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1.
Stede gently tucks the silk into his pocket and tells Ed that he wears fine things well under the fucking gorgeous fucking moonlight, and the world turns off its axis.
Ed doesn’t breathe again until he reaches the door to his room, private quarters commandeered from the crew that he’s never been more grateful for, because the moment he’s inside he’s dead weight against the door with his hand in his trousers.
Fucking hell. He feels frantic, lightheaded, fully hard in a moment as he gets himself out and strokes once, twice.
Stede’s eyes under the moon. Looking at him as the calm ocean rocks them, almost imperceptible.
No one looks at Ed like that. No one ever has.
Ed spits in his hand and wraps it around his cock again, sighs quietly. He’s used to years of no privacy, no time, getting off fast and hard, but he can’t quite bring himself to break the spell of calm. This new, fragile feeling. Stede’s doing. The moon’s.
He tips his head back against the door and slowly moves his hand, rough and callused on his cock, thumb gentle over the head. Gives himself goosebumps, and then he thinks what if it was him and shivers all over, head to toe.
What if - what if Stede had followed him back here. Pressed him against the door in the dim light. Said “May I?” in that gentle voice, then opened Ed’s trousers, touched him just like this. What if he was right there, smelling of lavender and rosewater and sea, his kind face -
Ed’s going to gut him. Burn his face off till there’s nothing left to recognize.
He groans and shakes his head, wills himself into familiar thoughts, forcing his mind to replay them. He flips through memories: the ménage à trois with the girls at port in Saint Kitts, the time he fucked a Spanish merchant and then tossed him overboard, the first time with Calico Jack when they were both off their faces with rum. They nearly always were in those days. Ed imagines Jack at his feet and fucks his hand the way he’d fuck Jack’s mouth, careless and forceful, taking what was his. Blackbeard would choke him and hold Jack’s head there till the man was close to blacking out, then release him, laughing, and start again.
Ed barely feels it. “Come on, come on,” he mutters vaguely down at himself, spitting again on his hand and tugging on his softening cock roughly to no avail. He’s too frustrated for this, too on edge and tense to let it go for tonight.
Once won’t hurt.
Ed swallows and closes his eyes again. He thinks of Stede knelt in front of him instead, and doesn’t bother to try for any false surprise when it gets him so hard again in moments that he could fucking die. It wouldn’t be about force or possession. Ed would want him to feel good, too. Put a cushion down for Stede’s knees and put a hand in his hair just to touch it, just to hold.
He imagines it: Stede looking up at him, his eyes dark in the moonlight, mouth dropping open to lick the head of his cock. He’d take it all, slowly, his eyes fluttering closed and mouth so hot and wet and perfect around Ed, his hands moving up to hold Ed’s hips against the door. Ed digs his fingers into his thigh, hand moving faster on his cock, trembling.
Stede would be - oh, god, would it be better if he knew what he was doing, or if it was his first time? No, that’s it - heat flares in Ed’s belly at the thought. Stede would be hesitant and sloppy but wanting to do this for Ed. Wanting it so badly he’d get on his knees and kiss Ed’s thighs, suck him off gently, like Ed’s the kind of person you would treat that way, like he’s good, like -
Ed imagines Stede taking his mouth away for a moment but keeping his hand moving, soft skin on soft skin. He’d be panting slightly, but clear when he looks up and says, “Let me take care of you.” And then the Stede of his imagination gets his lips back around Ed’s cock, licks him up and down, and Ed comes so hard his vision whites out for a moment, shock waves rolling through him.
When he’s able, he stumbles away from the door and takes his clothes off with clumsy hands, falling into bed. He’s still shaking a little.
If he can’t sleep this off and get his head on right, he’s completely fucked.
2.
Blackbeard is drunk most of the time. It didn’t used to be this way, but what else is he to do? And who is going to question him? They’ll stop at the next island port to fill up on rum and oranges and gunpowder, and then he’ll be free.
He shoves Lucius overboard, dumps the books, tosses all of Bonnet’s shitty trinkets into the sea where they belong. Let them sink and rot.
Day turns to night and day again. They pass in a haze, baffling and pointless. He wants to maim a shipful of men. He shouts at the gulls and Fang and Izzy and Jim and every face who shows up at his door.
Blackbeard is sinking. Rotting.
He drinks some more. Drinks to himself, to the ocean, to Izzy, to red silk and knowing better, now. He drinks to his good health and to his inevitable death. He drinks to the future, but that’s just a joke.
He drinks because he’s fucking sick of himself when he doesn’t. Fucking sick of the chasm in him that hides nothing but weak and stupid things, like guilt or sadness or missing Stede so much he wants to throw up.
He drinks enough to stay in the perfect zone, not sober and not the kind of semi-drunk where the chasm opens up and he can’t hold it at bay and he sobs and sobs into one of those soft, high thread count pillowcases.
Never be on the way to fucked up. Just stay there.
One afternoon, though, a day out from port, he wakes from a nap grimy and bleary. A little nauseous. Neither sober nor drunk, just weary, and hard in his leather trousers.
Why fight it, now? The bottle is empty and Stede’s stupid ugly silk dressing gown is crumpled under the bed, where he’d left it a week ago.
Blackbeard slowly leans over to pick it up, dizzy from the movement, and lays it on the bed next to him. He’s so pathetic he should fucking throw himself overboard.
He doesn’t. Instead, he shimmies his trousers halfway down his legs - can’t be bothered to move much more than that - and closes his eyes, one hand on his cock and the other bunched in the silk.
It won’t take long. Never does. He thinks about that day on the beach and the way Stede looked at him then. They should have stayed there for longer. Blackbeard lets himself wish, lets himself think about how he would have fetched a blanket and laid Stede out on it in the sunshine, gotten his clothes off and tasted his skin. How he would have made Stede feel so good, would have taken him to the edge over and over with his hands and mouth and then would have held him down and fucked him till he came all over them both. How beautiful a sight that would have been.
Ed comes on the silk, and there’s kohl smeared on the pillowcase, wet from his face. He curls up and tugs the blanket half over him, a headache building quickly behind his eyes.
As his breathing slows, there’s a tentative knock on the door.
“Uh, Blackbeard, sir?” Frenchie’s voice calls, sounding strange. “Sorry to bother you, but, uh, there’s news. A ship in port. Word is she’s waiting for us.”
It could be anything, anyone. It’s more than likely the English come to track him down again. Ed’s heart seizes, regardless.
He takes a deep breath and thinks, rather seriously, about getting up.
Someone could be waiting for him.