Work Text:
After Ed saw Stede, all of him, he had to know.
“Yes,” Stede answers, “I had my children naturally.” He pats his bare stomach. “Carried them both. Of course, we pretended Mary had them, to keep up appearances. But it was me.”
“Was it difficult?” Ed asks, but then he feels stupid because yes, child-bearing is fucking difficult.
But Stede just shrugs. “It’s a lot of waiting, mostly. Nine months is a long time. Labor is painful, though. Worse than getting run through.“
No wonder Stede took those stabbings like it was hardly a bother. “And you did it twice?” Ed asks. “Willingly?”
Stede makes a face. “It wasn’t exactly my choice, as we had to produce an heir. But the pain is only temporary.”
Only temporary.
Ed wraps his arm around Stede, enclosing them together.
I’ll never leave you again, Stede had promised him. Ed hadn’t forced it from him — he doesn’t want anyone who doesn’t want him in return — but god, it was nice to hear.
Ed wants to trust Stede. He does trust him. It’s easy, with the sweet nothings Stede whispers in his ear, or the way Stede smiles at him like he’s the rising sun. But, Ed’s soul drops out of him every time he wakes up without Stede by his side. This is it, he thinks. That Stede had left for good this time, that he changed his mind, that he couldn’t make it work — but Stede always returns, having only been up to pee or to check on the crew.
Stede won’t leave him. He said so.
Ed promises him the same, even though he never really left him. Ed promises that he’ll never do anything to hurt him. He dotes on Stede, gets him anything he wants, eats him out until he’s sobbing on pleasure. He doesn’t give Stede a reason to leave.
But he couldn’t leave if Ed got a child in him.
Or maybe Stede would. He left his other children. Not until they were older, though. Stede said that was one of the reasons he had waited so long to leave home. He felt responsible. So, it’d give Ed about six to ten years to change Stede’s mind. To convince him to stay. If Stede was pregnant, he couldn’t leave. He can never go back to Barbados — he’s a dead man there — and it’d be too dangerous for him to go out on the open sea alone while he’s with child.
So, Ed comes inside him.
He had been pulling out. Stede didn’t specifically ask for him to do so, but it seemed polite. There’s been a few near misses, caught up with the rapture of Stede’s body hot against his, but he’s managed to drag himself out and spill on Stede’s stomach. But this time... It wasn’t entirely an accident. Not really. Stede felt so fucking good, so tight and perfect that Ed thrust deep in the hot clutch of him and lets go.
And Ed immediately knows he fucked up.
“Shit, sorry.” Ed drags out of Stede fast, making Stede yelp at the suddenness of it. “I didn’t mean to—”
“What?” Stede asks, voice all sex-slurred. His legs are still spread wide. White fluid leaks out of him. It makes Ed feel some kind of way.
“I released in you,” Ed says. “I’m sorry.”
Stede reaches down, touches himself where he’s slick.
“Indeed,” he says. “I didn’t even notice. I was too distracted.”
Ed should not be thinking that he could have not said anything and Stede wouldn’t have even known—
“Sorry,” he says again.
“Why?”
“I should’ve been more careful,” Ed says. “You could get…” He gestures with his hand. “You know.”
Stede squints at him, confused, but then understanding settles across his face. He laughs.
At least someone thinks it’s funny.
“Oh, that. Stop your fretting,” Stede says. “Nothing will come of it, most likely. My cycle is a bit off and I am much older now.”
“Ah.”
Ed can’t parse his relief from his disappointment.
Stede pulls at Ed’s arm until he lies down next to him. Ed tries to recapture that post-coitus bliss. Relax. Stede nuzzles against his hair. It feels good. It’s a good moment. He should let it be.
However.
“Was it hard for you to conceive?”
Stede scoffs. “No. Both times it was like this—” he snaps his fingers “—and bam, pregnant.”
“Huh.” Ed’s hand brushes over Stede’s tummy, over the blonde fuzz under his navel. “Just like that.”
Ed doesn’t bother pulling out anymore. Just fuck and bury himself deep into Stede and come. He fucks him so good that Stede begs for it, grinds on his cock, asks for more, deeper, harder, wants to feel it, wants Ed to fill him up. Ed is happy to oblige.
He stays in Stede until the haze passes and he goes soft and slips out. Stede lets his thighs fall apart, revealing his pretty, pink cunt. He’s wet, with his own slick and Ed’s. Ed drags his fingers through the mess then slides them in, pushing it back in. Keeping it in him, to hopefully take.
“Please,” Stede whimpers. “Ed.”
Ed lowers his face down, licks at Stede’s cock above where his fingers are tucked inside of him. Stede lets out a breathy moan, his thighs trembling and flexing. Ed sucks at him, his cock, curls his fingers and rubs until Stede comes wet on his hand. Stede looks gorgeous like that, and it's said that helps conception, so — win-win.
Ed watches Stede dress.
It’s been a couple of months. Ed had hoped that by now something would’ve happened. Some change to Stede’s body. A curve of his belly, his pants fitting too tight, getting sick in the mornings. Or some blood to prove that it hasn’t happened yet. But it wouldn’t quicken that fast, would it? To show? He could be pregnant now, with Ed’s child growing inside him.
“How did you know when you were with child?” Ed is asking before he can stop himself. His impulsivity had always gotten him into trouble, speaking before his brain has time to tell him, hold on, maybe don’t say that.
Stede turns from his wardrobe, to look at Ed. “Why?”
Even in just his stockings and smallclothes, he can be imposing.
“Just curious,” Ed says, feigning nonchalance. “I want to know about you, before I knew you.”
Stede smiles. He’s charmed. So is Ed.
“I was unreasonably emotional,” Stede says. “Once, I burst into tears when my toast fell on the floor.”
“Was it butter-side down?”
“Don’t tease.”
“I’m not! That would be damn upsetting. I’d cry about it too.”
Stede gives him a chiding glance, but continues on.
“And then my, um, my chest ached,” he says. “With Louis I had terrible nausea every morning for weeks, but not with Alma. What brought this up?”
“No reason.” Ed gestures to a pair of lilac breeches. “You should wear those.”
Ed has an unending want to put a baby in Stede. Create something together. Something that ties them to one another. Something that’s a bit of both of them. That even if Stede did leave him one day, he couldn’t forget Ed.
Ed leaves no wasted opportunity. Stede sucks him to the edge of coming and it’s so good that Ed nearly finishes right then, but he taps Stede’s shoulder, says, “I want to come with you around me.” Stede grins wicked, turns around, bends over — Ed grabs his hips and his cock finds his hole and sinks in. Stede gasps as Ed pounds into him once, twice, then he’s coming, hard, like it’s wrenched from him, like his body is desperate to give it to Stede. He imagines it filling Stede, taking hold, give it a few months and everyone will know that Stede is his.
He’s still in the throes of it when Stede says, “You said you’d finish me off,” a little indignant. He wiggles on Ed’s cock, and fuck, if that isn’t a dream. “Hurry up, now.”
“Bossy,” Ed mumbles, and he reaches down between them and rubs at Stede while he’s still buried in him. Brings him there, and how Stede shudders all over and goes, “Oh god, Ed, yes—” is nearly enough to coax his cock back to hardness again.
And in fact, it does — they lie down together, Ed’s front to Stede’s back, his cock still nestled soft inside him. Ed presses his face into Stede’s curls, wraps his arm around him and holds him tight, as though he could meld their bodies together, until he feels himself start to stir again.
“Oh, hello there,” Stede says, brazen — he does a good show of trying to hide how his breath catches in his throat when Ed drags out halfway and pushes in, more, deeper. They fuck like that, gentle little thrusts that is more grinding than anything else. Stede drops his head back onto Ed’s shoulder. Ed kisses every bit of him his mouth can reach, his ear, his neck, the side of his nose, his eyebrow, his parted lips. Ed could live in this moment forever.
Ed is beginning to think it won’t take.
Maybe Stede is too old like he said, or maybe Ed has been whipped in the balls too many times for them to produce anything fruitful. Ed feels like a fucking failure that he can’t knock Stede up when it was so easy for him before. Maybe his spunk isn’t good enough to make an offspring with landed gentry. It was stupid to think that they could— that he could be a parent. Blackbeard, scourge of the seven seas, a father? Fucking joke.
But then one evening, Stede is in his lap and warm on his dick, his hands braced on Ed’s shoulders, riding the hell out of him, and Ed is right there, so close to release, he tells Stede so, “I’m so close, you feel so good, Stede, fuck, gonna come,” and Stede says, “yes yes,” and Ed echos him, yes yes, and Stede says—
“Get me pregnant.”
Ed is coming before he even realizes it, a flash of bliss but then the oh fuck of his brain catching up to his dick — he bites down on his moans because no no no but he can’t help it, and he tries to push Stede off of him but Stede drives himself down, clenching down on every pulse of his cock spurting inside him, filling him, until there’s nothing more to give.
He’s vaguely aware of Stede sliding off of him, lying next to him. He tries to enjoy this because it’s going to be the last time it’ll happen because he’s gone and ruined everything, Stede is going to leave him— no, Ed will leave, kicked off their ship, their home they’ve built together.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” Stede asks, in the silence. “You were trying to?”
“What? Why’d you say that?”
Ed can’t even deny it. Christ.
Stede’s tone shifts — lighthearted to pointed, direct.
“Why, Ed?”
Stede sounds angry. He should be.
“Ed? You need to say something.”
Stede puts a hand on his arm. A raft in a storm.
“I wanted—” Ed’s voice cracks. “Shit.”
Stede isn’t giving in, not offering anything. No escape. Making Ed admit it.
“I wanted to have a baby with you,” Ed says, “so… so you’d stay.”
Stede makes a soft oh sound and his face goes all soft.
“I told you I wasn’t going to leave,” he says. “I only want you.”
“I know!” Ed shouts — Stede flinches and if it wasn’t possible to feel worse, he does. He takes a deep breath, says calmer, “I know , but I still— If there was a reason. My mum stayed with my dad because of me. Figured that when you got tired of me, there’d be…”
“Our child.”
Hearing Stede saying it — our — makes it real. It had only been this impossible idea, but it could be, they could—
“How did you know?” Ed asks. “That I was trying to…?”
Trap you.
“You kept wanting to finish in me,” Stede says, “and there were all the questions about reproduction…”
Ed winces. “So, really fucking obvious.”
“Kinda, yeah.”
Ed tries to pull away. He’s considering climbing up on the mainmast and jumping into the ocean, but Stede holds tight to his arm, doesn’t let him leave. Ed isn’t strong enough to fight him so he crumbles, relents. He buries himself into Stede's side.
“I’ll understand—” Ed says, and this is the hardest fucking thing he’s ever done, “I understand why you want me to leave.”
“Leave? I’m not— No.” Stede’s voice is sharp. “How many times must I tell you?”
Again, and again.
“But if you knew,” Ed says, “why’d you let me?”
“Why not?” Stede replies, and that is answer enough.