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It’s a Sunday morning. Ed is in the kitchen, at the counter, in his socks and his sweats and his ratty t-shirt, hair tied up in a haphazard knot on top of his head, chopping potatoes and tossing them into the small bowl at his side. The curtain over the kitchen window is pushed back, letting in the dewy glow of morning light. Outside, the birds are twittering like mad up in the trees. It’s almost spring.
It’s Sunday morning, and Stede’s asleep in the bedroom while Ed puts breakfast together. It’s not early, or late. Half-eight, meandering toward nine. Ed had woken up about half an hour ago, because his internal clock is a bastard and rarely lets him have much of a lie-in. Eight o’clock is actually pretty fucking great for him; more often than not it’s seven or earlier, no matter what time he’d fallen asleep the night before.
Stede doesn’t have that problem. Stede’s body thrives on a regular and reliable eight-hour sleeping pattern. Less than that turns his sunshine-and-morning-glories of a husband into a cranky bitch. It’s not cute. It was one of the first lessons Ed had learned in his lifelong course on The Care and Keeping of Stede Bartholomewl Bonnet: everyone is happier when Stede gets his eight hours.
Ed’s cranky trigger is an empty stomach. This had also been an early discovery of their relationship. They’d been out running errands or something equally mundane, and Ed had gotten worked up into a proper, steaming sulk about something—crossed arms, a scowl that could wilt daisies, the works. Without a word, Stede had opened the glove compartment of his car and pulled out a package of fruit leather. He’d set it on Ed’s knee with a fond pat, and Ed had chomped his way through a strip of mixed berries while fighting off some very confusing tears.
Anyway. Ed woke up around eight, nuzzled dozily into Stede’s side for a bit, then dragged himself out of bed to make breakfast. It’s half-eight, and they’d gone down around midnight the night before, which means Ed’s got about ten to twenty minutes before Stede makes an appearance.
He finishes chopping up the last potato, sets the knife aside, grabs the olive oil and the garlic powder and the paprika and the salt and pepper. A few glugs of oil, a good sprinkle of garlic, a few heavy shakes of paprika, a hearty pinch of salt, and then another. Crack-crack-crack of pepper, until a bit of it gets up his nose and he has to turn away and sneeze into his elbow.
He drags the airfryer out from the lower cabinets. Ed’s become an air fryer guy, against his better judgement (“It’s just a convection oven, ‘air frying’ isn’t a fucking thing”). Frenchie had bought it for them as a housewarming gift, and it turned out that everyone else was right about how great they are. He’d throw this big mess of chopped potatoes in there and they’d be golden and crispy in half the time it’d take in the oven. Can’t beat that, even though he resents the loss of his cabinet space.
He twists the knob on the timer. The air fryer hums to life. Ed checks the clock and begins cracking eggs into a bowl.
Stede hadn’t been keen on eggs for breakfast, before Ed came along and figured out how he likes them. No runny yolks or soft-boiled goodness here. Scrambled, seasoned with cracked pepper and garlic, cooked in a pan with a generous pat of butter and a hearty handful of sharp grated cheddar for good measure. Cooked, and then overcooked, and then browned, just a little bit. Stede likes his eggs with a bit of a crunch on the edge, and then doused in hot sauce. Fucking mental.
Stede-before-Ed hadn’t been used to this sort of breakfast at all, really. He’d gone through life on a single slice of barely-browned toast with a barely-there smear of butter. Half a grapefruit sprinkled with a whisper of sugar. Efficient, restrained, polite. A vacuum of desire, a total absence of hunger. When he’d met Ed, he’d been a man half-starved.
Ed hadn’t had much growing up, but he’d had this: toast (the cheapest white bread at the market), and butter (margarine, but who’s counting), and eggs scrambled with a bit of milk or fried toad-in-the-hole style in the middle of a slice of bread. On a morning like this, his mum would pull a chair up beside her in the kitchen and let Ed stand on it to watch her work, let him carefully crack the eggs into the bowl and whisk it all up with a fork. He can still taste it all on the back of his tongue.
He drops a knob of butter into the pan, lets it melt, swirls it around, then pours in the eggs. Feels his mum’s hand on his wrist as he stirs and stirs and lets the curds cook up.
Normally he’d have music on while he cooks, but Stede’s asleep. Ed listens to the birds and the sizzle of the butter and eggs and the hum of the air fryer and thinks about love, and home.
The smell of garlic and paprika suffuses the kitchen. Ed pulls out the basket of the air fryer, gives it all a bit of a toss, then pushes it back in. Another few minutes there.
While the eggs cook, he pulls out a pair of plates and opens the fridge to see what else he can scrounge up. Raspberry jam for the toast, a couple slices of salami. A clementine for each of them, the last of the good ones before they go out of season. Ed fishes a couple of nice fat ones out of the drawer.
From the bedroom, he hears the creak of the mattress, the soft sound of the bedclothes rustling. He takes the eggs off the heat, fills up the kettle and clicks it on, then connects his phone to the speaker and puts on something quiet and slow.
A few minutes later, just as he’s dumping the potatoes onto their plates, Stede emerges.
God, Ed loves him. He’s pulled on a thin robe over his pajamas, and his hair looks like he’s been through a wind tunnel. His eyes are soft and sleepy, and he smiles as he comes into the kitchen, takes in the sight of Ed’s mess all over the counters and the stove.
“Morning,” Ed says, holding out his unoccupied hand for Stede to tuck in under his arm.
He does, shuffling across the kitchen to slot their bodies together like a pair of puzzle pieces, slipping his arms around Ed’s waist and resting his head on Ed’s shoulder. He smells like sleep and their bed, and his hair tickles under Ed’s chin.
“Morning, darling,” Stede mumbles, laying a kiss in the crook of his neck.
“Sleep good?”
“Mm. You?”
“Yeah. Breakfast is about ready.”
“It smells divine.” Stede lifts his head and surveys the spread with a bit of wonder in his eyes. Ed feels that warm, glowing pride expand in his chest—the satisfaction of providing, the pleasure of pleasing.
The kettle clicks off. Stede disentangles himself and shuffles over to the cabinet where they keep the tea, plucks out a bag for each of them—English breakfast for himself, vanilla chai for Ed—and drops them in a pair of mismatched mugs. He pours the steaming water over the bags, gets the milk out of the fridge, then shuffles back over and slumps against Ed's back. Ed reaches behind him and gets ahold of Stede's arms to wrap them around his waist, keeps them there with gentle hands on his wrists.
"Thank you for doing all this," Stede says, quiet against his shoulder blade, and Ed knows that maybe a year or so ago he would have said You didn't have to do all this. One of those things his therapist taught him—saying thank you instead of I'm sorry, showing gratitude instead of the uneasy, misplaced guilt for having dared to exist in the first place. It's good. He's been working on it.
Ed hums. He turns around in the circle of Stede's arms, drapes himself over Stede's shoulders, stands lightly on the tops of his feet. Stede looks up at him, too close, owlish roundness to his eyes. Ed wants to lean down and bury his face in the white gold waves of his hair. Wants to smooth over the bags under his eyes and bite the end of his nose.
Instead, he murmurs softly, "Happy to."
The music goes on. The smell of their tea rises on the steam, mingles with their breakfast in the morning light.
Ed sways them a bit, can't help but smile. Stede smiles back reflexively, still a little dreamy around the eyes. “What’s the non-hetero version of ‘happy wife, happy life?’” he asks.
Stede's lips quirk. “I believe it’s ‘happy spouse, happy house.’”
“Egh.”
The space between them is so small, and Stede closes it with ease, gives him a soft, plush kiss. “Wife is fine.”
The toast pops out of the toaster. Stede carries their plates to the sunroom, and Ed follows him with the toast, the butter and jam, two mugs hooked precariously around his fingers. Stede meets him halfway and takes his mug, the butter, the jam, takes another kiss for his troubles. Ed curls his toes into the hardwood floor as he steps away, feels like maybe he's about to start twittering right alongside the birds outside their windows.
The feast spreads out in a pool of morning sunlight. One of the sunroom windows is open, and it welcomes in a cool breeze, the fresh smell of dewey grass just starting to grow again. Stede's already reaching for a slice of toast, eager around the eyes as he smears it with a scrape scrape scrape of butter and a glob of ruby red jam. He crunches into the slice, crumbs scattering, eyes closing for a moment to taste it all.
Ed props his elbows on the table, lets the indulgent smile curl across his face as he digs a nail into the dimpled skin of the clementine and watches Stede eat.