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The wedding was lovely.
From what Ed can tell, it was miles better than Stede’s first, in part because he seemed genuinely invested in it. He forced Stede to stay as hands off as possible, to let the crew take care of the tedious planning, but he made his opinions known. Ed loves his bridezilla to the ends of the Earth.
He is enjoying the after part much more thoroughly. The crew stayed for two weeks, and it was lovely having them around, but they had to host them all in the inn. Stede and Ed are both itching for alone time away from the sweaty pirates who were piled on their bedroom floor. They waved off the crew yesterday morning, and it looked like they were going to get some of that sweet sweet alone time…
But instead of having tons of hot married sex, they spent a whole day recovering from the world’s worst hangovers. Admittedly, those lazy hours were spent curled up in each other’s arms, exchanging a sleepy kiss every once in a while.
Eventually. Eventually Ed will get some quality Stede time. And also some hot married sex. This morning is looking pretty good when big spoon Stede kisses along Ed’s neck to wake him up.
“Mmm?” Ed rumbles, turning back towards Stede without yet opening his eyes.
“Good morning, love,” Stede whispers.
“No it’s not. ‘M still sleeping, not morning yet,” Ed pouts, burying his face in Stede’s chest. He wraps his arms around Stede and snuggles closer.
“Oh well,” Stede chuckles, “I guess I’ll leave my husband to his beauty sleep and take myself on a honeymoon picnic date.”
Ed’s face warms at husband and he cracks an eye open. “Mm? What does a honeymoon picnic date entail, husband?”
Stede sweeps Ed’s hair from his face and kisses his temple sweetly.
“Oh, you know, some fancy finger sandwiches and leftover wedding cake in the flower fields by the seaside cliff. Nothing special.”
“Stede Bonnet, are you trying to wine and dine me,” Ed perks up, smiling up at his lover.
“Whatever do you mean, Edward? I would do no such thing.”
“So there won’t be any hot sex? I might as well stay in bed then,” Ed muses, getting cozy again.
“Now, I didn’t say that,” Stede hums, tilting Ed’s head up to give him a proper good morning kiss. It’s a good, deep kiss that tastes like fresh pressed orange juice and the promise of more kisses and longer kisses. Finally. Ed moves to kiss Stede again, to drape his arms around Stede and pull him closer.
Tragically, Stede gets up instead.
Ed sits up at Stede’s side of the bed, catching him between his legs and with arms around his waist. “Not yet. Stay in bed.”
Ed tugs Stede close and nuzzles his face into Stede’s warm tummy. “Please?”
Stede just pets his hair gently.
Get out all your charms, Teach.
Ed pulls back just enough to look up at his husband with his big brown eyes and pouty, kissy faces. That seems to do the trick, as Stede laughs and lets Ed pull him down to his knees, to a sufficient height.
Ed’s legs wrap around him, his hands tangle in Stede’s hair, and Stede holds his waist as they exchange many, many more heated kisses in the morning glow.
Stede pulls away to look dazed at Ed. “You make a very…convincing case.”
“Yeah?” Ed murmurs, kissing down Stede’s jaw. “Come back to bed, then,” he says, husky and low.
Stede giggles when Ed gets to the ticklish spot on his neck. “I need to make our lunch. If I get back in bed with you right now we won’t leave again all day, and I’d really like to get out in the sunshine.”
Ed pouts.
“I love you,” Stede murmurs, “And I’ll love making love to my new husband.”
“Yeah. Pssh. He’s really fucking lucky, bro,” Ed chuckles.
“Ed…” Stede pulls away and holds Ed’s face in his hands. “I hope you know I’m not putting you off.”
“I know,” Ed murmurs. “I know that. You’re a planner.”
Stede looks into his eyes so earnestly that Ed’s heart skips a beat. “We were both completely pissed, and yesterday was miserable…I want this first time to be perfect. I want to get it right.”
“Babe, it’ll be so good, I’m sure. Especially if you butter me up with cake first.”
Stede grins like a maniac, the very maniac Ed fell in love with, before scrambling into the kitchen to get lunch ready.
So that’s how Ed finds himself splayed out on a picnic blanket, his head in his husband’s lap, the very same husband feeding him finger sandwiches. And also how he finds himself slightly tipsy on white wine, telling silly stories and smashing orange cake into Stede’s face.
It’s fun. It’s easy.
Ed finishes his cake while Stede picks flowers along the cliffs, and he admires the childlike wonder in Stede’s eyes when he shows Ed a particularly good specimen. He returns with armfuls and Ed admires them all, but more so the smile on Stede’s face.
Stede holds one flower up, his face dusted by blush, and looks at Ed. “Can I put them in your hair?”
Now it’s Ed’s turn to blush. “Yeah. I’d like that.”
“Put it half up the way I like it,” Stede says.
“Sure thing, captain,” Ed grins, pulling some of his salt and pepper up on his head. He watches Stede smile proudly and arrange the flowers by size and colour. His heart feels unbearably full at his husband’s idiosyncrasies.
Ed resists the urge to kiss Stede as he concentrates on arranging wildflowers in Ed’s hair.
“You know, when I was a child, everyone used to make fun of me for picking flowers. My father said it made me a lily-livered little rich boy,” Stede says, combing his hands through Ed’s hair with a sigh. “I think I rather like being soft.”
“What does he know? I think you’re charming, love.” He plants a chaste peck on Stede’s lips, a kiss borne of gentle habit, the kind that peppers most of their days and feels unimaginable to go without.
“It’s almost hard to believe you’ll never tire of me,” Stede smiles gently. “That I won’t grow old to you somehow.”
“Oh you’ll get old alright,” Ed guffaws, and Stede laughs. “I just made vows to you that I would get old with you. You better fuckin’ deliver.”
“I’ll try my best.”
Ed smiles softly after the laugh secedes. “I love that you’re soft. It's one of my favourite things about you. Probably always will be.”
Stede smiles and fixes a few final flowers in Ed’s hair before admiring his handiwork.
Ed looks down to the flowers Stede has splayed on their picnic blanket. “I love that you like picking flowers,” he says, admiring one. “I love that you like finding moths in the woods and bringing them back to show me, even though I think they’re kind of weird. Creepy crawlies freak me out.” He looks up at Stede through his eyelashes. “But I know you’ll keep the bugs away from me. And kill the spiders, right?”
Stede laughs. “No, I could never kill them! I’ll take them outside.”
Ed scowls playfully. “Hm…I think I’m reconsidering the whole marriage thing right now.”
“You’re so dramatic, darling,” Stede grins, taking his hand. “I will take the spiders far, far away from you. They’ll live their little arachnid lives in peace outside where they belong. How’s that?”
“That sounds perfect.” Ed smiles. He takes a minute to admire Stede: his hair ruffled, a light sheen of sweat on his forehead from the sun, the rosiness of laughter in his cheeks.
He loves him. Oh, how he loves him.
Stede holds Ed’s gaze, adjusting a flower in his hair. “You’re breathtaking,” Stede murmurs.
“Hold up.”
“Is something wrong?” Stede frowns.
Ed shakes his head. “Not wrong, but still needs to be fixed.”
He slides the stems into Stede’s hair, propping one big one behind his ear. “There. Stede Bonnet, you are also beautiful.”
Stede laughs and meets Ed for a kiss. “Never as lovely as you,” Stede sighs against his lips.
Ed laughs into another kiss, his hand resting possessively on Stede’s chest. “I can’t win, can I?”
Stede shakes his head and pulls Ed in with hands threaded deep in his hair. “No. No, I don’t think either of us can win.”
It’s finally happening, Ed thinks, when he presses Stede back into the picnic blanket. They’re surrounded by a lush meadow, not another soul in sight. It’s perfect.
They kiss and kiss in their wealth of time and the early afternoon sun. Ed sheds his shirt and luxuriates in Stede’s praising hands and the mouth that follows over his arms and his chest and around his waist. Gripping him, keeping him close, admiring the planes of muscle and fat and bone that make him up with such downright reverence that Ed might just die from it. He helps Stede shed his shirt, too, and then they’re pressed skin to skin in the cool island air, softly kissing and grinding against each other, Ed between Stede’s legs.
Fuck, he could live between Stede’s legs. Or with Stede between his legs. Ed’s not picky. He’ll happily die there, too.
Ed sits back on his heels and presses his hand over Stede’s arousal. He lives in Stede’s punched out sigh, the way his hips arch into the touch. It’s more intoxicating than the wine they’d shared and sweeter than the cake.
Ed moves to take Stede out of his breeches when he feels an unbearable tickle in his nose. He sneezes.
He sneezes again. Stede looks at him with dawning worry.
And then he can’t stop.
Oh no.
“Ed, darling, are you alright? Did you catch a chill?”
Ed shakes his head and can barely get words out, his eyes growing watery and itchy.
“Stede it’s so fucking—“ Sneeze. “Warm out, how would I have a chill? Fuck! What is going on.”
“Is it my cologne?” Stede frets. “I think I put it on a little too strong today…”
“No Stede,” Ed laughs. “It’s not your sex cologne.”
”My…my what!”
Ed laughs so hard that he sneezes again. “Yeah babe, the one you always put on when you want to fuck me. You smell great.”
Stede pinks. “I didn’t know you realized...”
“Oh yeah, it works like a charm. But this has never happened before so I doubt it’s that.”
Stede makes a face. Ed sneezes again and pouts right back at him, neither of them ready to concede aloud that the moment is ruined.
“I get the impression that the universe would rather we didn’t consummate our marriage,” Stede sighs as Ed sneezes again. “More wine to drown your chaste sorrows?”
“Mmm,” Ed hums noncommittally and rolls off of Stede. He smells one of the flowers from his hair and then abruptly sneezes three more times.
“That simple, huh?” Ed says.
“Of course.” Stede laughs in great fits and Ed joins him.
“It’s a really common allergy, how did I not think…” Stede mumbles, half to himself, leaning over Ed to frantically pull the flowers out of his hair. “I was just trying to be romantic, we should have stayed in bed. Can you ever forgive me?”
“Yes, I will forgive you for cock blocking me with flowers, babe,” Ed winds his arms around Stede’s neck and pulls the big flower out from behind Stede’s ear with a flourish.
The two of them laugh too much to kiss, and Ed nuzzles his smile into Stede’s neck. “Not too late.”
“Come here, then.”
Ed lets out a surprised laugh when Stede scoops him up and beelines for their inn. “Babe, wait! What about our stuff?”
“Fuck it all,” Stede replies grandly. “We’ll come back for it.”
Ed presses a kiss to his cheek. “We’d better. I really liked that wine.”
Stede beams at him and they laugh all the way back home. Truth be told, it’s not far, but it’s the gesture. Ed feels like a blushing bride, down to the moment that Stede lays him on their plush, warm bed and then kisses him, pliant and soft, into the sheets.
They pull off their shoes and their hands fumble for the buttons and ties of each other’s trousers, each of them having shed the leathers of their old life in favour of airy cottons and linens.
“I love you,” Ed sighs, where Stede clambers naked up on the bed with him. “I love you.”
“I know. I know that,” Stede breathes, settling between Ed’s legs. “I love you, too.”
Ed takes Stede’s hand and brings their noses together in a hongi. They breathe in together.
“Hi,” Stede whispers, full of warmth. “Is something the matter? You usually do that to say hello.”
“Hi,” Ed says shyly. “You can’t laugh.”
“Why would I laugh, Ed?” Stede kisses his cheek. “It’s clearly very important to you. Is there a more sensual meaning I’ve forgotten?”
“No, I just wanted to…welcome you?”
“Into our bed?” Stede smiles.
“Yeah. Felt right.”
“Why would I laugh at that?” Stede whispers.
“I don’t know. Maybe you’d think it’s silly, seeing as we’ve been together all day.”
“No, Ed,” Stede beams. “I think it’s beautiful,”
“You are the love of my fucking life, Stede.” Ed wells up.
“With pleasure,” Stede murmurs. “So much pleasure here.” He wraps his arms around Ed. “How do you want me, love?”
Ed chuckles and kisses Stede’s cheek to whisper low in his ear. “Fucking me.”
Stede laughs and hugs Ed close. “I really had no idea why you wanted to keep me in this bed, darling, certainly not for coitus. I was counting on a nap.”
Ed breathes in the smell of Stede and his heady, sweet cologne and hums into his skin. “A nap will be needed after we’re through.”
“Yeah?” Stede sighs, shivering when Ed runs his hands deep through his hair.
“After you fuck me nice and slow. Make my brain melt.”
Stede kisses him, and Ed rests his hand over Stede’s heart in the space that forms between them, soaking in the warmth of Stede’s body over him. Always so perfectly warm.
Stede looks down at Ed with a glint in his eye that Ed just knows means he has a good idea.
“I can do that, my beautiful flower.”
All of the blood that isn’t in Ed’s cheeks floods rapidly to his dick.
“Somebody rose to the occasion,” Ed murmurs, glancing down.
“Oh?” Stede grins wide and reaches for the little pot of oil on the side table. “I think I sense…hm…” He slicks them both over before taking a hold of them together. “Ah yes, some budding competition.”
“I’ll bloom for you,” Ed moans softly as Stede pulls them off in tandem. “Yeah, just like that,” Ed keens.
“Not so fast, I was really hoping to take root,” Stede chuckles.
“Put your tulips to use, then,” Ed mutters, pulling Stede into a heated kiss. Stede moans into his mouth while he reaches for the oil pot again.
“Anything for you, honey,” Stede murmurs between kisses, grinding their naked bodies together. Ed can feel his cheeks flushing.
No one’s ever made him blush like Stede. No one else sounds so sweet and yet so filthy calling him names like that.
When Ed feels Stede’s slick finger pressing in little circles against his hole, he breaks off the kiss to gasp. “Fuck, Stede…you gonna make me yours? Fill me up with your seed?”
“Jesus, Ed!” Stede turns bright red.
“What?” Ed resists the urge to bat his eyes. “Do I win, then?”
“No, no…you…that’s…” Stede scowls. “That’s not fair.”
“You gotta say another one,” Ed smirks, looping his arms lazily around Stede’s neck to egg him on.
“I…I um…” Gears audibly turn in Stede’s head. “I look forward to putting my peony-is—”
They both burst into laughter before he can finish. Ed feels lightheaded and his stomach hurts with it.
Stede blushes even redder in his laughter, if that’s even possible. “That wasn’t quite it, was it?”
“Stede, mate, you’re insane.” Ed giggles and covers his mouth with his hand. “I need you inside me yesterday.”
Stede kisses at the ticklish places on his neck and Ed’s sure he just wants to get him giggling more. He feels like a debauched schoolgirl as Stede presses a finger of oil inside him, and the laughter mixes with breathless moans.
Stede reaches down to coat his cock in enough oil for it to be comfortable, and then he’s looking at Ed with the softest smile, asking for permission.
Ed nods, and the bed creaks as he curls his legs around Stede’s waist to get comfortable and Stede adjusts before entering him.
They’ve done this so many times, but Ed’s never been made love to like this: Stede kissing Ed thoroughly and tenderly until their thighs are touching. Stede winding his fingers into the back of Ed’s hair to tug his head back as he begins to thrust languidly. Stede lavishing kisses to Ed’s neck while his scalp tingles pleasantly at the pressure.
There’s a rare quiet between them as Stede slowly and tenderly fucks Ed into seeing stars.
“Stede,” Ed whines, feeling pleasantly floaty. “I love you,” he breathes. “Fuck, you’re so good to me.”
“You feel amazing,” Stede moans. “So perfect for me. My perfect husband.”
Stede’s voice sounds…tight? Like he’s on the verge of crying. Shit. If Stede cries, Ed will too.
Ed will not cry. He will not.
“You’re the love of my life, too,” Stede murmurs, kissing over the tear tracks on Ed’s cheeks. “I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to make you feel so good.”
Ed holds Stede’s cheeks and looks into his eyes.
“Oh, Ed…”
Tears well up at Stede’s eyes as Ed kisses him hard and deep.
“You fuck me so well, love,” Ed murmurs in his ear.
Some of Stede’s resolve seems ro break then, and he ramps up the pace until he’s pistoning his hips in deep thrusts that Ed sings like a bird about.
“Right there, yeah, fuck, fuck, fuck, Stede…”
Before he can even think to ask for it, Stede’s hand is gripping Ed’s cock, stroking Ed in time with his thrusts. The wave crests before Ed even knows to prepare for it, and when they crash together, it's transcendent.
Ed scratches hot red lines up Stede’s back and calls for him. Stede breathes hot on his neck and keens Ed’s name back, like it’s a praise all its own.
The wind feels knocked out of him, like his chest is making contact with the sandbar. Heat and swirls of pleasure lick down his spine as he wraps himself around Stede, unable to get close enough.
As the heat slowly ebbs, they hold each other, catching their breaths and laughing gently. Stede slips free and quickly wipes them clean before inviting Ed under the covers.
“Mine. You’re all mine,” Ed murmurs, blanketing himself over Stede.
“Yes I am,” Stede smiles. It feels like sinking into heavenly pillows. Ed can’t stop laughing; he feels downright giddy.
“What’s funny, sweetheart?” Stede asks, rubbing Ed’s back.
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“Well, I want to know,” Stede says.
Ed looks up at him, tracing lazily over his chest. “If you heard that Blackbeard retired, got married, and spent his time off having loads of soft kissy missionary sex, would you believe it?”
Stede smiles pridefully to himself. “I would, because if I recall correctly, the Gentleman Pirate is satisfying him quite thoroughly, thank you very much.”
Ed chuckles. He takes Stede’s hand to kiss over his ring, intertwining their fingers. “Yeah, yeah he is. Ed wouldn’t change a fuckin’ thing.”
Ed makes himself comfortable when Stede lets go to pull a book off of his side table.
“Mm? What have you been reading, babe?”
“I doubt you could guess, it’s just so out of character for me,” Stede chuckles.
“John Donne again?”
Stede huffs petulantly. “Perhaps.”
Ed kisses Stede’s chest. “I know you love his stuff.”
”I’m—I can’t help it Ed, the way he writes about love like the feeling itself is made of heavenly bodies…” Stede sighs and presses the book to his chest. “As if he would disappear were his love unrequited…”
Ed props his chin up on Stede. “Let’s hear one.”
“Alright, darling,” Stede beams, always starry-eyed when Ed entertains his love for poetry. He invites Stede in for a kiss before allowing him to find a poem.
“Hm…that one is about a spider, I doubt you’d like to hear that one…” Ed grimaces. “Ah! I think you might like this. ‘The Primrose.’”
Stede settles his free arm around Ed as he begins to read aloud. “‘Upon this primrose hill, where, if heaven would distil a shower of rain, each several drop might go to his own primrose, and grow manna so; where their form and their infinity make a terrestrial galaxy, as the small stars do in the sky: I walk to find a true love; and I see that ‘tis not a mere woman’—a mere man,” Stede corrects, rubbing Ed’s shoulder, “‘That is he, but must or more or less than man be’—ah, hell, that ruins the meter,” Stede grumbles.
Ed laughs and nuzzles into Stede. “I don’t mind. Makes me feel pretty,” he murmurs.
“Alright,” Stede says, kissing Ed’s head before returning to his anthology. “‘More or less than woman be. Yet know I not which flower I wish; a six, or four; for should my true-love less than woman be she were scarce any thing; and then, should she be more than woman she would get above all thought of sex—’”
“Mmm, sex,” Ed grins, kissing along Stede’s neck playfully. “Not above that in the slightest.”
Stede wiggles away. “Ed, please, let me finish—no, not like that, you nut, stop waggling your eyebrows at me! In all seriousness, it’ll be some time until I can perform again.”
Ed giggles and hugs Stede close. “I know.”
“I would like to spend that time reading to you, so let me,” Stede murmurs into his hair.
“Okay, babe.”
Ed knows that Stede knows that Ed will keep interrupting him, and Stede knows that Ed knows he won’t really mind, as dramatically he portrays his offense.
“She would get above all thought of sex and think to move my heart to study her, and not to love; both these were monsters; since there must reside falsehood in woman, I could more abide she were by art than nature falsified.’ Hm.”
“That’s not very nice,” Ed frowns, eyes closed, enjoying the sensation of Stede’s fingers at his scalp. “I love women.”
“Is that so, Edward Teach?” Stede replies knowingly.
“I might not want to marry one but that doesn’t mean I don’t love women, Stede,” Ed chuckles. “Archie’s pretty cool. Anne and Mary.”
“Very true,” Stede resumes. “‘Live primrose then, and thrive with thy true number five; and woman, whom this flower doth represent, with this mysterious number be content; ten is the farthest number; if half ten belong unto each woman, then each woman may take half us men—’”
“I want all of you, Stede,” Ed whines.
“You have all of me, sweetness. Just a few more lines. I know you’re getting eager for that nap.”
“Mhm,” Ed murmurs sleepily. Stede kisses the top of his head.
“Then each woman may take half us men or if this will not serve their turn, since all numbers are odd or even, and they fall first into this, five, woman may take us all.’”
“That was nice,” Ed murmurs drowsily.
“Well, I thought I ought to read you a flower one, seeing as poetry’s now the closest you can get.”
Ed laughs. “Yeah. You’ll just have to show me the flowers from a distance.”
“I’d give up flowers forever for you, Ed, if I had to,” Stede muses, putting the poems aside and shifting to lay them both down.
“You like them too much,” Ed says, looking shyly at Stede across the pillow.
“I know you’d never ask that of me. But I would, if it meant I got to have you. My lovely primrose,” Stede smiles, pressing a gentle kiss to Ed’s lips.
Ed closes his eyes again and smiles, the two of them shifting so that Ed can lay his head on Stede’s chest again. The afternoon breeze brings the smell of the sea and fresh grass to their bed while they sleep peacefully, naked limbs intertwined.
The picnic lies forgotten in the meadow until the morning, when Stede starts at the realization and braves the cold of dawn to bring the wine and blankets back before Ed rouses. Stede makes sure he wakes to kisses and gentle morning sex.
They drink some more and laugh until their lungs ache. They find excuses to touch each other; they tell stories of their lives apart and before. They go on adventures around their island and frolic in the waves. They do it all again the next day, and the next, certain they could live this carefree bliss everyday until the end of time.