Sunset ^beta

They had gone back to piracy after all. Mary had been unsure about it, Anne hadn’t been lying even if she had just seized on whatever insult was at hand in order to make a point, but in the end nothing else they did worked. Over the past year, they’d tried any number of occupations: they’d been wine merchants, itinerant artists, actresses. All of them ended in blood, screaming, knives, and so on. Highway robbery was pretty good, but on a small island the pickings were so slim and the risk of being caught and hanged was so high. Better to do essentially the same thing by ship, with the whole Atlantic to terrorize.

Not that piracy made for less blood, screaming, and knives, even in their sex life. But when Anne had an outlet for her rage and Mary didn’t feel like a useless piece of shit, everything … fell into place. Talking to each other wasn’t the worst thing, and it turned out to be somewhat more satisfying to playact the fights than to really have them, pushing them to ludicrous heights of feigned offense.

(And sometimes they were lucky enough to come across ladies on the ships they took who also wanted to be taken, who would ask to spend a week with them, tied up and available in their cabin. They didn’t really need the blood and screaming when they were both concentrating on one of these tender morsels, although knives usually came into play as props. And the girls went away with a small box of jewels as a reward, and a nice story about having been held captive by the fearsome pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read.)

But you needed a holiday every once in a while, even from the most stimulating career. Anne suggested it one night as she looked out the window at the coastline, only visible as a string of lighted windows and lanterns in the distant darkness.

“Mmm, what if we put ashore for a bit? We could find a place to stay, see the sights, go out to dinner, that kind of thing.” Mary made a noise, and she lifted up onto her knees a bit to let her speak.

“You just want to fucking go antiquing, don’t you?”

"Oh, hush," Anne replied, and sat down again, grinding a bit for good measure.

They ended up at a small inn close to the beach, a ramshackle building that looked like a tiny house with four or five additions on the back, each one executed differently. The one furthest to the back looked the most structurally sound, as though the builders were learning as they went.

"Well, it's very cute," said Anne, pursing her lips and cocking her head to one side. "It has character."

Mary crossed her arms. "Probably a shithole." But Anne was already picking her way up the stone-studded path, arms held out for balance with a dainty little flick of the wrists, and so Mary followed with a sigh.

"Oh, now, this is lovely!" said Anne once they were inside, and, well, it was nice enough. Not as good as their old house used to be before they burned it down, but it was better than you'd expect from the loose boards and wonky corners — decent carpet, painted walls. The tall reception desk was an antique, looked like it had come from a bar somewhere, nice walnut stain. "Look at this clock!" Obediently, Mary turned around to look at the piece with her arms crossed while Anne ran her hands over the inlay.

"We're not getting back into —" she said, only to be interrupted by a chirping voice behind her.

"Hello! Welcome to the —" Anne looked up and Mary turned around, and the man recognized them as quickly as they recognized him. "Oh, my god."

"Oh my god!" Anne squealed. "It's little Stede Bonnet! Are you an innkeeper now, Stedey boy?"

It was always kind of fun to watch people get wrongfooted by Annie, and just as she remembered, Bonnet’s face was expressive enough to make it very entertaining. He’d probably never considered running into them again. Maybe he’d even hoped not to, like most of the people they crossed paths with.

“You — ah.” The two of them exchanged an amused glance while Stede scrambled for words. “I’m not — well, it’s complicated.”

“Oooh, you’re in disguise? That’s fun.” Anne’s grin was wide and wolfish. “Well, no need for that with us, of course.”

“Where’s Eddie?” He had to be nearby. Mary couldn’t imagine he’d let Stede Bonnet be all alone and unprotected in his silly little venture, not the way he’d been the last time she saw him. Stepping between them and his boyfriend like they were going to waste any of their poison or weapons on him.

Stede eyed them both, hesitated, and then called out, “Ed?”

There was only a moment’s quiet before good old Ed Teach walked through the door to Stede’s right, wiping his hands on a towel and making cow eyes. “Hey, babe! Just put the next loaves in the oven, I think you’re really gonna — oh, shit.”

Not as nice a welcome as last time. Not as bad as it could have been, though. Ed’s eyes were darting between her and Anne and then back to Stede, and then back to them. He tucked the towel into his belt, stepped casually around to the front of the desk, and then leaned on it. Shielding Bonnet again. Mary rolled her eyes at Anne.

“So. Girls. Didn’t expect to see you again.”

Anne laughed, her hands on her hips. “You sound so suspicious, Eddie!”

“Wonder why.”

She strolled forward, ass swaying, and patted him on the cheek. To his credit, he didn’t flinch, although Stede looked nervous. “Times change, you know. We’re not bored like we were. Not hiding out on land anymore, trying to be something we’re not.”

“We’ve gone back to piracy,” Mary put in.

Maybe she was just imagining it, but a flash of something went across Stede’s face. Ed didn’t notice, she thought, but he did look sort of relieved. Which was probably pretty fair.

The boys set Anne and Mary up in a room they claimed was their best, although it wasn’t a patch on the house Anne had burned down. Well, it was only the best out of six rooms, so it wasn’t that much of a claim, anyway.

"So here's towels," said Stede, putting an armload of them on the foot of the bed while Ed lingered in the doorway. He was cleaner than the last time Anne had seen him, not that that was saying much, and he'd filled out a bit and his hair was nicer. And at the same time, Anne barely wanted to jump his bones to piss off Mary and Ed. Ah, love. “Anything else we can get you?”

She still fluttered her eyelashes and rolled her shoulders back when she responded. “No thanks, sweetie. All good here.”

“Right.” Both boys seemed not to want to leave, but they weren’t being particularly interesting either, pursing their lips and looking around like they didn’t presumably know the whole tiny place like the backs of each other’s hands.

Anne didn’t really care — if they wanted to hang about, well, she always liked an audience — but it was getting under Mary’s skin. “The fuck’s going on with the two of you?” she demanded, one hand on her hip and the other pointing furiously at them. “Worried we’re gonna steal the silver?”

“What? No!” protested Stede, but Ed didn’t rise to the bait.

“Want to make sure you’re not planning to burn the house down,” he said evenly.

“Eddie!” Anne pretended to be scandalized, but only just enough to let them know. Mary, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be shamming.

“We’re not a couple of pyromaniacs.”

Ed shrugged. “I’ve seen you both burn down plenty of things. Ships … houses … forests …”

“I think,” said Stede, his hands raised to cut off Mary before she could retort that she’d seen the same kind of behavior from him, “that we should leave the two of you to your, ah, whatever it is you want to do with the afternoon. There are some highly-rated sights around here — the mountain over there behind the house, the locals call it the Sleeping Giant, you get a great view from the top, and then there’s the beach, and, you know, all the cute little shops in the village …”

It didn’t escape Anne's notice that all of his suggestions involved them leaving the premises, but her response was just a cute little wave and a wink to usher him out of the room in terror of a flirtatious woman who’d already shown a tendency to leap on him for a snog. Ed followed, because of course he did.

Anne and Mary decided to christen the room properly instead of going out for some kind of hike (boring), swimming (they lived on a fucking ship on the fucking ocean), or shopping (maybe later).

Dinner was a truly exciting prospect. They didn't have to exchange a word about it to know how each of them felt: Anne's glinting eyes and Mary's lopsided smirk said get a load of all this domestic crap. Want to bet I can blow it all up? The boys wouldn't know what had hit them.

Well, except that they'd already experienced the shtick before. That was an unusual twist on the usual formula, since very few people got to see them do their thing twice. Nobody, really, since they were usually dead by the end of it. Still — this was just for fun, anyway, so who cared?

The dining table was … serviceable. Kind of a letdown, really. Apparently they'd put all the best furniture in the entry hall. But it was sturdy, definitely something that would hold up to, say, being railed on it. (Anne had more qualifications for what counted as “good furniture,” but that was a frequent standard of Mary's.) Ed and Stede put themselves at the head and foot, leaving Anne and Mary to sit together in the middle. Like they were being hemmed in.

Well, fine. Four could play at that game.

“So! Two of you've settled down,” Mary said as she took a hefty serving of mashed potatoes. Ed's eyes tracked the spoon as she dipped it in for a second. “Nice place you've got here. Very solid, very … safe.”

“It's lovely.” Anne took the bowl and scraped up her own helping, effectively finishing it off before handing it down to Ed, who scowled down at it. “So quaint. Would you call it kitschy?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely kitschy.”

“Get a lot of guests, do you?”

“Ah,” said Stede, watching the two of them start to demolish the pot roast, taking slices that were much too big for them to eat in a single sitting. “Well. We see ourselves as more of a … boutique operation.”

Anne and Mary exchanged amused glances. “Adorable,” said Anne, sweetly — too sweetly. “Aw, Mary, remember when we ran a business?”

“Oh yeah.” Mary smiled the smile of fond reminiscence. “Fucking awful.”

“Fucking awful! Christ, remember how frustrated I used to get over doing the books?”

“I remember you chucking the books in the fire, anyway.”

“How about you, Eddie?” Anne turned to his end of the table, where Ed was now scowling down at the small and gristly piece of beef left for him. “Do you just love sitting at your little desk, trying to make all the columns add up? Aw, do you wear a little pair of spectacles while you do it?”

“It's fine,” said Ed, shortly. Another hit.

“Come on, now, Annie,” said Mary, with a tone that implied she was being generous. “Can't take more than, what? Ten or fifteen minutes a week at the most for this place.”

Oh, Stede didn't like that. “Our business is doing very well, actually. We were just runners-up for Best Lodgings last month!”

“Ooooh!” Anne and Mary exclaimed together, making eye contact and raising their brows. “Well done, then,” Mary went on. “Runners-up.”

The tension was definitely rising. Stede was flustered for sure, not that it seemed to hard to get a reaction from him (those emotions were right on the surface), and Ed? Ed was annoyed they were getting to his boyfriend, and also ruining his dinner. This new version of Eddie seemed kind of zen, but you just had to scratch that layer away to get to the anger underneath.

So the time was right to shift up a gear. “Well,” said Anne with a bit of a prissy air. “if business is booming, I hope it hasn’t affected your love life.”

“Excuse me?” burst out of Stede, while Ed let out a “what the fuck?”

“You know,” she went on, drawing it out and enjoying it even more than the wine or the roast. “Sometimes when you’re too busy, or too stressed out, it can affect things … downstairs. Make you too tired for it, makes you too cross with each other. We know about that sort of thing, don't we, love?”

“All in the past now, darling.” Mary reached over and took a generous pinch of Anne’s backside, leading to a whoop of laughter. “Fuck, it’s like being twenty again, isn’t it?”

“Nothing like the salt breezes to make you ready for a tumble.”

“Really gets the blood up.”

“Well, if you'll permit me to add to the conversation,” said Stede loudly, “we’re fine in that department.”

Another exchanged glance that landed on its audience. Too easy.

“Of course you are.” Anne used that pouty, you’re-being-so-brave voice that really got under people’s skin. “A little bed death is nothing you can’t work through.”

“A little — Ed!” Stede was calling for reinforcements, but Ed was glowering silently at their guests. Honestly, it was hilarious how seriously he was taking the whole conversation. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

“Of course we don’t, sweetie.” Anne reached over and patted his arm softly, like she was giving him moral support, and that was apparently the last straw.

“Right!” Stede set his hands on the edge of the table and pushed back off it, shoving his chair across the bare floorboards with an obnoxious scraping sound, and that was it. Oooh, would he fling it at the wall like Eddie had on their visit? They both took sips of wine in anticipation of the new turn that the night’s entertainment was about to take, exchanging looks with dancing eyes as their pulses quickened. Anne was almost salivating with the feel of something about to happen.

Keeping up that pissy energy, he marched down the length of the table to Ed, wrenching the chair around with one hand, and squarely straddled Ed’s lap with his own legs planted firmly on either side. His hands came up to cradle Ed’s face, one sneaking around to the back of his neck, and Stede’s head blocked out whatever Ed’s expression might have been as he came in for the kiss.

It was a pretty good one, as far as Anne and Mary could tell. Bit performative, a lot more lip smacking and moaning than necessary, especially given how quiet the room was, but it didn’t come across as forced. It wasn’t until Stede arched his back and slid higher up Ed’s lap, and Ed responded by clutching him closer and letting one hand travel down to Stede’s ass, that, well, someone had to break the tension. Mary let out a low, throaty laugh; Anne sipped her wine and banged a fist on the table in glee.

“All right, all right,” said Mary, still chuckling, and the boys broke apart, breathing hard. When they turned to her, their eyes were wide and mouths still slightly open, an aura of surprise giving the impression that they’d forgotten about their audience. “Nice job.”

“You don’t have to prove to me that you’re a good kisser.” Anne winked at Stede, and this time he just wrinkled his nose in response. Ed laughed.

“But he’s my good kisser.” And when he squeezed the ass cheek he was palming, Stede looked back at him and kissed him again, more casually, and it was pretty fucking adorable.

Maybe they’d gone soft. Anne could still have provoked a fight, or Mary could have turned it into an orgy. This stupid little inn could have been totally wrecked either way, if they’d wanted. But they didn’t want. Instead, Anne laughed and Mary got out her weed and Stede poured some more wine and Ed moved them all over to some armchairs by the fire, where it was warm and light and felt as safe as their cabin, which wasn’t even really that safe when you got down to it, but when it was just Anne and Mary (and the occasional guest) in there, it did actually feel as safe as anything.

Fucking gross. But also? Fucking nice.