and gathers him in his arms, rolling around him, weighing him down. Kisses whatever’s nearest. Makes hushing sounds and whispers words without, so far, waking him. It works. Ed envies him. Ed thinks about asking Stede to return the favor, to snuff out and smother Ed’s nightmares with a welcoming body and a soothing recall to peace. He always forgets, until the next bad one hits and he jolts awake alone.
Stede can always tell when Ed is dreaming, even the early signals that dreams are on the way. He’s had to move bed, to flee, to keep from being struck or shoved, to be beyond the disturbing sound of Ed’s voice in distress. Some of Ed’s nice dreams, which happen, he can tolerate.
They talk to each other constantly. Not many of their conversations or lectures or delighted reactions or even arguments have to do with personal matters.* Or pasts. Ed doesn’t want to and Stede was raised not to discuss such things.
- *Personal matters: How I feel, how I don’t feel, what frightens me, why geese make me vomit, why I’m crying, why I fear being abandoned, why I like my own bed, why I lie so much, why I have a very complicated relationship with money, why I threw your children’s portraits in the sea but not the lighthouse painting, why I see ghosts and haven’t told you. “I love you!” and “That’s too much mustard” and “Your breeches are stained” and “Do you feel like having sex now?” isn’t the same kind of personal.
They don’t begin their day discussing dreams, until they do. Today, they do. They have their meals in the great cabin. It’s one of the graces and benefits of being a captain, Ed insists. Privacy on a ship so small is to be savored. On special occasions, or times of work and duress (storms; rough seas; narrow escapes), they eat together with the crew, or the core part of the crew that remains. This does not include Izzy, who’s taking a break, commanding Stede's captured sweet sailing ketch all the way up to Halifax, to fence some cargo. Some loot. It’s mostly spices and coffee and some damn fine Port, but the market has become saturated this month, locally. And a change is welcome, for everyone. They’ll meet him up there. Maybe. It’s working all right, with Oluwande as first mate and Buttons backing him up. Today, however, temperate, with sun shining through the open lights, breakfast is bright and satisfying, and they’re talking. Ed had a dream.
“Buttons told me he believes my nightmares predict the weather,” says Ed. “Have you...what do you think?”
“I hmm.” Stede butters a piece of bread. “I suppose...I don’t know what you dream about. Does the subject, the inside of the dream mean anything? In this context, in re: Buttons’s belief, say.” His eyes are pink and his skin is dry. “I, did you? Have one? Sweetheart?”
“You didn’t stay the night, again. Are you feeling alright? My Dear?” He says my dear, but just this moment he’d like to flick porridge at Stede’s nose. Affectionately, affectionately. Last night was a bad one, a weird, other place one, still lingering in the shadows and possibly under his chair. He would like a hug. For Stede’s Sweetheart.
“Wobbly tummy. I needed water. And air.” He woke when Ed began to tremble and he needed to escape. It must have been unpleasant, if Ed remembers it still and has brought it up. He looks a little ashen. He’s got a death grip on that spoon. Is, possibly, a Gesture required? Stede wipes the corners of his mouth and lays his napkin down. The table is wide and covered in dishes, and they’d sat rather far apart. He must remember to sit within reach, if future Gestures are on the table. Ha. Wordplay. During this thought, he’s pushed back his heavy chair and stood, and moved sideways the short distance to stand next to Ed’s chair. Ed, who’s looking at him a little squinty-eyed, but interested.
Anything that brings Stede closer to him, unexpectedly, is welcome. Ed stays still. The stupid flower and flourishes design on the silver fucking silver spoon’s handle is biting into his hand. Stede puts a hand on his shoulder, no, an arm around his shoulders, and squidges them in a nice side hug. Oh, and a kiss on his ear. His eyebrow.
“Are you feeling alright? You look pale.”
“Come sit, sit here on my lap and do that again. My Dear. Close to me.”
“Ah.” Stede looks back at his plate, then pats Ed’s shoulder. “Is this a sex thing? Because, after breakfast and...clearing away. After will be nice. Sweetheart.”
Fucking hell, Stede. “No, it’s a please sit in my blasted lap and give me another hug, My damn Dear, I’m I, need, I’d like that, immediately, now. I’ll tell you my dream, you’ll tell me what you think.”
“Fuss, fuss,” says Stede, “Sweetheart,” and squiggles around to sit across Ed’s lap, sideways to the table, arms around his neck, kicking his feet to settle. First, an extra napkin on his lap, and then arms around Ed’s neck. “Mind the butter.”
And there, Ed feels better, dream slinking away, with Stede’s pleasing wide weight across his lap and warm body and arm around his neck, and Stede stealing a slim bit of sausage, a nibble while Ed talks.
“It was...not here." Ed smirks, pleased with himself, then leans back and stares out of the large window at the brilliant sunset peeking between tall buildings, all bright golds and rich reds and deep purples. They’re almost to their stop, but Ed is sleepy, and he has just shut his eyes for a moment when there is a blinding but soundless flash outside, obscuring the view and giving him an instant headache. He fights a wave of nausea “I was on land, moving fast in a coach, I think, looking at a beautiful sky. Falling asleep.”
“That part sounds nice,” says Stede, who would lick his fingers if he were alone. He had not thought this through.
“But then, there was lightning, sheet lightning, with no thunder, and I felt sick.” Intensely sick, with an aching head and nausea that has lingered through the night and surged up at this table. He realizes with a shock that he and Izzy are completely alone in the car. He looks at Izzy, who is pressing his hands over his eyes, grimacing in pain and breathing heavily. “Izzy was there, all of a sudden, across from me, looking bad.”
“Well, there’s your nightmare. What did you eat before bedtime?” He pinches the napkin on his lap.
Ed kisses his hand. The smell of the sausage and memory of last night’s late snack isn’t helping his stomach
With a sickening crunch, they’re off and the car is spinning around them and there are sparks everywhere and a brick wall is rushing towards them and— “The coach left the road. There were sparks and flames, and then we’re smashing into a brick wall... A flash of light and Izzy, groaning in pain. Blood, thick and red, on Ed’s hands. “Izzy’s hurt. There’s blood.” He’s having trouble getting the words out.
Stede is rubbing small circles on the back of Ed’s neck now, at his hairline. He can’t reach lower, between Ed's back and chair, and this is the most comforting Gesture he thinks of. “Frightening. Sweetheart. But we’ve been through, you’ve been through, so much worse awake, in storms and battles.”
Ed wakes, gasping, in a panic. It’s a dream; it’s just a dream, he thinks to himself, trying to get his heart rate under control, except it’s not really just a dream, is it? He dreamed of waking, then he woke up fucking alone again, a nightmare itself, worse than the dream.
“This felt...feels real. Like a memory, coming back. It’s one of those.” Well, Ed hasn’t really told Stede about “those,” the waking nightmares and their flashbacks and shadows. They became part of everyday life in the Time Between, sailing these weird stagnant waters, before Stede was back and solid to cling to. He hasn’t said anything, after the first terrifying week of verbal excess and knives, that would drive him away again. “I have bad days, sometimes, after bad dreams.” Don’t leave me.
Stede sighs, and Ed bends his head and brings his arms around to pull Stede close, closer against him. Stede tries to remember anything he’d done for the children after a scary dream. He can’t remember them having any, none that he was present for. Mary, good heavens, no. Boys in the dorm, at school? They’d be pounded, first by their fellow beastly students, and then by a tutor or master. Stede’s not a monster. He, uh, loves this gorgeous, bizarre, marvelous, scary, still so very much a stranger man who astonishingly says he likes Stede back. He would very much like to Offer Comfort. Or lay down his life, if needed. “I did not know that,” he says, carefully. He kind of guessed. “I never dream, you see. I don’t know what it’s like.” Ed flinches, Stede squeezes his shoulder. “Are we still pursuing Buttons’s weird pronouncement, or have we moved on?” And, actually feeling tender, stroking Ed’s hair, “Is there anything I can do? Sweetheart?” Internal sigh. “Do you want sex now?”
“Fuck, no. My Dear,” says Ed, his voice muffled by all of Stede’s middle and clothes. He holds on to Stede, breathing in his solid, idiotic warmth, and Stede nabs a slice of fried potato and yearns for tea. But tea will come.
+++
Stede doesn’t talk to Buttons about nightmare weather predictions because pfffft, but he finds Frenchie and invites him into the cabin with his sketchbook for an interior design consultation. “Where could we put a second bed, without interrupting the flow?” What flow there wasn’t, in a cabin almost bare of furnishings, but conceptually one makes an effort. He hasn’t brought up curtains and sound-proofing, yet.
“Second bed.” Frenchie scratches behind his ear with the pen. “Uh-huh. Would this be like in addition to making the current bunk wider? Are we talking a whole new piece of furniture, plus the enlarged bunk, or is this reimagining a solution altogether? Or are the two of you surprising each other again, because I wish you wouldn’t do that.”
Stede shuts his mouth with a snap and tries not to glare. “Just work up some sketches, for both,” he says with what he believes to be an airy wave. The sooner they get a damned chaise longue in here for him to collapse on, the better.
+++
Stede needs to talk to Ed, who has been someplace else all afternoon and evening. He remembers his first days on the Revenge, with Izzy roaming the ship, calling for him.
He takes a bottle of best brandy from his cunningly constructed spirits cellar and practices a little speech with a cut glass goblet in hand.
“Ed.
Ed.
Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed, Ed...” Mmmhm.
He leans against the cold fireplace surround. He stands in front of the empty bookshelves. He sits on the side of the custom-built-and-really-only-meant-and-ideally-fitted-for-one-person-thank-you bunk and drinks a little more. It’s been a long night and then day and now night coming on. His eyes close, so he can think.
Stede is dreaming. At least, he thinks he's dreaming. He's not entirely sure. He is sure that his hands are on fire. Which is very odd, because he’s drowning. Isn’t water supposed to douse fire? Perhaps he’ll write a strongly-worded letter to… to someone… about how this water refuses to put out the flames that engulf his fingers and twist around his knuckles as he clenches his fists. He can see his fingers inside the flames but the flames are inside his fingers and now they’re shooting up his arms. It’s rather unusual to be burning underwater, don’t you think? He is going to need a new shirt soon because this one is soaked and also on fire. Then something heavy is wrapping around him, pressing his arms to his sides and dragging him deeper into the water and away from the light. He tries to move, to scream, but his hands are on fire and his clothes are soaked and he cannot get free and he is going to die
Stede makes a strangled “snff snffff skruuk” not-scream noise; he breaks awake croaking “What the fuck was that?” shaking and sweating and hitting something hard, with his fist. It’s Ed. It’s Ed’s ankles in Ed’s boots, which are crossed and propped on the edge of the bunk with the rest of Ed in a chair, smoking the long-stem pipe. (This, actually, this restarts his heart.)
“My Darling,” says Ed, on a puff of smoke. “My undreaming, unthinking, Dear. We need to talk.”
+++
At the helm, Buttons watches a white sea bird make a wide, soaring circle around the Revenge, widdershins, against the moonless sky.
Right then. Captain’s orders. He gives the wheel a quarter turn and nods to Boodhari, who touches his hat and nods back. The rudder cable creaks, the sails further fill, and his nose points the way to the open sea.
+++
The cabin is dark and quiet. The two captains fit snug in the bunk made for one. Ed lifts his head at the change of direction; fresher air curls through the lights. Stede notices only the steady, present beat of the heart underneath his hands.
“I see ghosts, too,” says Stede. His throat is sore from use.
“I know a witch,” answers Ed. He’s not letting go. Not a dream. They'll sort it out. “Tell me the story again about the mermaid man.”