Chapter Text
It was a grind of a day in the studio. Granted, Ed couldn't remember the last time studio days weren't a grind, the last time the studio was easy and exciting the way it had been at first.
Ed was in a recording booth singing a painful third take into the mic, hand on one ear of his headphones. Izzy was across the booth from him playing the bones of the lead they'd written so far. Ed continued the melody when he ran out of lyrics, singing nonsense until Izzy ran out of tabs and his last strum faded into the sound-dampening on the walls. They didn't look at each other.
Izzy raised his head to look skeptically out the window of the booth. Ivan and Fang stood on either side of Jackie, sat at the mixing board, with their arms crossed.
Ivan hummed. "S'all right, needs some spine."
"I like that riff, Izzy," Fang said, ever the supporter.
Jackie looked straight at Ed. "You sound breathy as hell. Get some water, take three, and let's run that again with some gut behind it."
Ed rolled his eyes and pulled the headphones off. "Nothing's working today. It all sounds the fucking same. What about that one I wrote earlier this week? That one was fun, right?" he looked through the window.
Everyone outside the booth had pity on their faces.
"Yeah, no, it's—" Fang looked apologetic.
Izzy interrupted. "It's too fucking experimental. All over the place. Where's the Blackbeard sound?"
Ed scowled, dropping the headphones onto the mic stand. "Fine. Whatever. I'm done for today, I'm tired." He didn't wait for them to speak, just pushed out of the booth and through the studio, then into the street.
He pulled his hat low, dodging crowded areas and anybody with what even resembled a proper camera, and slipped into the back door of a buildilng. The bar was empty as Ed ducked in, nodding to the bartender, Gerardo, whose eyes immediately scanned the doors at the front of the building for fans, or God forbid, paps. Ed liked Gerardo well enough—he was a good guy, easily took a steady stream of hush money to let Ed have a drink in peace.
Ed sank into his usual seat at the corner of the bar top, no competition for it on a Wednesday afternoon where the only patrons were Ed and his too-loud thoughts.
No, wait, not empty. There was one guy at a table in the opposite corner of the floor, busy on a laptop with folded-out monitors, surrounded by paper notes and empty pint glasses. Too many empty glasses for this early in the day, but Ed wasn't really one to talk.
Gerardo slid Ed's whiskey in front of him—neat, just how Ed had always ordered—and Ed frowned in the guy's direction as he raised the glass to his lips. Ed day drinking was one thing, but this fancy-ass, productive, very handsome man who appeared to have been drinking steadily for several hours and was still frantically typing and scribbling notes and mumbling to himself was on a whole different level.
The guy's eyes darted up to Ed's as he stared, just for a moment, and Ed was quick to look away. He might be fucking fascinating from a distance, sure, but Ed had been mobbed or interrupted too many times to think he was safe to approach a stranger even here, not even thinking about the awkwardness of it all. Nah, definitely not happening.
Ed was startled the next time he looked up from the bottom of his glass, tracing the rim idly with his fingertip, to see the guy walking over to him. Oh fuck, here go we go. Ed sighed.
"You look as tired as I feel. Kindred spirits, eh?" The guy smiled big and white.
Ed's tolerant half-smile faltered, brows creasing. This guy was Kiwi, what were the chances? But even Kiwi didn't mean safe, if anything it meant more likely to pick Ed out of a crowd, famous guy from Aotearoa and all. He felt himself bracing for the ineviable "OMG Blackbeard can we get a selfie so I can photoshop all my friends into it?" or worse "will you sign my dick??" (Yes, it had happened. No, Ed did not sign it).
Ed shot a desperate look to Gerardo, who shrugged and shook his head. The guy was still talking, and what Ed heard was, "I like your outfit, by the way. The jacket suits you very well."
Ed looked down and cursed himself internally. He had grabbed his leather jacket on the way to the studio this morning, a Blackbeard stage signature. Dammit. So much for incognito regular-dude outfit, between that and the beard he might as well have hung a neon sign around his neck that said "this guy is Edward Teach aka Blackbeard, come be a fucking creep!!"
Ed snapped, "I'm just trying to enjoy my drink, man." His voice was sharp with the irritation rising in his chest, heart rate kicking up, eyes darting to the doors, searching for cameras, finding a path out the back door.
The guy smiled pleasantly. "As was I, and then I saw your eyes and just knew we were in the same boat. Did you also get broken up with recently?"
Ed blinked. What the fuck? What the fuck. He looked over the guy again, really this time. Neat, wavy blond hair, bags under his eyes, a little haggard, gesticulating wildly as he spoke. Full of life, but zero stars in his eyes. None. Not the awkward fidgeting of a fan working up the courage to approach him, either, or the total disregard for human dignity of a journalist interrupting his peace and quiet.
Ed stepped back mentally. "What was your name again? Didn't catch it."
The guy beamed and offered a hand to shake. "Stede Bonnet, nice to make your acquaintance."
Ed shook it. "I'm Ed. And uh, I didn't just get broken up with, no. Just . . . tired of it all, I guess. Just need a break." He sighed.
Stede laughed. "I understand that. That's why I spend most of my time these days teaching or writing papers. It helps to distract me from other things in my life, things I'd rather not think about. Though sometimes it doesn't work and I resort to, well . . . " He gestured to the glasses occupying the table. "But it's all right! I think things will be improving very soon. I hope."
Ed was almost afraid to ask. "How do you know?"
Stede shrugged and tipped his head. "Well, I don't, but I'm of the opinion that if you think something hard enough it will happen eventually. I'm in the process of finding an apartment so I can move out from my wife—well, ex-wife now," he corrects himself. "She and the children need the space more than I do, anyway."
Ed couldn't do anything but blink in Stede's direction. What in the fucking truth bomb? Who talks about their now-ex-wife in the first two minutes of conversation with a stranger? They just met and Stede was already telling him about his divorce and children? He was making Ed look like a defensive sociopath. Well, defensive for good reason by this point, Ed would argue, but still.
Stede continued. "We were married much too young, really, and were never truly happy, and we're finally both working on separating so we can live independently. Still taking care of the children together, of course, my therapist says it's called co-parenting." Stede beamed, and Ed didn't know what to do with that. He could still feel himself stiffening, dodging Stede's words, making exit strategies.
Ed tried to take a fucking breath as he tuned back into what Stede was saying. He was laughing sheepishly at himself. "That was quite a lot. Sorry. I just—I thought you'd understand. You seem to be going through a lot at the moment, too, no?"
On the outside, Ed was nodding wearily, going, "Yeah, I guess so." But inside, Ed frowned. How was Stede seeing through him in all but the obvious? There was a billboard advertising their last tour down the block, a little faded but still obviously identifiable. Had Stede just . . . never looked up? Or was he doing it on purpose?
Get a grip Ed, he told himself. The world doesn't revolve around you. Not everyone knows every celebrity in the world. He cringed at himself. Not every celebrity, maybe, but a household name, an easily-identifiable hair-beard-tattoos combo, and up here in the asshole of the private quarter of Vegas? Odds weren't good to go incognito.
The next words that came out of Ed's mouth surprised him. "What are you working on over there? Looks like you've got a lot going on."
Stede brightened and gestured so largely his drink sloshed over the side of its glass. "I'm a professor over at UNLV, I teach botany. Mostly to grad students, but I teach some undergrad too. Those are always interesting, young impressionable students being introduced to how incredible plants are, it's exciting! And a few of them decide they can tolerate me enough to want to do even more of it, and then they join the ranks of the grad students and get to spend entirely too much time with me picking over their work and preparing for defense and that sort of thing." Stede sighed. "The campus is beautiful, too, so many flowers and such a variety of plant life. I actually put in a proposal when I started teaching to get native flora planted on campus to support the local wildlife and pollinator population, and it went through. So now even my undergraduate students get to do field research on native plants right on campus!"
Ed shook his head. "Do you know how hard it is to find someone who's doing something original out here? I mean, a botanist? In the middle of the desert? Incredible."
Stede smiled, mischief in his eyes. "If you think teaching botany is original, wait until you see my research." He pulled Ed by the hand (by the hand!) over to his laptop and notepad and empty-glass table. He scrolled through a document on the main laptop screen that seemed to be an utterly massive research paper of some kind, pointing to graphs and images on the two foldout monitors on either side of the center screen. It started going over Ed's head when Stede used words like xerophytic, and aridification, gesturing wildly at the squiggly lines and labeled diagrams.
When he saw Ed's wide eyes, Stede stopped speaking long enough to take a breath, and then checked his watch. "Oh gosh, it's late. I've got to get going, I'm supposed to make dinner for the children." Stede put a hand on Ed's arm where it was resting as Ed leaned into the screen. "It was so lovely to meet you, Ed, I hope we see each other again." He folded up his laptop monitors and shoved it and the notebooks into a backpack, and then he was gone.
Ed headed back to the bartop and texted Archie to bring the car around as he finished his drink—that made four, he thought? Gerardo didn't let them build up around him the way he did Stede, Ed had told him once it made him feel pathetic.
When he got the notification the car was here, Ed sighed and slid off the barstool, back and knees popping as he stood. He rolled his neck, closed his tab with a cash tip, waved to Gerardo, and headed out the back door.
The car door slammed as he closed himself into the backseat.
"All right, Ed?" Archie asked, cheerful as always, the roll of her accent soothing in his ears.
Ed rubbed his eyes. "Yeah. Just home, mate."
Archie nodded. "You got it, boss." She rolled the divider up, and Ed closed his eyes, head thudding against the rest.
The car slowed to a stop. Archie deposited him at his front door, the property blessedly empty all the way back to the gate today. Thank fuck. Ed shut the car door behind himself and gave Archie a weary thumbs-up. He unlocked his front door, locked it behind him, and trudged through the house. He didn't look twice at the clutter, the dust, the untouched groceries delivered three days ago by a faceless staff member that were now attracting flies.
He kicked off his boots and fell fully-dressed into his soft bed, puffy comforter and custom extra-heavy weighted blanket pulled up past his chin, hair down and teeth unbrushed. He did not sleep.