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“What are we going to do with three dozen corsets?”
Black Pete lifts a bundle of fabric from the disarray of one of the overturned cargo crates spilled out across the deck, edge held precariously by the tips of his fingers like he thinks it’s hiding teeth in there somewhere. Ed can’t really blame him. There’s something innately suspect about clothes that are meant to make you look like you’ve got less insides than you do.
Naturally, Stede’s there in three seconds flat, drawn to the siren song of flashy fashion.
“Oh, that’s a lovely brocade,” he exclaims, tracing a loopy floral pattern in cream and gold.
Ed starts rummaging through the nearest barrel, because there might be something important in here with all of this… corn. Not for any other reason, obviously. Why should he care if this particular merchant vessel is loaded down with a bunch of fancy, pretty stuff on top of the basics?
He shouldn’t, that’s why.
Even if the stuff is probably smooth, and silky, and covered in lavish embroidery, and the colors make him feel all squiggly in his belly.
Nope, shouldn’t care at all.
Unless they’re valuable, that is.
“Could you sell ‘em?” Kernels titter against the deck as Ed drops his handful of corn mostly back into the barrel, edging over to where Stede is already elbow deep in frippery.
An emerald green stay covered in tiny fan shapes comes out next, sheen of the fabric catching the sun like an actual gemstone. The tips of Ed’s fingers feel inexplicably itchy all of a sudden. He wonders if running them over the panels of the corset would help.
“I should think so!” Stede plucks delicately at the frilly green lace running along the edge of the thing, bringing it closer to his face to inspect the details. “This is very fine stitchwork.”
“What are these for?” the Swede asks, playing with a toggle on another one covered in a garish fuchsia and orange check that he’s got plastered against the front of his body. The toggle opens a little flap on the right side of the piece revealing nothing underneath. There’s another one strategically placed one on the left. “Oh.”
The sudden sensation of Ed’s nipples grating against the inside of his jacket is just an illusion, he’s sure of it.
“Nursing stays, do you think?” Stede’s voice has hit that particular flustered soprano that Ed used to find hilariously charming. It also happens to be the octave Stede hits when he comes, so nowadays it mostly just does things to Ed in the trousers region. “For nursing, you know. Keep the little nippers fed!”
Jim wanders by on route to the dinghy, a crate overflowing with what looks to be the spoils of the former captain’s cabin braced on their shoulder. “I vote we all pretend we never heard the word nippers .”
Several “aye”s go up amongst the crew, including Stede, who is now a shade of pink that nearly matches the slutty corset.
Lucius looks up from where he is purportedly recording the haul in Stede’s log book, but Ed strongly suspects is just sketching the Swede in a nursing stay now. Says, “I don’t know much about babies, but that’s definitely not what those are for.”
“Making them, maybe,” Pete jokes. A murmur of laughter runs among the crew who, it has to be said, probably ought to be more focussed on looting or something instead of playing about with women’s dresswear.
Gamely attempting to make out like his own chest isn’t on fucking fire with some kind of feeling—he’s pretty sure he didn’t have this many of them before he met Stede—Ed joins in with, “Didn’t know the Spanish had it in ‘em.”
Which, of course, inspires Stede to chime back with, “It does seem more like the French, doesn’t it?”
And then the crew’s off, debating the relative kinkiness of various European powers—joke’s on them, it’s Prussia—and finally getting back to loading shit into the boats.
Ed resumes his traditional duty as supervisor general and chief picker-overer of the choicest bits in peace. If his eyes happen to keep getting stuck on the pile of corsets Stede’s packing back into the crate with the tender care of a collector, well, that’s not anybody’s business, now is it?
***
The corsets are fucking haunting him.
Actually, literally haunting him. In his own cabin. Across every available surface.
“Stede,” he calls out, casting about for a blond head amongst the rainbow of chaos that’s taken over the room. This might be the only time in his life Stede’s managed to be camouflaged.
One pale hand appears on the other side of the chaise in the library, ruffled sleeve fluttering as it waves.
“Over here. I was just taking stock.”
Ed rounds the lounge to find him, of all things, settled on the floor, fairly drowning in a sea of silk and satin and whale bone.
This is not the version of hell Ed figured he would be doomed to. Or heaven, for that matter.
There’s a fire crackling in the grate, presumably for light, since it’s plenty warm already, turning the air sticky with the lavender and musk scent that Ed doesn’t dare think of as “us” even inside his own head. Maybe as a nod to that, Stede’s stripped down to his linen shirt and breeches, bare feet pale against the rug, wrists seeming fragile and exposed above his rolled cuffs.
It’s not doing anything to assuage Ed’s urge to lay him down in the mess of all that finery and make him scream Ed’s name.
Sinking down to the floor next to Stede is the kind of position his knee specifically doesn’t adore, but Ed’s well accustomed to ignoring that. Stede’s obviously less so, because his hand immediately settles on the offending joint, gently working his thumb against the tensest part of the tendon until it relaxes slightly. He doesn’t even look up from the splay of fabric in front of him while he does it, like taking care of Ed is some kind of useless, deranged instinct he was born with.
It gets Ed right in the balls every single time.
“I’m not an expert in ladies fashion by any stretch, but some of these seemed like they might be a bit special,” he says, surveying the lot as his fingers idly tuck into the bend of Ed’s knee. “I thought it merited a look in case anything might fetch a higher price.”
Ed takes in the sampling laid out on the floor in front of them. Stripes compete with branches of cherry blossoms and dainty birds, a riot of red and teal and citrine that sing out for his touch.
“Special how?”
He curls his fingers in tight against his palms, nails Stede has neatly filed for him catching on his callouses. He’d probably just ruin them anyway, threads snagging on his rough skin if he ran his hands over them.
His mother’s voice whispers at the back of his mind.
“Materials, mostly,” Stede shrugs. “The fabrics, the trims. This soutache, for example,” he indicates a peach-colored paisley one with coral curlicues all around the edges, “would be very pricey.”
Ed’s picked up a lot more information than he’d ever imagined he’d know about textiles over the last couple of years, but it’s still a bit beyond him what Stede’s seeing that says this one’s better than the maroon one with the silver over there in the corner.
“Sure,” he nods agreeably anyway, jostling playfully against Stede’s side. “Who doesn’t love a pricey mustache?”
Stede’s grin makes an appearance like the sun coming out after a squall, cheeks gone round on it and eyes crinkled up with delight.
It’s honestly fucked up how everything he does makes Ed hot for him. It’s like a sickness. He fervently hopes never to be cured.
“And of course there’s the, erm,” Stede adds, adorably flushed considering they sacked a ship this very morning. “The nursing stays.”
There’s a knot in Ed’s throat that wasn’t there two seconds ago, the craggy shape of it clinging thick as he tries to swallow around it.
“Still going with ‘nursing’, then?”
The pink in Stede’s cheeks darkens and his chin gets that prim set that makes Ed need to bend him over something.
“It’s still plausible,” he sniffs. His eyes traipse Ed’s direction, flick to Ed’s chest like he can see the silver rings in his nipples right through leather and cotton. Ed can sure as hell feel them, hyper-aware as usual to just the thought of Stede’s hands on him. It really is a fucking sickness. “Though I’ll admit, upon consideration, I’ve come to appreciate the alternative appeal.”
It’s no effort at all for Ed to lean in a bit, snug his nose into that spot behind Stede’s ear that sends a quiver through him every time. And since that conveniently puts his lips up close to Stede’s pulse, there’s really no reason not to give it a kiss hello. Maybe a little scrape of teeth, a swipe of tongue after, for the sweet-salt taste that makes his cheeks cramp up with how hard his mouth waters.
“Why don’t you come appreciate it right now, hmm?”
Stede’s skin is goosebumped against Ed’s lips, neck tilted accommodatingly as he kisses over the wing of Stede’s jaw, up to his mouth. Gets a soft, hungry sigh that absolutely does things to Ed as he swallows it down, pushing closer, hungry for more.
He slides a hand over Stede’s hip, starts trying to maneuver him over into his lap and gets surprised by resistance instead.
“Actually, I was thinking,” Stde hums, licking sweetly at the edge of Ed’s lip before any ideas about him not being interested can take root. “How would you like to do something weird?”
Ed’s not in the habit of turning it down when Stede decides to get a little creative—for all that he’d come into this thing between them skittish as a virgin, the man’s got a deliciously filthy mind hidden under all those ruffles. Still, there’s something about the circumstance that sits oddly in the pit of Ed’s stomach, an itch at the back of his neck like somebody coming up behind him with a knife.
Carefully, Stede fishes one of the stays out of the pile. The color is lush as blackberry wine, worked over with intricate diamond shapes that only show up when Stede shifts it under the light.
It’s obvious why this one’s in the special pile, because it’s got the same flaps as the other definitely-not-for-nursing ones, held closed by the tiniest black satin bows Ed’s ever seen.
“You’ve always looked stunning in purple,” Stede says tentatively, the back of one hand coasting down the front of Ed’s jacket. Like a fucking cheater, because it buys another scant second where Ed’s mind doesn’t quite fix on what exactly Stede’s suggesting.
And then it does.
It’s like getting struck by lightning, probably. Or like being thrown in a fucking whirpool, spun around and twisted with the air flying out of your lungs and the thoughts whipped out of your brains and-
“You want- I’m not-”
And Ed’s got to move. He’s gotta walk or something. He’s got to be far enough away that Stede’s buttercream skin and soap smell and pretty, eager, loving eyes stop annihilating his ability to think.
“Fuck off.”
He lurches to his feet fast enough his knee twinges again, but that can fuck off too. Pacing to the far side of the room, beside the bed and as far from Stede and his beguiling pile of fabrics as he can get without going above deck.
He doesn’t want to go above deck. He’s gonna push somebody overboard again if he goes above deck, and then Stede’s going to give him that disappointed look, and Ed can’t handle it.
Not while he’s still thinking about Stede thinking about…
About what, exactly?
About him all tarted up like some kind of expensive prostitute? Ed’s certainly been called worse. Hell, Ed is worse. Folks rarely get maimed by prostitutes in the line of duty; at least not in any ways that they didn’t request.
Tarted up like some high-class slag, then? That might be worse. Leastways, it’d mean Stede wanted to imagine him being something else, or maybe some body else, which puts a taste like sucking on lead shot on the back of his tongue.
Or maybe just Stede thinking about him like some cheap bit of tat to toy with; a little joke, putting something as common as Ed in something so special, like putting a pig in a dress. Any other aristocrat Ed’s ever met, sure, wouldn’t even have to wonder, but Stede…
Looking at Stede slowly getting up off the floor, hands open, carefully letting Ed have his space, he knows none of that’s it.
Gripping at the back of the couch at least gives Ed somewhere to put all of the shaky, aimless energy making him want to peel his own skin off.
“Why?” he grits out, on uneven footing like he hasn’t been with Stede in ages.
The dark sheen of the corset is a black spot at the edge of his vision, beckoning even though Ed refuses to look at it.
Not for people like us , his mother whispers.
Stede takes a few slow steps toward the middle of the room, being obvious about it in a way that makes Ed want to gnash his teeth about how he’s apparently coming off like he needs coddling right now.
Maybe more to the point, that he does need coddling right now.
“Because you wear fine things well,” Stede says, quiet and earnest and a hell of a lot like getting stabbed. “Because you’re lovely. Because I think touching those ,” his eyes skip to Ed’s chest again, and even out of sorts, Ed still feels it like a brand, “while you’re wearing that might make me finish on the spot.”
He’s made his way to the arm of the sofa, halting just far enough away that Ed would really have to stretch to touch him. The smile that tilts his mouth is painfully gentle.
“And the way you looked at them, I thought perhaps you had an interest. But if I was wrong...”
“If you were?” Ed bites out. It’s hard to be angry when Stede’s not giving him anything to push back against. Harder when he’s not even sure what he’s angry at in the first place, except that he’s got to feel all of this weird shit at all.
Stede shrugs again, taking one more step so his hand can land lightly on top of the one Ed’s using to strangle the stuffing out of the sofa.
“Then we can do something else. Or nothing, if you’d prefer,” he says, as if Ed has ever once chosen ‘not fucking Stede’ over the alternative. Even when Stede first came back and Ed wanted to carve the heart out of him with a spoon, he still couldn’t keep his hands off him. “No need to ever speak of it again.”
Like it’s just that easy. Like this memory isn’t going to have permanent residence in his head. Like it doesn’t ruin a thing at all if Ed’s being strange, and mercurial, and frankly kind of an ass about this whole situation.
They never put this part of being in love into the ballads.
Which makes it easier, somehow, for Ed to take a second to cope, and maybe nudge a toe against the idea. A bunch of silky fabric pressed up against him, shifting over his skin every time he moves, every time he breathes. Held close.
Would the unwomanly shape of him and the jumble of tattoos get a polish from the stiff shape, the rich shine?
Just the thought of it fills him with a queasy sort of heat.
“I’d look like a dick,” he grumbles, biting at the inside of his lip.
“You’d look spectacular, as always.”
“Shut up.” He imagines the deep color of it against his skin, smooth material dragging against his nipples. At least until Stede untied those little bows, and then… “You’d really want to see me in something like that?”
Stede finally, blessedly, closes the distance. One hand loops, feather light, around Ed’s wrist, the other at his waist. He presses a chaste kiss to Ed’s arm, even though he’s still got his jacket on and it’s the wrong side for Ed to feel it through the leather.
“I’d want anything that would make you feel nice.”
This man is going to be the death of him.
But what a fucking way to go.
Ed stalls for another few seconds, trying to picture it, then trying not to picture it, landing somewhere in the middle. Sighs every scrap of breath out of his body like this hasn’t been a foregone conclusion from the start.
“Could try it, I guess,” he mutters to the far wall. Licks his lips with a tongue too dry for the job. “You know, if you think it’d do something for you.”
He’s not looking at Stede, but he can still feel him smiling indulgently when he says, “That’s very generous, dearest.”
Ed’s lungs perform their usual acrobatic swoop for Stede’s cadre of sugary pet names. It’s unfair how much Stede gets to him.
“Don’t say I never did anything for you.”
Lips pressed softly to Ed’s cheek, just above the line of his beard, Stede promises, “I would never.”
***
Getting into the damn thing is a fucking trick, even with the two of them working at it.
His body’s not made to curve in the places the corset thinks it should, and the laces seem to want to be a gnarled up ball of string a lot more than to hold the fucker together. The little tabs on the bottom flare out to emphasize hips Ed doesn’t have. Skirts he doesn’t have, for that matter; slits of skin visible where the sides don’t stretch to meet the band of Ed’s trousers, showing off the gnarled scar tissue on his left side.
The shape forces his shoulders back, chest out; awkward, but not entirely uncomfortable. Especially not with Stede standing behind him, warm fingers brushing his neck as he sweeps Ed’s hair up off his nape. Ed can’t see what Stede’s doing from his seat on the footstool, but he’d produced an eggplant-colored ribbon from somewhere, which Ed can only assume is involved in whatever configuration he’s being coiffed into.
Laid bare, the back of his neck feels overheated against the cool kiss of air; pebbled when Stede runs a fingertip down the revealed rungs of his spine.
Stede’s done far, far dirtier things to him that just touching his neck before—Stede’s done things so filthy to him Ed considered becoming Catholic just so he could go to confession for them (to brag, obviously)—but there’s something about this particular moment that makes the sensation crackle through him like gunpowder catching a spark.
Could be the way the deep breath it pulls into him makes his chest puff against the inside of the corset, aware of all the silk pressed against him. It’s not crushing him like he thought it might, but there’s no forgetting about it either, every shift, every inhale a tiny reminder of just, like, skin , and how he has it, and how apparently it’s been laying down on the job for years, because wow is he getting a lot of sensation here.
“There,” Stede says, tracing down the shell of Ed’s ear as he circles around to stand in front of him and cast an appraising look from his newly styled hair to his bare toes.
If he had any extra space in this thing, Ed’s heart would be beating right out of his ribcage.
“Well?” His voice sounds like he just drank sand, but at least it comes out, which hadn’t honestly been a given.
“Sumptuous,” Stede breathes. “An utter confection.”
Ed’s cock, which has been bewilderedly half-hard for the proceedings, perks up with a speed that makes the room spin a little. Twitches in its leather confines when Stede holds out a hand to him like Ed’s Her Ladyship of FuckKnowsWhat at some kind of fancy ball or something.
He’s never bothered to ask, be he kind of figures Her Ladyship probably wouldn’t be leaking against the fall front of her trousers over it. Doesn’t stop him from playing along.
Stede’s got good-sized hands. Rougher than they used to be back when they first met, but still soft compared to Ed’s, courtesy of that woodsy-smelling balm he puts on every night before they go to bed. (Another of the myriad things Ed’s developed weird sexual responses to.) They fold gently over Ed’s now, fingertips ticklishly light on the back of his hands.
Ed loses the battle with a shiver as they skate over his wrists and up the length of his bare arms.
Loses it all over again when Stede sighs, “My darling,” like a prayer and turns Ed’s insides molten.
This, Ed assumes, is why people came up with the idea of not marrying for love. If everybody walked around as fuck-stupid over somebody as he is over Stede, nobody’d ever get anything done.
“Yeah?”
He leans into the circle of Stede’s arms. Starts tugging the hem of Stede’s shirt free so he can get at a little skin himself.
“Oh yes,” Stede nods, tipping his chin obligingly for a slow, sizzling kiss.
It all feels different through the corset, touch muted into heady, melting heat everywhere Stede’s hands run over him, shocking when it slips past the edge and onto the exposed skin above Ed’s trousers.
He steps when Stede pushes, following him, feeding off of his thin lips as Stede navigates them somewhere. Ed assumes the bed. For the love of fuck, let it be the bed. He needs Stede on top of him immediately, if not sooner.
On the other hand, this wall is very nice. At least until Stede, for some insane reason, pulls back. He’s breathing like surfacing from a dive, mouth a perfect sunset pink to match his cheeks. Staring at Ed like he’s the best thing he’s ever seen.
His hands find Ed’s hips, which feels like a very good idea indeed, but he stops Ed halfway through turning, so instead of facing the wall, he’s facing the-
The mirror of Stede’s shaving vanity.
There’s a sideways moment where every part of him seems to go numb. The puff and pile of curls on the top of his head is tied up with Stede’s ribbon. A couple of tendrils escape from the one side in a way that looks like he did it on purpose; a demure kind of counterpoint to the fullness of his beard. The wide swath of bare skin at his chest, shoulders, is cut through by the stark line of purple-black silk, his tattoos bleeding into it like they’re all part and parcel, like the corset’s grafted onto him, growing out of him, like it belongs there.
Not elegant, like some blue-blood playing dress up. A bit coarse, a little grungy, slightly incongruous, sure, but not silly like he’d feared. Not wrong, so much as profane.
He looks like Edward Bloody Teach. Just not a version of him Ed knew was in there before.
Sensation floods back with avengence, starting with the press of Stede against his back. One arm loops around his waist, holding him close as Stede mouths along the curve of his neck.
“My beauty,” drips from his lips like hot candle wax through Ed’s marrow, eye meeting Ed’s in the mirror. “My rapture.”
Ed’s going to make him come so hard he forgets all of his boarding school words.
Reaching back, he grabs a rough handful of Stede’s ass through the satin of his breeches—why the fuck are they both still wearing trousers?—jerks him forward against Ed’s ass hard enough to jolt a precious little squeak out of him.
“You’re gonna fuck me,” Ed growls, not quite Blackbeard, but not entirely anything else either.
Stede’s breath stutters against his ear, a bastard mix of fond and faintly dazed when he says, “Yes, dear.”
Ed’s going to make him come so hard he blacks out .
“Over there,” he jerks his chin toward the shaving vanity. “So I can watch.”
The muscle cupped in Ed’s palm tenses as Stede grinds forward against him, cock thick and hard enough to make Ed clench up even through two layers of material. He digs his fingers in a little harder, arches back into it in a pantomime of what he’d really like to be doing.
“But first,” he turns his head, bites at the edge of Stede’s jaw, curve of his cheek. “First, you’re gonna suck on my tits.”
“Edward.” Stede gasps, scandalized and reverent and maybe somewhere in the same hemisphere as as desperate for it as Ed feels.
He brushes Stede roughly out of the way, gets his own back up against the wall again before reeling him in. The second they’re touching again, Stede clings to him, mouth open and wet against Ed’s, practically pleading for the dirty wriggle of his tongue.
Fuck, Ed wants everything. Wants to kiss him, and suck him, and fuck him; get sucked, get fucked; to roll around in bed with him, and wake up to his sleepy eyes; argue about stabbing people, and steal the last of the marmalade off his spoon, and chase the horizon with him until the day Ed’s unworthy heart stops beating. He wants everything from Stede, always.
Right now what he wants most is to get his prick out from where it’s aching in his leathers and jack it a little while Stede does that thing with his teeth on Ed’s nipple rings.
At least one of those problems is easy to solve.
It takes some groping, but he finally manages to get a hand in between them and the fastenings of his fall front undone. His cock springs free with a rush of relief, catches sticky between Stede’s breeches and the low V front of the corset, and oh, that’s a feeling. Smooth fabric and stiff boning, almost too much.
Ed breaks off with a gasp, tries to draw in enough air to cope, but the feel of the corset and Stede and everything all over him makes anything other than being swamped by sensation impossible.
“Stede, mate. C’mon.” He nudges at Stede’s head, contradicts the whole thing when he can’t resist leaning in to steal a couple more quick kisses from that wet, sweet mouth before it presses against his collarbone, the shallow swell of his chest pushed up by the stay.
Stede licks along the edge, stark black piping and skin; slips his tongue just slightly between to leave a hint of silk dragging spit-damp against Ed as he moves further down.
The fog of his breath is brutally hot pressed up against the shutter hiding Ed’s nipple. Lips pink as strawberries against bruise-purple brocade, mouthing along the outside like it’s getting them somewhere, because it fucking well is.
All of these fine, precious things that have no business being touched by Ed’s grubby self, but belong to him anyway.
Ed reaches down to get a hand around himself, gives his cock a good couple of strokes to dull the worst of the edge while Stede, painfully slowly, unties that first little bow.
The air hits his sweating skin like a splash of cold water as Stede peels the flap back, exposing the tight brown oval of his nipple, the glint of silver shot through it.
Ed got the rings in the dark months of ‘After Stede’. Had done a lot of stupid shit at the time just for the sake of pain. And for a while they had hurt, a constant dull ache that turned sharp when he brushed against them. When that had faded, he’d figured out how to use them to make himself hurt—he’s always had a talent for it.
But Stede. Stede’s never seen them like that. From the very first trembling touch, so light Ed might not even have felt it if not for the way the metal transmits every little vibration into him, Stede’s only ever seen them as a way to make Ed feel good.
It’s a far superior talent; one that Stede applies himself to liberally and enthusiastically.
Like now, when he presses a coy kiss to the newly revealed skin, turning it wet with a slowness that tightens the tension in Ed’s gut like soaked rope drying in the sun. The flap only leaves a small window of him exposed, everything else still neatly bound, and the contrast between Stede’s hot mouth on his skin and his warm breath dimmed and spread by the fabric is so delicious it makes the muscles in Ed’s thigh twitch.
And Ed is a tactical genius, because in this position he’s got a twin view; Stede in front of him, and Stede in the mirror, both of them laving at Ed’s chest with the most beatific expression, face pressed next to the rapidfire beat of Ed’s heart. His teeth catch at the ring, tug lightly, everything maddeningly warm and slippery enough to wrench a moan from the pit of Ed’s stomach. He’s so gentle. So perfectly delicate as the tip of his tongue turns the ring, sleek metal brushing Ed inside and out.
A handful of gold hair slip-slides through Ed’s fingers as he grips the back of Stede’s head, arches forward when Stede bites softly at damp flesh. Every nerve in Ed’s body fizzes, alight; not-enough pleasure, not-quite-pain stringing him along a razor’s edge until there’s nothing Ed can do but writhe for it.
The tip of his prick catches on the front of Stede’s shirt, the drag of fine linen turned gritty by the pounding of blood just beneath the skin. Ed bucks into his own hand for just enough relief to keep him sane.
Which is, of course, the moment that Stede chooses to switch to the other tit.
A sound like the ground up remains of a whine squeezes out of Ed’s throat as Stede mouths at him, sweet and vicious. So hot it’s like ice running down Ed’s spine.
It’s obviously getting to Stede too, because for all that the shift-pull-swipe is still tender, the prissy quiet of it has slipped right out under the window sash, blown off by the breeze. In its place is the lewd sucking noise of Stede trying to get closer, more, grunting into it every couple of breaths—the kind of filthy, ordinary sex sounds that make Stede blush crimson unless he’s too far gone to notice.
Fuck music, Ed could listen to that forever.
You know, if his fucking balls weren’t about to murder him.
“That’s enough,” Ed spits out. The dry husk of his voice is all Blackbeard this time, but Stede doesn’t even miss a beat scrambling up to lick it straight out of his mouth, all swollen-hot lips and spit on his chin. A fucking mess, because Ed asked for it, Ed likes it, and Stede’s too distracted by want to pretend he doesn’t like it too.
He’s grinding shakily against Ed’s thigh, eager as a school boy even with Ed’s leathers still halfway up his hips and Stede’s breeches fully buttoned. A nasty flash of an impulse runs through Ed’s head to make him keep going, finish up just like that in his fine clothes, maybe jerk himself off onto them after just to add to the stains.
But fuck, he really wants Stede’s cock inside of him right now.
Never hurts to have ideas for next time.
“Get your kit off.” He makes some space he doesn’t want between them by pushing Stede back a bit, lightly shoving at his shoulders until he gets with the program enough to start fumbling at his own clothes. “All of it. I don’t want anything on you but me.”
It’s sorely tempting to stand there and watch him, because, frankly, there’s not much Ed likes to do more than watch Stede, especially when he’s worked up and flustered enough to be a little careless of all the pretty clothes he covets so much. It just so happens that one of those things happens to be getting railed within an inch of his life by Stede, and if that’s going to happen in the near future—which it fucking well needs to—then he’s got other things to attend to.
Honestly, Ed could take Stede on just spit—has done, on a couple of memorable occasions. Could even go without a finger or two first if he needed to; it’s the kind of pain he got accustomed to long enough ago he doesn’t quite remember when it started. He’d talked Stede into giving it a go like that exactly once, and the panicky, protective spiral it had sent Stede into for the next three days definitely hadn’t been worth it, even if Ed had enjoyed being hand-fed sweets and having his hair petted.
So instead he goes over to the vanity and rummages around amidst the forest of pots and vials until he unearths their oil. It’s plain, compared to all of the elaborate scented potions among Stede’s hoard, just something simple and slick, but you’d never know it from looking at the lavish green and gold bottle Stede keeps it in, like the pride of his collection.
There’s no elegant way to get out of leather trousers, so Ed just shucks them down until they get hung on the brace. Peels his good leg free so he can spread and get a slippery finger at his hole, pushing in on one deep stroke.
Behind him, Stede lets out a moan that sounds like it was keelhauled out of him, and the mirror is once again a fucking brilliant contribution, because Ed doesn’t even have to turn around to see the wrecked, frenzied desire painting Stede’s face.
More than enough inspiration to make Ed add a second finger, leaning further over with one hand planted on the vanity to give Stede a better view.
The corset keeps him from curling into it the way he usually would, shoulders still yoked back, chest still pushed forward, nothing to do but cant his hips up into it and ride the not-enough press of his own fingers working himself open as fast as he physically can.
Stede warbles a little whine, stumbles forward on unsteady feet to hover beside him.
“Ed.” He’s close enough Ed can feel the heat pouring off of him, but those rich boy fingers are still clenching helplessly against his bare thighs as if he’s ever needed permission to touch. As if it’s not the thing Ed spends all of his waking hours and a fair few of his sleeping ones craving. “Darling. You’re so lovely, I knew you would be.”
His hand flutters toward the palm Ed’s got planted on the vanity, a feathering brush against the knob of bone at his wrist.
Ed’s fucked people who could spit dirty talk so vile it’d make even Ed blush, has dospoiled his body in ways so foul that just thinking about them in polite society could probably get him arrested. It’s no kind of sense at all that Stede Bonnet saying, “Please, may I?” with his nicest drawing room manners is the one that makes Ed’s balls spasm.
“If you don’t I’m going off without you.”
He pulls the three fingers he’d managed to wedge up inside of himself free, slaps his hand to the vanity for balance just in time for Stede to cozy up close behind him.
The hot tip of his prick nudges between his thighs as Stede fumbles for the oil, comes back with a maddeningly smooth glide of skin-on-skin between the cheeks of his ass. Anticipation jangles irritably through his veins as Stede’s cock catches at the rim, skids off, teeth-clenchingly close and then finally, fucking finally, in.
Once upon a very long time ago, Ed’s mother had tried to force him into church. Not regularly, of course; there had always been more work for her, and when there wasn’t, like as not, some bruise she couldn’t disguise to hide away. Still he’d gone often enough to get the gist. Never felt it, though, the way other people had seemed to. The ecstasy. The devotion.
It’s probably some special kind of depravity that having Stede’s cock up his ass, and Stede’s breath at his ear, and Stede’s fucking silk wrapped tight around him like an embrace, is his idea of worship.
“I love you,” Stede mouths against the wing of his shoulder blade, just above the edge of the corset.
“I love you,” into the curve of his neck, Stede’s dick stoking a blaze of pleasure along all the soft, untouchable parts of him.
“God, Ed, I love you,” against the stiff panels holding Ed in, fraying his breaths like twine, twisting him into something alluring and obscene and glorious under the skimming touch of Stede’s hands.
One flattens against his front, clutching him and pulling him back into the buck of Stede’s hips all at once. The pressure mounds the flesh of Ed’s chest, bent far enough forward that from the angle of the mirror it almost looks like he has cleavage.
His cock leaps at the sight of himself, all satin and skin, Stede behind him, glowing and ruddy with exertion as he fucks in harder, faster, shoving bliss like thorns up Ed’s spine with every thrust, and all Ed can do is use his handhold to push back, arch into it, take more, greedy for anything Stede will give him.
Like he summoned it, Stede’s hand flits to his nipple, batting the flap of the corset out of the way to twist ring and flesh both. Harsher than he was before, treading the coastline of pain, where good becomes sublime.
Wet like he’s already come, precome strings thick from the tip of Ed’s cock, smearing to wood and skin and silk all together. He doesn’t have a hand free to do anything about it, unwilling to give up the rhythm to readjust how he’s braced, so it just hangs there, jolting and throbbing every time Stede’s hips slap against his ass, coiling the pleasure higher and tighter until he can feel it bobbing in the back of his throat.
It’s not going to take long, he can tell from the way Stede’s arms are starting to shake around him. Sweat drips from his face onto Ed’s back, the corset between them dragging hot with the humidity.
Crazily, Ed wonders if it will leave marks, little pink friction burns to feel against the cool slip of the sheets, the warm press of his clothes tomorrow. How it would feel to have Stede’s hot tongue against them, his come spilling over them like they belong to him as much as Ed does, if he’d rub it all over them and make Ed hiss and squirm and beg for more.
Ed hasn’t come without something around his cock since he was a fucking kid and he has all of three stunned seconds to watch it rolling toward him like a storm on the horizon before he’s swept underneath it.
Fuck.
Clearly as taken aback by it as Ed—well, alright, maybe not quite —Stede’s tempo stutters, locks up as Ed’s body grasps at him entirely beyond his control. It makes the draw of Stede’s prick along his insides somehow more intense, knocks loose the scattered scraps of breath lingering at the bottom of Ed’s lungs on a weak little mewl.
He feels hollowed out in the wake of it. Half collapses onto the vanity, miraculously able to keep his legs under him for the handful of wobbly thrusts it takes for Stede to shoot off, a warm, slick slide as he falters into stillness.
His weight against Ed’s back is almost unbearable, but the idea of moving is worse, so Ed makes do with lowering his chest all the way to the surface of the table. No doubt slathering come all over the front of his pretty purple corset.
He is entirely too old and well-fucked for how that makes his dick twitch.
“We’re keeping this,” he manages to say after he’s remembered how to breathe properly. The corset’s actually not helping with that but he’s not entirely sure he’s ready to take it off either.
Half-felt against one of the back panels, Stede nods his head. A hot hand traces down his flank, petting idly as Stede slowly softens enough to slip free.
It’s always a good day when he can sex Stede into silence.
Progressively they pull themselves together enough to peel apart. Several very important muscle groups send up a forceful reminder that Ed’s past the point in his life where he can reasonably get fucked over any flat surface that takes his fancy without paying for it the next day. Still worth it.
Stede’s vanity is in utter disarray, and Ed’s probably going to have to hear some complaints about that tomorrow too—there’s come on the fucking wall, for fuck’s sake—but that’s worth it too, he reckons. Particularly if it means getting the chance to watch Stede go all rosy and bashful as Ed reminds him how it got that way. Maybe with a practical demonstration.
If Ed’d thought he looked like sin on Sunday in the mirror before, he’d seriously underestimated himself. His hair’s coming unwound from Stede’s updo, strands pasted to his face and neck with sweat. There is, indeed, come dabbed wet on the front of the corset, his nipples peeking dark, rings glinting, from behind their undone covers. The V at the front arrows down like a sign pointing directly at his very satisfied cock.
All in all, it might be the most indecent he’s ever looked. They ought to put this shit in their pirate books.
Even better when Stede steps into the picture too, plasters himself naked against Ed’s side. Murmurs, “Beloved,” into a dainty kiss to Ed’s earlobe like he’s actively trying to make him shiver.
Because it’s closer than the bed, he lets Stede press him back to the wall for another round of slow, honey-thick kisses.
“That was alright then?” Stede asks. Pointless with his hand roaming over Ed’s chest, feeling him up through a couple of thin layers of fabric, and their pricks bumping together, sticky and oversensitive.
“I’ve had worse.” He shrugs, earning himself a playful flick of Stede’s fingernail against one of his nipple rings.
Stede’s hair is already enough of a mess that he doesn’t even have to feel bad for carding his fingers through it, watching those pale lashes of his flutter and he tilts into it like a spoiled housecat.
“Thinking of holding onto that white and gold one too,” Ed admits after a minute, casting a look across the tangle of corsets still strewn about the cabin.
Stede’s eyes open lazily, one eyebrow slowly winging up to match the pleased curve of his mouth.
“Are you, now?”
Ed loves him like this, all cozy and pliable with contentment. Loves him every way, really, but this version is a particular favorite. How he leans into it when Ed lips little hummingbird kisses to his soft mouth, his jaw, the secret hollow behind his ear.
“Sure,” he hums, lightly touches the tip of his tongue to a faint patch of stubble. “You wear fine things well too.”