#this tiny feral child is the true mvp

[queerspacepunk]

Would love a fic where instead of running away, Stede explains to Ed why he needs to go back to his family and he brings Ed with him. It's probably a massive story idea I realize, but any tidbit would be amazing if it sounds interesting <3

ask and ye shall receive!! or something like that. it is indeed a Massive Story Idea and not one I'm super invested in exploring in too much detail as a whole thing (i love the angst too much!!!) but a tidbit? a lil snippet??? something a lil light and a lil silly? fuck yes!!

ofmd drabble #02 - three 1651 words | meeting the parents kids family?

If you had asked Edward Teach at, oh, literally any time in his life prior to this exact moment, whether or not he'd ever willingly allow himself to be shuffled out of the room with the children so that the adults could talk, he would have told you to go fuck yourself with whatever uncomfortable utensil was closest to hand.

Ed had discovered however, in the last few moments, that discretion is in fact the better part of not having to be in the middle of that domestic. Fuck, he would have crawled inside his own bloody beard and hidden in it, had he still had the damn thing, just to get away.

Alas, he doesn't have a beard, but Stede (legally speaking at least) still does, and her name is Mary. Ed's always thought of 'Mary' as a sort of humble, unassuming name, but the woman in front of him is a hell of a lot closer to the formidable end of the scale than Ed had been expecting. She may well be the only person he's ever met who's ballsier than Stede himself, with a touch more common sense and rather a lot more follow-through.

He's pretty sure the only reason she hasn't stabbed a hat pin or something right through his ear hole and into Stede's squishy little brain is that she wants him to be able to hear what has got to be the most severe and well-deserved bollocking of the poor sod's life.

And so, Ed had assessed the situation, and his options, and decided; fuck this all the way to church, actually, and had nicked off out the back door with Stede and Mary's equally judicious children.

He'd figured that they would, you know, entertain themselves, once they got out of there. Ed would had, when he was a kid, and there'd only been the one of him! Even if they didn't they surely wouldn't be bothering him.

Ed's back in his own clothes, mostly. He needed the knee brace for the walk, and it doesn't fit right over normal trousers so he put his leather ones back on too. Sure, he's left the jacket off and pulled his hair back into a bun in an attempt to look slightly less obviously a notoriously escaped pirate, but even with the beard gone, and a normal amount of weapons on his person, he still looks like a pirate.

(He'd put the cravat back on too, and no it hadn't escaped his notice that Mary was wearing one as well. He'd found himself wondering if she'd stolen it from Stede's wardrobe too, or if black cravats were just something all rich people owned. Then he'd wondered if it was weird that he's hoping it's the first option.)

The point is, he looks like the pirate he is. A cool one. An intimidating one. The friend of Mary's who'd passed him on her way out had certainly gone an awfully funny colour at the sight of him, which means that the kids would surely leave him alone to indulge in his favourite and most lucrative hobby – being a nosy little shit.

Not much to the immediate garden – some tidy but not perfectly kept flowerbeds, neat lawn worn down into desire paths in places that Ed suspects the children are responsible for, a small collection of sticks staked perfectly upright in a circle near the back of the shed in a way that would give Frenchie the absolute shits, you know, normal kid stuff.

"How good a pirate are you?" a voice asks from behind him, as he turns away from what he's assuming is (at least) attempted witchcraft, and he doesn't jump, but he does suddenly have a lot more sympathy for Frenchie.

"What?" Ed asks, turning to look at her – one of the kids, Alma? Because he'd processed 'pirate' and 'creepy child' and not a lot else.

"How good of a pirate are you?" she repeats, and he's not sure how someone half his height can stare him down, but damn if she isn't giving it a go.

"Very," Ed says with a shrug.

Her face scrunches up, like she's thinking, in a way that is familiar and oddly endearing. "You're Blackbeard."

"What the fu- no I'm no- how the hell do you know that?" Hell's not a curse word. It's fine. They say it in church all the time. Or, so he's been told, "I don't even have a beard."

"You're running away. It would be silly not to shave it off."

Well, yeah. Okay, fair.

"Lots of pirates have beards," Ed points out, "how'd you know I was Blackbeard."

Alma shrugs and kicks at the dirt, "my dad has a crush on you."

Ed laughs, a genuine one, a happy one, because yeah, she's not wrong.

"Wait," he says after a moment, "how do you know that? He hasn't seen you since we met."

A child should not be able to pull off such a scathing eyeroll, "he used to read us stories."

Ed’s chest feels tighter at that and not in a good way, at the idea of Stede daydreaming over the idea of him, even though he knows that no one's ever seen him as truly as Stede has, that Stede was giving him those delighted looks even before he realised that Ed was Blackbeard.

"He had a crush on the Beast from Beauty and the Beast, too," Alma adds.

"Uh…" Ed says, because he's honestly not sure how he feels about that.

"and King Arthur," she continues, turning and wandering away, "and Shakespeare."

That's something, Ed supposes, as he watches her goes, before turning his sights on the… barn? Shed? It definitely isn't housing animals, he can tell that even before he gets to the wide open doors and steps inside to find himself surrounded by… paintings? Cool ones.

They're not like the hoity-toity, fancy-ass (boring-ass) paintings he often sees in the fancy ships he's raiding, nah, these ones are interesting. There's some that seem to be all lines and shapes – siblings to the lighthouse painting of Stede's still sitting back in his cabin on the Revenge, while others are more… anatomically suggestive?

(Well, if he's honest, they're vaginas. Floral vaginas, but definitely vaginas. A few botanical penises and the odd probable ballsack too, but they're definitely Mary's work, and she is both terrifying and a lady so Ed's going to try and keep his own non-implied balls right where they are and not mention that to anyone. Ever.)

"Er, hello?"

Ed spins on his heel, doing his best to put his back to something resembling a wall as he turns to face the intruder– or well, since Ed's kind of the intruder in this situation – the newcomer, and tries to keep his stance as outwardly casual as he can.

The man, he notes, doesn't look like he's much of a threat to anyone, and seems more perplexed than concerned with the stranger in what may well be his painting shed – if the smears on his fingers and the fact that the smaller kid – Luciu- no, Louis – is just about clinging to his leg, is anything to go by.

"Who're you?" Ed asks, because he gets the feeling that this guy is daft enough and wholesome enough that he might just answer despite it definitely not being Ed who should be asking that question.

"Doug."

Called it.

"Ed," Ed says, because it only seems fair, really, and steps forward to shake the guy's hand. No need to not be polite. "who are you. In er, context?"

"Mary's painting instructor," Doug says, at the exact same moment as Louis says "my dad."

Ed looks at Doug, who's now blushing bright pink, and then to Louis who (fortunately? Unfortunately? Hard to say) takes quite strongly after both Mary and Stede, and then across the lawn to the window of the house where, thanks to the sheer curtains Ed can the silhouette of Mary brandishing what looks concerningly like a lamp while she yells something that Ed can't quite catch but has the distinct cadence of someone articulating just what they're planning to do to your favourite organ (which, knowing Stede is probably his bloody heart, but which Ed's hoping Mary will assume to be his balls because that at least they can recover from), and then looks back to Doug. Doug who looks like either a real estate agent's idea of a painter or possibly a painter's idea of a real estate agent (Ed's sadly not familiar enough with either profession to determine which).

"Nice."

Doug's face goes all… funny, all wibbly in a way that takes Ed far too long a moment to realise is him being all gooey-eyed and in love, and is weirdly, a rather familiar expression (and oh fuck no he cannot be realising that that's what Stede's face means when he does that. Not while he's in Stede's wife's painting shed talking to Stede's wife's mister-ess. Only apparently, he can), before Doug laughs awkwardly and asks, "and who are you? In, uh, context?"

"I, uh-" oh fuck it, it's not like he can get any deeper, "I'm the other man. The, er, other man's other man."

Doug mouths that silently to himself a couple of times before it seems to click, and then he's giving Ed a once-over before letting out a rather appreciative whistle, "good for him."

"Doug," Louis asks reaching up to tug on his wrist, "what does 'other man' mean?"

"I think, kiddo," Doug says, hoisting the boy up onto his hip (and he's too big for it, really, but it makes Ed's heart do something funny to see it, all the same), "that it means that you and Alma are about to be the first kids in town with three whole dads."

He glances up at Ed, who is absolutely not freaking out, "want a drink?"

#bing bong #our flag means death #ofmd drabble #our flag means drabble #stede bonnet #edward teach #edward 'accidentally good with children' teach #doug 'it's free children (and i plan to love them like my own)' ofmd #look i'm just really proud of 'other man's other man' and 'mister-ess' #alma is ABSOLUTELY doing witchcraft in the garden #how do you think stede survived this long? #this tiny feral child is the true mvp #ofmd #asks #this is real rough and had very lil editing but i'm sure you will all manage!! #replies and reblogs all v welcome and appreciated as always