Chapter Text
Ed has been to Ocracoke many times, but this time it’s harder. He ditched the Revenge, and the Queen Anne, and everything, before he went to Barbados. He made his journey alone, anonymous and in trade for labour. Couldn’t stand to see anyone’s faces if they knew where he was going, why he was going.
With his own ship at his disposal, he could reach Ocracoke island as quickly as any letter. Without it, his journey feels something like drifting with the tide. Taking short hops on any ship available, so long as it’s not connected to the English, and so long as it is going any degree of north.
He hauls nets, guts fish and hoists sails for passage. Every day a little closer, and every night listening to a rush in his ears, a cocktail of his blood combined with the words in Stede’s letters. Now and for always , a thick, red roar each night.
It takes weeks longer than sailing directly, but he gets there. He reaches the spit of land in pale morning light, rowing a stolen dinghy towards the sand dunes which marked the horizon at dawn. The humidity sticks his hair to the back of his neck, and he drops the oars to tie it back. As the dinghy drifts and Ed knots his hair at the crown of his head, he watches the white tower of the lighthouse solidify as gentle morning mists burn away, feels the soft lick of the ocean rippling against the curve of wood beneath him.
He’s here.
Pulling the dingy through the shallows and onto the beach, shifting sands beneath his feet, Ed remembers rowing away from a dock alone, now 7 months and change in the past, and wonders if he could erase the intervening time. If he could restructure his days, his memories, so he rowed off that dock straight to arrive here, where Stede is waiting for him. If he is waiting.
Now and for always . Bright and crimson and viscous in his arteries.
He’ll be waiting.
When Ed sees him, light begins to return. The green and yellow of the dandelions growing past cobbles saturate, becoming rich and full. The edges of the people going about their day lose their blur, becoming sharp, definite lines. Ed can hear their footsteps, can hear the gentle whip of a sea breeze, can hear the low hum of chatter throughout the town. The world comes back.
Stede is standing at a corner, leaning back on the wall, fiddling with belongings in a small bag. His clothes are soft, plain, and his hair is pushed back in waves. Longer than it used to be, curling at the nape of his neck. He glows like the iridescent trails at sea Ed has seen on a handful of magical nights; a glittering strangeness amongst the otherwise unremarkable.
Ed looks for a long time. Not spying, not hiding, just allowing himself to breathe for the first time in months that the air in his lungs has felt clean. He watches the details of Stede he hadn’t committed to memory before, back when it felt like there wasn’t any need to, when Stede was a growing constant in his life, rather than a feather leaving on a storm. The slope of his shoulder, the long exhale, the idle scuffing of his heel in the dirt. Twisting a finger into a long curl before tucking it behind his ear. All the small things that had been lost in the past months.
There’s a threshold to cross, like a doorway written in air down the street, where this turns from Ed seeing him, to Ed being seen. To walk up to him feels impossibly simple after everything.
It’s a matter of steps only. Ed counts, and the people of Ocracoke town flow past him down the street with each knock of his boot on cobblestones, and Stede is there and all Ed needs to do is keep walking. Easier than either of them have earned.
Ed is five paces from him when Stede looks up and life begins again.
Stede is a cascade in his arms, whispering his name and burying his face in his shoulder, hands fisted into the front of Ed’s shirt. Ed can feel Stede’s chest heave and he matches his breathing, rising and falling together as he winds a hand into Stede’s hair and holds him against him.
“You’re here,” Stede says.
“I’m here.”
The moment expands and engulfs them. Ed feels dampness on his shoulder, a tremulous shudder in his arms. “I’m here,” he says again, this time for himself.
Time might pass, or it might stop. It matters less than ever before.
“I’m mad at you,” Stede says quietly into Ed’s shoulder, sounding anything but.
“You should be. I’m mad at you too.”
“You should be.”
Ed smiles then, and brushes his nose through Stede’s hair, breathing him in. “Can we be mad tomorrow?” Ed asks. “And for today just be here?”
Stede leads him to an inn, two lefts and a right from their starting place. Ed hangs back in the shadowy bar while Stede buys a room, leaving a note with the barman for the ‘charming young man’ or ‘threatening, intense person’ so his crew can know he’s okay when they come looking. They climb the stairs together with a key tied to a wooden block and a bottle of cheap wine.
The room is sparse and dark and dirty, and beautiful.
They lay on the bed, rolled onto sides and facing each other. Ed links their hands together in the space between them. He can feel Stede’s pulse under his thumb, beating and alive and next to him, a rhythm that soothes the grief and loss and confusion of half a year.
“I thought you died,” Ed tells him.
Stede closes his eyes for a beat, an extended blink against too harsh a reality. “I meant to find you before you heard that; I’m so sorry.” Then, “I was starting to believe I’d never find you again. Getting your letter was - there are no words for it. How did you know where I was?”
Ed feels a smile play on his lips. “I met Mary. She showed me your letters.”
“All of them?” Stede looks taken aback, a glimmer of nerves making his eyes dart away from Ed’s for a moment before they return. Being flayed bare by Ed having seen his letters is not enough to break the delicate thread strung between them.
“I think so.” Ed raises their joined hands, brings Stede’s wrist to his lips for a ghost of a kiss on the fine, soft skin he finds there. “Now and for always,” Ed murmurs.
The gesture is copied, Stede bringing Ed’s hand to his mouth, pressing his lips slow and firm to his knuckles. “Now and for always,” he repeats back, speaking into their clasped hands. “For always,” eyes closed and lips warm.
The day is meaningless, passing in a thousand little ways to prove they’re sharing the same space in the world again. Ed rests his head on Stede’s chest and runs his fingers over the scar to his right hand, as Stede tells the story of a fight with a privateer who claimed to know the whereabouts of the Revenge but refused to reveal it - a lie, in any case, and a healed scar now.
Stede hooks his leg over Ed’s and presses their bare feet together, while Ed tells him about sailing to the South Americas, jumping ship from the Revenge, giving up on Blackbeard’s fleet and making his own way first to Barbados and now to Carolina. Ed tells him how the Ocracoke lighthouse parted the mist when he arrived and Stede breathes in the scent of his skin.
They tangle and laugh, Ed’s legs strewn over Stede’s lap as he rubs his knee, and they make stupid jokes about French merchants and Spanish rations, about hiding from the English and the array of things they’ve both stolen to be here. About ‘painting instructors’ who sleep over and Evelyn Higgins taking morning tea with the dread pirate Blackbeard.
They drink wine which tastes like tea and vinegar and makes them shudder as they swallow. They swig from the neck of green glass in turns, feeling the warmth of each other’s lips on the bottle. It is the worst and best drink they’ve ever shared.
Stede ties Ed’s hair in a braid then sets it free again. Ed uses the loop of leather to make a short, low ponytail at the nape of Stede’s neck, to capture his more ragged locks, so he can see more of his face, more of his neck, more of him.
They talk of what comes next, skating over the argument they’re committed to have tomorrow, and the next day and the next, and run fantasy worlds of 6 months, a year, 5 years in the future. Of how old is too old to climb rigging, of how to have a little home on a beach when you’ve no name, of China and India and Africa and spices and dyes and mountains and every choice that spreads out before them in a cavalcade of freedom. Of a life they both want to live.
Wanting to live so much feels new to Ed. New like the gentle press of Ed’s hand on Stede’s ribs, the whisper of Stede’s breath across Ed’s collarbone, new like being looked at by someone who sees the whole of you and still keeps looking.
The sun dips below the small, dim window and Stede lights a candle at the bedside. The wine bottle lies empty on the floor, half-rolled under the bed forgotten.
“On the beach, you kissed me,” Stede says, looking at Ed through golden eyelashes, running his fingers over the scales tattooed across his arm.
Ed’s been, not waiting because there is no desire for things to unfold differently, when all he needs is to be in the same room as Stede, but aware. Aware of points of contact, of possibilities, aware of the shape of Stede’s lips and the curves and lines of his body, of the heat that radiates off his skin.
“Yeah.” Ed smiles. “I did.”
Stede inches forward, hand shifting from an absent minded play of fingers to a steady grip on Ed’s bicep. “I would like to do that again.”
There’s a ghost of distance remaining between their lips and Ed closes it. It’s gunpowder and fire as they press together; Stede opens his mouth with the sweetest of sounds, a soft moan, and Ed lets himself be captured, stolen, enmeshed. Stede’s lips are soft and warm, gently finding a rhythm against Ed’s own. Ed feels his bottom lip catch between Stede’s teeth, and he inhales deeply, needing to be grounded from the cashmere pull of Stede’s mouth.
Ed’s never been one for kissing, not like this, he thinks; never had the opportunity of it feeling like this, like it’s pulling two bodies into sync, aligning their breathing, their shoulders, their hips. Stede’s hands are tentative to begin with, but as Ed strokes his knuckles over the soft skin of Stede’s belly, slipping beneath his shirt, he becomes braver. It starts to feel like Stede is everywhere, pads of his fingers at his waist, then thumb brushing his cheek, then palm open and flat in the centre of his chest.
Ed could swear he feels the earth turning below them.
The candlelight flickers; the sun is below the horizon now, the dancing flame casting glow and shadow on Stede’s face, his hair, making this tatty, depreciated room feel otherworldly. Ed lets his thigh slide forward, nudging between Stede’s legs, fitting them together. Stede’s hips cant forward, pressing his cock into Ed’s thigh, hard and heavy.
Ed’s lips sting beautifully from pressure and touch and teeth, slick with spit, scraped by the faint stubble lining Stede’s jaw. The escalation has been in gentle swells, hushed breaths become sounds of pleasure, quiet murmurs of indulgence, but now Ed finds himself panting, clasping Stede’s face in his hands. It’s urgent and insistent; Ed nips at Stede’s lips and presses their faces close, nose to nose, forehead to forehead.
“Do you want to do more?” Ed asks, like breaking through the surface of the water.
“God, yes, Ed, I really do,” Stede says in a hurry, then laughs at himself, at his own eagerness. “Yes.”
“Here, stand up.”
Ed takes Stede’s hand and pulls him to the side of the bed bathed in candle light, then guides him to standing. He starts undoing the buttons of Stede’s shirt. Stede’s hands go to the hem of Ed’s purple t-shirt. Pausing his work, Ed lifts his hands over his head and lets Stede pull the cotton off and away.
Ed finishes Stede’s buttons while Stede scratches blunt nails over his chest, making him shiver.
“You’re so beautiful,” Stede tells him, and Ed tries to let it flow over him, not think, and Stede says it again, and one more time, until he looks him in the eye. “You are.”
Ed dips his head, and true or not, lets it be true that Stede wants to say it.
Pants off next, Ed’s leathers shoved and pulled and wriggled away, Stede’s linen breeches falling softly to the ground. Ed feels young, feels how he imagined a first would be and never was at 16, to be naked and happy and excited. To be something more like being washed clean by shared wanting, not made other by unspoken expectation.
Stede’s arms slide around Ed’s waist and he steps into him, skin to skin from forehead to thigh. Ed bites his lip on a moan and laughs softly, stretches his neck back, at the feeling of their cocks brushing together. Leans in for another kiss.
“What do you want to do?” Ed asks through a face-splitting smile, can practically feel the creases and lines around his eyes, whole face taken over by just feeling so bloody good, skin and lips and hands and hair.
“I’m not very experienced,” Stede says, and Ed nods, bumping their noses together. “But, I think I’d like to do anything that would make you feel good.”
There’s so much trust in that, Ed falters for a moment. He hasn’t earned that trust, hasn’t earned the tender confidence of hazel eyes looking into his, but there it is anyway. In Stede’s gaze, and in the easy trace of fingertips over his back, the unhurried sway creating closeness between their hips as they talk.
“D’you have any oil, lotion, anything like that on you?”
Stede’s breath hitches in his throat; Ed feels his broad chest shift against him and the eyes locked on his own widen. “For me,” Ed says, “if you want to, I’d want to.”
“I’d want to,” Stede echoes. “I have, uh, I have a hand cream, I think-” and he breaks off to look for it, rummaging through his small black bag.
Ed misses his touch but admires the soft curve of his arse into strong thighs, the bob of his cock standing hard and proud as he steps lightly to find something for them. There’s been a litany of fantasies about Stede, and none were like this. They were hot and heavy, desperate hands down trousers pressed up against a wall, gasped kisses and half-clothed, stolen pleasure. Or, they were anxious, not fantasies but fears, Stede ashamed, repulsed, or simply there without wanting.
This is like breathing. Stede raises a little bottle triumphantly and shakes it in the air, pronounces it ‘almond cuticle oil’, and Ed thinks he’s wonderful like he has a thousand times, and they are themselves in every moment.
Ed reclines on the bed; Stede abandons the oil amongst the covers, and kisses him with reverence to each inch of skin. He lets the room float away from them as Stede tastes his nipples, the slope of his hip bones, the vulnerable, thinnest skin inside his thigh. Ed feels like he is a false god Stede is trying to press into existence with his tongue, each touch accompanied by murmured praise, beautiful, perfect, exquisite, everything.
It’s dizzying; it’s the moment you stand and realise how much you’ve had to drink, the moment you feel the first sun of spring, the moment a hundred fast thoughts fit together and the answer to a question appears complete inside of you. It’s you wear fine things well, and now and for always, and wait for me .
It’s worship.
Stede follows quiet instructions with care and concentration, sliding slicked fingers into Ed in caressing strokes, watching his body with devotion. When Ed’s back arches against the mattress, Stede repeats the curl of his fingers again, and again, until Ed’s legs are shaking and he is beyond trying to attune the sounds he makes to something sexy, instead breathing Stede’s name between gasps and twisting whines.
Stede offers a third finger and Ed shakes his head, “It’s enough, I’m ready, I want you .”
A shaking, long exhale, eye’s held, a nod.
“Lie down,” Ed says.
“ Oh .”
Ed swings his leg over Stede’s hips and leans down to kiss him. His hair falls forward, hides their kiss behind a waterfall of grey and black and silver, like a curtain drawn between them and all the things that do not matter.
Ed kisses him while he searches with blind hands for the little bottle of oil, grasps it, spills some into his palm. He strokes Stede’s cock in one slow, firm motion and Stede swears into his mouth, nips at his bottom lip.
“Ready?” Ed is giddy and kiss-drunk and happy.
“Ready.”
He feels it throughout his body, the flush of being stretched and held open rippling through nerve-endings, swelling and unfurling through muscles, the base of his spine, the tips of his fingers, the curve of his neck. Stede is solid and real and alive inside him, making him electrified, lightning searing the pattern of his veins into Ed’s skin.
He rocks in shallow thrusts, slow to feel all of him. He wants - more than he’s ever wanted, wants the details, the minute flex of his muscles around Stede’s cock, the foreign pressure inside, the almost-too-much of it. Stede’s looking up at him, admiring and devout, making hushed, bitten down cries every time Ed cants his hips forward.
Stede is beautiful. His hair has fallen from the loose tie and is fanned golden on the white pillow, burnt warm and burnished in the candle light. His face is rapturous, eyes sparkling and being fought open, lips red and sore and swollen, and every sound is high, light, Ed’s name in pleasure-pain intensity in each breath.
Ed can feel the hot velvet sensation growing deep in his belly, and he follows his body’s wants, moves faster, rising and falling, head tipped back, hands spread for balance on Stede’s chest. Stede’s hands fly from Ed’s hips to his wrists, holding his touch on him, and he’s rising to meet him, driving into Ed as he slides up, not letting him be anything but full.
“Ed, I’m, god, Ed, I’m close,” Stede says, punctuated with a cry.
“Good, fuck, I wanna see you, let me see you.”
“I want - I want -” Another broken, choked sob of a moan.
“Tell me. Anything.”
“To be holding you,” Stede says.
Stede moves his hands up Ed’s arms to his shoulders and pulls himself to sitting, with Ed held in his lap. He buries his face at the hollow of Ed’s throat, arms wrapped over his back, finger tips digging into shoulder blades.
The shift deepens the angle of Stede inside him, and Ed grinds down, one hand tangled into Stede’s hair and holding him close, the other stroking himself between their bodies. His eyes prickle and burn, overwhelmed; he feels covered, sheltered, consumed, and close in so many ways.
“I love you,” he gasps, mouth pressed open to Stede’s temple.
He doesn’t hear Stede’s reply; he doesn’t need to; he knows. Everything disappears but the feeling of Stede inside him and around him, and he comes, shuddering and shaking in his arms, muscles spasming beyond his control. He feels himself clench around Stede’s cock and the bucking, convulsive response as Stede thrusts into him, hard, sharp and fast until he keens into Ed’s chest, spilling inside him.
Ed’s ears rush like he’s underwater, drifting somewhere warm and safe and sun-dappled. They stay enveloped in each other as their breathing steadies and reality begins to filter back in. Sounds of a street outside, a gentle ache in Ed’s knee, a dampness where Stede’s face is pressed to his skin; when it can’t be ignored any longer, Ed eases himself off Stede’s lap, lays down and draws him close again to rest in the space under his arm.
The sounds of the bar downstairs get rowdy, then quiet again.
Ed runs his fingers through Stede’s hair.
Stede draws the outlines of Ed’s tattoos across his skin.
Evening gives way to night.
“Tomorrow,” Ed says, not knowing how to finish. Tomorrow we have to talk about what you did, about what I did, about everything we got wrong.
“That’s tomorrow,” Stede says, knowing. “Today we’re here.”