Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The word of the day is disembowelment.

Its definition is as follows:

Disembowelment: The act of taking the bowels out of someone. 

And then - a footnote:

(Bowels are like all the squishy inside-bits that make up your guts.)

Next to the definition is a picture of a pukey-face, vomiting green Expo-marker that drips a good three inches down the whiteboard. Lovely.

Great word, disembowelment. Very…multi-syllabic. Really tests the ol’ phonics knowledge. 

It’s just. Well.

The word of the day was not supposed to be disembowelment.

For reference, Stede’s most recent ‘words-of-the-day’ have been:

• Ecstatic
• Vibrant
• Optimism
• Resilient (a tricky one, and a word that the kids have been using with single-minded obsession ever since. Mr Bonnet, I fell and I didn’t even cry; I’m so resilient! Mr Bonnet, the copier jammed again and you didn’t even cry? You’re so resilient!)

And, of course:

• Taffeta

(Stede happens to consider a knowledge of fabrics to be of extreme importance. Besides, taffeta is fun to say. Forgive him for wanting the occasional spot of whimsy in his day.)

The word of the day is supposed to tick all of the following boxes:

1. Provide more complex vocabulary for his third-graders, and encourage them to explore harder words in a safe, risk-free environment.
2. Help to reinforce spelling rules and letter formation.
3. Be practical. The kind of versatile word that his little crew could realistically incorporate during writing-time (we don’t need to talk about taffeta here, thank you very much).
4. Be appropriate. For eight-year-olds.

It’s hardly any wonder that Stede is staring, aghast, at his whiteboard right now. He feels his mouth hanging ajar, and that little muscle under his right eye is beginning to twitch. Which, according to student Jayce Nguyen, it only does when he gets really miffed (another word of the day, and Stede hadn’t even been annoyed by Jayce’s commentary at the time; just proud that he had both remembered the word and used it correctly).

Disembowelment, though.

Bloody disembowelment?

Stede stands in the doorway to his classroom, one palm still poised against the light switch, his blood pressure bubbling and swelling like a sourdough that’s gone a bit wrong.

He takes a deep breath, and reminds himself in dulcet tones, that this is, admittedly, par for the course.

Hard to find a decent substitute these days. It’s pretty typical that when a teacher takes a personal day, they come back to disorder and disarray and plans not being properly followed. If disembowelment is the worst of what has occurred in his absence, then Stede should probably consider himself pretty fortunate.

Nodding once, forcing the irritable zings in his blood to settle, Stede takes a single step into the room.

He promptly trips over a chair, stumbles all over his own ankles, stumbles over nothing at all, and then finally hits the deck with a loud, bruising thump.

Jesus Christ. 

What the fuck. Why the absolute fuck is there a chair directly in the middle of the bloody doorway?

With a grizzly noise of pain, a surly glower at the teeny-tiny plastic seat, and an irascible rub of his ankle, Stede finally takes a moment to absorb the rest of his classroom. 

And.

Okay.

Great.

Sure.

Fine.

Great.

Stede hobbles to his feet, gripping the chair to haul himself to standing.

He turns off the light.

He limps back into the hallway, and he closes the door behind him.

He locks the door.

He takes another slow, steady breath.

Why Stede thinks this is likely to help, he’s got no idea. The tried-and-true ‘turn it off and on again’ trick. Great for iPads. Great for temper tantrums.

Not so great for your classroom that’s been turned upside down. And also booby-trapped to ensure the first thing Stede would do upon entry is enthusiastically belly-flop directly into the fucking ground.

Stede stands in the hall for a moment with the general vibes of a pissed-off tea kettle, tottering away on the burner with an internal shriek building in the steam of his lungs.

Oh dear, these seem like very big feelings! Why don’t we try our birthday candle breaths so we can calm down your body and your brain? Show me your birthday candle fingers, come on!

Get stuffed.

Stede unlocks the door again. He opens it again. He takes two steps into the room, and he turns on the light. Again.

And then he stands alone in his empty classroom, taking in the scene that’s slowly unfolding before his eyes, atrocity after atrocity looming to the surface. 

His year three crew will be arriving to start the day in just over thirty minutes, and Stede honestly thinks it’s going to take him every one of those thirty minutes to try and process what the hell has happened in this room over the past twenty-four hours. 

The first thing is the desks.

The fact that Stede had noticed the disembowelment before the desks is completely baffling, quite honestly.

His sweet arrangement of collaborative table clusters and quiet work-stations and neatly stacked chairs? 

Gone. Obliterated.

Instead, the furniture is strewn wildly around the room, propped into all sorts of erratic configurations like a dropped box of panic attacks. There’s a desk or three toppled completely onto their sides, legs jutting out, the rubber stoppers on their feet gazing at Stede like mournful, helpless eyes. The chairs, too, are a total disaster; some sideways or upside-down, one particular chair balanced on one corner, with a swaying skyscraper of tables leaning against it in a way that suggests it’s providing an alarming amount of structural integrity.

Draped over most of the tables are…blankets. 

Under them: pillows.

Stede doesn’t keep blankets or pillows in his classroom. 

He inches towards some of the more-stable looking architecture, gingerly lifting the corner of a blanket-roof.

A handwritten label reads: Property of Mr Fettering - Kindergarten.

Stede frowns. He wonders whether Jeffrey gave up his naptime supplies willingly, or whether it was under duress. Or worse, if they were simply pilfered without his knowledge.

Unbelieeeeevable.

The encampment of blanket forts is bad enough. Jesus, it’s going to take Stede all morning to get his room back to normal.

But then. Then!

Drawn on his other whiteboard, the bigger one near the interactive screen (left on, wasting power, Stede notes testily)- on that board is a hand-drawn map.

Stede sidles carefully through the mayhem of desks to get a closer look. Still manages to get jabbed in the thigh by table legs three times, and to stub his toe, and to send several pieces of furniture crashing to the ground. He curses about each of these with increasing creativity, each one earning a prestigious spot for the secret, grown-up word-of-the-day that resides solely inside his own head. 

The map is…impressively detailed, though Stede isn’t entirely sure what he’s looking at, if he’s honest. It’s definitely not recognisable as any part of Aotearoa. No cities or landmarks are labelled, although there are a few large red dots marked that certainly indicate…something. 

It’s coastal, certainly. Stede traces the craggy shoreline with a fingertip, erasing a path of green and blue as he goes. 

You see, it’s all the blue that suggests it's adjacent to the sea. Lots of blue. Maybe more blue than Stede has ever seen in his life.

Someone has coloured in the entire fucking board.

Stede snatches his sky-blue dry erase marker from the magnetic pen-cup, squeaks off the lid, and does a quick, aggressive test-scribble on the tiniest patch of empty space, right near the bottom of the board, though he already knows exactly what he’s going to find.

Sure enough, the marker is completely dead. The green one, too.

A brand new pack. A brand new pack of markers, Stede’s actual lifeblood, ruined. A twelve-pack, now down to ten, and sure, ten is still a nice round number, but Stede knows there is supposed to be twelve, and now there isn’t. How is he meant to function, without the objective-best two colours in the pack? 

And yes, he could buy another pack. But then he’d have twenty-two. It’d be all wrong!

With a loud, strangled noise not unlike a pigeon in a blender, Stede smacks the flat of his hand against the mystery-map and swipes viciously. It makes a squeegee noise, and the blue and green ink smears across his bare palm.

The complex black spiderweb of interlocking highways and railroads…does not smear.

Permanent ink.

Spectacular.

With a twisted snarl, Stede turns on his heels to stalk away from the board, and immediately whacks his shin on the desk parked innocently behind him. The chair balanced on top falls, and lands squarely on Stede's foot.

Stede thinks calm thoughts. He really, truly does. He’s trickling brooks and quiet birdsong. He’s ambient lighting and the smell of old books. He’s birthday candle breaths. Really, he is.

Tea. He needs tea.

Just a nice cup of tea to soothe his nerves. 

Thankfully, Stede is proactive enough to keep an entire brewing station in his classroom. This is both so he can avoid running into Sharon from enrolments in the staffroom, who likes to tell long, nasally stories about her five cats, and also for Extreme Tea Emergencies.

This is definitely an Extreme Tea Emergency.

Stede digs the electric kettle out of the biggest drawer in his desk, where it stays safely stashed away from grabby little fingers in search of third-degree burns and incident reports. He manoeuvres past more desks (carefully, this time), jams the plug into the socket by the sink, and fills it with enough water for a nice, alleviating brew. 

Then he pulls open the drawer under the sink containing his tea supplies.

Containing. Some of his tea supplies.

Stede stares into the drawer.

Teabags: check. An assortment of them, too. English Breakfast, Russian Caravan, this sprightly lavender-blueberry tisane he’d gotten in a Christmas hamper last year. 

Sugar:

No.

Zero. Zilch. 

Stede gazes with vacant, dead-eyed fury at the empty glass jar, which now only contains a few sad, sticky grains at the very bottom.

The day before yesterday, Stede still had seven sugar cubes left.

Who, in their right mind, could possibly burn through a week’s worth of sugar in one day? Was his classroom run by ten-thousand ants in a trenchcoat in his absence?

Or. Or–

Or by some lunatic that’s intentionally trying to mess with Stede as much as he can?

And that does it! That really breaks Stede’s biscuit!

This teacher– nay! This ersatz educator, this ignoramus instructor, this utterly spurious, sorry excuse for a mentor who has probably never heard the word pedagogy in his-or-her-or-their entire life, nor of explicit teaching nor gradual release nor intrinsic reward nor Paddington Bear - nor of any of the things Stede holds dear! This–this lunatic has not only chosen to waltz right into Stede’s classroom and turn his entire life upside-down, but also to use up Stede’s markers, and also - the most diabolical crime of all - to leave Stede without a decent cuppa at eight o’ clock in the morning?

With that, Stede’s eyes fly to the clock on the wall.

Not eight. Five past.

But if he goes right this very second, he might still have time.

Abandoning his classroom in its state of broken-kaleidoscope disarray, Stede grabs his empty sugar-jar and marches towards the door.

Stede wouldn’t exactly describe himself as easy to anger. But when he’s this downright ropeable, someone is going to bloody well hear about it.

He practically flies down the hall, which is already beginning to fill with a sea of grinning children and fussing parents. He receives a few cheery greetings as he barrels along, and while his sour mood makes it sorely tempting to respond with a tight smile and a curt nod, he forces the vitriol out of his face and manages some appropriately-bright responses. 

Not their fault. This is not their fault. Keep it together.

Stede remains firmly in-character as chipper, patient Mr Bonnet all the way until he reaches the main reception desk.

Then, he takes a quick peek around for any little listening ears and, upon finding none, finally explodes with a shrill:

“I need to see Oluwande. Now.”

And he punctuates this by slamming the empty jar on the desk.

Punctuation is important. 

Lucius Spriggs - school receptionist, principal’s assistant, registrar and sick-bay manager - does not look up from his computer screen. 

He’s wearing earbuds at his post again, obnoxiously snapping a wad of gum, and idly flicking through cards on a desktop solitaire game (all of which he’s been warned about).

Stede huffs. Loudly. 

Lucius is a man who wears many hats at Queen Anne's Primary School. Unfortunately for Stede, he wears most of those hats at a lazy tilt that suggests he knows exactly how indispensable he is, and as such views urgency as a choice.

Stede huffs again. With gusto, this time. He taps his nails in an irate rhythm against the counter while he waits for Lucius to acknowledge his presence. 

When Lucius does, it’s without words, without eye contact, and without very much interest.

He stretches one arm over his head, up towards the sweet little reminder of Queen Anne's Primary School’s Core Values, which are displayed on a colourful plaque on the wall behind him. 

Still clicking through his solitaire game with his other hand, Lucius taps his own nails. Right over the words: We show kindness and respect!

Stede feels another huff building. He can’t help it. He’s simply a man that was born to huff. 

“Please,” he adds. With only a smidge of petulance. 

Evidently, Lucius hears…a smidge more than a smidge. 

He gives Stede a barely-there side-eye, snorts, rolls his eyes, and goes:

“Yeah, it’s a no from me, babe. I don’t let ten-year-olds talk to me like that. You’re gonna try again.”

Full disclosure: some days, Stede thinks he might have a touch of that Oppositional Defiance Disorder. He’d done a whole training session on it last year. 

‘You’re gonna try again.’ The absolute nerve!

With his mind stippled all over with outrage, feeling his own nostrils flaring, and wanting very much to rip Lucius’s mouse out by the cord and clobber him with it until paramedics need to shine a little torch in his eyes, Stede sucks back a breath, and “tries again”:

“Lucius. I need to see Oluwande, please. It’s urgent.”

“‘Hello, Lucius,’” Lucius coaches, voice saccharine. “‘How are you today? How’s your morning been?’”

Stede thinks that maybe, as a collective society, everyone should reconsider the merits of fighting to the death. It should be brought back, he thinks. He could take Lucius. Stede might not be very young and spry anymore, but his biceps are actually quite big.

Through gritted teeth, with eye-twitching politeness, and with violence front and centre in his mind, Stede parrots:

“Hello, Lucius. How are you today? How’s your morning been? I need to see Oluwande, please. As soon as convenient for you, of course.”

“‘May I see Oluwande,’” Lucius corrects with a smarmy grin. He’s turned to face Stede now, eyes dancing. “You’re asking a question, not making a demand. And smile, too. You’ve literally got the eyes of a madman right now. It’s offputting.”

Stede doesn’t doubt it. 

He bares his teeth. This is technically a smile. Ask anyone.

“May I,” he seethes, “please see Oluwande?”

Lucius tilts his head, considering the request with a slow-developing smirk.

“Okay, now the whole thing,” he says. “From the top.”

Stede wouldn’t hold up in prison. He’s too genteel. He has delicate hands. If he were to end up incarcerated, in one of those maximum-security places where the real sicko murdery-folks go, he’s pretty sure he’d have to wait for his commissary to come through before he’d get his hands on any cuticle oil. He’s not willing to take that risk.

He reminds himself of all this. Slowly.

Saying each word is excruciating. Teeth-pullingly excruciating. Genuinely, Stede is grinding his molars together so hard between each word that he swears he feels the hairline fissures starting to form in the enamel. 

“Hello, Lucius,” Stede says, with a smile that he hopes might shatter glass (though his sugar jar has, admittedly, already been through too much tumult today). “How are you? How’s your morning been? Good? Great. I’m overjoyed to hear it. Truly elated. Now, Lucius. I’m in a real dilly of a pickle right now, and I was hoping you might be able to find it in the goodness of your heart to help me out. So, if it isn’t too much trouble - only if it doesn’t put you out in any way, shape or form: may I please, please see Oluwande?”

Lucius smiles sweetly.

“No, you may not,” he says. “He’s in a meeting right now.”

Stede feels a kind of silence sweep through his entire body.

It is not a peaceful silence. 

He has supplicated. He has debased himself. He has smiled in ways that have made him feel like his entire face has been printed out of alignment. He has endured etiquette coaching - him, Stede! Receiving etiquette coaching! From Lucius!

Ideally, now would be the time for him to go properly postal. His usual decorum has been completely fumigated out of his body at this point, and he can feel anatomically-impossible parts of himself absolutely scintillating with barely-restrained fury. Truly, Stede might be about to become a Training Module. He’s on the brink of the word premeditated being used in his imminent future.

Unfortunately for Stede, despite how good it would feel for him to volcanically erupt at this moment, his brain has apparently hit its limit of fire-and-brimstone for the day.

Instead, he finds himself slumping pathetically over the front desk in defeat. His forehead hits the laminate with a bowling-ball thump. 

“I see,” he concedes. “I’ll just wait for him then, shall I?”

He swears he can sense the way Lucius raises an unimpressed eyebrow by the way it displaces the surrounding air.

“You’ll wait,” Lucius echoes in disbelief. “From…there.”

“Yep,” Stede says wearily, mouth smooshed out of place, head still splattered against the counter like a dropped carton of eggs. “I’ll wait. Right here.”

There is another long silence. Like Lucius is expecting Stede to admit that he’s bluffing.

Stede is not.

He waits to hear the candy-clatter of that obnoxious mechanical keyboard again. He hears nothing, which suggests that Lucius is simply…staring at him. 

Which. Fair. Stede’s still doing his very best impression of a gelatinous mannequin. It’s stare-able material, he supposes.

“You’re smudging my counter,” Lucius tries. “With your whole…face. Windex isn’t free, you know.”

“Sorry,” Stede offers glumly. Completely unmoving.

It’s Lucius’s turn to huff. Stede privately notes that he’s far better at it than Lucius.

He makes one final attempt at scraping Stede’s face off his countertop, sounding like he’s only just shy of using physical force and a heavy-duty spatula to do it.

“Why d’you need Olu so bad right now anyway? What, you need another personal day? Threw your back out with all the moving boxes yesterday, is that it?”

“No,” Stede replies, unthinkingly. “No, I…”

Quite suddenly, his face tears off the counter like a strip of duct tape.

“You– how do you know about that?”

Lucius smiles placidly at him. He’s swivelling back and forth in his chair, back to lazily snapping his gum, visibly having the time of his life.

“Know about what? The fact that your marriage has been dead in the water for years? Or the fact that you moved out yesterday?”

Stede feels his mouth open and close stupidly a few times.

“Either,” he says, with slow-dawning, weak humiliation. “Both.”

“Oh, come on, Stede. Everyone knows. You made the rookie mistake of telling Pete. And obviously, Pete’s gonna tell me. And obviously, I’m gonna tell everyone else.”

Stede had, in fact, made the mistake of telling Pete in IT about his impending divorce. He’d naively assumed that divulging such information to Pete would be pretty innocuous, because, well. Nobody in their right mind would ever believe anything that Pete says. Pete both claims to be the hacking mastermind behind several of the country’s biggest data breaches, while simultaneously pronouncing USB-C as “you-subck”. Pete once shorted out half the school’s power by accidentally spilling an entire can of beans on some apparently very vital wiring, and then opted to rectify this mistake by ripping out all of said wiring and rinsing it off in the kindergarten drink fountains. Pete often tells people to ‘stand back’ before installing a routine system-update, because he swears such an act can be wildly dangerous when performed by ‘an amateur.’

Sadly, Stede had completely forgotten that Pete from IT just so happened to be married to the biggest gossip on campus. 

Probably half the parents know by now. The kids, even. Stede wouldn’t be surprised if Lucius has gone and published it in the bloody school newsletter: Campus Update: Stede Bonnet (Room 3.1) Now a Sad, Lonely Divorcee! Or maybe he's asked Mr Feeney, the art teacher, to add him to the hand-painted mural by the front gates. There’s probably a depiction of Stede already there, in amongst the smiling children and rosy apples and flags of the world. Stede, pushing along his cardboard boxes with a hangdog expression, perhaps with a sad little cloud dangling its gloomy raindrops over his head.

Stede makes a noise of appropriately-rainclouded misery, and then lobs his head back down onto the countertop with a thunk. 

Perhaps he will have to take another day of leave after all. He’s gunning for a concussion, at this rate.

Lucius reaches across the countertop, and gives Stede what he thinks is supposed to be a comforting pat on the back. It feels like he’s maybe using a pen to do it, though. Also, it’s more of a prod than a pat. Stede supposes it’s the thought that counts.

“Okay, stop,” Lucius says. “You’re starting to bum me out. Besides, there’s no need for the dramatics. Y’know, I’m not just a bitchy face, Stede. I’m the eyes and ears of this entire institution.”

“You’re starting to sound just like Pete,” Stede snorts.

Lucius smiles blithely. “Opposite of a problem, babe. That man is a genius.”

“Lucius. He accidentally live-streamed his own lunch break to every smart-board in the school last year. And when I raised the issue with him, he told me to, and I quote: contact IT. Pete is IT, Lucius.”

“Yeah, well. There are different kinds of intelligence, Stede,” Lucius says, with a flippant hand-wave. “Thought a quality educator like you would know that. Anyway, when you’re done shit-talking my husband: care to tell me if you wanna let me help you?”

For a moment, all Stede can do is balk at him.

There’s a catch. A condition. A proviso. There’s got to be.

“You,” Stede verifies, with shrewd suspicion. “You want to help me now. After all of that.”

Lucius shrugs.

“You’ve provided me with more than enough fodder to get me through the morning,” he says, smiling serenely. “What do you need from Olu? I might be able to lend a hand.”

Fodder. Like Stede’s just the little court jester, dragging his sad, jingling self through the mud for Lucius’s own amusement.

Great.

But an opportunity has, at the very least, presented itself. Stede would be even more the fool not to take it. 

“I need to know who subbed for me yesterday,” he says in a rush, before Lucius changes his mind. “And then I need them blacklisted. Immediately. Bar them from the premises. Lock the doors. Put their face on wanted posters.”

Lucius snorts derisively, but his fingers start flying over his clattery keyboard all the same. 

“That bad, huh?”

“They ate all my sugar!” Stede cries, distraught all over again over the injustice of such a heinous act.

“Oh no,” Lucius intones. “Guess you’re gonna have to use the actual staffroom with all the plebs, instead of holing up in your little quarters all the time. However will you cope?”

“Well, it’s not just that!” Stede defends, getting very close to stomping a foot about it. “Also–”

“Oh, I don’t care,” Lucius interjects smoothly, barely sparing Stede a passing glance as he types. “If I made you think otherwise, that’s on me, I guess. Just– shut up for a sec; can barely hear myself think with you bleating away over there.”

Stede rather takes umbrage at the word bleating. He prefers impassioned rhetoric, thank you very much.

Still, he clamps his lips shut with begrudging obedience, and lets Lucius clicky-clack away in silence.

Fortunately, Lucius seems to have finally decided to have pity, and he searches for the information with fearsome secretarial speed. Perhaps he, too, has noted the time - which Stede is fast running out of before the school day begins. Jesus, and his room is still in a state of complete and utter mayhem. Maybe this is a conversation he ought to just shelve for the day; take care of priorities first, and then–

“Right, here we go,” says Lucius, right as Stede has started wearing a hole into his bottom lip with his teeth. “So, by the looks of things, Olu had to call someone in from one of those online agencies to cover you. Real last minute, according to the system.”

Stede frowns at this.

“I’d organised for Ivan to cover me. Sorted it weeks ago,” he says. “What happened there?”

Ivan is a regular substitute at Queen Anne’s. A little terrifying, and certainly a little unhinged, but Stede can admit that the man runs a tight ship. He’s a popular choice for the year five and six teachers for that very reason. Pre-teens can be absolutely lawless, especially in the hands of a supply teacher. Ivan is the one guy you can guarantee will be able to shut down any nonsense with a single, murderous stare. 

“Ivan,” Lucius murmurs to himself, brows furrowed as his gaze flicks across his screen. “Ivan, Ivan, Ivan, let’s see…ah, here! Looks like he called in…dead.”

Stede feels his jaw drop in abject horror.

“Called in dead?!”

“Or sick, maybe,” Lucius says. “Or something. I dunno. I’ve typed dead, right here, see? ‘Ivan rang: said he’s dead. Cover needed ASAP 4 Stede.’ I guess it’s possible I wasn’t really listening.”

Unsure of what the protocol is for someone who’s apparently declared himself dead, Stede makes a mental note to draft an email offering his condolences and/or get well soon’s and/or vague, miscellaneous best-wishes.

“Hang on,” says Lucius suddenly, snapping Stede out of his stupor. “Here. Got him.”

“Him?”

“The guy from the agency. Got his deets, right here. Looks like you were covered by a…Mr Teach?”

For a long moment, Stede truly believes that Lucius is, once again, fucking with him. He even scoffs, gives Lucius a snippy little eyeroll.

Lucius simply stares at him. A proud smile lingers on his face, like he’s mentally patting himself on the back for completing a single good deed today. Perhaps the first one of the calendar year.

Stede scoffs again, though this time the noise is closer to a bark of sheer disbelief.

“...Mr Teach?”

“Mm-hm. Says right here, your sub yesterday was an Ed Teach.”

This time, Stede laughs out loud.

“You mean to tell me,” he says, “that the substitute’s full, government name was Education Teach?”

“Edward, I’d expect,” says Lucius, giving Stede a look ordinarily reserved for the particularly dim-witted.

“Lucius, that’s absurd!” Stede insists. “Ed Teach? There’s no way that can possibly be his real name!”

It’s Lucius’s turn to scoff.

“Stede, believe me. As someone who deals with kilometres of red tape when it comes to all the working-with-kids safety protocols? I can guarantee you that nobody works a day behind these doors with a fake ID. Guess your buddy Ed just happened to choose the perfect line of work for himself.”

“Not so perfect, as it turns out,” Stede grumbles belligerently. “Well, pseudonym or not: is there no way we can contact the agency that sent him? Insist they don’t send him our way again?”

Just as Lucius opens his mouth to answer, a nearby door unlatches, and Principal Boodhari emerges from his office, already wearing the forbearing smile that seems to take up permanent residence on his face.

“Morning, Lucius. Ah, Stede - good to have you back, mate. Everything okay?”

When Stede himself had been at school, principals were nothing like Oluwande Boodhari. Perhaps if they were, he'd have turned out a mite more…normal. Stede’s own school principal, a dour-faced man with sunken cheekbones and a cemented curl in his upper lip, had seemed to take great pride in his reign of terror, which extended to both the students and the staff. Even now Stede can recall sitting in his office, shrinking into his seat with Mr Ironwood looming menacingly over him, slicing him through with a baleful glare. Stede had been seven, and he’d tried, intentionally, to hide in the school library after the last bell had gone, because he didn’t want to go home to the everpresent ire of his parents. He’d been successfully locked in for two whole hours before the cleaners had noticed him and kicked him out. Mr Ironwood had been furious.

But Olu is not like that.

There isn’t a child in the entire school that regards Oluwande with a sense of fear. They greet him the same way they greet Stede; big smiles and high-fives and burbling commentary about their days, all of which Olu listens to with rapt attention. Oluwande is a mediator, a gentle guide - a distributor of consequences, sometimes. But always fair ones; always talked through with a quiet patience and a willingness to negotiate. Stede’s always likened Olu to a retaining wall. Solid, but never imposing, and always easy to lean on. 

“Yes, yes,” Stede says impatiently, though he knows he’ll feel guilty for his rudeness later. “All okay. What’s more important is that things weren’t okay here.”

Olu raises an eyebrow in question.

“He wants his sub blacklisted,” Lucius informs him, sounding bored now. He’s back into his solitaire game, apparently in need of entertainment now that Stede is no longer providing it.

“Blacklisted?” Olu asks Stede, with genuine concern. “Why? What went wrong?”

It’s only as Stede wets his lips to try to explain that he realises how outright pathetic the complaint is going to sound. Something about the wide-open plains of Oluwande’s tranquil gaze suddenly has Stede feeling a bit stupid. 

“Well,” Stede says, voice clipped, throat tight. “I mean. You should see the state of my classroom. The desks are all–all skew-whiff. And he used up all my markers, and my sugar, and the board is all–”

Stede can tell by the look on Olu’s face that he’s really not doing a very good job of conveying just how disastrous his morning has been. The man’s still looking at Stede with slow, easy patience and a tiny smile. Somehow this only serves to make Stede feel about two inches tall.

“Stede,” Olu interjects gently. “Listen. I know you’re a…particular man. Honestly, that’s what makes you such a great teacher. You have clear, specific routines; really high standards. I mean, s’hardly any wonder your kids have the highest reading levels in the entire school year after year, hey?”

Stede feels his face crumple in frustration.

He’s not getting it. All these niceties. He’s not fucking getting it. Stede is bracing himself for what he knows is coming: the but.

Maybe Stede could squeeze a ‘but’ in first? Does one ‘but’ cancel out another ‘but’ in situations like these?

“Yes,” Stede tries. “But–”

“But Stede.”

Damn it. No dice.

Stede shoves another surly huff out of his chest.

(Again, it cannot be overstated that this is a habit that is beyond Stede’s control. Would you tell the wind not to blow, the sun not to shine? No? Then don’t presume to tell Stede not to huff. And don’t say a word about his bitchy nose-scrunch, either.)

“Stede,” Oluwande says again, a touch sympathetically this time. Stede hates that. “Look. We're facing a shortage of substitutes in this country. It's a tough gig, man. Walking into a classroom at the last minute without knowing the dynamic of the room, the routines, the students - and being expected to just take over. I mean, s’no surprise nobody wants to do it, yeah?”

“Well, I know,” Stede attempts, “but–”

“I wish we could pick and choose, when it comes to supply teachers,” Oluwande continues, in a way that makes Stede feel like he’s being gently and politely steamrolled until he loses his rather vital third dimension (his favourite one). “Really Stede, I do. But in cases of extreme emergencies - like when your organised-substitute is a no-show, well. We can’t exactly be picky, yeah? S’just the way it is, m’afraid. I mean, unless there was a serious incident of some kind? Or the kids were, like. Genuinely distressed by this guy’s presence?”

Stede would very much like to argue that the sugar thing is a serious incident. 

However, as he opens his mouth to do just that, he realises two very important things.

The first is obvious: that continuing to argue here is a fruitless endeavour.

But secondly:

Stede does not need to argue.

Because Oluwande has just presented Stede with the exact information that he needs to ensure this Ed Teach never sets foot in his classroom again. Or any classroom, as a matter of fact.

Stede closes his mouth, un-slumps his spine, and straightens out his jacket with a brisk snap of his wrists. He snatches up his empty sugar jar from the counter, holding it so tightly he risks splintering the glass.

“Right,” he says tersely. “Yes. Of course. Silly of me. Thank you, Oluwande. I appreciate your time.”

Olu crooks a bemused eyebrow at him. He’s very good at doing eyebrow-things. Must be a unique requirement of school principals.

“...You do?”

“Certainly do. You’ve been very helpful. Now, if you’ll excuse me. It’s, um. Far too close to eight-thirty for my liking, and I’ve got some…some business to attend to.”

And if Oluwande’s face slowly shifts into a look of realisation, then disapproval, and if he lets out a truly beleaguered sigh, and goes ‘Stede, come on, man. Don’t–’

Well. Stede can hardly be blamed for not noticing.

He’s barrelling out of the office at top speed, you see. Thanking all the little bits of his DNA sequence for making him leggy enough to sail down the corridor in a handful of countable strides. 

His students will be arriving for the day at any moment. 

And Stede has…questions.

If some of those questions just so happen to be leading questions? Questions that just so happen to confirm what Stede already knows must be the god’s honest truth: that his poor students must be completely and utterly traumatised by their day of unrelenting chaos?

Well, who’s ever going to know?

And look. The thing is: Stede doesn’t even have to put words in his kiddos’ mouths, here.

He really only needs one. Just one child to admit that they had a superbly rotten day, and that this Mr Teach was, in fact, a state-certified maniac. Stede can take it from there. ‘Oh, you should have heard what they said, Oluwande. Atrocious conduct. Appalling. He’s a downright dangerous individual, and I have student testimony to prove it. You’ll be receiving complaints from parents soon, mark my words!’

There’ll be one child who hated this Ed character. 

Statistical impossibility for there not to be.

It’s a downright miracle that Stede gets his classroom into a somewhat acceptable condition, and still manages to get his door open to greet the students at bang-on eight-thirty. 

There are still marker streaks all over the board, and all of Jeffrey’s naptime accoutrements have all been shoved in a haphazard pile under Stede’s desk. The children’s tables are mostly back in order, albeit lacking their usual regimented formation. Stede, himself, is what you might call worse for wear. He's been zipping around like a particularly angry wasp, and now he's sweating from the exertion. He's already flung off his jacket in a flurry of vexation, and his shirt is sticking to him in all his sweatiest places. His hair is likely a windswept disaster, and his index finger is bleeding sluggishly. The stupid latch on the door to his supply closet is the cause of that one. Bloody thing always sticks, making it a prime location for jammed fingers, which is why it’s been designated as an ‘out of bounds’ zone for the children. Usually Stede’s more careful, but he’d been trying to unearth the whiteboard cleaning spray that’s stashed away on the back shelf, and in his haste had completely forgotten about how dodgy the door is.  

So yes. Stede might look a bit like he’s been run over by a car and attacked by a jungle cat and then had a grand piano dropped on him. And his beautiful little space might be in a similar state of havoc, frantically holding itself together with the bravest of smiles. 

But it’s eight-thirty, and Stede has an interrogation to conduct.

It’s show time.

Over the course of the morning, it becomes increasingly apparent that Stede would make a terrible cop.

On any other given day, this would be fine.

Stede doesn’t want to be a cop, because Stede values a whole lot of little, inconsequential things (human decency, empathy, kindness, etc.) that would probably make it difficult for him to carry out daily Cop Tasks.

Today, however, there is a significant issue with Stede’s abysmal lack of Cop Skills.

He’d known going into his little interrogation that he absolutely couldn’t pass himself off as the Bad Cop. All that intimidation and glowering stares and ‘don’t you trifle me’ nonsense, or whatever lines the Bad Cop gets to say. That’s not Stede at all.

But it’s the Good Cop that usually gets the information anyway, right? With all those gentle, guiding questions and slow, understanding nods and ‘we’re all friends here’ vibes?

That’s more Stede’s style. If he really harnesses that Good Cop persona, he reckons he could make light work of this whole thing. He’ll have his kids talking in no time at all.

That’s what he’d assumed, anyway. Several hours ago.

It’s just gone four in the afternoon. Stede’s buckled backwards in his seat, gazing blankly across his classroom with a thousand-yard stare, irritation still fizzling in the recesses of his brain. 

The kids all left an hour ago. Stede had sat down for a moment, with the intention of trying to get his plans in order for tomorrow. Send a few emails, print a few activities.

He’d zoned out almost immediately, and instead spent a whole hour sullenly replaying the entire morning in his head.

It had started off just fine. 

One of Stede’s students had made him a card. Adorable. Touching.

He’d been expecting it to be a get-well card, given his day off. Or perhaps a ‘please come back Mr Bonnet, we are all being tortured here without you’ card. 

Instead, the front of the card had read:

I saw you getting coffy yesterday.

And there’d been a crooked drawing of a very rectangular-bodied man with yellow loopy hair, holding a cup in one hand. 

Noah is Stede’s resident artist, always taking the time to add finicky little details to his work. 

In this case, it’d been Stede’s crow’s feet; a sunburst of dark lines framing each lopsided eye. Jesus, that’s depressing. Stede’s been using the expensive retinol lately and everything. 

Inside the card was the following message:

me and mum were at the trafic lights on the way to school and I saw you going into the coffy place and I waved but you did’nt say hi to me witch I think is rude why werent you at school yesterday do you work at the coffy place now?

The question mark was commendable. The lack of full stops, concerning. The apostrophes? Yikes. Stede had made a note to do some extra punctuation practice at some point during the week. 

Stede then took the time to field the questions pelted at him from all directions as his little crew had filed into the classroom to start the day. The coffee-shop rumour mill had sent the story far and wide, quickly evolving like a game of Telephone. The fact that Noah had seen Stede grabbing a coffee had become a theory that Stede works at the cafe now, which had then tipped into some speculation that maybe Stede had brought the entire class cake pops, and Stede had needed to hurriedly put a lid on that one before he’d ended up with a full-blown riot on his hands.

No, he’d told the gaggle of scallywags encrusted around him (who, at the mention of cake, all suddenly seemed to have never eaten before in their lives). No, there were no cake pops. Mr Bonnet does not, in fact, work at a coffee shop, because Mr Bonnet already has a job. Being a teacher is Mr Bonnet’s job. This is something they have already discussed at length, but clearly the kids still needed more time to come to terms with it. Big news, if true.

So the line of questioning had shifted. Where had Stede gone, then?

“Were you sick?” one of the kids had asked. Georgina, because of course it had been Georgina. “Why were you at a coffee shop if you were sick? You should have stayed in bed. When I’m sick, my mum makes me pastina. I bet she’ll make some for you. I’ll ask her.”

Stede couldn’t help but laugh. It wasn’t every day he felt parented by his students, but he certainly appreciated the sentiment on the occasions it happened.

“I wasn’t sick,” he’d told her gently, utterly charmed.

Georgina had frowned, then taken a long moment to scrutinise him with her gaze.

“Well. You look sick, a bit. You have grey thingies under your eyes. And you’re all out of breath and sweaty. And your hand is bleeding.”

Okay. So perhaps Stede had been…less than charmed. It had been nice for the four seconds it had lasted, at least.

“I’m not sick,” Stede had reiterated, less gentle (and noting to himself that perhaps he’d need to have a talk with the kids about how it is okay to lie to grown-ups, sometimes).

“I’ll ask my mum about the pastina anyway,” Georgina had told him benevolently. “Just in case.”

“If you weren’t sick,” another voice had piped up from the back of the huddle, which seemed to be mostly composed of jabby elbows and shuffling feet, all of which seemed to be inching further into Stede’s personal space by the second. “If you weren’t sick, then where did you go when Mr Teach was here?”

Excellent. A perfect segue.

“Well, crew,” Stede had chirped, clapping his hands together. “I would very much like to answer that, and I’d love to know how you all got on with Mr Teach yesterday, too. But we certainly can’t do that when we’re all squashed together like a bunch of grapes! Let’s unpack our things for the morning, and then perhaps we’d better sit ourselves down on the carpet and start the day with a sharing circle, hey? I’ll go and fetch the talking stick.”

And so the kids had gotten themselves settled, and they’d congregated on the carpet in the kind of circle one might draw if there were lead in their bloody pipes. And Stede had needed to manoeuvre several unwieldy little people to scooch back, scooch left (little more, little more–no, that’s too much–goodness gracious, a circle, people!), and then to dig the talking stick out of the supply cupboard, and of course he’d once again been heedless of the stupid fucking door, and he’d jammed his finger in it again, same finger as last time and everything, and he’d hissed a caustic little ‘ffffffruit tingles!’ under his breath, and of course when he’d looked up he’d locked eyes with Enid, who clearly knew exactly which alternative f-word Stede had been about to say, and who’d appeared to be incredibly disappointed that this had not come to fruition.

Anyway. They’d gotten seated. Criss-cross-applesauce, with Stede on his cozy blue armchair, talking stick in-hand. The stick in question is a vibrant sparkly cyan, and it used to make the most horrific noise when it was turned upside-down; not unlike an alien trying and failing to vomit up a bathtub of stout, until Stede took it apart and removed the noisemaker disc from inside. Now rendered mute, it makes for an excellent talking stick (although the children do insist it was far better with the oughhh noise).

Stede was holding the stick, and so he went first.

“Now,” he’d said, as diplomatic and kind-eyed as he could with his finger still smarting and rage still quietly simmering behind his eyes. “I know that yesterday was your very first day with a substitute teacher. And first of all, I’d like to commend you all on your outstanding behaviour. You should all be very proud of yourselves. I didn't receive a single word of complaint!”

Yes, okay. Stede had maybe tried buttering the kids up a little, here. But technically, it had been truthful, because Mr Teach hadn't left behind any semblance of notes for Stede at all.

The children, for their part, had appeared very proud of this. They’d sat themselves up a mite straighter, as though the additional inch-and-a-half of height might’ve made them all look like the responsible, trust-worthy grown-ups they were.

Stede had been confident at that point: he had it in the bag. Those kids would be eating out of the palm of his hand any minute, telling him exactly what he wanted to hear. Stede had found himself wondering why he even bothered to talk to Oluwande at all, when he could have just done this first. 

“You see,” Stede had said, even gentler, downright syrupy. “I know it must have been hard for you all, not having me here. I'm sure you were very upset. And some of you may have put on a brave face, and might seem totally fine... but in reality, be mentally devastated by what you witnessed in this room yesterday.”

He’d looked carefully around the circle, and been certain he’d spotted a few solemn nods. Definitely a few head-bobbles in his peripherals, at the very least. A few smiles, too - obviously due to the fact that Stede had returned. Poor things. He could scarcely even fathom the utter torment they must have endured yesterday. 

“So,” Stede had continued, “if that's the case, what do we do?”

In response to this, Stede had received crickets.

He’d felt his throat crumple around a swallowed-back sigh. 

Truly, some days he couldn’t help but believe that an accommodating, charitable man such as himself was never meant to be so…employed. 

“Remember the rhyme? We talk it through,” he’d reminded them, giving the talking-stick a wiggle in the air. “As a…?”

And of course, the kids had all indulged him with a chorus of: crew!

Excellent. Back on track. 

“So,” Stede had said again. “Does anyone have any questions? Comments? Criticisms? This is an open forum, gang. If there’s anything on your mind, this is a safe space to share it.”

A hand had gone up, and Stede had nodded encouragingly. Here we go.

“I have a question,” Georgina had said politely. “When my mum makes you the pastina, do you want me to ask her to put extra cheese in it? She always makes it with extra cheese for me. This one time, she put in…well, that time it was my brother who was sick, but she made enough for everyone, and so I had some too. My brother doesn’t like extra cheese, but I do, so she put more cheese in mine, and then. You’ll never believe what happened. Then, she–”

“Okay,” Stede had cut in, fighting for his life in an attempt to match Georgina’s politeness. “While this is certainly a fascinating anecdote, and I’d love to hear all about it later: when I said anything on your mind, I suppose I didn’t quite mean–”

“I have a question,” came a second voice. “You’re bleeding on the talking stick.”

Stede’s eyes had flicked to his lacerated index finger. He had, indeed, been bleeding on the talking stick. 

“That isn’t a question,” Stede had said tightly. He’d set the stupid thing down, then ripped a few tissues from the nearby box and wrapped them around the digit in a makeshift bandaid. “That’s what we call a comment, Oliver.”

“You said comments were allowed. You said questions, comments and criticisms.”

“Oh, I have a critism! My critism is that Oliver got to talk without holding the talking stick.”

“Thank you for your criticism, Skye,” Stede had gritted out. “But I’m afraid the talking stick is a temporary biohazard. We’ll just have to make do without. And this is all rather beside the point!”

In hindsight, all of this was probably the first indicator that the interrogation was not about to go as planned. At the time, Stede had truly believed he still had a fighting chance to make this work out the way it had in his head.

He just needed to be a bit more heavy-handed about it.

“Does nobody have anything to tell me about your teacher from yesterday? Mr…Teach, was it?”

At this, a ripple of genuine enthusiasm had pinged across the circle. Several hands had instantly shot into the air at once, some of them stretching so desperately high that a few rear ends had been tugged right off the floor. There had been an immediate, eager accompaniment of ‘ooh-ooh-ooh!’, coming from just about every direction at once.

Bingo.

Something had to have happened, to get a response like that out of the kids. Something truly noteworthy. Catastrophic, perhaps. Stede had already started running through new potential words-of-the-day in his head: cataclysmic, lamentable, dire, horrendous…

Stede had been about to call upon one of the raised hands. 

But he’d hesitated for just a fraction of a second too long, and a blurt-out had happened instead.

Stede’s still not entirely sure which direction it had come from. 

The question itself, though, had been perfectly loud and clear:

“When is Mr Teach coming back?”

Suddenly, there had been a wild burst of what Stede can only describe as utter pandemonium. 

The room had quickly filled to the brim with twenty-four eager, chattering voices all at once, the volume spilling into deafening chaos as each student tried to be heard over the person sitting next to them. A few still tried to raise their hands to get Stede’s attention, but the fact that they’d babbled away at top speed without even waiting for Stede to acknowledge them rather defeated the purpose of the hand-raising. The circle had lost traction, once again breaking its banks into some geometrically-impossible thing as the kids giggled and fidgeted and squealed at each other, the cacophony rising higher and higher with each passing second.

Stede had sunk slowly into his seat in dismay.

He’d gazed around the circle, hoping to see at least the slightest trace of anguish in just one of those little faces. Georgina, maybe? Lucas? Jordy?

Nope. Not one. 

Stede had never seen a full collective group of students so united about their enthusiasm before. In all his years of teaching. About anything.

He’d scowled. This was, obviously, because a room full of Outside Voices had been incredibly overstimulating and likely to give Stede one of his headaches, and certainly not because of any juvenile feelings of unease or inadequacy or jealousy. Some lesser teachers might feel that way. Not Stede, though. He’s above all of that. 

Stede had silenced the room with markedly more difficulty than usual, noting that it had taken the students significantly longer to settle down than it normally does.

A bad influence. Ed Teach is a bad influence.

That had to be something he could take back to Oluwande, surely.

“Now,” Stede had said primly, once he’d commanded the attention of the room once more. “One at a time, and with a bit more decorum, people. I can’t hear a word any of you have to say about Mr Teach if you go ahead and shout out all at once.”

The hands had all dutifully shot into the air again. The children had been so excited to speak they hadn’t appeared to even realise they’d been chastised.

“He was cool!” blurted a girl called Mei, still waving her hand frantically in the air and nearly taking out several nearby eyeballs, and this is why they have the bloody talking stick. 

“Oh, Mr Cool, was he?” Stede had said, and it hadn’t come out snide at all, and definitely not contemptuous, because Stede had not been harbouring any feelings of bitterness over his students enjoying a day with another (terrible, incompetent, downright maniacal) teacher. 

“Yeah! He was a pirate!”

Stede had blinked.

“...I’m sorry?”

“A pirate!” Mei had repeated, her hand rather arbitrarily still flapping around above her head. “He knew all stuff about ships and all the oceans and the continents and everything!”

“He drew us a map! Of Orca Coke, where all the pirates used to go! And– I think killer whales too, because of the name?”

“It was on the board! He drew it all without even looking at a proper map, and he told us all about–”

“It wasn’t Orca Coke, it was North Carolina–”

“Orca Croak’s in North Carolina, you bilge rat–”

And then Stede had needed to settle the second wave of commotion, and to give a stern reminder to Ethan that as a crew they treat each other with kindness, and kindness does not involve calling anyone a bilge rat (nor a scurvy dog, Ethan).

Where these new terms had been picked up from, Stede doesn’t know for sure. But he’s certainly got a pretty good guess. 

“Right, well,” Stede had said. “I think I’m…a little confused.”

Confused had been an understatement. There is absolutely nothing in the year three history curriculum about the golden age of piracy, nor had there been mention of any such thing in Stede’s carefully-curated lesson plans for the day.

“Perhaps one of you,” he’d continued slowly, “could walk me through your day yesterday. Starting from the very beginning. You were supposed to begin your literacy block with phonics. And then fractions for maths. It was all in the plan I left on my desk–”

“Oh, Mr Teach didn’t really use that,” Georgina had told him. “He said he didn’t like the different sizes of the fonts. He said that’s where the tricks are.”

Stede had felt his upper lip curl in righteous indignation. His plans had been laid out beautifully, as a matter of fact. Besides which: tricks? What tricks? What does that even mean?

How utterly laughable, for the man who’d ransacked Stede’s classroom, to have claimed that Stede had been the one with some sort of nefarious intention!

“Well then. I don’t suppose you went for a nature walk in the afternoon then, either?” Stede had sniffed haughtily.

Their current topic in Science is ecosystems. Stede had thought it would be a marvellous idea to take the class for a wander around the school and do some observations of all the different insects they could find. There’s some insane foliage in certain parts of the grounds, and Stede would bet his entire measly paycheck that said foliage is home to all sorts of fascinating little critters.

“Nope,” said Zoe from across the circle. “Mr Teach hates nature, he said he wasn’t doing that.”

Outrageously, the kids hadn’t even seemed to be very disappointed about it. They could have been having a nature walk! Outside, in the sunshine! And they hadn’t even seemed to care!

“Right,” Stede had said stiffly. “Well, no fractions, no phonics, no nature walk. I’d imagine storytime was a wash too, then?”

This, unfortunately, had turned out to be entirely the wrong thing to say.

Because the classroom, once again, had erupted into whatever you might call the exact opposite of ASMR. 

“No way!” Jayce had protested, downright affronted. “Storytime was the best!”

“He was a pirate!” Mei had hollered again, looking insulted that Stede clearly wasn’t giving this the attention it deserved. 

“He told us pirate stories! Real pirate stories. He didn’t even use a book!”

“Yeah! He told us this story about this guy, and he was gouging an eyeball out of this other guy's skull–”

Instantly queasy, Stede had been forced to interrupt.

“Oh, I'm gonna stop you there, Aoife,” he’d said, a tad desperately. “A classroom is…not really an appropriate setting for skull-talk.”

Unfortunately, the children had been unperturbed by this.

“There was this other guy, and he used to torture people!” one of them crowed, with a disconcerting sense of glee. “He had this fiddle, and he used people's guts to–”

“And then! There used to be this pirate, and he'd make people walk the plank! And then they'd fall into the ocean! And die! To death!”

“He taught us about flaying! And flogging!”

“Mr Bonnet, what’s a keelhaul?”

“Right!” Stede had finally barked over all the hubbub. “That’s quite enough!”

His voice had sounded gratingly metallic, and he’d felt a little like he’d had a belly full of barnacles. You could’ve probably keelhauled several members of his class through his own intestinal tract, at that stage.

Flaying. Flogging. Keelhauling.

Stede had taken one day. Just one day of leave to try to pick up the pieces of his crumbling, ramshackle life.

And in one day, his class - his sweet, gentle, bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed class - had been radicalised. 

Radicalised, and also taught (in stomach-churningly vivid detail!) about several acts prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

And they’d liked it.

“Well,” Stede had said, with a smile so tight it'd felt liable to snap, “that all sounds very…stimulating. I’m very pleased to hear you all had such an invigorating day.”

Stede is quite certain that none of his students know what the word invigorating means. But they’d clearly picked up on the negative cadence with which it’d been delivered, because several of them immediately began to protest.

“It wasn’t all gross pirate-stuff!” argued Holly, thorny and defensive.

“Yeah, he read a proper book to us, too. Paddington Bear. And he cried.”

Stede…faltered. 

He’d stared.

“He…cried,” he’d confirmed slowly.

“Yeah.”

“While reading you Paddington Bear.”

“Yeah. Oh, and that’s why we had the blanket forts! With our desks, and Mr Fettering’s stuff! He said you had to be warm and cozy for Paddington Bear. He said that’s the only way.”

“He helped me make mine!” Ethan had chimed in, sounding utterly chuffed about it. “He used the cushion from your chair to make me a door. He said he wished he had a door for his blanket fort.”

“He…hold on a moment. He had his own blanket fort?”

The look Stede had received in reply suggested that this was considered to be an admirably stupid question.

It’s not everyday that Stede is rendered speechless. In fact, he can recall perhaps three instances of speechlessness in his entire life. Two of which he’s fairly certain occurred before he had developed the ability to speak.

The third had happened today.

What kind of a man goes ahead and just…swans into a third grade classroom, ditches the learning in favour of outright brutality, and then…

Cries while reading Paddington Bear?

Stede will admit it: he himself has cried while reading Paddington Bear. But that’s different. Stede is soft. He has the energy of a sentient cardigan. Stede once cried over a toilet paper commercial because it featured a dog whose eyes looked too sad; of course he’s going to cry while reading the ending of Paddington bloody…

And then the penny had dropped.

Stede reads to his class every day. It’s his thing. It’s a truly beloved Room 3.1 tradition. Stede is the storyteller; the finest in all of Queen Anne's Primary School. Stede Bonnet regales an audience like no other. Fables, fairytales, sonnets, limericks - he tells them all, and better than anyone.

And the day before yesterday, Stede had been halfway through reading Paddington Bear. 

He wouldn’t. Ed Teach - he wouldn’t, surely. He wouldn’t go and commandeer something as sacred as Paddington Bear.

“May I ask,” Stede had said, with sinking trepidation. “How much of Paddington did you read?”

“The whole thing,” Aoife had told him.

“And we started on the next book, too,” Jayce had added.

The whole thing. 

Paddington. Snatched from Stede’s grasp. 

There is truly no justice in the world. No equity. Bad things happen to good people every day. Stede didn’t even fuck around, so why on earth is he finding out? It’s not fair.

“But,” Stede had said, aggrieved. “But he can’t have done all the voices though? The way I do them?”

“Oh,” said Aoife, blithe as anything. “He was better at it, actually.”

Stricken, Stede had glanced across the room for confirmation of this. 

Not a single child had voiced any disagreement. At least some of them had the decency to look a touch sympathetic about it.

Better than Stede. Ed Teach had been better than Stede. At doing the voices. 

That’s Stede’s thing. That’s his one and only thing!

With increasing despair, Stede had made one final attempt at…something. Anything.

“Well,” he’d said snottily. “Seems you’ve all had a real kicker of a day. An absolute whale of a time. But tell me. There had to have been some challenges.”

The room had gone the quietest it’d been all morning. The children had stared at him blankly.

Stede had leaned forward, gripping the edge of his chair.

“For instance,” he’d tried, with hitching desperation, “did anyone feel that the substitute lacked a certain sense of…well, structure? A sense of tranquility? A sense of…Mr Bonnetness?”

To this, he’d received…more staring. One of them had yawned, apparently growing bored that they weren’t gushing over their amazing stupid teacher-pirate-man that went and taught them all about vivisections and dismemberment, or whatever the bloody hell they did all day.

Staring. And then finally:

One slow, hesitant hand had crept into the air.

Yes. Thank god.

Stede had pointed immediately, barely even sparing a glance at the arm the hand was attached to. 

“Yes! Go ahead! Fire away!”

“So, about the pastina,” came an earnest little voice. “Was it a yes to the extra cheese? Or did you just wanna put your own extra cheese on it at home, when you eat it?”

Stede had dropped his head into his hands.

Anyway.

Now, it’s four. 

Somehow, Stede has made it through the day.

He’s made it through some unruly behaviours, courtesy of Ed Teach. He’s made it through his own trips and bumps and finger injuries. He’s made it through a lost pile of spelling flashcards (he tries to blame this one on Mr Teach too, but it turns out he’d accidentally hidden them from himself under the blood-drenched talking stick. He decides it’s Mr Teach’s fault anyway). 

He’s made it through a few bleak texts from Mary. All nice enough in tone, but messages that only serve as a reminder that his life is falling apart in two locations. Box of your old Halloween costumes left in linen closet: chuck or donate? Paperwork update re the house being in your name - call when you can. Banking issue - I’ve emailed you. 

And now it’s four, and Stede sits in his empty classroom, gazing into the ether.

The lights are all off, and Stede’s got his keys in one hand, ready to leave. But he just can’t find the energy to peel himself to standing. The staff parking lot feels a million miles away. 

Stede is going to have to walk all the way to his car, and drive all the way to his empty apartment, and go through all the moving boxes to find a fork so he can eat his sad, microwavable divorcee-dinner.

And then he’s going to have to decide which screen he wants to stare blankly at for several hours. Reality TV or bleak evening news or whatever the fuck his social media algorithm has lapsed into these days. Is Stede in the mood for people being awful to each other, war, or another photo-album of AI shrimp-Jesus captioned ‘Amen!’

He’ll have to pick one of the above. Because otherwise he’ll be forced to look the inevitable truth in the eye.

Which is:

Stede has been a terrible husband.

He’s been a pretty lousy dad, most of the time.

And, judging by the absolute ghost-town of his social life, there’s clearly something intrinsic he lacks in the friendship department, too.

But until now, Stede could at least say, with his whole chest, that he is a wonderful educator. 

The best. The favourite.

Now, this no longer quite feels like the truth.

There is someone out there, this Ed Teach, who’s doing it worse in every way. In ways designed specifically to tick Stede off, it seems.

And somehow, he’s doing it better.

If some lunatic can barge into Stede’s classroom, and give his students such a whirlwind of a day that they’re all begging for him to come back. Well, what does Stede have going for him anymore?

The word of the day is: 

Nothing. 

The board has stayed blank all day, and it’s still covered in thick, oily marker smudges. Stede is far too burnt-out to consider an appropriate word for tomorrow. His mind feels like the dull sizzle of an old, almost-dead electrical cable. Occasionally, it’ll buzz with something hot and ferocious, zap him full of ire for a fleeting moment. But it passes quickly, leaving Stede feeling just as ransacked as his classroom.

Logistically, Stede knows that all the grievances he’d aired with Oluwande, all his stroppy complaining to an uncaring Lucius; it had all been utterly pointless. Really, the chances of Ed Teach being randomly selected to cover Stede’s class ever again are wildly improbable. There are hundreds of schools in the district for a supply-teacher to be called into. And hundreds of supply-teachers who sit by the phone each morning, waiting for that seven o’ clock phone call.

This day with Ed Teach was an outlier. One awful day that will live on in infamy in Stede’s mind.

But this doesn’t matter.

Stede sits in his darkening classroom, picking marker stains out of his fingernails. And he makes a decision.

This is never going to happen again.

Because Stede Bonnet is simply never going to take a day of leave ever again.

It’s a solid plan. 

Foolproof. 

Stede feels good about it.

It lasts a week.