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Ed thinks it’s a brooch or something before he thinks it’s anything else; the red velvet box is just small enough for jewellery but too big for a ring (not that it would be a good time or place for a proposal anyway) and Stede seems like a brooch guy.
What he doesn’t expect is, well…
“Do you like it? It was just from this adorable little stall on that market on the port. Mostly things like glass pendants and knick knacks, but the fellow saw me looking and brought out this whole secret crate of items that he explained you couldn’t really sell out in the open. I even got a discount because I bought a charming paperweight while I was at it!” His tone is bright and breezy, but he’s watching Ed carefully for any sort of reaction. Ed’s still kind of trying to wrap his head around what he’s looking at.
“It’s… sorry, what is it?”
Stede darts his tongue out to wet his lips. He looks very furtive. “A… massager.”
“Fuck off, what the hell is it supposed to massage?” Ed picks the glass ornament looking thing out of its box and turns out over in his hand. It’s heavier than he thought it would be, and cool to the touch. “Looks a bit like Lucius’ new finger. Don’t know how that’s any better than a good shoulder rub.”
The glass is tinted blue, very smooth and if Ed tilts it and squints just right, it looks like the arch of a dolphin jumping out of the water. The head is blunter than a dolphin’s however, and at the base instead of a tail is a flattened circle almost like a wide cork for a bottle. It’s about half the size of Ed’s palm and really quite nice looking, all except for the fact that he cannot for the life of him figure out what on earth it’s meant to do. Stede watches as Ed sizes it up, runs his fingers along the bumped tip, holds it up to the light.
“I give up,” he says eventually. “What did the guy sell it to you as?”
Stede breathes a nervous laugh. “It’s a prostate massager, Ed.” He gives him a slight grin. “It goes inside you.”
…Oh.
Something dark and dangerous perks up inside him, Stede’s words making the tentacled grip of arousal docked in the harbour of his belly rear its head and begin to unfurl itself in anticipation. Stede is still staring at him, waiting for him to say something.
“Well. What do you think?”
“Fuck, Stede.” It’s almost a whisper, and Ed grips the ornament a bit tighter as he tries to get his brain in order.
“You hate it.” Stede sighs, and holds out his hand for Ed to give it back. “It’s fine, really, you don’t have to—“
“No!” The shout surprises even Ed, and Stede’s eyes go wide. “I mean… I don’t hate it. Actually, I kind of like it. Really like it.”
“Ah.”
There’s a beat as Stede’s face relaxes into a smile and he withdraws his hand.
“In that case, I was wondering how you’d feel about me helping you to put it in and then… keeping it in. All day. Was what I was thinking.”
The monster in Ed’s belly roars.
“You fucking maniac,” Ed murmurs. “Fuck, that’s so fucking hot. You mean, around the crew and stuff? Under my clothes?”
“Only if you’re comfortable with it.”
Ed is going to come in his pants.
“If I’m — yeah, Stede, I think I’m fucking comfortable. Jesus wept. Oh my god, that’s the hottest thing you’ve ever said to me. In fact, sod this whole idea, I want to fuck you right now and then three more times before dinner, I actually won’t be able to last a full day with it in because I am hard as a fucking rock as I’m saying this. I'm gonna go mental.”
Stede goes a bit pink but nevertheless gives him a coy smile. “So just imagine how good it’ll be after a full day of anticipation, hm?”
“Ngh.” Ed leans back on the sheets, basking in the beams of the early morning sunrise bursting through the window. “C’mere. At least give me a proper kiss before you get all clinical with it. I deserve it, for what I’m gonna go through.”
Stede beams and moves so that he’s on top of him, knees straddling the outsides of Ed’s thighs and then leans down to kiss him. It’s a much better affair than the first time they’d kissed, what feels like a lifetime ago, and Stede has gotten much more used to kissing as an art rather than as just something you do in front of your parents when they come over to check you haven’t killed yourself out of marital misery. Ed makes a little noise in the back of his throat as Stede takes control, and he brings up a thigh between Stede’s legs and nudges up into his crotch, making him gasp into his mouth before pulling back suddenly.
“That’s not fair.”
“Who said I was making it easy on you?” Ed looks at Stede through low lidded eyes and smirks. “If I have to spend the full day thinking about how badly I want you, I’m fuckin’ taking you with me.”
“Lord,” Stede mumbles, and then kisses him again, sliding a hand between them to gently push Ed’s thigh back down onto the bed. “Mm. Can you do this, I mean, would it be alright if…? Today?”
“Could probably manage that,” Ed says, and instinctually starts to loosen his trousers, lifting his hips off the sheets to aid him in wiggling them down. “I don’t think there’s any scheduled yoga sessions on the bulletin that I know about.”
Stede smiles and helps him with the strings, sitting back on his heels to do so.
“I’ll handle this. If you could just grab…”
“On it.” Ed reaches behind him and brings forward a translucent green bottle stopped with a cork from behind the bed frame and uncorks it. “Do you want me to, or are you…?”
“I’d like to do it, if that’s okay with you.”
“Oh nooo,” Ed pouts in a parody of disappointment, letting his legs fall open. “Oh man. Oh no. Please, I hate it when I get to feel your fingers fucking me in all the right places. Urgh. The worst.” He grins and passes the bottle to Stede. “Go on, then. Have your wicked way with me.”
“Happily.”
The next thing Ed knows, Stede’s hand is between his legs, teasing and letting slicked fingers trail between his thighs. Ed sucks in a sharp breath.
“What bollocks you talk, what fucking bollocks. Anticipation my arse.”
Stede laughs. “Just relax, Ed. Don’t you trust me?”
“I am nursing a fucking semi over here and you’re trying to kill me!”
“Whatever you say.” Stede eases the first finger inside Ed, making him shudder and thrust his hips up, whining a little at the lack of stimulation. “See, I’m behaving myself.” As if to prove a point he pushes in a second, probably too soon but nevertheless making Ed’s dick stand to eager attention.
“You fucking liar,” Ed gasps. “If this is behaving yourself, I’d love to see what misbehaving looks like.”
“Don’t you mean you’d hate to?”
“I know what I said.”
Stede laughs again and crooks his fingers inside Ed, causing him to hiss and buck upwards again. The throb of arousal overwhelms everything as Stede fingers him open, his senses, his logic, and for one glorious second he imagines that Stede is going to withdraw the fingers and fuck him stupid, right here on the bed - and then the pressure is gone and replaced immediately with the sudden stretch of the glass toy filling him up before Ed can even think about opening his mouth to protest.
“There. That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
“…Fgnhm.” Ed closes his eyes and shifts his hips on the bed, testing. He can definitely feel the toy anyway, and when he goes to sit up straight it - oh! - rubs against him just so - making him keen embarrassingly loudly to Stede’s poorly hidden delight. It’s bigger than he’d thought, too.
“Fuck, I have to keep this in all day?”
“I’d really rather like you to, yes.”
Ed adjusts his weight a bit where he sits, trying to figure out the trick here. As the toy shifts, it rubs against his prostate and reduces any thoughts he might have in his brain to pretty much white noise as well as having the added effect of making him so turned on it physically hurts.
“Stede, it’s every time I move,” he says in a kind of shell shocked awe. “Every time I move, I can fucking… god. If I tense, too, I…I don’t know how much you paid for this, but it wasn’t enough. I won’t be able to sit down. I really just won’t be able to sit down without… I haven’t even tried to walk yet.”
“You don’t even know how good you look,” Stede murmurs. Ed gets the distinct impression he hasn’t taken in a single goddamn thing he’s said, too busy raking his eyes over Ed like he’s a goddamn spot the difference. “Gosh. I don’t know if I’ve ever wanted to wreck you more.”
Ed’s heart jumps into his mouth.
“Do it,” he says instantly, hardly even registering his own words. “C’mon. We can just take it out, you could even put it back in straight after if you want, you could just like keep it all inside me for hours afterwards, walking around with your come still in me like you fucking own me. I can take it.”
Stede’s looking at him like a freshwater lake in a desert. Finally, and with an audible degree of pain in the words, he says, “Let’s just try this for now. We’ll see what happens.”
Then, he moves off the bed and leaves Ed to pull his own trousers back up and get himself composed before they both walk out of the quarters together, albeit Ed a little more laboured than Stede.
“It’s walking, too,” Ed pipes up from a little way behind him. “Waking is fucking killing me as well.”
“You could always spend the day looking longingly off into the distance with Buttons,” Stede suggests, tone light and amused. Ed rolls his eyes.
“Ha ha. Very funny. I’m holding you to it, by the way.”
“Hm? Holding me to what?”
Ed darts round and comes to stand in front of Stede, blocking his path. He leans in as Stede swallows, getting inches away from his face.
“At the end of this, you’re gonna wreck me. I wanna be wrecked by you, and I want it hard.”
Stede’s Adam’s apple bobs in his throat, and his eyelashes flutter as his eyes flicker over Ed.
“I’m walking away from you, now,” he whispers. “Before I do something I’ll regret.”
Then, he sidesteps Ed and strides off. Ed smirks after him.
This is going to be fun.
***
Ed is not having fun.
Firstly, there’s the problem of Izzy - the angry chihuahua of a man who takes him aside basically as soon as he gets above deck to ask him whether he was intending to address the crew before lunchtime or whether he was just going to lounge around plaiting Stede’s hair all morning. Ed doesn’t even have it in him to fight him over it.
“It’s barely nine in the morning,” he says flatly, glancing out past Izzy’s shoulder to where the crew look absolutely unbothered by their lack of a captain. Some way behind them, Stede begins merrily hoisting something over the side of the ship and Ed watches him like birds through a window, completely ignoring the protests of the man standing in front of him. Izzy just growls and moves closer into Ed’s space to get his attention back, causing him to step backwards into the wall, coming up suddenly flush against it and —
“…Edward?”
Izzy stares at him, open mouthed, and Ed tries frantically to turn the whimper that unwittingly escaped him into a yawn. The fucking massager is pushed right up against his prostate, and it’s all he can do to stay completely still and pray like fuck that it doesn’t move any more. Izzy just gapes, glances around (reddens a little?) and then shuts his mouth, seeming absolutely lost for words.
“Long night,” Ed tries in a panic, watching Izzy’s face as it transitions from shock to confusion to just flat out embarrassment. The admission doesn’t seem to help, as Izzy’s eyes just go very wide and he briefly glances at Ed’s exposed skin as if to check for injuries or anything similar that could’ve resulted in his reaction to having pressure put on them. Finding nothing, his eyes find Ed’s face again and this time he looks like he might be about to bring out an Ed-shaped doll and ask him to point out spots on it.
“Edward, if there’s anything—“
“There isn’t!” Ed interrupts, feeling thoroughly mortified by now and also not especially keen on staring Izzy in the eyes while having his prostate stimulated. “There’s nothing. I mean, literally, just tired.”
“…Right.” Izzy squints a bit, then just shakes his head and mercifully steps back. “Fine. In that case, I’ll just… I can address… unless? Do you? I mean, um.” He looks totally out of his depth. Ed takes pity on him.
“I’ll do it now. You find a spot to listen, Izzy.”
“Yes. Right, excellent. I’ll just… great.”
He blinks and turns around, walking away from Ed with his hands tightening into fists and then relaxing over and over, almost like he’s trying to put himself back into his own body. Ed exhales and moves away from the wall, feeling the pressure in his hips lessen a bit and the thrill of pleasure slipping away.
It’s probably for the best.
He shuffles out of the side door, makes his way gingerly down the stairs with what feels like all the eyes on the ship following him and once he’s sure all of the idle chatter has died down he clears his throat.
“Right, everyone! Big plans for today, we’re going to, err…” he scans around, looking for inspiration. His eyes fall on Lucius and Pete running death glares through Izzy’s back and whispering to each other like fourteen year old girls, and jumps on it. “We’re going to sit down and give each other some feedback about how we feel everyone is contributing to the team, positive and negative. It’s. Uh. Important to make sure we have open communication and shit. Yeah. That’s the plan.”
Secondly, there’s the problem of…
“Why are you walking like that?” Frenchie asks, seeming genuinely curious. Ed sees Lucius’ head snap up out of the corner of his eye.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says weakly.
“No, you’re definitely walking funny,” Wee John says helpfully. “When you were coming down those stairs, you had a right odd look about you.”
“Uhhhh.” Ed flounders. Lucius is in danger of having his eyebrows vanish off his face for how high he’s managing to get them.
“Oh, Ed, it’s alright, there’s no shame in it,” comes Stede’s chirpy voice suddenly. Ed turns his head to look at him so quickly he almost gets whiplash.
“Wh-? But!”
“You can tell them about your bad knee,” Stede says gently. “The colder weather makes it go sore and stiff, right? It’s fine, even the best pirates have their weaknesses - I’m sure the crew won’t judge you for it?”
There’s a general mumbled consensus of no, along with the shaking of heads and even a sympathetic look or two. Ed glances down at his knee brace and gives himself a mental reminder to have a slight limp next time he has to walk. Izzy and Lucius are still both looking at him with a great degree of skepticism, but there’s pretty much no way to dispute Stede’s explanation without sounding like a pervert and/or a bit ableist. Neither are stupid enough to say anything.
“Yeah, guys. Whoops, sorry! It’s the knee.” Ed taps the brace. “Kind of killing me a bit. It’s alright, it just needs a salve and I’ll be right as rain.”
To his left, he hears Lucius have a coughing fit that sounds a great deal like the word “Bullshit,” and steadfastly ignores him.
“Uh, yeah! So if everyone else wants to get out some cushions or whatever that’d be good. Get comfy, I guess. Yeah.” He chances a look at Stede whose expression is unreadable. Izzy, after another moment of staring, snaps into action and spins around to face the crew.
“You heard your captain! Some fucking cushions need to be brought up right now, or else!”
“Brill. Thanks.” Ed nods as the crew begin to separate, some dropping down below decks and others just kind of standing around in confusion.
“Captain,” the Swede begins slowly. “I don’t know how to give feedback. Will there be a form? I can’t write.”
Ed frowns. “Uhh. Lucius?”
Lucius looks up. “Captain?”
“Can you, like. Document this? Just uh. Transcribing, really. The usual.”
Lucius is giving him a Look. “Mm. Do we need to?”
“Swede?”
“I can’t write.”
“Yeah, there you go. The man can’t write. You need to transcribe, sorry.” Ed shrugs. Lucius’ expression doesn’t change, but he jerks his head while making direct eye contact as if to indicate stepping away from everyone left above deck. Ed’s stomach does a flip, but nevertheless he follows Lucius to the side of the ship with shaky legs. Lucius turns them both away from the eyes of the crew and leans towards him, eyes seeming to search his face.
“I don’t want to be presumptuous, but are you a bit… distracted? You kind of seemed to make up that stuff about feedback on the spot. Along with the cushions. And transcribing. And your knee actually, for that matter.” His gaze tracks down to Ed’s leg. Ed immediately adjusts his stance to accommodate for an imaginary sore knee. “Did… something happen?”
“…Nnnnno.”
“Nothing with Stede?”
“No? Why would it? Stede - why Stede? What?” Ed feels his face go hot as his brain tries to come up with Words, just Any Words, and as he’s staring at Lucius something clicks within him.
“Oh fuck, do you think he’s fucking slapping me about or something?”
Lucius screws his face up and cocks his head to the side.
“Like, no? But it would’ve been pretty messed up to assume.”
Ed wants to sink into the ground and die. “Jesus Christ, I didn’t even think about what — he isn’t, for the record! Everything is - it’s all smooth sailing between us! He’s, yeah! We’re both great, actually. It’s all, all good.”
“Riiight.” Lucius nods slowly. “So. Your knee?”
“Cold weather does fuck it over, to be fair.”
Lucius glances skywards. The sky is blue and perfectly clear, and the still May air is warm with a slight breeze that still isn’t worthy of putting on a jacket.
“And the group feedback session?”
“I did make that up on the spot, but Izzy kind of suggested I address the crew and if I didn’t then he was going to make up some really shitty work and I’m actually just not in the mood.”
This seems to set Lucius a little more at ease. “Makes sense.”
He opens the book he’s been holding to his chest and flicks to a fresh page. Ed catches glimpses of birds, plant life, the occasional dick or two and one really, really good angle of Izzy fast asleep with Roach holding a meat cleaver over him menacingly whilst grinning to the viewer before he finally gets to the front.
“I’ll get started, then. I’ll begin with the date, just set the scene a bit, you know? The weather… and so on. Just know you can talk to me about anything, so long as it’s at a reasonable hour.” He clicks his tongue and gives Ed another pointed look before swanning back over to where it looks like most of the crew has re-emerged with suitable seating devices in hand. Ed shuts his eyes.
When he opens them again, what feels like hours later (it’s totally forty seven seconds), Stede is standing in front of him, having snuck his way over while everyone arranges themselves in something akin to a circle on deck with Lucius directing them to create the (least? Most?) amount of conflict possible. He has this look about him of what’s probably supposed to be sympathy but is actually pretty reminiscent of the look he gave him when Ed had his thigh between his legs.
“How are you holding up?” He whispers, stepping closer to cover him from the suspicious eyes of the crew. “What was Lucius saying to you?”
“Oh, you know,” Ed fumbles. “My knee. Whether I was feeling okay. Whether he really had to transcribe or not. The usual.”
“Good, good.” Stede’s eyes hold a million words, mostly ‘I want to fuck you more than I want to eat three times a day’, or other fan favourites like ‘Want me to bend you over this barrel and show you just how talented a glassblower really is?’ Ed is suddenly hyper-aware of the pressing of the toy inside him. What Stede actually says is, “We’d better show our faces up there before Izzy starts maiming people when they try to give him honest peer review.”
Ed can’t really argue with that.
However, as soon as Stede starts to back off, he grabs him by the upper arm and pulls him back. “Wait. Give me a time,” he murmurs.
“Hm?”
“Give me a time for… this. You. I can’t fucking take not knowing. It’s already killing me.”
Stede inhales sharply, regarding Ed through low lidded eyes. “Mm. Seven?”
“Dream on. If you make me wait till seven I’ll fucking hold you down and ride your thigh until I finish wherever we are, whoever’s company we’re in, no matter what, the second I can’t wait any longer, and you know I will. Make it four.”
Stede’s breathing hitches. He looks to be losing a little of his composure. “Six.”
Ed groans and tips his head forwards onto Stede’s shoulder. “You want me to die. Half four.”
“Half five.”
“Five, and I won’t make you sit in a chair while I get myself off in front of you and refuse to let you touch me.”
Stede cracks.
“Five it is,” he breathes, then takes Ed’s hand off his arm gently and leans in to kiss him. Ed kisses back like he’s dying, which in fairness he feels like he is. He pushes his hips forward into Stede’s, which Stede diplomatically deals with by making an annoyed little noise into Ed’s mouth and then shoving Ed back with a force that basically has the opposite effect of a cold shower.
“Oh my god, behave yourself,” he says in an offended tone, but his eyes are gleaming. “Anyone would think you were some blushing virgin bride, never been touched before.”
“What, like you when we first met?”
Stede flushes. “Very funny. If you can’t keep a lid on it, I’ll just have to ignore you completely until five. And I’m sure neither of us want that.”
“You’re superbly mean to me,” Ed sighs, and then reaches for Stede’s mouth again.
“Captain, I don’t mean to rush you in your endeavours to find out what Bonnet’s wisdom teeth taste like, but are you nearly done?”
It’s the distinctive and unwelcome voice of Izzy Hands, because who else? Stede’s warmth is lost immediately as the man steps away, leaving Ed feeling exasperated (can’t a man get an intimate moment to himself anymore?) and more than a little blue balled. Izzy’s staring across at both of them with a pained expression, standing rigidly next to a cushion that’s obviously been brought out for him and that he’s trying to pretend he hasn’t seen. Ed just glumly resigns himself to his fate.
“Coming, Izzy,” he deadpans. Then, under his breath, “Chance would be a fine thing.” Stede chuckles softly at the comment, then both of them make their way over to the pile of crew members waiting in slightly tense anticipation atop pillows from below deck.
Ed is definitely not having fun.
***
“It’s been hours, can you just admit you avoid doing knot duty and we can all move on?”
“I do no such thing! It’s not my fault if Roach always gets there before me!”
“Only because you deliberately take half an hour getting above deck and by that time I could’ve done them anyway.”
“What nonsense! I don’t have to listen to this shit. Half an hour my right arse cheek; it takes at least two hours if you’re doing it properly. I can only suggest Roach isn’t tying them properly!”
“Oh, you little—!”
Ed puts his head into his hands as Roach lunges towards Black Pete, only just stopped from cleaving his head in two by a well-timed foot stuck out in front of him courtesy of Lucius.
“Ladies, ladies,” Lucius says in a deeply exasperated tone. “Do we think we can all chill out and put down the handbags for just one second? Frenchie is right; this will all just be so much more quick and painless if you can just admit that yeah, knot duty isn’t your favourite! It’s fine! I don’t like doing the dirty manual work either!”
“There’s a surprise,” Izzy murmurs under his breath. Lucius turns to face him with a look of forced politeness.
“It’s okay, Izzy,” he says through gritted teeth. “It’s my turn to air out my grievances next, and I have a great deal to say about how much you fidget when you’re getting sketched. It makes it tricky to get consistency, hm?”
And then it all kicks off again.
It’s been close to four hours since they started, and had begun quite pleasantly with Wee John complimenting Frenchie on his interior design skills, Olu telling Jim how impressed he is with Jim’s impulse control as of late and Buttons shyly admitting that he thinks the Swede has some of the best vocal cords he’s ‘ever seen on man or beast’, which made the Swede blush so hard that Ed was genuinely worried he was going to burst a blood vessel.
Then, Izzy had opened his mouth.
In Izzy’s defence, he hadn’t actually been wrong about Black Pete’s conspicuous avoidance of knot duty but there really are better ways to phrase annoyance other than, “That fucking lazy sod too busy getting shagged off the face of the planet by Leonardo da Useless to bother making sure the ship’s sails don’t collapse in on themselves.”
Conversely, Lucius probably shouldn’t have responded with, “Jealous?”
Truth be told, Ed would’ve intervened before now (there’s nothing in the world he loves more than a bit of shit-stirring), only he’s been having to sit so rigidly for hours on end due to trying to not give himself any more of a hard-on than he’s already suppressing (it well and truly has been Hours and the pressure in his pelvis has only worsened with every effort to not think about it), and besides, Stede seems to have it mostly under control.
“Sit down! Izzy, Izzy sit!”
Izzy does no such thing. “Are you going to fucking let him talk to me like that!?”
“Lucius, apologise to Izzy!”
“Fine, fine,” Lucius sighs, folding his arms as he stands just beyond Izzy’s reach from where Wee John holds him back like some kind of bouncer for the Very Drunk and Very Aggressive. “I’m sorry for saying you fidgeted a lot while getting sketched. You actually sit very still when I’ve got you tied down.”
Jim poorly stifles a laugh as Izzy snarls and tries to tug himself away from Wee John’s hold with not much success. Stede gives Lucius a very stern look.
“Lucius.”
“Alright, whatever. Sorry, Izzy. I’ve never sketched you and I wouldn’t know how you would react to it, but I’m sure you’d be very well behaved.”
This at least seems to be an improvement, and Izzy stops struggling, albeit still staring daggers into Lucius.
“…Fine.”
“It’s not exactly for a lack of trying, though.”
Izzy turns his head away, and Ed could almost swear he goes pink for a moment before Wee John lets go of him and he sinks back down to the deck next to Ed. Ed tuts in irritation and shifts on his knees to try and stop them going numb. Izzy picks up on it immediately, likely trying to shift the attention away from himself.
“Do you have enough cushions, Captain?”
“Hm? Oh, it’s fine, I wasn’t really—“
“Fang! The captain doesn’t have enough cushions! Go down and get him some more, if we’re gonna be fucking stuck here we should at least be making sure he’s comfortable.”
Ed catches Stede’s expression as Fang reluctantly gets to his feet and shuffles off below deck. Amusement flickers across his face as he drops his eyes down to where Ed’s kneeling awkwardly on one flat cushion, shoulders tensed and pose uncharacteristically stiff. He flashes Ed a grin as he settles back, turning to Lucius with a look of benign encouragement.
“Okay, we’ll start with positives shall we? Take a short break from the negative energy we seem to be creating here.”
Lucius pouts and fixes Izzy with a Stare. “If you insist.” He looks away. “Pete, I’ve really been liking what you’ve been doing with your hips recently. Is that just learned recently or something you’ve been working on for a while?”
Izzy leans in closer so that only Ed can hear him as Pete laughs and delivers some kind of flirty retort to groans and protests from the rest of the crew.
“Edward, do I have to be here for this? I’ll do feedback, but I don’t fucking need a blow by blow account of what those two freaks are getting up to at nights probably inches away from me.”
Ed well and truly couldn't care less, having barely been tuned in to any of the feedback thanks to concentrating on being a Person With Normal Reactions And Demeanour who is definitely not checking the sun’s position in the sky every five minutes. He shrugs, not fully paying attention.
“I mean. The rest of us have to.”
“Can you tell them to stop, at least? And focus on something like sword fighting abilities or whatever?”
“I thought that was what they were talking about.”
Izzy groans and hides his face behind his hands, shaking his head as if to try and rid it of all thoughts and images. A few moments later, Fang appears again with cushions piled up to the top of his head and Lucius actually stops whatever gross stream of consciousness he’s got going on to stare at him as he drops them down beside Ed.
“Talk about getting comfortable. You might never get up again.”
“Oh, I think I will,” Ed mutters and glances again at the sun’s position above them and then again in Stede’s direction.
He sighs, looks at the stack of pillows and the slightly embarrassed looking Fang, and then something in his head goes ‘fuck it!’ and he begins to arrange them into a suitable sitting pile. Damned be the massager. He’s getting comfortable if it kills him. Lucius, mercifully, seems to have moved on from complimenting his boyfriend’s skills in bed and is now explaining to an unconvinced looking Jim why they could maybe possibly please god stop using his sleeping body for target practice.
“I’m aiming for the space around you,” Jim says in confusion. “The point is that I’m trying not to hit you.”
Lucius pulls a face. “The point is you’re trying to get as close to me as possible without hitting me?”
“Call it a trust exercise, amigo.”
Izzy snorts and looks to Ed for a reaction but Ed’s hardly listening, too focused on balancing the last two pillows so that he can comfortably sit back without having to support himself too much. Once he thinks he’s got it, he braces himself and sinks down onto his pillow throne, elbows coming down either side of him to ease the descent and trying to just position himself so, just so, just that he doesn’t—
Oh.
Oh. Oh oh oh oh.
He shuts his eyes and prays to every god he can think of, blood rushing to his crotch as if he’s been holding back the floodgates all day and has finally lost his steading. In his eyes he can feel tears start to prickle as his heartbeat begins to pound in his ears, louder than anything, louder than Lucius or Izzy or even his own thoughts. The massager presses into him at just the right angle, just hard enough, just insistent enough, and there’s no way he could move it apart from…
Ed shifts his hips on the pillows.
Another wave of unbridled pleasure comes crashing over him, blocking out every sense he has left and leaving him with just the feeling of being filled so fucking good that he can’t imagine a time before having it inside him. He lets his head fall back and tries his best to stay quiet amidst every instinct he has screaming at him to just keep doing whatever the fuck he’s doing. Distantly, as if from miles away, he hears the awkward cough of Izzy Hands. He opens his eyes to see the man looking at him with a great deal of concern.
“Captain?” He says, voice a bit strained. “Are you… quite alright?”
“Good to stretch out the knee,” Ed blurts without thinking. “Yep. Haven’t in a whole. Ooh. Oohoohoo. Feels good.” He tries to look nonchalant, as if he’s not just fucking himself in broad daylight in front of his entire crew. Izzy has no choice but to take his words at face value, and as he turns back to the others Ed catches sight of Stede looking nothing short of gobsmacked. He clearly hadn’t expected him to actually try and seek out the stimulation before the time. He clearly hadn’t expected him to do it in front of everyone.
Ed smirks and adjusts himself so that he’s in a better position to move at will with the least amount of disturbance to anyone else, and then begins to rock very slowly back and forth on his cushions so that with every shifting of the toy inside him he’s seeing stars. Privately, he thanks whichever cow had sacrificed itself for his leather trousers which at least go some way in being stiff enough to not draw much attention to his groin. Stede is still staring at him with a look of complete shock and awe. Ed watches him subtly adjust his position to accommodate for not wearing trousers made of stiff enough material, and he grins to himself.
It’s with a particularly well aimed roll of his hips that Ed really begins to feel the pressure beginning to build, and he bites down on his own hand to stop himself from making any noises that are threatening to come forwards. He squeezes his eyes shut, then hears Stede’s voice.
“Lucius, what time is it?”
“Huh?” Lucius pauses from his long winded explanation to Roach about how he’d like the dessert options to be organised in future to check the timepiece inside his jacket. “Um. Like, like two? Nearly two?”
“…Okay. Thank you.”
Ed has to resist the urge to yell, “I fucking told you we couldn’t wait!” but manages to hold himself back. He pushes his hips forwards again and nearly sobs at the sheer fucking sensation of being hit over and over again in exactly the right spot with zero effort at all. Stede is looking at him with an expression that Ed can only associate with a deep, unfulfilled hunger. He really seems to be struggling with something.
Another shift in position, and holy shit, holy fucking shit, how can this be an even better angle than before? He hadn’t thought it was possible. He hadn't thought anything could be better, but somehow it’s happening. Ed tries to steady his breathing.
Through a haze of pleasure, Ed tunes back in to hear Stede’s voice coming loud and clear, very close to him.
“The captain isn’t well. He needs to return below decks and rest; he must’ve picked something up from Bridgetown while we were over picking up supplies. Is everyone alright taking a break?”
Then, Izzy’s voice, with a murmured, “Couldn’t fucking come soon enough.”
“Amen,” Ed agrees, feeling a bit delirious. Stede just breathes a laugh, and when he hauls him to his feet with a strength Ed hadn't known he possessed he can feel him tense and wound up against him.
“We can reconvene soon,” Stede promises at the looks of indignation from several crew members who had not yet had the chance to say their bit, then he pulls one of Ed’s arms around his shoulders and hurries them both off, down the stairs, halfway along the corridor — and it is only halfway before he seems to lose his last shred of composure and just shoves Ed up against the wall, crushing their mouths together with such force that it made Ed a bit lightheaded.
When he pulls back, breathing hard against his lips and looking a bit sheepish, Ed just laughs and drags him back in, enjoying the way Stede’s obviously been thinking about doing this all day and finally is taking his chance by the horns.
“Seven, huh? You thought you could make it till seven?”
Stede sighs. “Give me a break. I’ve never done this before, and I don’t know you’d… I never imagined you would lack the patience…”
“Me? Patience?” Ed lets his hand drift down to Stede’s ass, making him inhale sharply. “You don’t know me at all. I don’t know which other guy you’re fucking who has patience.”
“Yeah, me neither.”
“Speaking of lack of patience though, were you planning to fuck me in this corridor or did you want to go somewhere a bit more private? I like the enthusiasm, but unless you want to give Izzy a very nasty shock when he inevitably comes to check I’m not dying, maybe we should…”
“Oh, probably,” Stede murmurs, then kisses him again, seemingly with no intention to go anywhere.
Ed hums and moves his hand round from Stede’s ass to palm at the front of his trousers, and yeah, that does it - Stede keens and draws back, grabbing Ed’s hand and lifting it up to his jaw to keep kissing even while stumbling backwards, groping behind him to find a door handle before both of them fall through into the captains quarters, hands pulling at clothes and messy, open mouthed kissing their way towards the bed.
“Want you to fuck me, Stede,” Ed mumbles between kisses as Stede pushes him down onto the bed and climbs on top of him. “Sod this stupid glass ornament. Need you. Need you so much.”
“Ed,” Stede gasps and begins to tug at his trousers. Ed can feel Stede’s hard-on pressing into his hip as he helps to shuck the offending clothing item off, the movement hampered a little by the awkward angle and Stede’s mouth hard and insistent against his own, not content with being close to him and needing more, needing to feel him, touch him, become one unit. The thought is… it’s making Ed feel something usually only experienced by people high as a kite on crack cocaine.
“Come on,” he says, letting his legs fall open and guiding Stede towards him. “I can take it.” The man needs no encouragement.
“Ed,” he repeats, desperation colouring his words as he steadies himself between Ed’s legs. “Ed, you’re so lovely. Love you so much. Want to feel you around me, I want to feel it when you come.”
Ed moans. He can’t help himself. Stede is too much, his words and mouth and body pressing all of Ed’s buttons like there’s no tomorrow and he feels like he could cry from how completely overwhelmed and consumed by Stede’s love he feels.
“Stop fucking talking about it,” he manages through the mind fuck. “I want you too, you idiot. I love you too. Now just fucking…”
He can’t even finish the sentence before he feels the toy that’s been causing him so much hell for the last few hours slide out of him - and he barely has time to adjust to the loss before Stede has lined himself up and sinks into him like he was fucking made for it.
Ed tips his head back and cries out at the sudden stretch, but again Stede doesn’t even let him process the feeling before he’s pulling back and then snapping his hips back down, shifting Ed up the bed and Ed can’t help it, he just can’t help it, he crosses both ankles behind Stede’s back and pulls him in, as deep as he can possibly go, at an angle he couldn’t even dream of. He grasps at the sheets with his hands, trying to find something to anchor him back to reality before Stede starts to slam into him at an unforgiving pace that makes Ed arch off the bed and moan with every piston of Stede’s hips. He probably sounds debauched, like the best hidden room in the world’s most disreputable whorehouse, and he can’t even bring himself to care. He might be dribbling.
His head spins, and it’s just as he’s wondering whether he’s going to pass out from sheer pleasure that Stede’s voice comes in his ear, low and rough and practically dripping with want.
“Fuck, you’re so good. You’re so good. The whole ship’s going to hear if we aren’t careful; every vessel for five miles around is going to know how good you are, how well you take my cock. I’d do this for hours. I’d keep you here, in my bed, on my sheets, fucking you just like this, exactly like this, until you beg me to stop or let you come. I’d do anything for you. You’re so lovely, Ed. There is nothing about you that I do not want. Are you going to come? Can you come, just like this?”
Ed sobs, and he kissed Stede again as Stede fucks into him one, twice, and then he’s spilling between them as Stede gasps and shudders against him, hips faltering in their pace as warmth spreads inside Ed and the movement slowly draws to a stop.
It’s a couple of minutes before either of them move, foreheads pressed together, breathing steadying and the slightly embarrassing realisation of what they’ve just done washes over them like an easy tide. Ed is the first to start laughing.
Stede follows not long after, the laughs eventually subsiding into murmured giggling accounts of what everyone else on the ship could possibly be thinking right now.
“Oh god, can you imagine Izzy’s face?” Ed wheezes, stomach beginning to hurt from laughter. Stede drops his head, shoulders shaking from mirth.
“Oh, ohhh, I have to go back up and see them all. It’s fine for you; it’s absolutely brilliant from where you’re laying, but for me-!”
“Ohhh, Edward,” Ed mimicks in a surprisingly good impersonation of his first mate. “I thought I’d come down to check on you, since I heard you screaming and thought Bonnet might be trying to push you out the window. I’ll kill him for you. I’d love to kill him. Please let me kill him, Edward.”
“Be nice,” Stede manages through giggles. “Be nice, Ed, he only does it because he cares.”
“Ah, whatever. It’s your problem now.”
“Urgh. Thanks for reminding me.”
They settle into an easy silence.
“I’ll get Lucius to run you a bath,” Stede says finally, checking back over his shoulder. “You can say it’s to sweat out the illness or something.”
“I think we’re well past that point now,” Ed sighs, but nevertheless stretches out and flashes Stede a grin.
“All the same. I’ll go and see how quickly I can get this whole thing rounded off, then I’ll come back down to see you.”
“How’s seven?” Ed asks playfully, and ducks as Stede swats at him.
“Ha ha.”
“I’ll remind you about this for a while.”
“I have no doubts about it.”
Stede gets up off the bed and smiles down at him.
“I’ll get dressed. Sooner I do this, the sooner it’s over. Oh, and Ed?”
“Hm?”
“Make sure the massager goes away properly. I have a feeling it’s not the last time we’ll be using it.”
Ed rolls over and closes his eyes, grinning as the afternoon sunlight splits his face and colours the sheets gold.
“Funny, that. I have that feeling too.”