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He's not been on the road for twenty-four hours, and already Stede Bonnet has buggered this up.
Blue lights flash behind him and a siren rings twice, staccato warnings that announce the officer’s presence, as if Stede wasn’t keenly aware of the police car crawling across the grassy median to reach him. He should be thankful for reinforcements, that he’s not alone anymore and has a way out of this situation—instead, he slumps forward and bangs his forehead on the steering wheel, defeated.
“I’m not a RV-er, I’m an idiot!”
There's a knock at his window and he turns to see a short man with an angry face glaring daggers at him. Hands, says the officer’s name tag. He touches the top of his hat in greeting before he signals for Stede to roll down the window on his brand new F250. If only Stede could remember where the window button is on his brand new F250. His heart is beating against his ribs so hard it’s making his hands shake, the presence of law enforcement having done nothing to calm his frayed nerves. He flaps those shaking hands, flustered, and the cop’s impatient, rasping voice filters through the pane of glass.
“I need you to open the window now, sir.”
“Ah ha!” Stede shouts as he locates the button and engages it. The blasted thing should really be labeled more clearly than that. “Sorry. Still figuring things out.”
Hands ignores him and growls, “License and registration.”
How unnecessarily rude, Stede thinks. He stares blankly at the police officer with his slicked back hair and silver goatee. He’s projecting power and authority as loudly as he can, but all Stede sees is an angry little attack dog on a power trip. He doesn’t know what he was expecting. A helping hand? Reassurance? Certainly not this level of disdain for one little mistake.
He hands over his paperwork and waits.
“What in heaven’s name are you doing on this highway with this size rig, Mr. Bonnet? Didn't you see the signs?”
Stede’s cheeks heat and he’s sure they’ve deepened into an impossibly bright shade of red. “Which signs?”
“Oh, I dunno. One of several along highway ninety-two that warn of low clearance? Maybe the digital one on the on ramp with the flashing lights that reads NO LARGE TRUCKS in the largest font they have?”
“Well, I’m not driving a large truck, am I?” Stede snaps. Maybe these things should be more clearly marked too.
A bead of sweat forms at his temple and he hopes it doesn’t roll down his cheek and give him away. Because the truth is, he was driving distracted. He’s had the same scene playing in his mind since he left the day before: parked outside his house, his windows rolled down, pristine blue sky and a slight breeze; and Mary, his wife, standing alongside their brand new trailer with tears in her eyes, forced to be the bravest of the two of them one final time.
“Come with me,” he'd said.
“I want a divorce,” she’d replied.
Now, Stede swallows hard and looks up to see the line of cars piling up behind him, the angry man outside his window growing more impatient. In front of him, the blasted bridge that started—or, stopped, really—all of this looms. The clearance is about six inches too short for him to proceed without scalping his trailer, the traffic is about a hundred yards too deep for him to throw it in reverse and press rewind on every choice he's made since the weekend. He’s stuck, for who knows how long, with an empty fridge and an empty belly. His stomach churns. He still doesn’t know how to empty his black water tank.
He just wants to go home—until he remembers that home has probably changed the locks, home hasn’t felt like a place he belongs in more than a decade. The word alone makes his heart ache. He’s got no idea what to do with a longing for something that never existed, for a place where he never fit.
Stede looks at his hands, suddenly free of the wedding ring he wore for twenty years, and he freezes. His breath comes shorter and his vision narrows. He knows what this is, the familiar dread and the convincingly loud panic that’s ringing in his ears, but it doesn’t make it any easier to stop it. He gasps and swallows, lifts his chin to try and get more air.
“Bonnet?” Hands is calling from somewhere very far away.
And then there’s another voice, close, just outside his open window. It’s warm and smooth and makes Stede think of the tan slice from the corner bakery he used to beg his nanny for as a child, golden syrup and condensed milk and caramel. He can almost taste the buttery shortbread melting in his mouth. The words exchanged between the two of them elude Stede entirely, but he listens, and tries to let the rhythm of their conversation draw him out of his dread.
The passenger door clicks open and a presence joins him in the cab, another warm body. Another cop, his overwhelmed brain supplies. Probably here to take you to jail. His eyes are pinched closed too tightly to check.
“Hey mate.” The voice is muffled in his ears, like he’s let himself slip underwater, too tired to keep swimming because he’s been treading for so long. “Seems like you’ve gotten yourself into a pickle here, hm?”
“Excuse me?” Hands yells across the truck and Stede tenses again. “You can’t be here! I've got to clear this whole highway—”
“Oi! I’ve been hauling shit way heavier and way longer than this for damn near twenty years, Officer,” the man shouts back, accent familiar, vowels slanting in the same direction as Stede’s. “So unless you’ve got experience reversing sixty feet of heavy machinery up an off ramp full of traffic, I suggest you give us a minute!”
Stede opens his eyes then, first to take in the shock on the cop’s face and the vein bulging over his eyebrow. Hands' jaw is clenched so tight Stede wonders if his molars will fuse and require the use of a crowbar to open his mouth again.
“Fuckin’ truckers,” he grumbles.
And then Stede’s not sure where to look anymore, because he's made the mistake of looking directly into the sun. There's an honest-to-god angel sitting in his passenger seat. Salt-and-pepper hair pulled up in a loose bun at the back of his head, a halo of rapidly-diminishing sunlight illuminating him from behind, all of it serves to cement the conclusion that he's some kind of fairy godparent sent to offer Stede three wishes, the click of his heels, there’s no place like home. His big brown eyes are wide and friendly, tendrils of curly hair that have come free frame his smiling face. His skin is the same color the sound of his voice evoked, golden and caramel, adorned with tattoos that span the length of both of his well-toned arms.
The thought comes loud and free and entirely as a surprise to Stede—he’s beautiful.
“Um,” Stede gulps. “Hi?”
“The Gentleman Nomad, I presume?”
“You—you’ve heard of me?”
“Oh yeah, mate. Heard all about you. Soon as I saw Revenge on the back of your RV, I knew it was you. I was tuned into channel thirteen yesterday, ‘til that dick Banes chased you off.”
Ah. That explains it. Stede had been so excited for his maiden voyage that he’d spent a large portion of the day broadcasting his plans to anyone who was listening over the CB radio. Idiot, he thinks, and blushes again as he remembers the shame he’d felt when he realized that the channel was meant to be used for traffic updates, not like an AOL chat room from the advent of the Internet.
The stranger doesn’t seem to notice though, he’s aglow with that intoxicating smile and an easy cool radiating off of him. Stede bets he knows better than to tie up the CB radio with his itinerary. He’s clearly skilled, a driver with some miles on him, not someone who’d make mistakes like this. He never would have used this exit ramp to begin with.
“How are you here?”
“Saw you from the bridge,” the man says. He points to his semi parked on the shoulder above them, just before the bridge. His lights are still on, like a warning beacon, a lighthouse meant to keep Stede from cracking up on the rocks. “Hiked down the hill there, and here I am.”
“Here you are,” Stede recites, the words slow and empty.
“I’m Ed.”
“Stede Bonnet,” he replies as they shake.
“Pleased to meet you, Gentleman Nomad. What say we get you out of here?”
“You—want to help?”
“‘Course mate. We've all been here a time or two. Just last week, I backed into mud so deep it took half a truck stop to get me moving again. Just payin’ it forward.”
Stede smiles and when their eyes meet, it's like they're both stuck in that thick mud. The gaze lasts too long, the quiet too complete, but somehow it's comfortable. Stede finds that he could spend all day looking at Ed like this and it settles him in his seat.
“We doing this?” Ed asks, hushed.
Stede nods.
“Yes?”
“I think so.”
“Great!” Ed shouts, too loud for the small space. He leans forward and looks past Stede to address the officer still waiting outside. “Handsy, is it? Ready to protect and serve or whatever it is you guys are supposed to do?”
“It’s Hands,” he spits in response and rolls his eyes hard enough that it moves his whole body. “Fine, Mr. Expert, what’s your fuckin’ great idea?”
Ed lights up with a wicked grin. “If you could get these cars to move onto the median, that would go a long way.”
“Fuckin’ truckers,” Hands repeats, but there’s less heat in it this time. He takes the instruction and his rancid attitude and leaves the two of them alone.
“Alright,” Ed says. “Now. Let’s get you back up this ramp.”
Stede’s frozen, his hands glued to the steering wheel, his knuckles ghostly white for how hard he’s squeezing. “But Ed. You can't drive my truck. You’re not insured.”
“Don’t want to drive your truck, mate. No plans to drive your truck. Where’s the fun in that?”
“Oh,” Stede says. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes,” Ed replies with a waggle of his eyebrows and a friendly punch to Stede's shoulder. “You got this. I’ll help.”
“No, I really, really, don’t. I’ve only been driving for a day. I haven’t had to back her up yet, I’ve barely had to do anything at all. I can’t.”
“Oh shut up,” Ed says and it almost sounds fond. Can’t be though. They’ve only just met and no one likes Stede Bonnet at first glance. “You can do it, and you will do it. Just keep to the right, that way you miss all the important bits.”
The panic is back and Stede’s ears are ringing a four-alarm fire in his head. “But, Ed, I can’t. I—” Fuck. He thought he’d put a stop to this earlier, but the tenuous hold he had on himself is slipping rapidly.
A heavy hand in the middle of his back slows his free-fall descent, and Ed's inhales and exhales grow marginally louder, like he’s hoping Stede will follow him.
“Whoa, there. Easy now. Just breathe.”
It's silly for Stede to trust this stranger just because he's being kind. That sort of naivety has burned him before, left him tied up in a row boat in the middle of a lake when the Badminton brothers had challenged him to a friendly race. It had convinced him to trust the milquetoast smile on Mary's art teacher’s face, to feel no threat when he'd met Doug, the man Stede assumes is the impetus for Mary's sudden request for a divorce. He shouldn't trust Ed so quickly, and he shouldn't lean back into the warmth of his hand, or make a memory of the cigarettes and sandalwood smell that surrounds him like a weighted blanket—but it's been so long since anyone was willing. Since anyone tried.
So Stede tries, holds his breath when Ed does, exhales when Ed does. Ed starts to count quietly between the hiss of his inhale and the whoosh of his exhale, and Stede finds himself bobbing along in the ebb and flow, the crashing waves, the push and pull of the current.
Soon, he’s settled. Soon, he pours himself back into the container of his body, calm again.
“Alright?” Ed asks in a whisper.
Stede nods and pointedly ignores the fact that a stranger knows how to guide him out of turbulent waters better than he knows how to himself.
“Okay then—before we turn this little lady back on, think you can talk me through it? Step by step?”
“Talk you…?”
“Yep. It’s going to take that pig a few minutes to get the road cleared so tell me how you plan to back her up. One step at a time. What do you do first?”
“I can't…I don't…I don’t know.”
“Stede?” Ed says. “Your truck is off and in park. What’s your first step?”
Deep breath.
I am adequate.
“Turn her on. Put it in reverse?” he responds, not even sure of that.
“Fuck yes!” Ed shouts, and he punches the roof of the truck. “Put it in rever—well, no, not now! Fucking lunatic,” he laughs and Stede pulls his hand away from the gear shift. “We’re imagining first. It's pretend. So c’mon, what's next?”
Stede closes his eyes and finds he's able to talk Ed through it when he's not so busy hyperventilating about the mess of his life and the gorgeous creature giving him all of his attention. They go through the whole process, reversing the truck, which way to turn the wheel at the top of the ramp so it doesn’t jackknife and make the problem insurmountably worse. By the time Stede has mentally shifted back into drive at the end, Hands is standing at his window again.
“Ok then, Bonnet. Showtime. Don’t fuck this up.”
He looks in the rearview and sees a narrow lane that's just wide enough to navigate through. There is no room for error. Stede’s blood runs hot and then cold, the sting that races through his veins makes the cab feel too small again. He could do with a quick sprint up and down the median to chase off some of this energy, maybe a good screaming session that goes on long enough to wear his voice out completely.
Don’t fuck this up. Don’t fuck this up. Don’t—
Ed’s hand is on his back again. “Just keep breathing, Stede. Just like that.”
His seatbelt is still on and he can feel it pressing into his neck with every inhale. It’s oddly grounding, a reminder that he’s pulling air into his body, and that’s something he can control. This panic isn’t going to leave him, he’s just going to have to do it scared, so he does the only thing left for him to do—he begins.
He turns the key and the engine responds, he feels the rumble through his feet, up his shins, into his backside. It’s like a two ton cat getting comfortable in his lap; he tries not to think about the twelve ton monster that’s looming behind him. He puts her in reverse and starts slowly, creeping, crawling, pushing his fifth wheel back up the exit ramp.
He slips into a crack in his mind, wades through the flood of adrenaline needed to keep him going and the sheer terror of crushing a two-door sedan with his enormous extended-cab pickup. It’s quiet and still there in this liminal space, just what he needs to turn on his autopilot feature and allow himself to muscle his way through the worst of it. He doesn’t know how long it’s been or how long it’s going to take, all Stede knows is that with each rotation of the wheels, with every minute press of his accelerator to keep his momentum going, he is ever so slowly making his way out of this, cleaning up the mess he made, inching closer and closer to freedom.
“I’m doing it,” he whispers, afraid that he’ll scare his good luck away. “I’m actually doing it.”
Ed’s voice is steady and calming, a warm assurance and a friendly nod. “Yeah you are, mate. Just keep going. Keep that wheel straight.”
Stede makes it across half the distance before trouble begins.
The ramp curves a little, not enough to call it a real bend, but just enough that Stede’s overly-conscious and uncertain hand is unable to avoid the little rumble patch along the lane markers designed to keep tired drivers from winding up in a ditch. The RV’s back tires go over it first and send a shockwave to the front. He's perilously close to a little Subaru toting a young family.
“Fuck!” Stede yells and slams the brakes.
The contents of his backseat slip off the leather and crash to the floor.
Ed shouts: “Whoa, mate!” and reaches across him to grab hold of the steering. “Don’t let go of the fuckin’ wheel!”
Stede shouts: “Sorry! I’m sorry!” and presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets while he waits for his heart to return to his chest from its brief detour into his mouth.
In the quiet, a horrible, jangling song, like the one that blares from the speakers on an ice cream truck, begins playing. Stede moves his hands from his face and closes his eyes. He knows exactly what’s making that noise.
The music comes to a crescendo, winds itself down, and ends on a tidy little note, the perfect place to stop, a logical end.
Except it doesn’t. It doesn’t end. It doesn’t even take a deep breath before beginning again.
“What…” Ed asks. “...the fuck is that sound?”
“Ah—my son’s toy piano, if I had to guess.” Stede winces and wonders if this is where Ed abandons ship entirely.
“Does it eventually stop?”
Stede winces and shakes his head. “Afraid not.”
They sit and listen to the thing cycle through its song once, twice. It’s supposed to be cheery and fun, could be ominous if you were to picture it playing on an abandoned street, echoing around empty houses, a single, creaking swing swaying back and forth in an empty yard. Either way, it’s unwelcome. Annoying and equally distracting when he needs all of his faculties for concentration. He can feel it sinking in, becoming the soundtrack to his utter failure.
His kids were supposed to be here. His wife. His whole family—they were supposed to come on the trip. And instead, he’s alone.
Ed clicks his seatbelt open and sighs. Moment of truth. Ed’s hand braces against the door handle. Stede waits for him to pull, to hop out onto the road, walk away without looking back.
“Thought you might say that,” Ed says. “Looks like I’m going spelunking.”
He swings his whole body around to face the back and manages to tuck his long legs beneath him until he’s squatting in place. He’s spiderlike in his movements, long limbs reaching and making contact with every possible surface to steady him. A hand on the ceiling, a knee on the center console.
Stede is transfixed. He didn’t know a body could move like that, a stream running downhill, confident and capable, agile. He's never felt such a visceral response to watching. There's heat in his belly and heat in his face, and then the sudden urge to press himself against Ed so Stede can feel the way he slinks and slides firsthand.
This is wrong. He shouldn’t be objectifying the only person who’s reached out a helping hand in the last twenty-four hours—he should be thankful. But honest to god, he can’t help it. He’s never found the bend in someone’s elbow attractive before.
“Um,” Stede says, his brain wiped thoroughly clean.
“Here’s the plan,” Ed says with all the seriousness of an action hero diffusing a bomb. “You keep driving. I’ve got this.”
“Keep…driving?”
“Keep driving,” Ed repeats. He’s halfway into the backseat now, but he looks back, putting them nearly face to face.
“Look at me, Stede,” he says, like Stede could look anywhere else. “You can do this. I’m not going to let anything happen to you, or to me, or this big beautiful rig of yours, alright?”
“Alright,” Stede whispers.
Good heavens it’s easy to believe him, what with how earnest and kind he is. And handsome. It’s the handsome really, it’s the handsome that seals the deal. He imagines that Ed probably lives in what one of Mary’s favorite TV shows called the Beautiful Bubble, a magical land where people treat him just a little bit differently. Strangers are kinder when you look Like That, they let you jump the checkout line at the grocery, hold doors open, smile brighter as you pass. He wonders how often Ed bats his eyelashes to get out of parking tickets.
Stede blinks rapidly a few times—just to clear the air, reset so he can focus on the task at hand—but he wishes his attentions weren’t so easily won. He wishes he weren’t so shallow. Lips, and smile, and warm, are playing on a loop in his broken-record brain as he reaches up and adjusts the rearview out of habit. He checks his side mirrors. He grips the wheel.
The song keeps playing.
And then, as if his poor, overstimulated mind needed one more thing to deal with, Ed finishes his journey into the back with a wiggle and a graceful little leap. He pulls his legs forward and leaves his back half, the bottom half, level with Stede’s face.
Ed’s ass is in Stede’s face.
Ed smells like tobacco and cheap gas station incense, a little bit of vanilla and amber underneath it all—and his ass is right in Stede’s face.
Stede blanches for what feels like the tenth time that afternoon and worries that his blood might get tired of filling and draining from his face and fuck off to some other part of him. His ears. His chest. His…lap? His lap, where there's something latent stirring, something that’s got more than just a passing interest in the view.
He grips the wheel tighter, takes a deep breath through his nose, and redoubles his efforts to pretend like everything is normal. Maybe he’s somewhere else! Could be out at sea on a boat, nothing but open water and an expansive blue sky all around him. He just has to ease his ship back onto calm waters, and he’ll be off on his way, lickety split. He just needs to think of something sobering like…like scurvy, or mutiny, or being gut-stabbed.
The only way out of this mess he’s made is through, so he lets his foot off the brake and engages the gas pedal, slowly, gently. He’s got a sense of the proper amount of pressure now and he’s pretty confident that he can get her moving without too much of Ed’s cajoling—though he’d be a liar if he didn’t admit that he likes that part. He likes feeling like he’s doing something right, fixing a problem as he edges past the little sedan on the shoulder. He likes being told that he’s good. It’s the perfect anecdote to the fact that with every passing car comes an angry driver with whom he makes eye contact and gets a glare or a middle finger for his troubles.
“Ah fuck,” Ed shouts suddenly.
“Okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Dodgy knee.”
Stede risks another glance.
Behind him, Ed is on his knees and leaning on his forearms as he searches under the seats for the little keyboard. His rather perfect ass is still right at eye level, and perfectly displayed for an audience of one.
Maybe Stede can have a small breakdown about this. As a treat. As the wheels beneath him roll faster, the ones in his brain match their pace.
He's been divorced. Or separated? Apart from his wife for almost an entire day now, surely that's long enough to grant him permission to indulge in a small gay awakening about the nice man who came to save him.
Except that no. That’s not the right word, awakening. It’s not like he didn’t know. He’d had passing crushes in boarding school, and of course, his Thursday afternoon trysts with Jeffrey Fettering at the horse stables during year eleven. Stede knows that he’d had some childish desires when he was younger, but he’d chosen to set those aside for the “greater good” when he’d married Mary. To mature. To become the man his father wanted him to be.
But now there’s no Father, no Mary. Not even a marry, as it were. He’s...free. Free to indulge in a lingering look at a beautiful man. Won’t hurt anybody, just to look.
The song starts over for the ninth time, and yes, he is fucking counting. He recognizes the tune now: Do your ears hang low? Do they wobble to and fro? Can you tie them in a knot? Can you tie them in a bow? Can you throw them over your shoulder like a continental soldier…
“Can you not find it, Ed?” Stede says. He can hear the irritation in his voice but he can’t help it, can’t flatten it out or smooth out the wrinkles. “Look under the bench, maybe?”
“Mmmph,” comes the reply, the sound of a man deep in the underbelly of this stupid, fuck-off huge truck that probably shouldn’t even be street legal. “Dammit! Almost had it!”
That’s a no, then. Maybe that's okay. Maybe he doesn't have to find it. They’re so close to the top of the hill now, he can make out the features of a couple of cops standing in the road, twiddling their thumbs. They’re pissed too, just as angry as Hands was at the beginning of all of this. Stede wonders what the purpose of these little tin soldiers is, if they’re just here to give him a hard time for an honest mistake.
“Just a few dozen yards more, Ed! Almost there!”
Stede focuses on their end point like his mental health depends on arriving there as quickly as possible, because it does, and he accelerates up the hill. Just enough to go something more like a reasonable speed, an amount of movement that might be called driving and not just rolling. Fast enough that he doesn’t have time to wonder if the toddler in the backseat of that minivan they just passed has been screaming like that for the last forty minutes.
He’s almost there, he’s almost done it, he just needs to turn the wheel, ever so carefully to the—
“Ah ha!” Ed shouts, at the same time that Stede lays on the horn and cries, “I fucking did it!”
He's done it.
Ed’s got a pair of double As in his fist and the fucking piano has sung its last.
“We fucking did it!” Ed says, and Stede throws the truck into park.
Ed bursts out of the back door and Stede follows him onto the highway in a similar fashion. He doesn't know what comes over him. He's never really been a touchy man— certainly not with an almost-stranger—but Stede launches himself at Ed, whose arms are already wide open and ready to catch him. He pulls Stede in close, arms tight around his waist and squeezing. He’s tugging and tugging, trying to bring Stede impossibly closer, until Stede feels him tip back. Stede gives a little excited kick of his feet, a tiny yelp into Ed's hair.
The ground and the sky become a blur as Ed starts to spin. Around them, the streetlights come on, luminaries adding their yellow glow to deep blues and greens, the black of approaching night. It's like being in an abstract painting, not a whole lot about it makes sense to Stede's rational mind, but he can't deny that it's making him feel something. Something new and confusing and alive.
“We made it!” Stede shouts and lets go of Ed's neck with one arm, raises it in triumph. Punches the air, a little too earnest, too big, too loud. It’s far too much of a celebration considering traffic is just starting to get moving again below them. Some sort of penance is probably due, and he feels a pang of guilt—but it’s so small and quiet he moves straight past it without a second glance. He’s happy, and he’s going to let himself have this for however long it lasts.
Ed's motion slows and Stede slides down his front until both of his feet are flat on the ground again. It should be awkward or uncomfortable, and Stede dusts off his shirt and clears his throat, ready to step back and to offer an apology for throwing himself at Ed like that, for getting them into this situation in the first place. Except that Stede’s hand has slipped down the front of Ed’s shirt and it’s resting right over his heart. It’s beating at such a clip that Stede feels the need to fist his hand into the fabric, to try and catch it on its next thud. Suddenly, it's much easier to take a step closer instead of away.
“Ed, I can’t thank you enough. I’m so so—”
Ed shakes his head. He doesn't look sorry. Ed doesn't look upset at all. His eyes are dark and intent, and they’re fixed on Stede’s lips.
“Glad I could be of service.”
Christ. Stede swallows against his own want, doing his best to ignore any thought of Ed servicing him. He hadn't imagined, even moments ago, that his harmless ogling would manifest into something more. He was just looking! Wanting this, but not daring to dream that it might become anything other than a figment of his imagination. It's a good imagination, robust, one he's always trusted. But maybe he’ll have to recalibrate it now, now that Ed’s broken his expectations wide open. Now that Ed is here, solid and warm.
That enticing mix of sweet and earthy smells is even stronger from this close. Every point of contact between them is a tiny spark—of electricity, of possibility, of heat—and Stede is hyper aware of each one. Even as he holds himself statue-still, Ed adds a few more connection points to their number: his thumb finds Stede's cheek, his palm cups the side of Stede's face, his lips complete the circuit.
And then, Ed is kissing Stede.
He leans in strong and sure and claims Stede’s top lip between his own. It’s gentle, just the way Ed had approached, leaving space for Stede to turn and run if he'd rather. But for once in his life, he doesn't want to be anywhere else. And even if he wanted to, he couldn’t, because everything is still spinning. Whether it’s because the dregs of dizziness are still clinging to him, or the way Ed's mouth is moving cautiously against his, he’s not sure. Maybe it’s a symptom of wanting more so badly you think you might not survive it. It makes him question whether he’s ever been properly kissed before this.
The answer, he thinks, is no.
Stede is warm all over and comfortably bereft of thought. Ed turns his head and Stede chases after him—but the kiss is over almost as quickly as it began. He gives a little whimper of protest.
Ed’s responding chuckle is deep and resonant, sounds like the purr of Stede's engine.
“Did you mean to do that?” Stede squeaks.
Ed grins. “Mhm.”
“On purpose?”
“Yes, mate," Ed laughs. "Is that okay?”
“Yes! It’s…GREAT!” Stede says, too loud for close range. He wrangles his voice into something more tolerable and says, “You could do it again if you want.”
“Don’t you worry, Bonnet. Planning on it.” Ed plants a little kiss on the tip of his nose, between his eyebrows. He tucks a strand of hair behind Stede’s ear and makes him feel pretty. “Got any plans for the rest of the night?”
Stede scoffs, starts to laugh, because what the hell kind of question is that? He’s not really had a plan since the moment he put the truck in drive and took to the highway. Does he have any plans for the evening? Of course he doesn’t. But he knows he doesn’t want to be alone. He pulls away from Ed with a shake of his head.
“No plans,” he says. “Not now, or for the foreseeable.”
“Well good,” Ed says and Stede can hear him smiling. “Good. What if I told you I knew a place where we could park for the night. Together? How much convincing might that take?”
Ed grabs him by the wrist, uses his arm like a lasso, and tugs Stede back into his chest where he holds onto him tightly, almost like he doesn’t want to let go. Stede lets himself be guided until he’s flush against Ed and there’s no room for his arms to hang at his sides. Ed drapes the hand he’d grabbed around his neck and Stede follows with the other one. It’s an embrace so natural, comfortable and familiar, that Stede is suddenly unsure why his plans haven’t always included Ed.
But that's not what comes out of his damn mouth.
“Together? But why?”
Ed pulls his face back, brown crinkled in surprise. “Why what?”
“Why do you want to go anywhere with me? I'm a mess, Ed. I just fled one miserable life and literally crashed into this one. I don't know what I'm doing, and…”
“And you're fascinating,” he asserts. “You're brave enough to be out here to begin with, you're doing something about it. I just want the chance to get to know you, mate.”
Stede thinks about that. He thinks about the alternative, driving off into the dark on his own. Missing out on the potential for more of that kissing.
He did take to the road looking for an adventure after all.
“Minimal negotiating, then. Negligible even. I’d say I’m halfway to convinced already.”
And when Ed says good this time, he whispers it against Stede’s lips as they fall together once again.