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It’s bad timing, is what it is. Ed’s only got the barest idea of a route sketched out, a suggestion that involves Savannah—Charles Town will never do, the grudge-holding bastards, it was only an itty bitty raid—and Nassau and then a long winter spent in the lesser Antilles, with brilliant blue waters and sunshine and white sand beaches.
But he really needs to get at least something together before the change of the watch or they’ll end up in fucking Bermuda.
So it’s bad timing: the click of the door behind him, the tap of heeled shoes, the heavy shift of an embroidered silk jacket being shifted off broad, strong shoulders. The tuneless hum that rises and dips, moving across the captain’s quarters. Ed’s sure Stede doesn’t even realise he’s doing it.
Gorgeous, ridiculous man. Ed’s so in love with him it still makes him dizzy.
That bad timing catches up with him fast as hand curls over his shoulder, drifts down across his chest. Heat drapes over his back, heavy and solid. “Hello, darling.”
He’s helpless to it, of course. Lifts his cheek automatically for Stede’s kiss, presses back into Stede’s hold. Tries to keep his eyes on the coasts of the Carolinas, and not on the golden hair and flushed skin lingering in his periphery. “Hey, sweet. Going to bed?”
“I was considering it. Coming along?”
“Right after you. I’ve got to get something of a route to Buttons before the change of the watch or he’ll have us in Bermuda before sunrise. Time to head south for the winter, I think.”
“Winter? It’s only September.”
“Gonna be an early chill this year.” He taps his leg absently, just above his troublesome knee. “Got my prophetic limb.”
Stede laughs, but his hand follows Ed’s down, petting along the length of his thigh. “Are you achy? I can call for hot water, get you a soak going. Have you put on that ointment today, the one that—”
“That smells like whale blubber and the death of a thousand souls?” Ed wrinkles his nose. “Can’t say I have. I’m fine,” he adds, daring finally to pull his eyes away from the map to reassure Stede properly, placating him with a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “It’s not hurting, it’s just—a feeling in it, I guess.”
“Mmph. Well, I still want to rub it tonight.”
“Aye Captain,” Ed agrees, kissing the corner of Stede’s mouth again. “But maps first. I won’t be long.”
But Stede doesn’t slink away. He just nuzzles in closer, breathing warm into Ed’s neck. “If you insist,” he says, terribly put upon. “Tell me about the maps, then.”
Ed should send him off anyway, but—like he said. Helpless. He’s flush with Stede’s attention, leaning back into his hold as he points out their current position just south of the Chesapeake, as he points out cities and trade routes, coastlines and good places for hideaways.
Stede hums in idle agreement now and then, and Ed loves how easy this is with him, how beautifully uncomplicated, how Stede just lets him think it all through, how Stede gives him space to work through it on his own time without forcing a quick answer, and—
And Stede’s not actually listening at all, is he?
The humming might’ve been a tip off, if the way Stede’s palm has started rubbing circles over his arse wasn’t.
“You’re distracted,” Ed says, not really a reprimand.
Stede grins against the side of his neck; Ed can feel his teeth. “You’re distracting.”
Ed snorts, but then there’s a hand at the button on his trousers, and distraction’s contagious, it turns out. Clever fingers work his trousers open, slackening the leathers, and Stede’s hand finds it way inside to cup his arse skin-to-skin.
That hand is warm and gentle, full of promises. Ed hums back in the same tone Stede’s been agreeing in all night, yes indeed, I see, and makes to turn in his arms.
Stede doesn’t let him.
“Ah, ah, ah,” he says instead, settling his weight more heavily against Ed’s back, holding him fast against the desk. Pinning him, a little, with his hips—helpless, isn’t Ed always, and Ed might be taller but not by much, and Stede’s got those little heeled shoes to give him the leverage, the ones with the bows on—fuck. “Go on, tell me where we’re going.”
“To bed, I thought.”
“You did insist upon the maps first.”
It’s deeply, incredibly unfair, how he sounds so calm and collected despite his fingers dipping into the heat between Ed’s cheeks. Ed groans, tries to shift back into Stede’s touch, but Stede just presses harder against him to hold him in place.
“Stede.”
“Yes?”
A dry fingertip rubs over Ed’s hole, brief and careful where Ed’s not quite tender but still aware that Stede had fucked him open the night before last, had spent the better part of an hour inside him. It had been like watching a storm build on the horizon, crackling with lightning, towering with an almost violent magnificence, but Stede had been so gentle with him and so slow, so deliberate, brushing the hair back from Ed’s forehead, kissing away tears Ed had no control over. Pausing over and over to make Ed catch his breath, driving them both the edge again and again and again until Ed had finally come so hard and for so long he’d thought he was having a bloody stroke.
The memory of it, the ghost feeling of Stede inside him, the suggestion of more—Ed’s breathless before anything’s even happened. “Jesus, Stede,” he manages, panting. “What are you doing?”
“Paying attention,” Stede says lightly. “Go on. Teach me.”
Ed blinks down at the maps again, not seeing anything. His entire world is balancing on the flat of Stede’s finger where it presses, and presses, and—
And then it’s gone.
Stede’s voice is firm, now. Hard-edged. Demanding. “Edward. Show me.”
Maps. The maps. Ed reaches for the first one on the pile, adjusting it. The Carolinas. “Right,” he says. “Right. So we want to stay close to the coast—”
The finger is back. Ed stutters to a stop again, and Stede’s touch pauses.
“We want to stay close to the coast,” Ed tries, and there, yes. The finger starts to move again, so very softly, tracing a circle over Ed’s hole. “But not so close we get caught. So we go south, but not directly south, we need to keep our position into this general tract, yeah?”
“You use celestial navigation to keep to the route, yes?”
Christ, he can’t also ask questions, Ed can hardly think as it is. He goes down to one elbow on the desk, bracing himself, then raises himself back up again, trying to focus.
“Yeah, celestial navigation. Could use dead reckoning, if you had to.”
“How do you calculate dead reckoning, then?”
Ed’s pretty sure Stede knows this. He might not’ve done it before—Buttons is the one that usually handles the navigation for Stede, and he uses neither dead reckoning nor celestial navigation but instead has apparently learned to speak to birds, which is mad—but Stede must have read this in some book or another.
But when Ed hesitates, so too does the finger, and oh, he’s such a dirty minx. Such a dirty, filthy, perfect minx, and Ed’s helpless for him.
He takes a deep breath. Shifts his hips back a little, back into the cup of Stede’s hand. Tries to go on.
“You—you take the speeds, here.” He searches through the papers on the desk for a moment, trying to find the page of figures. “Here we go. Fang and Ivan do these about twice an hour, that’s why they’re always throwing that line overboard, eh? And we know the time we’ve been traveling and the direction we’ve been headed, roughly.” He indicates to the large brass compass on the desk. “So I can calculate how far that should’ve gotten us, yeah?”
Stede hums in that same idle fucking tone as before, damn him. His free hand slips up under Ed’s shirt, stroking along his belly, scratching now and again through the trail of hair that leads downward. “Sounds reasonable.”
“It’s not bad, and it’ll do in a pinch if you don’t have a navigator, but it’s fla—ah—flawed. Why—why is it flawed?”
Stede is so warm against him. His hands rub and stroke and god, he’s everywhere, everywhere, Ed pinned between him and the desk.
“Currents,” Stede says, after a moment. “And wind?”
“Right, exactly, oh, shit, Stede.” The hand down the back of Ed’s trousers presses closer against his hole, then pauses when Ed stops, before Stede withdraws it entirely, leaving Ed shivering in its wake.
“Go on,” Stede says, still completely unaffected. “The wind.”
“The wind, yeah, so we—we can only do so much to calculate for that, you know? We can make some estimates—”
His voice trails off again as Stede’s mouth fixes itself to the back of Ed’s neck, and the hand is back now, two fingers slick with oil, where the fuck did he get oil, what the fuck.
“Estimates,” Stede repeats, blowing cool over Ed’s hot skin. “You were saying?”
“Estimates. Right.” Ed takes a few deep breaths, trying to come back to himself even as those oiled fingers circle his hole, start to press a little at the centre, they want in, Ed wants to let them in, wants to feel them. “Estimates, we make estimates, and Jesus fuck, Stede, what are you—”
“Tell me about the estimates.”
“We can make the estimates!” Ed half-shouts, something like desperation rising, and oh, god, oh, god, those fingers are inside him now, both of them, thick, gorgeous, just pressing past Ed’s rim. “Fuck, we make the estimates, and that’ll do us until we find another landmark, we want to stay a little closer to the coast with dead reckoning so we can, so we can, Stede, oh my god, Stede.”
Stede is inside him properly now, slow and steady, working those two fingers deeper. Ed drops to his elbows again, he couldn’t say what landmass is on the map in front of him if it meant the difference between sailing clear or sailing right into the middle of the English Navy, and Stede keeps working him, stroking inside him.
“So we can what, Edward?”
“So we can double-check where we are!”
“Good,” Stede says, practically purrs. His fingers twist inside Ed a little, and Ed moans, tries to hitch his hips, but he can’t. Stede has him held so tightly against the desk the edge is digging into his stomach, Stede’s feet bullying Ed’s apart to get between his legs far as he can. Ed’s sense of balance is shot like this, all his leverage wiped out, he’s relying on Stede now to keep him in place and Stede can see it, ‘course he can. He shifts a little, guiding Ed’s hips and thighs until he’s satisfied with the position. “Very good. And celestial navigation is different how?”
Celestial navigation. Sounds like nonsense to Ed just now, who cares about celestial navi-whatsits, but Stede’s free hand slides up under Ed’s hair to grasp the nape of his neck, and it’s not a question, not really.
“Angles,” Ed finally manages, gasping. “Fuck, it’s angles, we can measure the angles!”
“Such as this one?”
And Stede’s fingers curl inside Ed, the angle of his hand changes, and oh, fucking hell, fuck, that’s an angle, that’s the angle right there, and Stede’s fingers are merciless, curling over and into that spot again and again and again until suddenly he stops, going completely still, mid-stroke.
Ed’s going to kill him. He’s going to throw him off and straddle him right there on the floor and find the beautiful, hard cock that’s busy pressing into the back of his thigh just now, find a place for it inside himself, ride them both into completion and Stede—
Stede’ll be disappointed, won’t he. That he asked Ed to try, and Ed didn’t.
Ed is helpless.
He grits his teeth. He stares down at the Floridian coast. Wasn’t this supposed to be a map of the Carolinas? He tries to remember what he was saying.
“Angles of what?” Stede prompts.
But Ed can’t find it. He can’t remember it. Angles of what, who cares, angles of what. He closes his eyes, presses back into Stede’s hold, whines in the back of his throat, he wants, he wants, he wants those fingers to move.
They do. They withdraw.
“Stede.”
“Captain.”
“Stede, please, just—”
“I rather think the lesson is going very well,” Stede says, and now that Ed’s not even fucking trying with the maps he can pick up the ways Stede is affected, even though his voice is level: the way he’s bent over Ed’s body, chasing the skin of his neck with his mouth; the way his cock is pulsing hard against the back of Ed’s thigh; the way he can’t quite stop himself from touching even when he withholds himself from where Ed wants him most. “Come on. You can’t plot a course for Buttons if you don’t complete your measurements.”
Desperation threatens the back of his throat, a knot he can’t untie. “You’re not learning shit.”
“I beg your pardon,” and Christ, but Stede actually manages to sound offended. “I’m paying very close attention, as I said. You were talking about measuring between angles.”
Ed tries, oh, he really does try. His arse feels slick and open, his cock aches, and Stede is right there. Ed wants him, wants to feel him inside, wants to feel him all around him, wants to feel pinned and impaled and held close and kept safe. He wants to feel Stede stake a claim on him, in him, he’ll do anything and Stede is asking and he can’t remember, he can’t get it, Stede’s asking and he doesn’t know how—
He stops trying to brace himself at all. Lays himself out, Stede’s for the taking. It shifts the position of Stede’s fingers inside him and he shoves a hand over a bit of Florida and what might be the Bahamas so he can rest his forehead against it, sweaty and damp, and chokes out the last thing he can remember. “Angles.”
“Angles,” Stede agrees. He hums again, too, that idle hum, the one that sounds so disengaged, so far away, even as he gives a half-curl of his fingers inside Ed. Too far away, maybe. Like he doesn’t even care.
“Fucking angles.”
Ed tries to say something else, anything else, anything that would bring Stede closer, but only ends up with a sound in the back of his throat that could be a plea or a whine or something altogether more needy.
Stede must hear it, though, the thing Ed can’t figure out how to say, because he says, “Oh, darling,” and Ed could sob with relief when Stede moves again, when his hand flattens against Ed’s lower back, when Ed’s trousers are pushed down further, down to his knees, the leather heavy and awkward but it doesn’t even matter because there’s also the sound of silk being shuffled around and skin being made slick.
Then Stede is there again, he’s right there, one arm wrapping around Ed’s waist to keep him steady, cockhead pressed thick and hot against Ed’s hole.
“Give me one more fact about the angles,” Stede says, gently encouraging now, rather than demanding, softening to meet the curves of Ed’s need as he bows under the pressure of his own want. He slides his prick over Ed’s hole, his intention clear. “One more, there you are, I’m right here.”
One more. Ed can give him one more.
“The angles,” he begins again, and he feels Stede pushing against him, pushing in, forcing the rest of the thought from him all in a rush, “the angles of the stars and the horizon, we can measure the angles between the stars and the horizon, fuck, Stede—”
“There, now,” Stede groans, and he doesn’t wait, doesn’t rock himself deeper bit by bit—no, he pushes in and in, relentless, until he’s pressed flush to Ed’s arse, bottoming out. “There we are, Ed, I have you, I have you.”
Stede has him.
The maps crinkle underneath him, and they’ll be a mess after this, creased and probably torn to fuck, he’ll have to redraw them all probably, even if he doesn’t come all over them. Ed blinks the blur from his eyes, tries to focus on a little drawing of a whale so he doesn’t fall apart instantly.
Stede grinds into him. Bites at the back of his shoulder. “Better now?”
“Always better with you here,” Ed slurs, and fuck, he doesn’t even care how cheesy that sounds. He tilts his hips, tries to shift back, to encourage Stede to take—
But Stede has him, and he’s still holding Ed hard against the desk.
“Perhaps now your focus will have improved,” Stede says, hot against the hinge of Ed’s jaw. “You were telling me about the angles in celestial navigation.”
Bastard. Hot, slick, long, insane bastard.
Ed abandons the drawing of the whale and closes his eyes instead. Focuses on the sharp grip of Stede’s hand at his hip, on the heat of his mouth at his jaw. The weight of him, draped across Ed’s back, filling him from the inside, where the grind of his hips has slowed nearly—thought not quite—to a stop.
Then, quiet, almost like it’s a secret he doesn’t want anyone to hear, Stede whispers, “Breathe, darling.”
Ed’s helpless for him. He breathes.
He can do this. Stede is asking, and he can, he can, he will.
The information unspools into his mouth, and he lets it go, slow and measured, tasting each word on his tongue. “You measure the angle between two things.”
Stede sways behind him, begins to withdraw again, dragging every inch of himself against the million billion nerves inside Ed’s body, but Ed keeps breathing, and he can do this.
“The horizon to the sun, or the stars. There’s like, fifty-seven stars or something you can use, it’s in one of these charts—” He thumps a hand against the desk, clutches at something and hears it rip, decides he doesn’t care. “Celestial bodies you can use. You gotta sight at least three bodies, get the angles.”
“Only two bodies here,” Stede muses, but he’s moving again and that’s all that matters, he’s moving and he’s gorgeous, matching the measured pace of Ed’s recitation. “Though perhaps the desk serves as our horizon. What do you think?”
Ed can’t help it; he laughs, helpless again. Rolls his head on his neck so he can finally get a good look at Stede, flushed with exertion—and, maybe, the effort of holding himself back, as if that doesn’t pop off like a fucking firework in Ed’s brain—gold curls sticking to his forehead, eyes dark and liquid and intent.
“Think you’re mad, sweet,” Ed tells him, and Stede rolls his hips again as he grins back.
“That’s not terribly new, I don’t think,” Stede concedes.
He takes the opportunity to shove in deep, curl up over Ed’s back, press a kiss to his mouth—the first proper kiss all night, and Stede tastes like tea and sugar and even though the angle’s awkward Ed wants more of it, all of it, doesn’t he always, so of course it only lasts a second before Stede’s pulling away again, drifting kisses down Ed’s shoulder. Ed’s shirt has ridden up, bunching up nearly to his armpits, and Stede pushes it higher so he can kiss at Ed’s spine.
“If you can get through the rest,” Stede says, so sweet and close that his voice practically vibrates against Ed’s bones, “I’ll turn you over. Hold you down at the wrists and fuck you properly.”
It’s a jolt through Ed’s belly, a promise like that. A lightning strike, St Elmo’s fire burning him from the inside, making him incandescent. Stede’s mad, and he’s perfect, and he fucks Ed like he can see right through to the heart of him, and he can, he can, because Ed’s his.
He swallows hard against the spit pooling in his mouth. Grinds back, as much as he can, against the weight of Stede’s hips.
Angles. Measurements. The familiar weight of a sextant in his hands, the routine stops in New Providence or Kingston to get the annual charts if they hadn’t yet lifted one off a prize. The quiet moments spent lining everything up, scopes and mirrors and steady hands, waiting for the universe to reveal itself.
The stars had been there his whole life, and learning to read them—it’s like the world had opened itself up, ribs splayed, heart beating, to invite him in.
That’s what he feels like now, under Stede’s hands, his mouth, his driving prick. Like he’s opening himself up, giving Stede every raw, bloody beat of his heart and inviting him in, and maybe the metaphor is stupid and maybe it falls apart if he looks at it for more than a second but it doesn’t matter because Stede has him, Stede’s there, waiting for Ed to show him the way through.
Ed breathes.
“Check the measurements against the chart,” he says, and Stede starts to move again, a little faster, a little more. “Every star has a position, right, maps onto the earth depending on the date and time, fuck, oh, fuck—” he breaks off, moans, and it takes Stede longer now to slow, to stop with him before he can start again— “And, and, and the angle you’re measuring between the star and the horizon tells you the dist—ah!, god, right there—the distance, the distance between your position and the star’s positioning, yeah?”
“I’m with you,” Stede says, fucking in again, again, hands on Ed’s hips, and whether he means he’s following what Ed’s trying to tell him or whether he’s just losing himself to the rhythm of their bodies working together—Ed doesn’t know, doesn’t care.
“Gotta do your sight reductions to know, all these fiddly—numbers shit—oh, fucking shit—”
“Keep going, keep going, you’re almost there, Ed—”
“Numbers shit lets you draw a fucking line, you draw this line, it’s like, kind of a circle bit, then you do it again, you circle again,” and he breaks off as Stede makes a weird circling move with his hips, drawing the line inside Ed, sort of, like he’s calculating the distance between the two of them even though the distance is none, and this time he doesn’t stop when Ed does, he keeps going, pulling back to do that weird circle again with only the head of his cock inside, tugging at Ed’s rim with the flare of his cockhead, the both of them groaning, breathless, needing more, needing something, Ed’s drowning in it, tension building, thighs aching, he’s sweating under his hair, under his shirt, and Stede keeps kissing him, his back, his neck, his jaw, more tongue and breath than anything else, whispering encouragements that land on him like embers from a fire, little flickering lights—
“So you do it again, fuck, you do it again, and the place where they connect is the place where you are—Stede, oh my god, please—”
Stede pulls out. Ed cries out at the suddenness of it, the surprise of it, the emptiness where Stede has been pressed against him, pressed inside him, maybe Ed is weeping, fuck, but Stede is there, Stede’s there, he’s promised he’ll be there and he is, he’s promised he’ll never leave Ed and he won’t, he hasn’t, he isn’t—
Instead he heaves Ed up, off the maps, off the desk, shaky on his feet, who cares, it doesn’t matter, Stede’s got him turned around as soon as he’s upright, legs tangled, bullying Ed up onto the desk, pulling the leathers off his one ankle and ignoring them where they’re caught on Ed’s brace on the other, and Ed laughs but Stede steals the sound of it into his own mouth, licking deep, he’s still dressed, Stede is, just his cock out, slick with Ed and oil and his own fucking need, shirt untucked, waistcoat only half undone, he’s gorgeous, and Ed can get a hand on him now so he does, lets Stede lift him up onto the desk and gets two big handfuls of curls and shoulders and neck and he kisses Stede like he can’t fucking breathe or maybe just doesn’t want to, not if Stede’s here, and Stede’s here—
Stede drives back into him with one single thrust, smooth and demanding, and Ed’s whole again, Ed’s here again, held close and kept safe, helpless and Stede has him, Stede always has him, because that’s where they are: the place where the lines connect.
“You’re so good,” Stede is saying, mindless, clutching Ed to him, saying them before he’s even stopped kissing him so they come out muffled and spit-slick and Ed would eat them right out of Stede’s mouth if he could. “You’re so good, you’re perfect, look at you—”
In. In. In. Stede pushes in and Ed pushes back and the brass compass on the desk thumps itself right off the edge, clattering to the floor, startling them both. Ed breaks away to look, and Stede takes advantage of the moment to push him back by the shoulders, to lay him out on the desk again, push in in, in, in, he gets a hold of Ed’s wrists and pins them down, just like he’d promised, in, in. In.
Ed feels the rhythm in his pulse, in his cock, in the place where Stede’s holding him down, in his thighs, building, building, it’s not the storm like before, towering on the horizon for ages on end, it’s right here, right now, it’s need and want lashing all around him, the tension wrenching up his spine, down his legs, he can’t stop moving, trying to wrestle himself back up, fighting the grip of Stede’s palms, the roll of his hips. He’s so close he feels it building on the back of his tongue, so close he feels every slide over his prostate like a punch to the gut, so tense he’s breathless and aching, he tries to think of the words and all he ends up with are—
“Stede, I need—I need—”
Stede’s eyes are dark. Intense. He watches Ed writhe, and he can’t pretend anymore that he isn’t affected because it’s written all over him, in the roll of his hips and the hold of his hands, yes, but also in the wet line of his lower lip, in the mess of his hair, the riot of colour in his face and down his chest, the iron of his grip and the ruthless angle he’s fucking Ed at now, the way his prick feels huge inside, the way he’s heaving breath in and swallowing Ed up and bending over him to drive deeper, harder, so close Ed can feel the press of his belly against his cock, and Stede presses his mouth to Ed’s cheek and he says, hot and damp and just as desperate as Ed feels—
“No.”
It takes a moment. Just a moment, but it leaves Ed hanging in freefall, spiraling out under the press of Stede’s body, until Stede finds his mouth again and lifts his wrists just enough that he can slam them back down, and Ed understands what Stede wants.
He wants the fire to catch.
He wants the lick of flames that have been spreading over Ed’s skin to find their way in alongside him, burning along his bones; he wants the light and the flare and the bright, brilliant heat of it, burning through them both like pyres in the dark, he wants to be the match striking, he wants to be the tinder starting, he wants to roll through Ed from the inside out, he wants to ignite him and he wants to carry Ed through the blaze and to fuck him as the inferno rises around them, he wants and Ed wants too, he wants, he wants—
I need—
No.
Stede wants him to come on his cock alone.
Ed shakes his head, hair a mess around him, maps ruined underneath him. His prick is so hard he feels like he’ll burst, skin taut, rosy purple, throbbing with every thrust of Stede inside him. “I can’t, I can’t, Stede I can’t.”
“You can,” Stede tells him, and Christ he sounds like he believes it, like he knows it. He fucks in, in, in, he drags himself out, out out, holds Ed down and gathers him up and he’s here, he’s right here, sweat-slick and beautiful and insane and isn’t it true, isn’t it true that Stede makes things happen Ed didn’t think could ever happen, isn’t it true Stede has lived and died and he’s still here, isn’t it true that he’s made men out of monsters and found courage out of danger and a home on the sea, isn’t it true that he’s still here, choosing Ed, loving Ed, guiding him through at the place where they connect, isn’t it true that Stede has him, Stede has in, Stede has him—
“Look at you, darling,” Stede says, softly, leaving one wrist behind to brush the hair off Ed’s face. He smiles, gentle, and fucks in, hard, and holds Ed’s gaze with eyes that shine like the sun through deep water. “Look at you. You can do anything.”
Ed surrenders.
The orgasm sweeps through him and it’s a wildfire, it’s a tempest, it’s the blaze of a ship at night, white-orange heat in the velvet blue dark. It rolls through Ed in an instant and keeps burning, an sudden explosion and a roiling heat, licking along his tendons like old ropes, engulfing muscle and skin and every vein, his very heart, Stede has him by the waist now, hauls him down to meet his thrusts, harder, harder, driving the fire higher and higher and higher—fucking Christ, Ed’s still coming—
Until finally Stede shudders, pressing in hard and rough and deep, spilling himself over into Ed’s body, following after him.
Stede will always follow after him. Stede has him—he already knows the way.
The shivers last forever. Stede breathes hard into the curve of Ed’s neck, the two of them crushed together, the mess Ed made across his own stomach cooling as it soaks into Stede’s shirt. Stede makes a sound deep in his throat and goes to move, but Ed cups the back of his head with one trembling hand and keeps him there.
“Just wait, wait, wait, wait,” he says, “I can’t—I’m too—”
Stede waits. The sensitivity sparks all over Ed’s skin, at every tiny little brush of movement, but Stede waits. Catches his breath, and then helps Ed catch his, breathing slow and even and loud so Ed can match it as their heart rates calm down.
If he makes Stede wait a little longer than he really needs, just for the comfort of having him there, well. Stede will give him anything just now, and he no longer feels guilty for taking it.
“You’re all right,” Stede whispers to him. “You’re all right. You were perfect, darling, you were wonderful, that was absolutely—oh, you did so well.”
Ed hums. Yes, indeed, I see. Eventually he stops carding through the back of Stede’s hair, mussing up his curls, and shifts a little, looks down to find Stede daring to look up.
“Kiss,” Ed demands.
Stede obliges. The kiss is achingly tender, the last ember of a fire sparking one last note somewhere deep inside, before Stede pulls away. “Ready to move?”
He is. Stede helps him through it, holding Ed still on the desk as he stands and peels off his own sticky shirt, then keeping one hand flat on Ed’s belly to steady him as he withdraws carefully. His seed follows him out, spilling down Ed’s sensitive skin, but Stede is there with the shirt, catching it, cleaning him up.
There’s a look in Stede’s eye that means another idea is blooming, another want that Stede is learning he can want. Ed shivers. Another day, then.
Together they get Ed into the desk chair. They get Ed’s brace off him, his leather, his cropped shirt, nearly as filthy as Stede’s. He sits naked and quiet with Stede’s silk jacket around his shoulders—the closest clean thing Stede has to hand, luckily discarded before Stede had draped himself over Ed to begin with—until Stede can free Ed’s emerald green banyan from where it had gotten tangled in the bedsheets the night before.
Stede replaces the jacket with it, wraps Ed in lush velvet with a kiss to his temple, a brush of fingers through his hair, a whispered, “All right?”
Ed’s all right. He’s quiet, but he always tends to be a little quiet afterward, when it’s intense like that. When Stede’s intense like that, especially; when the need rises up in Ed so quick and powerful, dragging him down, spinning him out.
It used to be fucking frightening. Like being on too much opium, out of control. Like being a boy still cowering from his father, defenceless in the worst way.
Stede’s makes it different, though. Stede gets it. He doesn’t leave Ed afterward. He doesn’t rush back into noise, into movement, into the next thing and the next thing and the next. He takes Ed and he folds him up, tucks him close; he needs this comfort the same way Ed does. To coddle, and to hold, and to protect—to keep Ed safe and warm and close.
He would never leave Ed when Ed needs him. He will never leave Ed again. Ed’s trust in him is as overwhelming as his desire for him is.
They go through it together, then: cleaning Ed up nice and proper, with water that smells like lavender—“For relaxation,” Stede explains, in his quiet after-voice—and fine linens. He even gets Ed to lean back against the chair and lift his good leg again so Stede can check his hole, run his finger over the used rim and make sure there isn’t any harm. He kisses Ed’s forehead and his cheek and his shoulder blade and his wrists, each of his ten fingers, makes Ed drink a glass of water—“No alcohol, not after that.”—and untangles his hair with a wide-toothed comb and a gentle, repetitive touch before helping him to bed.
“Stede,” Ed whispers, settling back against the pillows, letting Stede draw the covers up over him, tucking him in.
“Yes? I’m here.”
Ed looks at him. The candles are burning low, but he’s still gilded in the glow of them. His eyes are like the sand under the water, dazzling with light.
“You already know how to navigate, don’t you, you mad bastard?”
Stede laughs, and kisses Ed again, kisses his eyelids closed, his cheeks where they flush. “It’s a good thing I do,” he says, warm against Ed’s mouth. “Because the shift change was ten minutes ago, and I hear you’re not interested in Bermuda.”
He’s impossible. He’s perfect. Ed’s so in love with him.
“If Buttons takes us to Bermuda,” he says with a yawn, eyes drifting shut, Stede’s hand in his, “because you distracted me and then didn’t plot the course right—you’ll be sleeping on the fucking sofa, Mr Bad Timing.”
It’s an empty threat, of course. Ed doesn’t really care if they wake up in Bermuda or Bristol or at the fucking Cape Horn itself.
He’ll wake up with Stede, and he already knows that path is the right one.