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Christmas morning is rainy and bleak, but it's cosy in bed under the extra layer of the patchwork quilt that the knitting group ladies stitched for them as a gift. Stede is still fairly convinced that their motivation was more about the hope of thank you hugs and kisses than anything altruistic, which Ed enthusiastically provided after the two of them unwrapped it together at the last meeting. Still, he's glad for its warmth, in a physical way as well as the unexpected warmth of friendship and community and things crafted by hand for no reason but to show affection for each other and for the simple joy of creation. There's been a lot of that these last couple of years, this year in particular.
Ed is semi-awake beside him, drowsing with his face tucked against Stede's neck and occasionally giving him sleepy kisses there, not yet conscious enough to put much effort in or to aim them very well. It makes Stede smile, feeling oddly fluttery around the heart and stomach areas. He never imagined he'd ever get used to this kind of casual, sweet devotion, and on some level maybe he never will be, but it's beautifully familiar at the same time somehow, like he's always had it. Like he's always been this happy.
"Go back to sleep," he murmurs, sliding his fingertips over the slippery satin lapel of Ed's pyjamas. They're a fraternal twin to his own, a rich dark teal against Stede's deep coral, gifted to each other the night before so they'd get to wake up on Christmas morning in something bright and luxurious.
Ed grumbles something incoherent, a wordless sound of lazy displeasure, and his mouth becomes more insistent on Stede's neck. "No," he manages, parched and growly with sleep. "I'm awake now. Might as well suck your dick about it."
He doesn't actually move to do so and Stede laughs softly, enfolding Ed in his arms until Ed wriggles impossibly closer with his head and his uncontrollable halo of curls on Stede's chest. He's got some half-baked idea about growing his famous Blackbeard hair out again, feeling like he might be more in control of his image this time, but now it's in the awkward in-between stage where he hates the way it looks and he spends most of the time with it tied back in a stubby little half-up ponytail. It's only in the nights and early mornings that Stede gets to feel it like this, freed from its constraints to tickle his nose and make him sneeze.
"Hold that thought," Stede tells him, combing his fingers almost reverently through Ed's soft grey curls. "There might be some vaguely relevant surprises under the tree."
Ed cracks one eye open at that, tilting his head to look up at Stede. "Relevant to me unhinging my jaw like a snake and swallowing you whole?"
"Mmm... no, not quite. But I imagine I'll want to suck the life out of you when you're wearing it."
Ed is up and out of bed heading for the bathroom for a pee and a wash so quickly that he almost trips over his own feet, which Stede thinks with some satisfaction bodes rather well for the morning.
Armed with strong tea and marmalade toast, they sit together on the carpet in front of the glittering tree like overexcited children, grabbing wrapped gifts to shove at each other and watching breathlessly for every delighted reaction—or bemused reaction, sometimes, when Ed grins like the devil and has to explain to Stede exactly which body parts go where in an elaborate new leather harness with a million angled straps and buckles.
Ed gets a bit teary-eyed when he unwraps a knitted jumper that's an exact copy of his favourite of Stede's, the one he admired on the antique dress form in the shop on the day they met. His is black and shades of purple with a few bright specks of cheeky hot pink instead of Stede's turquoises and teals and cream, but the pleasantly scratchy Shetland yarn is the same, the bands of intricate fairisle patterns are all the same. The only thing that's different is the large buttonholes worked into the cuffs so Ed can slip his thumbs through, which he discovers when he pulls off his pyjama shirt without bothering to unfasten it in his haste to get the jumper on.
"Fits perfectly," he says, sounding a little bit choked as he wriggles his thumbs into the cuff holes. He misses his favourite old hoodie, Stede knows he does, but he insists he doesn't regret giving it to Allie that last night of the kids' visit when they met up with the crew on the headland picnic spot and grilled burgers and sausages while the sun set like a vibrant oil painting over Anglesey and the sea breeze blew cold enough to make her shiver. Stede is pretty sure that's true as well. Both things can be true. Lots of impossible things can be true all at once, as it turns out. It's a strange and wonderful revelation that he wishes he could have had decades ago. So much might have been different.
"I should hope so," he says, submitting with a giddy little grin to the ferocious attack of kisses that Ed starts pressing all over his cheeks and hair. "I know your body very well."
"Fuck, I hope I know yours as well as I think I do," Ed says, passing him an elegant white gift bag with gold ribbon handles before clutching his hands together anxiously and twiddling his thumbs, restless with uncertainty. "Say if it's too much. It's totally okay, you know it is. I won't be offended or anything. I think you'll like it. But it's okay if you don't, you can swap it for whatever."
"Well, that's an awfully ominous build up," Stede says, looking warily at the bag in his hands for a moment. He tries and entirely fails to guess what can possibly have got Ed so nervous when the only thing on his face when he handed over the parcel containing a meticulously hand-made leather hip harness and enormous cock extender dildo earlier was an unabashed sort of delight and a 'you got me' sort of shrug when Stede cracked up laughing and accused him of giving a present that was really for himself.
He pulls the ribbon tails to open the bag, fights past gauzy clouds of white tissue paper, and pulls out—lingerie. And he laughs.
Before Ed can get offended or hurt at his reaction, Stede nods at a black and silver box under the tree. "Open that one," he says.
Ed's clearly divined what's in the box, already giggling as he lifts off the lid and outright cackling when he unfolds the paper and lifts out more lingerie. The sound of it startles Daphne awake and she gives the two of them a grouchy glare before settling back down, turning her other side towards the fireplace to cook evenly.
"Why on earth would you think I might not like this?" Stede demands, tracing the soft ruffled lines of translucent silk with his fingertips. "You can't have forgotten our lake trip already. You know how much I enjoy pretty things."
"Well, yeah," Ed concedes, laying his own gift out on the sofa cushions to inspect every piece in breathless glee. "But it wasn't that, you know"—he gestures vaguely—"French knickery, marabou feathery, Hollywood starlety before."
There's a halter neck babydoll in pale turquoise with feathers around the edges and a matching pair of frilled shorts, and a set of knickers, bodice and suspender belt in vibrant chartreuse satin trimmed with tiny white ribbon flowers. The final set is a longline bra and French knickers, all soft ivory silk tulle layers gathered and ruched with an elaborate pattern of microscopic stitches to give the deceptive effect of something simple and elegant when really it probably took longer to make than the fussier looking ones.
Ed is watching him. Stede can feel his gaze shining dark and intense through his long pretty eyelashes.
"I'm not asking you to marry me," Ed says, soft and low. "I know you're not sold on any of that stuff. But I thought, you know... since your birthday, what you said to me then. Maybe we could play sometime?"
Stede's heart is doing something very alarming suddenly. They laughed about it a little bit afterward when they were curled in bed together, pleasantly sore and sated and extremely ready for sleep. You really get into the acting, don't you? Ed teased, all soft and fond, and Stede giggled into the pillow, hiding his flushed face, not exactly embarrassed but enjoying the gentle humiliation of being ribbed so lovingly.
Marry me, he said in the middle of the scene when he was tied down firmly over a bench with his fine frilly linen chemise roughly torn down the back. The words came to him from god knows where, the way most of his words do when he starts babbling at times like this, channelling the character he invented on the spot for the birthday game that Ed devised for him after reading a dozen of Stede's pirate history books for research.
Ed laughed in his pirate captain persona, cruel and mocking, and swung his rope cat down again. Pain sliced across Stede's back in multiple sharp lines, concentrating in a fiery scatter where the knots landed on his tender flesh.
"This is how we deal with stowaways on my ship," he said, as softly threatening as the light brush of his cat's frayed edges trailing up and down the indentation of Stede's spine before striking again, again, again, until Stede is limp against the top of the bench and hard as steel in his ragged costume, his brain going fuzzy enough that he could almost believe he really feels the rocking of waves and the creak of wood.
That's when he said it, a character who was like him but not him begging something unexpected of a character who was like Ed but not Ed: "Marry me," he gasped, fighting the words out around the waves of heat and pain thrilling his back. "I'll be yours forever if you'll have me, Captain Blackbeard."
Ed is far too experienced and professional to let anything shake him much, and he only hesitated an almost imperceptible fraction of a second then before grasping the tails of the cat near their knotted ends and scratching the rough tight bundle cruelly down one side of Stede's whipped back and up the other, making him flinch and cry out in a broken, shaking voice that he barely recognised. Ed's in contrast was cool, disdainful, amused, when he replied, "What could I possibly want from you? A common harbour cunt stealing a free ride, daring to proposition the captain? I should throw you over the side."
Getting so thoroughly into the roleplay was like being possessed, inspiration striking like lightning somehow through the slow daze clouding all of Stede's senses except the one that was letting him feel every inch of those harsh ropes, and every deliberate touch of Ed's leather trousers and voluminous pirate shirt and sash and prop sword when he stood close enough.
"Your crew has misinformed you, sir," Stede said, improvising too quickly even to know what he was about to say. He heard a sound that might be the exhaled breath of a laugh, Ed disbelieving but delighted at the pushback and happy to play along and see where this went. "My name is Renée Lalique," Stede continued, taking a quick glance around and stealing the name from the antique glass vase Ed took from its former place in the living room and moved to the bookcase room mantelpiece, cheekily stuffing a few slim silicone dildos inside for decoration like a bizarre bouquet of flowers. "Wife of a silk merchant with a fleet of a dozen fine ships and a considerable fortune. Marry me. Let me sail with you. All of his riches could be yours, dear captain."
Slowly, making sure his clothes and the heat of his body touched Stede in every place that was tender, Ed bent over his bared back and murmured in his ear, "How could I marry you, Mrs Lalique, if you've already got a husband?"
Stede's restraints gave him just enough slack to edge back half an inch from the bench he was bound to and rub gently against the distorted front of Ed's trousers and the thick hardness behind the leather there. "Why do you think I stole away on your ship and no other? There's nobody else on the seas as strong and clever and fearsome as you, Captain Blackbeard. I want you to help me kill him so we can rule his fleet together," Stede-Renée said, and the game twisted in a very unexpected direction.
Now, Christmas morning, Stede turns the ivory underwear over in his hands, unable to stop gazing at its fine stitching and endless wafting layers of gauzy silk tulle. He'll look ridiculous in it, probably. But he'll feel sensational.
"Play," he repeats softly, feeling the word spark a hot little smoulder somewhere deep. "With or without the murder?"
"Ladies' choice," Ed says with a grin that shatters Stede's last bit of ability not to be kissing him right this moment. He leans in, scrunching his greedy possessive fingers around huge handfuls of Ed's growing hair, and they lose a very pleasant ten minutes to the sweet, lazy slide of lips and tongues until Ed reluctantly pulls away, explaining with regret, "If I keep doing that I'm gonna have to take you back to bed, and then we'll never get out again if I can help it."
"Well, that hardly sounds like a bad thing," Stede points out, and Ed laughs.
"It will be if we're late for dinner. Come on, last few then we need to get dressed." He starts gathering his own bits of lingerie back into their gift box, but lingers over some silky black knickers that fasten on each hip with ribbons before tucking them into the pocket of his pyjama trousers and packing away the rest.
"Got plans for those, have you?" Stede asks, feeling a little bit faint at the prospect, and the look Ed turns on him then could probably melt granite.
"Gonna wear these today," he says, soft and low, full of promise. "My first date skirt, and the pretty socks you made me. You wanna unwrap me like another present when we get home? Let me ride your massive cock?"
Unsure how he's going to manage to keep from blushing all day, Stede can only nod.
It's not so bad, really. It's even easy to forget in the hectic festivities, despite thinking that the sight of Ed's new ribboned underwear being hidden like a dirty little secret by his skirt and then revealed again in tantalising flashes when he propped his feet up one by one on the bedroom stool to fasten his thigh garters was the most unforgettable sight of Stede's life.
Dinner is entirely gluten-free and somehow doesn't taste like sawdust, thanks to Pete's surprisingly dedicated attention to a specialist cookery course he's become obsessed with since getting involved with Izzy. The dogs are well-behaved but charmingly boisterous, and very patient about being dressed in tinsel collars and antler headbands for photos in front of the enormous and excessively decorated tree, which Stede has to assume is Fang's doing far more than his Scrooge of a partner. There's a crackling fire, unobtrusive music, extremely good brandy and mince pies after the dim winter sun settles below the horizon in the late afternoon and the stars begin to glitter above the vast dark sea, and when Stede hears the words comfort and joy sing softly out of the speaker he thinks oh—yes, that's it, isn't it? That's what I'm feeling.
Roach is the last to arrive close to six o'clock, joining them for a supper of leftovers and far too much cheese—as if such a thing even exists—after Fleetwood Mackerel has finally chased away its last lingering diners. They all exchange their Secret Santa gifts, squabbling cheerfully and trying to guess the givers by either the quality of their sellotape skills (Jim: didn't bother, used colourful elastic bands stretched around brown parcel paper instead) or the obviousness of their present choice (Buttons: a hand-written, conspicuously bird-pecked invitation to teach Stede how to sail). Then, essential business concluded at last and all the important people in their odd blended crew of friends and found family present, things settle into an easy, comfortable hush and they break into smaller groups to talk and drink and pick at endless plates of food, John and Frenchie wandering off outside claiming they feel like a nice after-dinner walk which is almost certainly a half-arsed cover for their intentions to have a bit of a grope in the relative privacy of the garden.
It's a big old house with a lot of furniture, but Ed still sidles up to Stede's place on the sofa after chatting with Pete and the Swede for a while and says, "Hey. You too stuffed for me to sit on your lap?"
Stede pats his stomach, considering. Full, but not to the point that a bit of a jostle will cause too much discomfort. "No. Please, climb aboard."
Of course Ed doesn't bother with the usual sort of lap-sitting they both do sometimes when their favourite little pub is too busy for everyone to get their own seat: sideways, an arm looped casually around the neck, the sittee holding on around the sitter's waist to keep him steady. Instead he climbs astride Stede with an easy, natural sort of grace, the pleats in his black skirt spreading wide as his knees sink into the soft cushions on either side of him.
"Oh, hello," Stede says, surprised at first but then not surprised at all when he thinks for a moment. Ed is extra affectionate when he's a little bit tipsy, and when he's cosy and warm, and when he's been spending time with the people he loves best in the world. It's only surprising that it took him this long, really.
"Hey," Ed says again, softly, giving him a crooked little smile when Stede's hands go straight to the bare skin of his thighs almost without thinking, like they belong there and are simply going home. He takes a sip of brandy from the glass he's holding then sets it down on the side table, dipping his head to kiss Stede and share the rich warmth of the taste lingering on his lips.
Having Ed on his lap like this feels so natural somehow. Public affection was always excruciating before, and not only with Mary—Stede was happy enough to hold hands with previous boyfriends, quick hello and goodbye pecks, all of that, but he never would have behaved anything like this. There was something strange and staid about the company he kept before, like everybody always had half their brain concentrating on how to be the most unobtrusive and mature person in the room. Like playing at being grown-ups. This year has been a revelation in a million little ways, not least the realisation that acting a bit like a besotted teenager even when you're pushing fifty is okay, actually. More than okay. It's lovely to see other people in love. It's lovely to be in love, and to want to show it.
Around the room, everyone else is at it too in a variety of casual and deliberate ways. Oluwande is trailing his fingers absently up and down Jim's back in front of the blazing fire as they laugh about something with Roach, who in turn is sharing a plate of leftovers with Ivan and occasionally exchanging uncharacteristically shy little glances with him that Stede feels like he desperately needs to gossip and speculate about as soon as they're out of earshot. The Swede and the harbourmaster are standing by the front window, arms around each other's waists, watching the rolling winter sea in the bright illumination of the moon and not needing to talk. Izzy slipped onto the floor in front of Fang's chair a while ago to fuss the dogs and he's stuck there now, Barbarella and Daphne's snoozing heads in his lap while his own rests comfortably against Fang's knee, listening to Pete chatter excitedly from his perch on the ottoman about the new Blackbeard bondage chair Fang gave him for Christmas as if Izzy's not already perfectly aware of all its features. He looks more relaxed and happy than Stede's ever seen him in the almost-year they've known each other, which is annoyingly nice to see considering he's still nowhere near ready to forgive that awful man for stealing Lucius away from the shop.
And Lucius is giving Stede a knowing, fond, vaguely exasperated sort of look from beside him on the sofa.
"What?" Stede asks defensively, even as his fingers slide an inch or two higher beneath the hem of Ed's black skirt, running up the vertical bands of leather riveted to the two thigh bands of each garter.
"Nothing," Lucius says, slow and teasing, and Ed huffs out a breath that's almost a laugh.
"Say it or fuck off," he demands in his softly dangerous Blackbeard voice, and Lucius twists his face up in protest at his own treacherous body shivering in response.
"Just—you could, you know. If you wanted." He reaches out and plucks gently at one of the black leather buttons attaching the garter straps to Ed's long purple cashmere socks, grinning when Stede smacks his hand away. "Nobody cares. We've all seen you fucking already."
Halloween feels kind of like a dream, one that makes Stede's cheeks feel hot. "That was a special occasion," he reasons. "And everyone else was doing it too."
Lucius's pointed look across the room makes Stede glance over, finding Roach and Ivan half-concealed behind the tinselled fronds of the Christmas tree, consumed by a kiss that's all tongue and tugging at each other's clothes. Jim is on Olu's lap now on the plush patterned rug, murmuring something in his ear that's putting a soft sort of grin on his handsome face, and Stede sees a flash of white teeth as Jim gently bites his lobe.
"A party's what you make of it, babe," Lucius says, then raises his voice just slightly to say, "Hey, Fang? Any objections to people who aren't us fucking on your furniture?"
"It's my furniture," Izzy points out, narrowing his eyes slightly at Stede and Ed. "They're loud. They'll wake the dogs."
"We're not loud!" Stede snaps, loudly, and Ed and Lucius snort matching little laughs.
"You are. You screamed the hotel down at LeatherCon, both of you," Lucius says, elbowing him in a gentle, taunting sort of reproach. "I mean, I should be thanking you, really. That's how me and Izzy got together. I had to go and sleep in his room so I wouldn't have the most shameful wank of my life next door to you."
"That was the night I whipped your—" Ed starts, and Stede hastily shuts him up with a hand over his mouth, never mind the fact that his own cool revelation of the night's events to Chauncey Badminton probably still lives on in video form on Lucius's phone. Ed's eyes are laughing above the press of Stede's palm, bright and warm and beautiful, creased at the outer corners with the precious crow's feet that Stede's spent all this year kissing as often as he possibly can.
"Here," Fang says, digging something out of the red velvet pocket of his Santa suit and swiftly tossing it across the room. Reflexively, Stede tries and fails to catch it, and grabs it when it bounces on the cushion beside Ed's knee and almost tumbles onto the floor.
"Who carries lubricant about in their pocket at a family party?" he grouses when he reads what's printed on the tube, and there's a scatter of laughter from a couple of people around the room.
"Maybe we're not a normal family, love," Ed suggests now his mouth is free, and—yeah. That's putting it mildly. But on the other hand, who says this can't be normal? It feels normal. It feels warm and sweet and beautiful to be holding Ed in his lap like this, to be growing hard under the familiar pressure and weight of his body no matter who else is present.
He remembers Ed teasing him at LeatherCon—you wanna go downstairs and let them watch me blow you til you see stars, just say the word—and how it spiralled him into a sudden panic attack. It wasn't the idea of being watched, it was the idea of having to watch Ed perform his product demo on paid models later. Deciding to do the demo himself felt like the easiest thing in the world, and it was: a thousand people sitting there in held-breath silence, hanging on his every word with a reverence that nobody bothered with back in his academic and corporate days. And when they went to London in the summer to meet each other's friends and family, they were welcomed into Ed's friend Jackie's club like they were rockstars. The first time Ed sucked his cock in there was in a dark corner, mostly hidden from curious eyes behind a kitschy life-size plastic statue of a half-naked cowboy with a massive erection in his painted jeans. By the end of the two weeks, somehow Stede found himself with half his forearm up Ed's backside in front of a crowd of spectators, including his ex-wife and her now-husband whose expressions kept flickering between intrigued and aghast, explaining exactly why it was something they liked to do sometimes and how to do it safely. And then Lucius and Pete decided their Halloween wedding was no reason to cancel their annual Halloween orgy, and it seemed churlish not to get as involved as everybody else, even if it was only with each other.
Maybe this is just his life now. Maybe that's okay. Maybe, actually, he likes it. And isn't that something?
"Hold this," Stede tells Lucius, passing him the tube so he can slip both hands back under Ed's skirt to find the velvet ribbons he tied in a bow on each hip before they left home to come for dinner. Ed is decidedly less smirky now, all wide eyes and unsteady breathing like he didn't expect Stede to actually go for this. That's always nice, a surprise little victory. "Not exactly the location I intended to unwrap my present," Stede tells him softly, murmuring the words against Ed's open mouth after kissing him there. He pulls the tails of the second bow and the new lingerie slithers open in wispy folds of black satiny fabric, skin-warm on the back of Stede's hand before he twists to grasp it and tug it gently out from between Ed's legs.
"Fuck," Ed whispers, hungrily watching Stede fold the fabric neatly and tuck it into the pocket of his ivory wool trousers. "Are you really gonna...?"
"Please say yes," Lucius insists, staring wildly.
Stede takes the tube from him, opens it, and passes the lid back. "If you're staying, you'll stay quiet."
The only answer is an audible swallow and a shaky nod. Good enough.
Nobody's really paying attention as he tucks his hand between Ed's spread thighs and swipes two wet fingers over his hole, only Lucius, stunned silent for about the first time in his ridiculous life, and Fang, briefly, glancing at them with fond amusement before he goes back to stroking Izzy's hair and instructing him and Pete to kiss. Stede's not sure whether it's to distract them, Izzy from being irritated about his furniture being defiled and Pete from getting a good look at his idol being thoroughly fingered, or just because he wants to. Either way he's glad of it, finding the back of Ed's neck with his free hand and lightly stroking him there as he slides both fingers into the tight familiar heat of him, easing him open.
"You like this a lot, don't you?" Stede asks, quiet and fascinated, and Ed licks his lips and tries to give him a sardonic sort of look that doesn't actually make it very far past pleasantly flustered.
"Like your fucking gorgeous fingers inside me? Yeah."
"Like being fucked with an audience," Stede clarifies.
He's not looking at Lucius, but peripherally can see him moving, getting himself comfortable with his body twisted sideways and his legs curled up, his elbow on the back cushion so he can prop his cheek on his fist. Ed, on the other hand, seems completely unaware that anyone but Stede is there at all, despite the way the question is flushing colour into his cheeks and turning his eyes hot and bright.
"Tell me if that's a problem," he says, so low and smoky and hungry that Stede feels his cock twitch in response in his tailored trousers.
"We will have a problem if you don't properly answer the questions I ask you, darling."
Lucius remains silent, as ordered, but from the way the words make his breath shudder out of him it's probably taking more effort than he likes to put into anything.
Ed swallows, dry and audible, and his eyes never leave Stede's. "Yeah," he says, soft and steady. "Always liked fucking with an audience. Turns out I like being fucked with an audience even more, if it's by you."
"I'm not sure I'm ready to make a habit of it," Stede admits. Twice isn't a habit, right? Or six times, counting the sucking and handjobs and fist thing at Jackie's as well as the actual intercourse. Seven if you count the LeatherCon demo, which he probably should considering how many audience members didn't hesitate to go straight to Twitter afterwards to report the humidity levels in their underwear. Oh god, he thinks, this is becoming a habit.
Ed leans in to kiss him again, whimpering through his nose when the motion encourages Stede to slide a third slicked fingertip into him alongside the first two. "That's alright," he urges, so breathless that it's probably not even audible to anyone in the room farther away than Stede and Lucius. "Baby, it's fine. Anything you want."
"You'd better unfasten my trousers, then," Stede tells him, then glances at Lucius. "Do you have a clean-ish napkin? There's brie on mine."
The absurdity of the question and the situation makes Ed snort-laugh, a bizarrely thrilling sensation when it makes him clench a little bit on Stede's three fingers. Lucius, wide-eyed and silent like he's under hypnosis, checks the paper napkin on the plate of cheese and cracker crumbs balanced on the sofa arm his side, passing it over when he's deemed it clean-ish enough. By this time Stede's trousers and boxers have come down just enough for him to impatiently swipe a handful of lube onto himself, and he exchanges the tube for the paper napkin so he can blot his fingers dry and help Ed to sink down on his cock.
"Fuuck," Ed moans quietly when his backside lands on Stede's still clothed thighs. His shaky exhale becomes soft laughter, and Stede watches a million expressions cross his pretty face. Dizzy pleasure is the one at the forefront, and when Ed wriggles in place to get every possible millimetre of Stede's cock inside him it's joined by something like simple, naked satisfaction.
"Fuck," Stede agrees, spreading his hands on Ed's hips to push down and hold him there. His own breath is trembling now, hot and expansive in his heaving lungs. This is happening, he thinks wildly, and it doesn't feel real, or at least it wouldn't if not for the sweet, warm thrills rushing like waves from where he and Ed are joined right up the length of his sweating spine and down all his limbs. "Do you want to sit there nicely and keep that warm for me, darling? Or do you need something more?"
Ed glances around the room, smirking a bit, and Stede follows his eyes. He's been far too busy these last several minutes to care what anybody else is up to, but—well. What are they not up to is more like it.
Izzy is on Fang's lap now, their trousers open and Pete very happily servicing both of them on his knees in front of their shared armchair. Buttons and the Swede have folded each other into the plush cushions of the window seat, kissing deeply in the light of the nearly-full moon. Oluwande is sitting with his back against the wall by the side of the fireplace, hands roaming all over Jim's bare skin under their t-shirt while Jim rocks hard against his thigh and growls something in his ear that turns his face incongruously soft and dreamy. Roach and Ivan are still kissing furiously nearby, until Ivan pulls back and drags Roach by the hand to the door, stopping on the way to ask Fang something about the basement room, whatever that means, and plant a kiss on his bald head when he laughs and says yes.
Still. "I told you to answer me," Stede insists again, planting his teeth against Ed's neck and sucking hard enough to leave a mark.
"More," Ed says at once, tilting his head for Stede's next biting kiss against his thundering pulse. "I need more, please give me more."
"You can take it," Stede tells him, sinking his fingers hard into the flesh of Ed's hips and waist through the pleated fabric of his skirt, tilting him, encouraging him to move. "Take whatever you need, my darling. That's it, good boy," he praises, when Ed shudders and begins to slide the tight gorgeous heat of himself up Stede's slicked hard cock and down again, keeping his voice low because that usually helps at least a little bit to disguise the way it trembles when he's this sensationally turned on. He's pretty sure Lucius is going to use this weird night as teasing material for the rest of their lives already without giving him too much free ammunition as well.
Too late, he realises the good boy probably counts as some kind of ammunition, but the only reaction either it or the relentless rocking shift of Ed's clever hips gets from Lucius is a quivering little noise, like a bitten off moan.
Ed grins above Stede, alternating at random between riding him hard and grinding in tight little circles with the entire length of Stede's cock buried inside him, and gives Lucius an amused side eye. "You enjoying yourself, are you?"
Lucius's cheeks are pinker than Stede's ever seen them before. "I can never look you pair in the face ever again," he complains, the ungrateful little swine, and Stede finds the crumpled paper napkin where it's rolled halfway under his thigh and throws it at him, making Lucius yelp in disgust.
"Then it's a good thing you'll no longer be working for me come the New Year, isn't it?"
"Give it a rest, Bonnet," Izzy says from across the room, and it's not clear whether it's because he wants to defend his boyfriend or because he just enjoys every opportunity to have a go at Stede. "You've got your cock in Blackbeard, what the fuck have you got to whinge about?"
"That's enough from you," Fang tells him sharply, and points at the carpet between his boots. "Down. Help Pete."
"Fang, don't be a boyfriend hog, man," Ed says over his shoulder, not letting it break his delicious rhythm. "Lend Pete to Lucius before he fucking bursts."
"Blackbeard!" Pete complains, sounding hurt. "I live with Lucius. I suck his dick every day."
There's a twin giggle, a little cheer, and an approving good for you, man from near the Christmas tree, where Jim's now topless between Oluwande's legs with their back pressed to his half-unbuttoned shirt, one of his hands in their open trousers and the other lovingly tracing the black lines of the long dagger tattoo pointed at one of their chest scars.
"Shut up!" Lucius tells them, chucking the lube-smeared napkin their way, then adds to Pete, "Sorry my dick's such a fucking chore, babe!"
"I love your dick, babe!" Pete insists. "Can't I just finish on Fang's first?"
Ed groans, sounding more like it's out of annoyance than pleasure this time. "Izzy, can you—"
"No," Izzy and Stede interrupt together, eyeing each other malevolently.
"You guys are really killing the vibe," Ed says, giving them all his famous Blackbeard glare, which would probably be much more menacing if his cheeks and kissed lips weren't so pink and his hair so cutely tousled.
Then the living room door opens, first a crack as if to check whether the coast is clear and then wide in surprise.
"Oh lord above, what have we got here?" Frenchie says, stopping in the doorway with his eyebrows flying halfway off his head and staring incredulously at everybody in turn.
Behind him John looks equally unimpressed. "Last time we take ourselves off for 'a walk' to be polite," he grumbles, and nudges Frenchie into the living room so he can edge past him and take the empty space next to Lucius on the sofa.
"Really?" Stede asks, wrinkling his nose at the thought of that icy sea wind on sensitive parts. "It's freezing outside! Why not just slink off to the bathroom together?"
"Cos bathrooms aren't romantic," the Swede points out, earnest as ever. "Orally sexing your husband in a windswept garden on Christmas night is very romantic."
"Oh, glad you enjoyed the show, mate," Frenchie calls over, giving him a thumbs up while John just rolls his eyes.
"I thought you two were romantically watching the moon!" Stede accuses, and Buttons gives him a grave nod that in his odd way might be akin to a smirk or a raised eyebrow.
"Aye, there was a brace of beautiful full moons out there tonight, and not in the sky."
"Well, this has turned into a challenging wank but I'm going for it anyway," Lucius announces to the room at large, sarcastic and huffy. "You lot carry on or don't, I don't care."
Frenchie's only just perched himself on the sofa arm beside John but immediately gets back up and slips to his knees in front of Lucius, resting his chin on the knee of his indigo jeans. "Want some help? Season for giving, and all that."
"Alright," Lucius says sulkily, but he cheers up considerably once his cock is buried in Frenchie's throat and John's mouth is laying kisses in a line up his neck. He turns his eyes back to Stede and Ed, looking between them both and daring to reach out and stroke a few errant curls of hair off Stede's forehead. "Well? You two started this, you better fucking finish it."
"Keep your pervy little hands off your mother," Ed tells him, starting to gently circle his hips again.
"Yes," Stede adds viciously, slipping his hands under Ed's skirt to fondle his garters, "don't make Dadbeard ground you until next Easter."
"I fucking hate you both," Lucius whines. He squeezes his eyes shut, then opens them again to watch, repeating it several times like he just can't decide whether this is the best or worst night of his life and finally settling on watching, defeated.
"Still alright for me to do this?" Ed asks quietly, holding Stede's face in both hands. "Or you feeling too weird? I can stop. We can talk, if you want."
They're way, way beyond the point of no return now. "Do not stop," Stede tells him, tugging insistently on Ed's garters until he laughs on a shivering exhale and his circling turns back to heavy, rapid thrusts that lift him almost all the way off Stede's cock every time before he slams back down hard enough to squeak the springs in the furniture and bounce Lucius beside them, much to his irritation (and reluctant lechery, apparently in equal parts).
"Makes me think of the first time," Ed gasps, leaning forward to rest his forearms on Stede's shoulders and the back of the sofa for a better, deeper angle. "This skirt and garters combo always does."
"Your boots," Stede adds, reaching for them, stroking the polished old black leather with his greedy, reverent fingertips. "I would kill every last person in this town to kiss you here just once."
"Killing again," Ed says, breathless and teasing. "I reckon Renée's got anger issues."
"Who the hell is Renée?" Lucius demands, bewildered.
Stede glances past him, meeting John's amused eyes. "Be a dear and kiss him for me, would you? Shut him up for a while so I can hear myself think."
"Happy to oblige," John agrees peaceably, and turns Lucius towards him with a hand in his hair.
Ed's eyes are creased and glimmering with unvoiced laughter. "If you can hear yourself think, I must be doing a shit job up here."
"You can shut up as well," Stede insists, threading his hands through Ed's growing curls to haul him into a kiss that's easily as good as the one that made them lose half the morning after all the presents in the flat were opened and the mountain of eagerly torn wrapping paper stuffed into boxes for the recycling bin. He breaks it eventually, reluctant to stop but feeling the irresistible surge of heat beginning to gather momentum in him and needing to ask: "Can you finish like this? No hands?"
"You know I can," Ed insists, tugging roughly at Stede's chin to kiss him again.
Against his mouth, Stede breathlessly asks, "Soon?"
It's soon, and sweet, and Stede wraps his arms around Ed's trembling body and kisses him through it until the breathless euphoric sounds he's making drag out matching ones from Stede and he pulses deep and hot inside him, their bodies pressed so tightly together that their heartbeats seem to collide.
"I hate my life," Lucius says, eyeing them both with something like rapture in his gaze.
After a long time, after several repeats of that earthquake of a double climax in various places around the room, after Ivan and Roach have crept back in with bloodstains on their shirts and several visible bandages, Pete raises his head from its resting place on Fang's bare thigh and cheerfully asks, "So, what are we doing for New Year?"