Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Stede had made the decision to leave his family and run away to sea, even the best scenarios he imagined—all the swashbuckling and fantastical adventures, the sword fights and drunken evenings in taverns on shore—have never been able to come close to what he actually got.

Namely, the Caribbean’s most-feared pirate astraddle his lap, head tossed back with greying hair spilling across his shoulders and down his back. He shines with sweat—they both do, hot as it is in the cabin even though the sun has begun to slink below the horizon in a fading explosion of pinks and oranges. The way the light bleeds into the cabin limns Ed in those same pinks and oranges, shining off his parted lips, colouring the silver of his short beard, catching in the deep brown of his irises. If Stede possessed even an ounce of Mary’s creativity and vision this is something he’d have to immortalise in thick oil paints, expressive brushstrokes and painstaking detail to capture just right the twist of pleasure on Ed’s face as his cock surges between his legs with a great blurt of pre-come.

Stede is hopelessly in love with him. He can say that, now, and he does, at least several times a day. He says it again, here in this moment, hands cupping Ed’s hips to feel the flex of strong muscle and hard tendon and the bone underneath, thighs raised just enough to cradle the curve of Ed’s arse. It stretches from his mouth like molasses, thick as the late-summer air, sweet because it’s Ed he’s saying it to.

“Fuck,” swears Ed, like he usually does after Stede says it first. Like he can’t believe it’s him Stede’s saying it to. He arches his back. His prick glides against Stede’s soft belly, smearing slick as he rides Stede like he’ll die if he doesn’t, grinding hips and tight heat and the squeeze of muscles when Ed lifts up, rocks forward, slides down. It’s so very like Ed to be impatient about this, and Stede loves him even more for it. Ed pushes his chest out, pinches a nipple between his fingers, says in a gravel-rough voice, “Love you, Stede, fucking hell.”

Ed’s always managed to make this position look so luxurious, riding Stede with a sort of ease that punches staccato breaths from his chest every time their bodies meet, every time Ed squeezes his hips with his thighs. It’s something Stede would envy if it weren’t so fucking hot. All that power in those long legs, the strong muscles hidden by the thin layer of pudge at Ed’s waist. Stede has more strength than he did when he began captaining the Revenge, but he doesn’t have Ed’s decades of experience climbing rigging and running a ship.

Ed reaches for Stede’s hands, threading their fingers together, holding tight as he rides Stede hard, lets his head loll back with a pleased moan. Then he looks down, grins that grin that spans the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, and Stede can’t help but smile back, squeezing Ed’s hands, feeling free in a way that has nothing to do with the sea and everything to do with being in love.

They could go a whole day like this. Fucking, napping, feeding each other those little candies Ed had liberated from a merchant ship the prior week. God, the joy when he’d discovered the tin and opened the lid. How he’d taken one then and there, popping it into his mouth to roll on his tongue. Eyes closed in joy, a small smile and a pleased hum. Stede could kiss the sweetness from Ed’s lips, steal it from the warmth of his mouth. He could roll over, accept Ed into his body, hands and knees the way he’s discovered he likes.

Stede had always wondered what it would be like to simply lose himself in another person like this. Surely the great poets and authors were onto something, and he just had to find it; that fantasy had gotten Stede through the longer, darker times during his marriage. He’d just never expected it to be like this: so acute he could feel it in his marrow, and so addictive it may as well have been laced with opium. There’s always a need for more. There’s never just enough.

Stede pulls Ed down as he thrusts up; the crack of skin echoing in the cabin has Ed crying out sharply and letting go of Stede’s hands, tipping forward and finding his balance with his palms spread wide on Stede’s chest. Thighs shake as Stede fucks up into him, his own thighs trembling as his heels dig into the sheets.

“Up,” Stede breathes, slack-jawed as Ed shakes with Stede’s thrusts above him, prick swaying, “there you go—”

Ed’s brows pinch together, and he digs his nails into Stede’s chest when he swivels his hips. “Fucking fuck, oh fuck. Stede, I need—” A groan lodges itself in Ed’s throat. The world teeters for a moment while he gathers himself enough to gasp, “Hold me down, make me fucking take it,” his head tossed back. A glistening string of pre-come connects his cock to the slick puddle already on Stede’s belly. He moans so prettily, so desperately. Stays raised on his knees to let Stede fuck into him, toes curling against the sheets.

Oh. Stede’s cock throbs before he can fully think about it, skin blooming impossibly hotter. Surely Ed can’t mean that? Stede knows Ed likes it a little rough at times, likes to feel it the next day and smile to himself after he winces and thinks no one else is watching. But this is…a sliver of anxiety slides ice-cold into Stede’s belly. This is more than that. Realistically, he knows he wouldn’t hurt Ed, but realistically doesn’t mean anything in the face of a gnawing sort of anxiety.

A fission of concern cracking through him, Stede begins to say, “Darling, I don’t know if—”

“No,” says Ed, tipping his chin down, his eyes dark like coal, a light behind them like the ghost of an ember, “I’m asking for it, aren’t I? That means I fucking want it. I want it, Stede.”

And Stede knows: Ed isn’t how he was when they reunited. He doesn’t use pain as a crux like he did then. It’s just that Stede has never—well, he’s never held anyone down like that. What if he hurts Ed? Or, worse: what if he isn’t enough for what Ed wants? Ed has a wealth of experience. He’s surely asked someone to do this before. Someone with more experience, or who’s stronger and more assertive than Stede himself is—

As if Ed can hear the hesitation and insecurity running through Stede’s mind, he drops lower, grinding Stede’s cock deep inside him, and murmurs, “I know you can, sweetheart. I know you can fuck me exactly like I need.” His spine is a fluid wave, strands of gunmetal hair slipping over his shoulder to sway between them. Catching Stede’s eye, he adds, softly, “But if you aren’t comfortable, we don’t have to. You feel so fuckin’ good in me just like this. Could come like this, easy peasy.”

But, god, Stede wants to, is the whole thing. Can feel how it crackles like lightning through him. Now that Ed’s mentioned it, made it possible just by the suggestion, Stede can’t think about much else. This is more than just a hard, fast fuck. This is trust. This is the give-and-take of a relationship.

Stede is still learning what it means to want, and what it means to have, and how out here, on the sea, and in here, in this bed, no one can take those decisions away from him.

If he wants to hold his boyfriend down and fuck him, then no one can fucking tell him he’s not good enough to do it.

Manoeuvring takes a bit of work, shifting around in the limited space until Ed can get on his belly, legs spread, cheeks parted to expose the used, loosened furl of his hole and the dark hair there, the hang of his balls between his legs. Stede climbs in carefully after, slotting his legs between Ed’s, guiding him up onto elbows and knees to feed his cock back into him, biting his lip at the relieved groan Ed makes.

Stede pins him with a hand to Ed’s neck at first, pressing hesitantly and asking, “Like that?”

Ed nods into the pillow, moaning a grateful sound that settles deep in Stede’s bones. Stede can feel the tension bleed from Ed’s upper body as he puts a little more of his weight on it. He’s truly beautiful like this, with his broad shoulders and the shift of muscle underneath, the scars and the tattoos there, the sweat that drags in shining streaks when Stede runs his fingers over it with his other hand. “Yeah,” Ed says, breathless and squirming as much as he’s able to with Stede’s weight on him, “fuck, now cover me— ohhh fuck, yeah. ”

Stede drapes himself over Ed, knocking his knees wider to cant his hips up higher. It slides his prick in deeper, makes both of them shudder. In his chest, Stede’s heart thuds, steady but beginning to pick up. His legs slot alongside Ed’s, all that hot-sticky heat condensing to where their skin touches.

He asks, “Still okay?”

Ed makes a sound and spreads his knees even further, and underneath Stede his back dips lower, space opening between his spine and the slight curve of Stede’s belly. “Yeah, yes, fuck. Move. Please, move.”

Stede straightens, and Ed whines, and Stede says, “Hush, love, I’ll be right back in place in a moment. I just want to look at you.”

Hand on the soft curve of Ed’s waist, Stede looks at the enticing slope of his back, at where he disappears into Ed, the spread of his hips and the curves of his arse, the dark hair and the thick, pink-red shaft of Stede’s prick shining with oil as he slides halfway out, Ed’s body giving him up so easily as Stede feels the tremor run through him.

“Lovely,” he says as he slides back in to the hilt, half to himself. He gently tightens the hand on Ed’s neck, fingers pressing in. Ed clenches around him, exhaling shakily. With a gentle hand Stede eases Ed’s to the pillow one by one, murmurs praise and sweet words when Ed grips tight. Stede can feel the strength in the tendons there, in the breadth of those palms, and lets himself linger, squeezing before he pulls back. “That’s it, my dear. Are you ready?”

Ed whimpers, and it’s like a bell, how beautiful that sound is. Sweet and soft, that underbelly of Blackbeard no one but Stede is privy to. “So fucking ready, love. Fuck me.”

Bending low, Stede blankets Ed again, bracing himself on the mattress on one hand. With the other that had been curved around the shape of Ed’s neck he tucks Ed’s hair off it, leaning in to press a small kiss to the space behind his ear, then his ear itself, breathes in clean sweat and sea and soap. Ed’s forehead digs into the pillow beneath, a soft sound half-smothered in its silk. The trust there, in a pirate like Ed showing his vulnerability, swells up so great in Stede he feels nearly rocked in place with it.

He doesn’t warn Ed when he pulls out to the tip and slams back in with a great roll of his body. Ed cries out at the crack of their skin and seems to nearly go boneless. The next thrust pushes him further against the mattress, and Stede huffs a breath against the spill of Ed’s hair, smashing his nose there as they find a rhythm together. Heat explodes across his body at the clench of Ed’s hole, coiling so fiercely in his belly he can feel his abdomen grow tight with it.

He ruts against Ed like that, breathing hard through the waves of pleasure the give and take Ed’s body offers him. In his previous couplings, all those attempts to get first an heir, then a male heir, and the times in between when he was trying as hard as he could to be the husband that Mary deserved, Stede was always quiet. He realises now why that is, that he loves Mary as a friend rather than a sexual partner, that there is a difference. Sex had felt good, in the end, but it had never felt like it does with Ed. An explosion of gunpowder, a great crackling of electricity. He moans against Ed’s skin, far past being self-conscious about the wantonness of the sound.

“Oh, fuck,” Ed says. His fingers clench in the sheets, keeping him steady, body undulating to push against Stede’s thrusts. He can’t get much purchase, and that seems to spur him on. “That’s—Stede, oh— fuck. ”

“Good?” Stede manages, dragging his lips over the tight curls at the nape of Ed’s neck. His spine curls and uncurls, his own fingers clenching into the sheets centimetres shy from Ed’s.

“Uh-huh,” Ed whines, pushing his forehead against the pillow and moving it further up against the wall. “So fuckin’ good, keep going. Right—right there. Oh god, your— uhn— fucking cock, mate. Oh, oh. Pull my hair, just like— fuck! ”

Fist tight in Ed’s hair, Stede moves just enough to tug him into a lazy U and readjusts the spread of Ed’s body, gets him right where he needs to be. Then he drives in, over and over. Ed’s strained noises gradually ramp up, evolve from gasps and whimpers to full-throated moans to the ceiling as Stede holds him and grazes that spot, nudging it with the head of his prick until Ed’s thighs are trembling, knees slipping on the sheets as he tries to get more purchase and fails. That knowledge, that Ed’s still pinned just the way he’d asked, knocks loose a throaty moan that rumbles into Stede’s chest like thunder.

“Tell me,” Ed chokes out, and Stede lets go of his hair, runs his fingers through the section he’d gripped soothingly, pushes him back down onto the bed and brackets him. Ed’s voice comes out rough and low as his head drops back to the bed. He clenches his fingers into the pillow, tilts his head to look at Stede over his shoulder. His eyes are dark and wild, beard shining with saliva. His lips are red, swollen: from his teeth, from Stede’s. This is Ed at his basest, and Stede is so fucking lucky, isn’t he, to get him like this? “Tell me I was meant to take it.”

Stede snaps his hips forward, hair flopping over his forehead. Ed grips tight around him on the slide out, welcomes him back in soft and open to wring a breathless, adored groan from Stede’s throat. “Oh, darling, of course you were. You were meant to take me, and you do it so well.”

Ed cracks out a laugh, turning to bury his face in the pillows, his long, lovely hair spilling everywhere around him, sticking to his skin, getting caught under the press of his shoulder. “Not—Christ, Stede, I’m asking you to degrade me a little here, not make me feel all—all fuckin’ warm and fuzzy about it.”

“Shouldn’t you?” asks Stede. He can’t deny how that implication skitters sparks down his spine, but still he says, “Don’t you want to know how good you are for me? How much I cherish you?”

Ed shudders, saying half-slurred, “Stede, y’can’t just—”

“You are,” Stede continues like Ed never protested at all. He grips the curve of Ed’s hip, fingers spreading across the soft flesh there. Tugs him closer to his body, that humid space between where his hips grind forward. His breath stutters, a hitch-step. “And I do. Even taking my cock like this, like a—a slut, you’re so fucking good. And I love you so much that I can’t get enough of you. I’d take you every day, if you’d let me. Keep you in this bed, keep you filled up just like I know you need.”

Ed gasps sharply, bucking and twisting underneath Stede. A sharp jerk of pleasure hooks itself into his belly. “More. Stede. Keep going.”

The sun has nearly sunk beneath the horizon now, and most of the light comes from the candles Ed had lit when he’d cornered Stede in bed earlier in the evening. It suffuses the room in a soft, hazed-orange glow, candlelight flickering off the sweat on their bodies. Something about the dusk emboldens Stede, giving way to words that would otherwise stick in his throat.

“You take my cock so well,” he says on a whisper. Reverent, because how can he not be, with someone like Ed in his bed? Ed loves so wholly and fiercely, and it lights him up from the inside sometimes. Stede can only hope to be a shadow in its wake. “You were made for it, made for me. ” He grinds his hips, pushes up and urges Ed to bring his legs in closer, feels pleased at the crackling cry it breaks from him when the angle changes. “Fuck, you’re so beautiful, Edward.”

Ed moans, bicep flexing when he grips the sheets tightly. The snake wrapped around his arm seems to slither of its own will in the dying light of day gone bluish purple outside the window. “Yours, love, I’m all yours. Always have been.” A moan. “A-always will be.”

Stede urges Ed’s head up from the pillow with a hand on the side of his face and kisses him. It’s open and sloppy, slick sounds of lips and the tease of tongue. Ed whines, gives as good as he’s getting. Push-pull of their bodies, the humid space between him and the bed when Stede pulls him up again to ghost his palm over the slick-straining length of Ed’s prick. All the sweat that sticks and pulls. The slam of his hips is a harsh smack of skin, the bed shaking with it, a primal feeling unfurling itself from his chest like a great beast sunning itself on a rock.

The Stede Bonnet of Barbados is dead. The Stede Bonnet of the Gentleman Pirate has taken his place, and out on the freedom of the sea, in the freedom of living his truth, he can do whatever he puts his mind to. It’s a powerful thing, this knowledge, thumping like war drums in his chest. His lover is mewling underneath him, begging for more, and Stede can give it.

“I was worried I wouldn’t be enough, but I shouldn’t have worried, hmm?” One final suck on Ed’s lower lip and Stede moves across his cheek, over his ear to take the lobe between his teeth and tug right where Ed’s long, sparkling earrings go. “You’re so desperate for it,” he whispers into Ed’s ear, “opening up for me like you did. So easy to sink into your greedy hole. You squeeze so perfectly around me when you call my name.”

“Oh,” whines Ed, and he whines it again, a helpless thing. “Stede, sweetheart, I’m close. Come in me, please. Wanna feel you drip out of me. Wanna feel you on the insides of my fucking thighs.”

Stede’s knees slip on the sheets, mouth opening against Ed’s shoulder to set his teeth there. A sound threatens to break forth from him, something wild and untamable. He can feel his end pulling at him, heat condensing to prepare for something greater. Beneath him, Ed is whimpering, groaning helplessly with each slap of their bodies.

Then, when Stede thrusts deep and sucks a desperate mark onto the knob of Ed’s shoulder, Ed humps frantically against the bed and cries out and comes with a surprised, gut-punched sound, a hah-uh! forced from him as he spills across the sheets with a full-body shudder.

It doesn’t take much for Stede to follow; when he scrambles up, Ed pushes his arse up, arms flung out above his head on top of the half-folded pillow. If Stede were to look down he’d see the thin line of come stringing from Ed’s softening prick to the bed. Ed’s eyes are dark and wide when he turns his head to look up beatifically, jaw slack as he breathes, “That’s it, babe, fill me up. Use me. Make me fu—uh—ucking sloppy with it.”

Stede comes with a shout, gripping Ed’s hips tightly and holding him still as he buries himself and spills inside with long pulses that feel ripped from his bones. Back bowed over Ed, his hips jerking in little helpless, aborted thrusts. An implosion, white-hot from crown to sole, soundless in the face of it. Ed talks him through it, hushed snippets of filthy praise and sweet adorations gone slow and long with post-orgasm contentment.

“Go slow,” Ed advises, reaching back to stroke along Stede’s forearm. “Ohh, I’m gonna feel this tomorrow. And don’t you dare fuckin’ apologise, I know you.”

Stede absently pets along the curve of Ed’s arse as he eases his cock out. Ed’s hole winks at him as a thin line of come follows, spilling down over his sac. Jesus. A spark of lust desperately tried to make itself known through the full-body exhaustion. “Do you want me to get the towel?”

“I want you to come here, ” says Ed, rolling onto his side and holding his hands out in a gimme motion. “I’ll even lay in the wet spot for you as long as you cuddle me right the fuck now after you blew my fuckin’ back out.”

Oh, how Stede loves him. He bites back a smile, wriggling against Ed’s sweaty body as they adjust until they’re comfortable, Ed on his back and Stede pressed against the length of him.

“Holy fuck, mate,” Ed eventually says to the ceiling. His fingers trace idle patterns on whatever patch of skin he can reach; this time, it happens to be Stede’s side, and Stede has to suppress a ticklish shudder at the light touch of Ed’s fingertips. “I knew you could do it, but I didn’t know you could do it that well.”

Stede presses a kiss to what he can of the bite mark on Ed’s shoulder. “So it was good?”

“Stede.” Ed swivels his head to face him. His brows are raised. “I can’t remember the last time I got fucked that good. You’ve made it difficult for me to walk before, but this is next fuckin’ level. This is ‘no heavy work for a few days’ level.”

Satisfaction purrs in him at those words, even as Stede's cheeks burn. “Oh.” He briefly buries his face against Ed’s neck and the pillow, breathes in sex and lavender, the musk of Ed’s sweat that sets his heart to pounding. “Well…I’m glad.”

“‘I’m glad,’” Ed parrots in a higher-pitched version of Stede’s voice. He rolls his eyes, grinning so widely at the ceiling that they’ve gone creased at the corners. Stede looks at his profile in adoration, chin on his shoulder, his hand on Ed’s slick belly. “He rocked my fuckin’ world and all he can say is ‘I’m glad.’”

On anyone else Stede would immediately bristle. On Ed, the fondness is evident. He’s quick to tease, quick to make lighthearted jabs, and it’s never been in bad faith. Stede thinks he may actually trust him with his life, which should be scary, but considering how quickly they fell in love, it doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

God. He’s in love. He’s loved. By Ed, the most wonderful, funny, and perfectly imperfect man he’s ever met.

His expectations as a pirate haven't all been fully lived up to, or even accounted for, and this is one Stede’s glad came as a surprise.