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The first time the crew comes to visit the inn, they seem— surprised.
“What?” Stede asks, as they’re all eyeballing him with something near shock. “We said we were going to make this into an inn! What’s with the faces?”
“They didn’t think we could do it,” Ed says to Stede behind him, from the doorway, studying the new crew of the Revenge— though, not so new now, months after the change in command— as they stand before the porch of The Unicorn. “You guys suck, you know that? No fucking faith in us—”
“No, that’s not really—” Pete starts to say before Lucius nudges him sharply with his elbow, cutting him off hard. “—I— I just meant, it’s good to see you both here! Doing good! Alive and well, that’s— good! Good to see—”
Lucius elbows him again, and he goes silent this time, face flushing red, which is interesting. Stede’s already curious, which is fun. It’s been so long since there have been other people around.
“It’s lovely to see all of you doing so well, too!” Stede says, clapping his hands together. “Well— You’re also all filthy, so. Wash up before coming in, that’s right, I’ve got the basin right here—”
“Same old Stede,” Jim comments in an aside to Oluwande, and they say it fondly, and Stede can’t help but smile.
They seem a bit more hesitant with Ed than with him, but Stede supposes that’s to be expected. The crew had a bit of a difficult time with Ed, before; they haven’t had the weeks that Stede has had alone with him since, adjusting to him like Ed adjusts to him in return. They haven’t fallen in love with him like Stede has— or, he assumes so, anyways. He’d happily send anyone with any interest in Ed back on their merry way to sea, though.
While the crew’s staying here, Stede’s sure they’ll warm up to Ed again. He’s their host, after all, and Stede’s sure he’ll be a lovely one; he’s not the least bit concerned about how well he’ll do.
The crew seems to tense when he steps up behind Stede, but it’s probably just that they weren’t expecting him to move so abruptly. Stede’s put in mind of the bell they had him wear, startled by his sudden appearances; they must not have been anticipating his arrival at Stede’s side.
“Hey,” he says, all warmth now, affectionate, and yet the crewmen still eye the two of them with something near trepidation, Stede thinks. “Happy to have you all here with us! Anyone want something to drink?”
There’s a beat before Archie agrees, cheerful, “Yeah, alright, let’s drink!”
The energy breaks, and everyone’s coming forward, and Stede— for the most part— forgets there was anything to be concerned about at all.
That’s only the first day of the crew’s visit, however.
The next morning, while everybody else is still asleep, Ed and Stede wake up early together to run through their morning routine before the crew starts to rise.
“What do you think?” Stede asks, running his hand over his jaw, examining himself in their looking-glass. Ed hooks his chin over Stede’s bare shoulder, eyes running over his reflection; their small bathing-room is warm with the water he’s heated for their bath, and Ed’s running hot with the humidity, a fireplace against Stede’s back.
“You look good,” Ed murmurs, and Stede huffs a laugh.
“I mean the beard,” he clarifies. “Time to shave it again?”
“You know I like you either way,” Ed tells him.
Stede’s hand drifts off his own face towards Ed’s, tapping him on the tip of his nose, punctuating his little poke with a soft, “Boop,” that makes Ed smile.
“You’re ridiculous,” he insists, ducking into Stede’s throat, kissing the soft underneath of his jaw, teeth grazing his vulnerable flesh. His tongue traces in a hot brush along the line of his jaw, bristling through the golden-bronze stubble growing in there. Pressing a kiss to his cheek, he tells him, “I can help, if you want.”
“That’d be lovely,” Stede agrees, which is how he ends up sitting on the sturdy counter of their oak vanity, Ed fit between his legs, the blade of Stede’s razor gliding softly up his throat through the soap slicked along his skin.
It’s a lovely, intimate activity, something Stede particularly enjoys sharing with Ed. He loves the way he massages the lather into his skin, loves the way he tips his jaw this way and that, loves the way he methodically, steadily, determinedly strokes the razor-sharp edge of the shaving blade along his skin, over and over and over, without so much as a tiny nick in his flesh.
His eyes slip shut, throat cradled in Ed’s hand. He’s moved up from his neck, graduating to the line of his jaw; when Stede squints at him, he can see Ed’s tongue poked out between his lips, concentration furrowing his brows, and the sight makes his lips twitch in a smile.
“Stay still,” Ed scolds him, though he’s smiling, too.
“Mm,” Stede hums in agreement.
Stede’s eyebrows lift; Ed lifts his right back. “Stay still,” he repeats, and Stede relaxes, melting into him just a little bit.
Ed is so focused on shaving Stede smooth that Stede’s the one who hears the crew start to rouse. He’s not expecting them to start searching for them, though, and he’s truly stunned a moment later when an unexpected knock bangs on the door, jerking Ed’s attention and drawing the thinnest line of blood up from the line of Stede’s jaw.
“Shit,” Ed curses. “Fuck, I’m sorry—”
“It’s alright,” Stede tells him. It pinched, and then the pain was gone; it barely even stings anymore already, even with Ed grabbing one of their small cloths to hold to the little wound. “It’s really alright, you—”
“Captains?” Frenchie’s voice demands from the other side, even though neither of them have been a Captain in quite some time, now. “Are you in there?”
“Yes!” Ed calls back, holding Stede’s jaw, pressing the cloth to his face. The razor sticks out at an angle between them, shoved between Ed’s fingers and out of the way; Ed snaps it further out when he shouts, “Give me a fucking second—”
Despite his request, Frenchie starts rattling the door. Stede really hadn’t expected anyone to force their way in; the door is unlocked, and Frenchie spills right through, apparently having expected the door to be locked or barred, practically falling into the room before his eyes are scanning it wildly.
When his eyes land on Ed, gripping Stede, a splash of blood on his fingers and the shine of the razor between their faces, he’s lurching forward, shouting, “Don’t—”
“Frenchie!” Stede exclaims, at the same moment Ed bites out, “What the hell?” and Frenchie is snatching Stede by the arm, hauling him bodily into him.
“Captain, your throat,” Frenchie insists, taking Stede’s weight like he’s hurt. “You—”
“I’m fine, Frenchie, my goodness,” Stede tells him. He tries to disentangle them; in Frenchie’s confusion, he only tightens his grip, pulling Stede towards the door and away from Ed. “It’s just a little cut from shaving, I’m fine! I promise, we don’t need Roach or anyone, Ed was handling it just fine himself.”
This pulls Frenchie up short, and he stops in the doorway, fingers still tight in Stede’s flesh. Bewildered, he looks back, eyes finding the tiny— tiny— cut on Stede’s jaw before they snap up to Ed, brow furrowing.
“It’s barely anything,” Frenchie says, though— Stede’s expecting relief, and his tone only sounds accusatory, which is just strange.
“Yeah,” Ed replies, apparently just as confused as Stede feels. “He’s fine, mate. Don’t worry about it.”
Frenchie evaluates the scene for a beat longer before he releases Stede’s arm. His face flushes, but his demeanor shifts into something contrastingly light-hearted. He says, “Oh— Good! Yeah, I guess I just— thought I heard something. That’s my bad! Anyways— Hey, I think Roach said he’s gonna try and make breakfast! See you there!”
He’s gone a second later, though he leaves their bathing-room door wide open behind him. Stede’s frowning when Ed steps up to close it, a crease to his own expression.
The door is locked, this time, and Frenchie’s forgotten by the time Ed returns to his place between Stede’s legs, parting his thighs and cupping his jaw and tilting him upwards once again, Stede’s pulse thrumming just beneath the pad of his thumb, small blades of hair shaved away in soft sweeps until he’s left bare and vulnerable and exposed beneath Ed’s hands once again.
The sunset that night is absolutely stunning.
The day has been just packed, between Roach’s breakfast and touring the island and their picnic lunch and their frolicking on the beach and their explorations of the inn’s construction. Stede watches the crew flag after he and Ed make dinner, everyone spilling over themselves in the sand, and he makes himself at home in his chair just at the edge of the water, where the lapping ocean-tide meets the shore.
“Hey,” Stede hears, and Ed drags up his own wooden folding-chair right next to him. It’s practically tradition, by now; if there’s a sunset to be seen— and, often, even when there isn’t one— they can be found watching it, together, side-by-side on the beach.
“Hey, yourself,” Stede replies. Glancing over his shoulder at the crew, sprawled all over one another around the small fire they’ve built themselves a bit further up, he asks, “How are they?”
“Just like always,” Ed says. The way he’s smiling when he says it speaks volumes, to Stede. “What do you think we should do with them tomorrow?”
“Oh, put them to work,” Stede answers, and Ed laughs. The next wave brushes over their bare feet, a small stream up and away, warm to the touch.
“That’s nice,” Ed says, then offers Stede his hand. “Wanna go out a bit?”
“That sounds lovely,” Stede says, accepting his hand, allowing Ed to draw him out of the chair and to his feet.
The ocean is warm, spectacularly so. Stede’s more than pleased to roll up his pant legs and let Ed pull him out, tugging him until he’s ankle-deep, then knee-deep, the waves spraying just a bit of saltwater up over his bundled-up cuffs.
When the next wave comes, Ed splashes a bit of it in Stede’s direction, drawing a startled shriek of a laugh up and out of him.
“You’re awful,” he accuses him, leaning down to splash water right back at him.
Of course, with Ed, everything is a challenge to a game. Stede wouldn’t have it any other way—
—Even when Ed’s ducking his head and running at him and scooping him up off the ocean floor, hauled over his shoulder for a brief second where Stede screams with surprise and delight before Ed’s dropping him into the next wave, a massive splash where his hands don’t even really leave him, guiding him all the way down, refusing to let him smash through the water into the sandy ground below.
Despite the fact that Ed catches him, though, Stede still gets submerged, and he’s soaked, squealing before water’s in his mouth.
“Oh, shit,” Ed curses, hauling him up. Stede stumbles; Ed catches him on his knees, pounds on his back. “Sorry, babe. You alright?”
“Fine,” Stede tells him. He’s still laughing; turning his face up, he says, “Your turn!”
“What?” Ed asks, a beat before Stede’s grabbing him by the front of his shirt and tugging him down with him, sprawled on top of him, the both of them going under the water again.
It’ll take forever for them to dry, but Stede doesn’t even mind. He thinks it says a lot that he doesn’t mind, too, because— before, before all of this, he probably would have been spending this time being anxious about what he’s saying and what he’s doing and how he’s presenting himself instead of just having fun.
He’s having so much fun, actually, that he’s bewildered when Ed abruptly vanishes, tugged up and away from his body in a sudden jerk.
Before he knows it, he’s being hauled upright, too. Hands are on his shoulders, under his arms; someone’s slamming on his back, even though there’s no water in his lungs, and he tries to twist to see what’s going on, but it’s just all chaos.
“I’ve got you, Captain,” Jim insists, and it must be their arms under his, because someone is bodily dragging him towards the sand, and Jim’s voice is right in his ear. “It’s okay, don’t fight. You’re okay—”
“I know I am,” Stede sputters. “I’m fine, where— Where’s Ed? We were just playing in the—”
“Playing?” Jim echoes, confused. “You screamed—”
“Yes, because Ed threw me in the water,” Stede tells them. He shouldn’t need to explain this, when he’s dripping water and Jim has presumably seen everything that just happened, but he does anyway. “I’m fine, I didn’t hit the ground! I’m fine—”
“Get off me,” Ed’s saying, not too far away. “What the fuck—”
“It’s fine!” Jim exclaims. “They’re fine, it’s fine, Stede is fine!”
“He’s fine?” Archie asks.
“Fine!” Jim echoes, and Stede doesn’t understand why, but he and Ed are being released a beat later, the next wave colliding with their shins from behind.
“What the fuck?” Ed asks, bewildered, at the same time Stede demands, “What the hell was that?”
Archie and Jim both stare at him for a second, the crew watching from just beyond the shoreline, before Archie turns to Jim and bodily shoves them into the water with a yelp and a massive splash.
“We just— Uhh, we wanted to play, too,” Archie tells them.
Jim is grabbing them by the ankle a second later, yanking her down to join them, and the Swede comes sprinting out to join, and then it’s just— the crew having fun, all chaos, and Stede’s left with a bit of wriggling confusion that he mostly forgets about while his— former— crew is having fun outside their hotel.
It’s easy to ignore all the crew’s weirdness, after all. They’re all weird, always; this is just more of their strangeness. Stede doesn’t know everything they’ve been up to in the in-between, after all. They could have their own experiences making them odd in ways he doesn’t yet recognize.
Ed splashes him from the front, and Lucius splashes him from behind, and Stede, laughing, rejoins them without a care.
Roach helps Stede make an excellent dinner on the crew’s second night there.
When it comes to cooking, Stede has really been their main chef, here, as it were. After the childhood he had— his father forbidding him from some meals and ordering the servants to ignore him, Stede teaching himself to cook and knowing otherwise he may not eat for an indefinite period of time— he has a few staples down. The dishes he perfected from eating alone while married to Mary, not wanting to wake anyone in the house or bother anyone on their staff who preferred his wife over him, round them out.
Ed is more inventive when it comes to cooking. He’ll find anything he can and just throw it together. He’s pretty expert at skinning, plucking, draining, chopping, and all that, with practice. When they work together, things go rather well; they’re creative, they have fun, and their food is edible, so. Stede can’t ask for much more.
Tonight, however, Ed has begged off cooking with him. He instead joins most of the crew in their front parlor, smoking and talking, while Stede and Roach make dinner.
It’s fun. Stede misses spending time with other people. He adores Ed, of course, but he’s a people person, too.
“This looks fucking good, babe,” Ed says to him when Roach and Stede summon everyone to The Unicorn’s dining room and its long shared table. “Fuck, you actually made this?”
“Less surprise would be appreciated, thank you,” Stede remarks. Ed kisses his shoulder; Stede can’t help but smile. “Yes, I made th—”
“We made this, thanks,” Roach corrects, setting one of their last dishes on the table, the lemon-heavy scent of the glaze on their roasted fish filling the space. “Nice try, Captain.”
“I helped quite a bit,” Stede insists. The crew glances to Roach; it’s only after he nods his agreement with this that they engage with Stede at all, telling him he did a great job, and he just half-laughs, a playful scowl on his face as he waves them off. “You’re all horrible. I’m not the worst at cooking!”
“You’re not the best, though,” Oluwande mentions.
“Oh, you are not any better,” Zheng reminds him, and Stede can’t help smiling. “Remember the potato soup you made?”
The entire crew groans at that. Stede, grinning now, takes his seat at Ed’s side, letting him put things on his plate for him; he’s already distracted, talking to Lucius and Frenchie, and when he turns back, Ed’s loaded up his dishes for him already.
“Thank you, love,” Stede murmurs to him, leaning in, receiving a soft kiss in return.
Ed pushes his plate closer to him without looking away, tells him, “Eat,” around their kiss and a smile.
It’s nice to have everyone here again. Dinner is noisy, and loud, and exciting. Stede keeps getting distracted from his food and needing to remind himself to eat; at his side, Ed does the same, and their elbows occasionally knock, and Stede just loves him.
He’s listening to a story Archie is telling down the table, all wild-impossible twists and casually-dropped horrors, when he unexpectedly laughs around a mouthful of food.
And almost instantly starts to choke on it.
At first, he thinks he’s gonna be fine, and he coughs, but it doesn’t actually work to dislodge the block in his throat, and panic sweeps over him in a cold, wet grip. His hand grasps out, nails digging into Ed’s wrist.
“Hey, y— Oh, shit,” Ed says, a beat later, seeing Stede’s frantic eyes land on him, silent, unable to speak. “Hey— You okay?” Stede grips him tighter, then motions to his throat. “Oh, shit.”
Ed’s moving automatically, shoving his chair back and hauling Stede upward.
In a second, the rest of the table is in motion. Stede doesn’t even understand what’s happening, except that every share is screeching backwards and Ed is flipping him around over his chair and the crewmen are all getting up and coming towards them and—
—and Ed slams down on Stede’s back, hard enough that he chokes up the blockage in his throat, gripping the back of his chair to stop himself from collapsing forward.
Then Ed is being yanked backwards off of him, the two of them stumbling apart, Stede literally falling into Roach’s arms.
“You’re okay, Captain,” Roach is insisting, somewhere above his head. Stede’s not looking at him; baffled, overwhelmed, he’s still looking for Ed, and he finds him against the wall, Wee John rising from his seat to push him back by the shoulder.
“What did you do?” John asks him, and Ed’s head snaps up to him, brow furrowing.
“I got the fucking shit out of his throat, man,” Ed answers. “He’s fucking choking—” Their eyes meet, then, Ed’s finding Stede’s through the chaos, and he fights past John to get back to him. He snatches him from Roach, asks, “Shit, are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” Stede wheezes, throat sore, chest aching. Ed helps him to his feet, and the crew backs off, apparently unsure of what’s actually happening. “Fuck, I’m sorry. Wrong pipe, I guess!” Turning, he tells Archie— currently climbing off their table— “You’re quite a storyteller, I can tell you that.”
There’s a beat where nobody says anything.
Then, Jackie asks, “Bonnet, are you sure you’re alright?”
“Of course I am,” Stede insists, confused. “My throat’s a little sore, but— Ed helped! I’m fine, now. Don’t worry about that.”
The crewmen exchange glances with each other, and Stede doesn’t understand, but he’s used to not understanding, in all honesty. His crew— though, not technically his crew, not anymore— has always seemed to operate on their own wavelength, a frequency just below his own.
“Sorry to disrupt dinner,” Stede adds, then, feeling a little more sheepish, the tiniest bit embarrassed. The more people stare at him, the more uncomfortable he gets, skin prickling. “We can get back to it now. If that’s okay?”
“Chew your food, babe,” Ed tells him, easing his tension.
Stede just laughs. “I was. That’s part of the problem.”
Ed pulls his seat out for him, and Stede takes it, reclaiming his spot, and the crew slowly takes their own seats again, as well.
Dinner resumes, and conversation kicks back up, and alcohol starts to properly flow, and everyone settles back in together. Stede could almost forget that anything was strange during dinner at all.
Almost.
The crew is all asleep throughout the inn.
One of the benefits of living in and operating an inn is having plenty of beds, and rooms for those beds. Everybody is spread out; everybody has their own space, however small; everybody has a spot to sleep in.
Stede and Ed don’t feel any pressure to give up their own bedroom to their guests.
On the third night the crew is staying with them, after a lovely day spent catching up and sharing stories around the inn, casually encouraging the crew to help them with chores if they’re going to be visiting and staying here and eating all their food, Stede’s grateful they didn’t give up their room.
“Fuck, yes,” Ed breathes, head falling forward over Stede’s, hair swinging down in two silvery curtains to frame his face. The soft curls gather on Stede’s chest when he fucks into him, and in, and in. “Shit, you feel so fucking good.”
Stede chokes on his next sound, torn up out of his chest. It’s a filthy sort of groan, loud and deep; he forgets to silence himself, doesn’t really care. He heard enough of them, his crew, going at it on the Revenge over their time together that it’s difficult for him to feel much guilt or shame now that it’s his turn.
“You’re so fucking tight,” Ed tells him, hands gripping Stede’s hips so hard Stede hopes he’ll bruise. He’s ruthless, relentless, and somehow fucking tender at the same time, a soft intimacy in the way he’s fucking Stede’s wet cunt so sloppily the room is filled with the messy noises of his dick pounding in-and-out-and-in-and-out-and-in-and-out-and-in-and-out-and-in, fuck, he doesn’t stop. “Fuck, fuck, you’re so— You’re so fucking hot, you’re so tight, Stede, fuck.”
On the next thrust in, Stede cries out, hands flying upwards to slide through Ed’s hair. His fingers yank in tight, wrapping up and hauling Ed down for a hard kiss, lips parting instantly, tongue gliding along Ed’s.
They make out messily for a long minute before Ed separates them again to find his rhythm, to get a better position, to fuck Stede’s pussy right.
“There we are,” Ed says, low and dark and warm, before he says, louder, “That’s it, Stede. Don’t move, just— Don’t—”
Stede doesn’t entirely listen, chasing all the good feelings, arching his back and rolling his hips up and grinding into him, wanting pressure on his clit, friction where he needs it most, chest aching and belly tightening and blood boiling, his orgasm trying to twist up inside of him.
“Stede,” Ed groans out, louder this time, broken. He’s gone all flushed and his rhythm is starting to falter as he gets closer, too.
The sound of Stede’s name coming out of Ed that way, in this voice, does wild things to his insides, and Stede bites out a scraping, “Don’t—” before he cries out on the next thrust, begs, “Oh, God— Ed, don’t— stop, please, God—”
“I’m—” Ed starts trying to say, but he chokes off, ducks down, buries his face in Stede’s throat as he’s fucking in, his thrusts getting tighter, harder, closer, smaller, and Stede could fucking cry. “Fuck!”
“Ed—” Stede starts to say, his name tearing up and out of him, and then their locked bedroom door is banging in, despite the fact that Stede knows Ed locked it before he asked if he could eat Stede’s cunt less than an hour ago.
Stede shrieks, and Ed doesn’t take more than a second to grab his knife from under the mattress and whirl with it. The dislodge of his cock from Stede’s cunt is a fucking shock; Stede’s already shoving up onto his knees, snatching for the first thing he can find— a candlestick off the nightstand, as it turns out— and wields it, naked, cunt still throbbing, on his knees in their bed, with Ed standing beside him, knife up, cock out.
In the doorway, Lucius only stares at them.
The rest of the crew is right behind him, all staring at them.
For a second, nobody says or does anything.
Then, in the same moment that Stede starts to inhale to insist they tell him what the fuck is going on, Lucius says, confused, “He’s not stabbing you.”
Behind him, Jackie snorts, says, “Well.”
Bewildered, incredulous, Stede demands, “What?”
“I thought—” Lucius starts, then stops.
And it all comes together at once.
“What the fuck’re you talking about?” Ed asks, just as Stede huffs, setting the candlestick back down on Ed’s nightstand with a heavy whumpf. “Stede?”
To Ed, Stede says, “Here, my love, put this on,” and tosses him one of the quilts that got kicked to the end of their bed. He takes one up for himself, wrapping it around his shoulders before he turns to his crew, brow furrowed, and tells them in no uncertain terms, “Ed is not trying to kill me.”
“What?” Ed asks again. “What the f—”
“That’s what you thought, right?” Stede asks the crew, sheepish beyond the doorway of his bedroom, spilling into their space. There’s candlelight leaking in from the hall in flickering shadows; their silence speaks louder than words. “You think he’s trying to kill me or something, don’t you? With the razor, trying to drown me, trying to choke me, trying to poison me? You think he’s actually trying to kill me?”
There’s another silent beat.
Then, Lucius says, “Well— I mean.” After a gesture to himself, then to them, he adds, “You know?”
Frowning, Stede glances back to Ed, then to the crew again. “Obviously, I think there’s been a mix-up, here.”
Ed finally seems to come into his body, then, and he strides forward, the quilt like a flowing robe as it streams with him, stopping just before the crew.
“If you ever think someone is trying to kill Stede,” he tells them, “you fucking kill them. Don’t fucking wait around for them to do it, fucking shit.”
“Um— I’m sorry, what did you say?” the Swede asks from somewhere near the back of the group.
“If I wanted to kill him already, I would have,” Ed says, and he actually sounds kind of— angry, which—
Stede isn’t expecting that, and it’s really hot, and he was pretty close to cumming, so he thinks he can be forgiven for the fact that this is turning him on right now.
“I’ve had more than enough fucking chances,” Ed points out. “Fuck. I would’ve killed him before you even got back here and just told you he ran off.”
Frowning, Stede says, “Hey—”
“I’m not going to, babe,” Ed says, without looking back at him, eyes still fixed on the crew. “My point is that I’m not going to kill him. If that was my plan, he’d be dead already.” The knife in his hand snaps up, the point finding its home a breath away from the underside of Pete’s jaw, just beneath his chin. “Now, I’m more interested in killing anyone who wants to hurt him. Got it?”
“Got it,” Pete says, voice high.
“Yeah, got it,” Lucius agrees, knocking Ed’s wrist away from Pete’s throat. “You can’t really blame us for being nervous, though. You have to admit, you did sort of jump into this. We didn’t know how you’d handle all— this, together.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to kill him,” Ed snaps out. “I love him. Alright? You all got that?”
There’s a general rumbling of agreement from the crew. It’s apparently enough that Ed withdraws the knife completely, hand disappearing beneath his quilt, holding it close to himself, keeping warm.
“Jesus, Captain, keep it in your pants,” Lucius comments, and Stede thinks he’s speaking to Ed for a brief moment before he realizes Lucius’s eyes are on him.
“Sorry,” Stede apologizes without much authenticity. His focus is already shifted back onto Ed, stepping up to lean into his side, slipping his own hand beneath the cover of his quilt. He finds his cock easily, still throbbing-stiff, and his fingertips circle the base as he tilts up for a kiss. Against Ed’s lips, he breathes, “Thank you, my love.”
“Jesus— The blanket!” Oluwande exclaims.
“Close the fucking—” Jim’s saying right over him, and the group of them joins in in heckling them until Ed reaches out, refusing to break the kiss as he grabs the door and swings it to slam shut.
Stede pushes Ed back towards the bed, wanting to feel him, still hearing Ed’s voice echoing in his head to declare that he loves him, and—
—and, God, the crew is kind of like a family to him, and it’s always been a dream of Stede’s for someone to love him so openly and fiercely and loudly to his family, and Ed’s done that. He used a knife and he protected him and he declared, to everyone, that he loves Stede and he’d kill anyone that would so much as hurt him and maybe the crew is still a little nervous about Ed, and maybe they’re keeping an eye on him, but— that means they love him, too.
He’s not sure he’s ever been so loved. In absurd ways, maybe, and in healing ways, and in new ways, and he loves it, loves them, loves Ed, and he’s just—
Honestly, he couldn’t be happier. He knows that now, he really couldn’t.
Especially when he’s climbing over Ed, flat on his back in their bed, and seating himself on his cock again to finish what he started.
“I love you, too,” Stede tells him, leaning down, pressing their bodies close so he can kiss him.
“Love you more,” Ed replies, tossing his knife aside, stealing another kiss. With his hands free, he tracks up Stede’s body to his waist, fits his fingers into the shapes of the bruises he made earlier, their quilts falling away, leaving just them behind: bare, vulnerable, trusting.
“Promise not to kill me?” Stede asks once their kiss breaks.
“Oh, sorry. No promises, babe,” Ed replies, surging up into another kiss with him, rolling his hips to fuck up into Stede’s body, holding him close, keeping him safe.