A Pirate's Life For Us

Chapter 1 - The Bath

Ed had just burned it all down. All of it. He had tried to stay the man he had become, but he couldn't do it. He may have hated his old self, but it had kept him alive for a very long time. It protected him - and his heart. And now that his heart was broken, the urge to crawl back into that ugly, spiked suit of armor was far too strong.

But the psychic damage of pulling that ugly mask on him was intense. He could only hold it in the presence of others. Alone, like he was now, it all fell down.

He'd run out of tears some time ago and now sat numb in the bathtub of the captains' quarters, face streaked with kohl from darkened eyes and painted beard. Blackbeard had always been a mask, an artifice - but now he had to reapply it every morning - to cover up the man love had revealed.

There was no going back to wearing the armor of Blackbeard full-time.

Not since he met a funny little man named Stede Bonnet.

Ed reached out and wrapped his fingers around a bar of lavender soap. Its surface was cracked, but it smelled earthy and just a little musky. And just past it, a tiny toy model of the ship, designed for a child to play with in the bath.

The sense memory hit him like a bag of bricks.

—

"Stede. Uh. Stede?"

"You alright in there, Ed?"

"Yeah. Well. No. I mean..."

"Do...do you want me to come in?"

"...I think you better."

Stede very slowly opened the door to the bathroom. Or rather, he opened it a little, then closed it again, then shyly opened it a little more and poked his head in. "Ed? Oh my."

Ed was in the tub. Stede had shown him how to fill it and about the various soaps and left him to it. Somehow, the pirate had managed to create a massive pile of suds that completely enveloped him and spilled out onto the floor. He was nothing but a bearded face in a mountain of white.

"There were no bubbles. And then there were. Well, there were a lot of them."

"I can see that." Mirth danced in Stede's eyes as he looked at Ed, enveloped as he was in a soapy cloud. His face was just about the only thing sticking out as the suds piled high and spilled over onto the floor. He slowly made his way into the room, slipping a bit as his elegant shoes hit a bit of soap. "That's all right. Easy mistake to make."

Stede picked his way carefully over to the other man and reached up to sweep the suds away from his head. He pushed a handful out the porthole. It floated out and he heard a shout from Frenchie. "Sorry! Fair warning though. More coming." He giggled a little, then shouted, "SUDS AHOY!" and then scooped another armful out the window.

The crew gave a chorus of confused and delighted sounds.

"There, see? Your mistake brought a little bit of delight to the crew. So it's not all bad, right?"

Ed shifted, now a bit more unearthed from his soapy prison. "I guess so. Now that I'm not breathing in bubbles, it's kind of nice. Like swimming in a small bucket. On a ship. In the ocean. Which...doesn't make sense. Why wash on a boat when you can wash in the ocean? But I guess you don't get this in the ocean." He grabbed a handful of suds and blew on them. The first attempt was nothing more than a sputter, but the second pushed bits into the air.

"Well, I suppose there's sea foam."

"But that smells..."

"...smells bad, yes," said Stede in near-unison with Ed. "Certainly no good for getting clean, or relaxing for that matter."