Archive of Our Own

Stede found the house online and quietly booked it somewhere in the middle of Ed's lingering summer breakdown. The miracle availability on such short notice seemed like fate wanted them there in the slightly shabby little Frank Lloyd Wright knockoff by the side of a secluded lake in that particular week in late August, and who was he to argue with fate?

Ed didn't have the energy to care at the time, just brushed the whole thing off with a dismissive yeah, sure, sounds great when Stede tried to show him the pictures—but as his mood started to lift again his interest in things started flooding back, and by the time they're creeping Stede's beloved teal Jaguar down the private dirt road towards the house Ed is just about vibrating with excitement. Stede can almost feel his glee thrumming in the hand resting in its usual place on his thigh.

Of course, now Stede is the one having a bit of a breakdown instead as overgrown branches along the sides of the narrow road whip his poor car like it's in for a session with Blackbeard. He winces at one especially loud slap of leaves and twigs against his door, and Ed's hand tightens briefly in a squeeze that's probably meant to be comforting.

"Alright?" he asks, using that steady, low, soothing murmur he always reaches for when he's in aftercare mode trying to ease Stede down from whatever sensory peak he's been shoved to.

"Ask me again when I've checked the paintwork," Stede replies sourly. "If I'd known we were driving to fucking Mordor I would have bought a three hundred pound banger from one of Frenchie's dodgy mates and ruined that instead."

That makes Ed laugh, which is very nearly irritating when Stede's in such a foul mood, but the fondness in his voice makes it just about tolerable. "And miss out on the romance of whisking your boyfriend off on holiday in your fancy turquoise Jaguar? No fucking way."

"It's teal," Stede mutters, still grouchy, but he has to admit he feels minutely less murderous because... it is quite romantic, isn't it? And god knows they both need a good concentrated helping of that after the last two weeks trying to parent two potentially possessed adolescents without the hovering threat of their mother, the only person in the world they seem to truly respect.

Actually seeing the house changes everything. It was beautiful in the listing photos but there's something extra special about seeing it in person for the first time in the soft golden light of the late afternoon. Stede actually gasps when it appears all at once ahead of them, and he doesn't even feel silly about it because Ed's beaming like a child on Christmas morning too.

"Not what I expected," Ed says, and then swears ferociously at his seatbelt when it locks and ruins his impulsive attempt at a kiss. He does a better job of it when they're out of the car and Daphne is excitedly snuffling around the unfamiliar animal scents in the underbrush: grabs Stede's face in both hands and delivers the sort of enthusiastic smooch that can't be given without a resounding mwah noise.

"What did you expect?" Stede wants to know, sneaking a hand under the hem of Ed's cropped purple t-shirt to stroke the bit of his back that always makes him squirmy.

"I dunno. Something more traditional, I guess? You and your Art Nouveau, Arts and Crafts boner." Predictably, he wriggles happily under the possessive slide of Stede's fingers, going in for another kiss that's softer and more serious, though his face crinkles into a blurry smile right after when he touches their foreheads together and rests there, noses gently bumping. "Full of surprises, you fucking lunatic."

"Ha, yes," Stede agrees vaguely, wondering with a sudden spike of trepidation what Ed's going to make of the other surprises he stashed in his suitcase for later. Maybe he won't break them out tonight after all. They've got a whole week here in absolute seclusion with no internet or mobile signal, only an ancient landline connecting them to the wider world for emergencies. Might be a shame not to keep a little something back, just in case it turns out they actually can't abide each other's company when that's all they've got.

Later, after the exploring and unpacking and fumbling to cook dinner in an unfamiliar kitchen, he feels stupid for even considering such a thing. Of course they're not going to get sick of each other. Really, it's the opposite: Stede finds he feels at peace here with an ease he's not allowed himself in years, maybe ever, and it's clear from Ed's face that he's feeling it too. He's kneeling on a cushion in front of Stede's armchair now, like he does so often at home, soaking up comfort from the closeness to ease him through the sudden energy drop now his giddy first impressions of their holiday home are over.

There's quiet music playing from Stede's phone in the speaker dock, a classical mix he set on shuffle before he called Ed over and soothed his sudden restless fidgeting by telling him, softly, down. Something in French now, an old favourite he loves for the soaring prettiness of the melody more than what little he can remember of the Verlaine poem that's been set to the music.

"Will you translate?" Stede asks, gently stroking his fingers through Ed's misbehaving grey curls. "My ancient schoolboy French is horrible."

"Mm." It's partly a yes, partly a plea for the hair playing not to stop, and he turns to rest his cheek against Stede's knee so his words aren't muffled against the cool linen drape of his trousers. "Gonna lose a bit in translation, probably, but yeah, I'll give it a go. Start it over?"

The quiet opening piano notes float again from the speakers, blending beautifully with the sound of birds welcoming the dusk outside the open doors and enormous wide windows. "Something kinda like, the white moon shines in the wood," Ed says, eyes closed, a sweet little frown of concentration creasing his brows while he listens and tries to reword the meaning of the song. "From every branch there comes a voice... beneath the boughs. Oh, my love. The pool reflects... a deep mirror... the silhouette of the black willow where the wind is weeping. Let's dream. It's the hour. A vast and tender consolation seems to fall from the starlit sky. It's the exquisite hour."

The next track starts, the loveliest of Satie's Gnossiennes, and they stay there in held-breath silence for a while just listening. Stede realises his fingers stopped moving somewhere during the song and starts stroking again until Ed turns, propping his bearded chin instead of his cheek on Stede's knee now to look up at him.

"Oh, hey," he says, suddenly all soft concern. "You okay?"

"Am I...?" A wet tickle on the side of his nose clues Stede in to the fact that he started crying somewhere in the last few minutes and he swipes the tear away with a knuckle, laughing a bit self-consciously. "Wow. Sorry. Yes, I'm fine. Come here?"

Ed's up and in his lap instantly, straddling him and cupping Stede's face in his gentle hands to look him in the eyes and double check. He slides a thumb across to mop up the remains of the tear track, and then rests his forehead against Stede's so they can just sit for a while and share breath and the music and the moonlight.

"I used to imagine being happy with someone," Stede says eventually, halting and a little bit embarrassed by himself. "When I was little, or a lonely teenager. Even when I was married. And it was always the big, dramatic, Hollywood moments. Racing through an airport for a last desperate declaration, or someone loving me so much they had to object at my wedding, or, I don't know, having to sword fight a dashing villain for someone's honour."

Ed laughs on an exhale, barely audible, and presses a sweet, lingering kiss to Stede's forehead. "Yeah. Guess I did too. I used to play with these ugly little plastic figures my parents kept off the top of their wedding cake. Didn't even fucking look like them, the bride was blonde. That Hollywood shit's not real."

"I know. I know that now," Stede clarifies. "This, with you—every moment just existing next to you. I suppose I never knew what to actually hope for."

Ed finds the speaker remote on the side table and rewinds to the beginning soft piano notes of the song that made him cry. They tickle Stede's neck somehow, like stroking fingers raising all the fine little hairs there, and the woman starts singing again: La lune blanche luit dans le bois, de chaque branche part une voix sous la ramée...

"Reckon this might be it," Ed says, watching Stede's eyes droop closed the way he always likes to let them when he's really listening to his music and not just letting it colour the atmosphere of a room like his fancy wallpaper. "Our song?"

Stede feels a grin start to tug at his mouth, immediately chased by a bristly kiss from Ed. "You wouldn't want something a bit cooler? One of your scary rock guys? For yourself, I mean. I know I'm not cool at all."

"Mmm," Ed hedges, pulling a face when Stede opens one eye again to look at him and tilting his hand side to side in the air to show he's not that sold. "Not sure Nine Inch Nails or White Zombie's the first place I'd go when I think about you, babe."

"I wanna fuck you like a saule noir," Stede murmurs, vaguely recognisable as the beat of Closer. "I wanna feel you où le vent pleure." He's pleased when it pokes an amused little chortle out of Ed, breaking a bit of the weird gloomy tension he's feeling he cursed the nice night with by going all maudlin.

"Come on, then," Ed demands, getting off his lap and grabbing Stede's hand to pull him up too. "Money where your mouth is, then, please and thank you."

And Stede decides maybe he will keep the secret in his suitcase to himself for a little while longer.

Stede brought along the early birthday present the kids gave him last week, or rather Alma gave him but let Louis add his name to the card. The gift is her through and through, which means it's Stede through and through: a complicated model ship, a million tiny little balsa pieces and scraps of thread carefully bagged by size, an instruction booklet neither he nor she needs showing diagrams of how to tie different accurate knots.

Ed's been sitting in the open patio doorway for a while with Daphne's snoozing head in his lap, watching the Biblically apocalyptic rain hammering down on the surface of the lake and swinging between laughing and pissed off at the weather deciding to fuck up their holiday on day one, but he gets bored of that eventually and manages to wriggle out from under her without disturbing her too much, wandering over to take a seat at the dining table and watch Stede instead.

"You want to help?" Stede offers, indicating the little piles of hull boards he's sorting, but Ed only shakes his head and smiles fondly, settling down with his chin on his folded arms to simply spectate.

He's so quiet and the rain sounds are so hypnotic and the task is just the right kind of fiddly and methodical that Stede kind of forgets Ed is even there after a while, consumed entirely by starting to construct his model. It's been years since he's done one of these. It was always one of his favourite little escapes when Mary was painting, both of them finding their private creative joys in the increasingly silent house before the kids ever came along. It became too tricky after that, too many curious little grabby toddler hands wanting to get involved in things that weren't their own unbreakable plastic Duplo blocks, and he kind of abandoned it in favour of activities the kids couldn't muck up too much: long solo hikes with baby Alma strapped to his back in her carrier, or shorter ones when Louis appeared and Alma graduated to running along beside them or furiously pedalling her baby trike only to get distracted by every cool bug or flower she spotted and leaving it abandoned on the path for Stede to carry while Louis chanted his first, and favourite, real word endlessly in his weary father's ear. Bored bored bored bored bored!

It's the fading of the rain that finally pulls him out of his craft-trance, the lack of sound somehow as conspicuous as the racket when it started. Stede blinks like he's just woken up from a good long deep nap and checks the clock on the wall to find it's been almost two and a half hours since he last looked.

"Shit," he says, genuinely surprised and feeling a bit guilty. "Think I zoned out for a while there."

Ed's giving him the strangest look: all soft and fond, which isn't new, but for some alarming reason he looks tearful as well. Stede drops the balsa bits immediately and reaches across the table for his hand, gently squeezing his fingers. "Darling? What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Ed says, laughing again at himself. "Just, you know, hits me sometimes out of nowhere at the fucking dumbest times. You're all focused on your fancy little ship and you're sticking your tongue out the side of your mouth and muttering to yourself and you've got glue all over your hands and now you're getting me all sticky too and that sunbeam coming through the cloud was hitting your hair like a spotlight and I just thought god, I like you so fucking much I'm gonna start crying."

"Only like?" Stede teases gently, fairly sure he's about to start as well if he doesn't make a joke of it and if they set each other off they'll be useless all day.

Ed pulls out of his grip and smacks his hand gently, lifting the hem of his t-shirt to blot his watery eyes. "Shut up. Obviously I love you. But, fuck, I just like you so much, too. I like hanging out with you, babe."

And Stede checks in with him about it half an hour later when they're back in the unfamiliar bed—"You still like this?" murmured against the bare patch of skin in the middle of Ed's chest that he's been saving to ink with something special—and it's partly to tease, to make him blush and giggle and go all soft and crinkled around the eyes, and partly because Stede just likes hearing the simple honesty in his yes. He's not used to being the cause of such confidence in anyone, especially not right after the annual reminder of his life's greatest failures, and the truth of it thrills a sparkling hot little line up the back of his neck before Ed's fingers even get there to draw him back up for a kiss.

"Don't stop," Ed breathes against his ear, and there's barely any weight to it, only a touch of a plea clinging to a sigh. "Please don't."

He has to, but only to slide his fingers free and wipe them dry against the sheets. It's so easy to enter him—Stede's been teasing and toying with him for so long that there's hardly any resistance at all—but Ed moans and arches like he's being filled with one of the enormous silicone cocks that Stede laughed at when he first saw because he thought they were some kind of novelty joke and not objects that Ed actually, and very frequently, fucked.

"You really like it like this?" Stede asks again, propped above Ed on shaking arms with his sweaty hair falling in his eyes. "Just, you know, me and you? None of the accoutrements?"

A final nudge gets him as deep as he can go and Ed's thighs squeeze his sides, his heels planting hard against Stede's backside like he needs to urge him just a final, impossible millimetre into the centre of his soul. In the bright bedroom, full-length windows making up the two corner walls overlooking the lake nestled with their borrowed house in the protective cradle of the Eryri mountains, Ed's eyes look huge, glittering little twin reflections of the midday sun swimming there in the unshed tears he's laughing through again.

"Nothing I like more," he promises, and sinks back against the pillows with another sweet little moan that Stede wants to eat right out of his mouth. "Can I get it tattooed on me?"

"What?" Stede asks, pleasure-drunk and easily confused because, really, who could be expected to think at a time like this?

"Your ship." Ed gasps at a harder shift inside him, humming a please don't stop kind of plea through his clenched teeth. He finds Stede's hand braced on the mattress next to his shoulder and moves it to his chest, pressing the sweating palm and fingers to the bare brown stretch of uninked skin. "Right here. Right over my heart."

Stede might have chosen that night for the secret, if only they weren't so exhausted by their middle-aged afternoon romp that they fell asleep in the living room right after dinner and woke up grumpy with stiff necks at gone two in the morning.

The glorious fresh scent of summer wildflowers greets them in the morning when Stede opens the enormous sliding window for a proper, rain-free look at their surroundings. There's no sign anywhere of yesterday's storm, except maybe the vibrant greens of the forest spread all around the lake and stretching off around the rising mountains a couple of miles away. The puddles have vanished, the sky is cloudless, and that little wooden jetty sticking out into the still blue-green water is very tempting.

"Think I'll go for a swim," he tells Ed, who grunts something sleepy and unintelligible and pulls a pillow over his head. Then, rifling through the chest of drawers: "Oh, bugger."

That gets Ed's attention. He lifts a corner of the pillow, peering out curiously and obviously sensing there's some delightful little scandal brewing. "Oh?" he repeats, scratchy with morning dehydration but sounding marginally less grumpy.

"Hmm. Well, looks like I forgot to pack my trunks," Stede admits, turning for another search in case they're just hiding somewhere weird.

And that really gets Ed's attention, enough that the pillow ends up on the floor in his haste to sit up. "Actually forgot?" he asks, smirking when Stede turns round to pull a face and shrug his confirmation, banging the drawer shut with an irritated bump of his backside. "Or forgot on purpose so you can skinny dip and fucking drive me insane all week?"

"Actually forgot!" Stede insists, because... skinny dipping! Honestly! The idea would never in a million years cross his mind, not least because there are creatures in that water and he wouldn't want them to think there's a dangling fleshy bit of tasty food floating past. "I don't suppose you brought a spare pair I could borrow? Or I could just wear my underwear..."

Nope. He halts that line of thought immediately, not wanting to blush and set Ed off on twenty questions concerning the sudden shyness about his boring Marks and Sparks five-packs.

"Never even packed my own," Ed says easily, stretching and twisting enough to crack all his arm joints and the entire length of his spine. "You told me private lake. I'm gonna be non-stop naked, and so are you."

And—it's actually quite nice, once he's past the slightly giggly, slightly horrified feeling that he's doing something awfully naughty by creeping out of the house in nothing but his flip-flops and a towel while Ed wolf-whistles and calls encouragement from the bedroom window where he's standing with his phone on video mode. The water is cool but not unpleasantly so, a lovely fresh contrast to the breezeless air even after he's warmed up with a leisurely trip to the other shore and back again. By that time Ed's managed to curb his amateur pornography urges and is bringing various foods and crockery out from the house, arranging it on a blanket on the jetty with some cushions and a couple of big beanbags from the gazebo. To Stede's absolute lack of surprise he's managed to find some shorts for himself after all, and not just any shorts—Ed is wearing Stede's swimming trunks, a faded old Flintlock t-shirt, and a smug look, clearly extremely pleased with himself for getting away with a bit of a fuckery.

"Well played," Stede tells him when he's close enough, treading water and swiping his wet hair out of his eyes.

Ed's spreading grin is luminous. "You barely even objected, you tart. I reckon you wanted to get your knob out."

"If you're complaining, I can always—"

"Nope," Ed insists, scooting closer on his knees to the edge of the boards to shamelessly eye Stede up through the ripples he's making. "No complaints. You're like a sexy old mermaid, it's fucking great."

He shout-laughs when Stede splashes him, falling sideways onto his arse to wipe the drips off his face with the hem of his t-shirt, and Stede tips himself back to float comfortably in the cool water, knob fully on display now since Ed is apparently so desperate to see the silly little thing. "Yes, you'll have to work extra hard for my attention this week, I'm afraid," he says, feeling too lazy and content after his workout to worry about peckish birds or fish any more. The sun is bright through his eyelids, glowing coral pink. "God, I miss swimming," he says, feeling suddenly a bit wistful. "I used to go to the leisure centre twice a week like clockwork to do lengths before you turned up and stole all my free time."

There's a vibrant smirk in Ed's voice again. "Now you just do my length."

"And very distracting it is, too." He hears the tempting clink of glass bottles as Ed goes back to unpacking the impromptu picnic brunch from the cooler, and opens his eyes, squinting against the late morning sunlight, to watch him lay it out on the patchwork blanket spread across the weathered old boards: good wine, French bread and Welsh cakes from the nearest village's traditional little bakery, a probably silly amount of cheese that Daphne is absolutely going to try to steal when she's had enough of chasing dragonflies, fat red strawberries. "Throw me one of those little beauties, would you?"

Ed plucks the stalk off one and eyes him, gauging the distance between the jetty and Stede bobbing about naked in the lake. "What's my prize if I get it in the hole?"

"Mmm... you can put something in another hole?" Stede suggests, then screams when the strawberry lands off target, splatting above his eyebrow and making him lose his balance in the water so he sinks under and comes up flailing and spluttering. Not so sexy old mermaid. Ed's cackling too hard to even pretend to be sorry, but he does at least lean over to offer a hand when Stede swims to the wooden ladder to climb up.

"Come on," he says, giggles easing off when he's got Stede in his arms with the towel whirled cape-like around his shoulders. "Get some fuel in you if you're gonna be swimming about in the buff all day. You don't wanna burn off all your energy, I'm gonna need some of that later."

"Oh? Got something strenuous in mind, have you?" Stede asks innocently, stealing a strawberry from the bowl and actually getting it in his mouth this time. Ed says nothing, not out loud, but his raised eyebrow and crooked curling smile say plenty.

I like hanging out with you, babe, Ed said yesterday, overwhelmed to the point of tears by having something sweet in his life now after years of surviving without, and Stede's feeling something of that now himself as they idly chat and eat and drink and soak up the sun together while Daphne amuses herself on the shore exploring all the new exciting little treasures and hidey holes. Being bollock naked is unexpected, of course, but he's not finding it unpleasant, actually. In fact, he's not sure he can remember ever being this comfortable. Maybe a bit of private naturism is good for the heart and soul. Maybe he just really enjoys the way Ed keeps seeming to forget there's not a stitch on him and then gets that heated, hungry look in his eyes every time he glances at him and remembers again.

"Still can't believe you've never skinny dipped before," Ed accuses, feeding Stede another strawberry.

"What was I supposed to do, waggle my little chap at the gardeners and my sisters every time I went for a dip in the lake at home?"

Ed snorts, licking strawberry juice off his fingertips. "Still can't fucking believe you had a private lake in your back garden. Can't believe you had gardeners. I never even had a garden. We had this tiny paved bit where the wheelie bin went. Just enough space to hang a washing line that only fit like three shirts, and obviously my dad got dibs, so mine and Mum's gear always smelled weird and fusty from drying on the knackered old radiators."

"Sorry." He's not, really. He's sorry Ed had a nightmarishly horrible time as a child, of course, but he's kind of moved a little way past feeling uselessly guilty about his own childhood privilege—because having all the opportunities and material things that came with aristocracy and wealth was great, obviously, a safety net that it would be ridiculous to deny having had for his entire coddled life, but the price in other ways was exorbitant and even now he's still paying the debt. It shows up even in his voice, for god's sake: he speaks with his nanny's accent, because his parents and much older sisters didn't care to spend enough time with him to pass on their own when he was learning to talk, and isolated on the family estate as he was he didn't have any friends until long after his strange hybrid Kiwi-English accent was fully set in his mouth for life. It shows up in his desperate devotion to anyone who shows even the slightest bit of curiosity in the things he likes, and in the way his brain has always struggled to understand the difference between people politely but insincerely expressing interest because that's what society rules say one should do while conversing and people who actually want to be randomly monologued to at great and excited length about sailors learning how to determine longitude at sea in the eighteenth century. He's coming to realise, especially since Alma's autism diagnosis, that there are probably additional reasons for him being the way he is, but nevertheless, at nearly fifty the consequences of childhood neglect and so many years of crushing loneliness are still following him like his shadow.

"I used to find it so odd that we had all these huge beautiful gardens and people hired to look after them year-round," Stede says, not really knowing where he's going with it, just musing out loud, "and still my father seemed absolutely incensed that I loved spending time out there. I mean, what else did he think they were for? And what could possibly be weird about enjoying a little walk in the sunshine when all the roses were out?" He can feel his face twisting at the memory now, much more quietly angry about it these days than hurt, because—really? That much seething rage for your child over flowers? "I used to ask the gardeners if I could help, he hated that. But somehow nothing he ever said about it really explained why? He once told me I was a weak-hearted, soft-handed, lily-livered little rich boy. I always forget where I put my keys and glasses down but I still remember that little nugget word for word after forty years."

Ed's head is pleasantly heavy on his bare chest, his fingers fiddling absently with a nipple bar in a way that might be far more distracting were Stede not so lazily comfortable here on a blanket in the sunshine and full of too much cheese and holiday-permitted morning wine. "Yeah, well, if your glasses called you a cunt when you put them down I bet you'd remember where they were, too," he points out, barely bothering to restrain his contempt for the man he luckily only ever had to meet briefly once and never will again. He stretches, tangling their legs more comfortably on the blanket and tucking his instep against the arch of Stede's foot like he's trying to get as much of their skin touching as possible before Stede abandons him to swim again once his food has settled. "I like your soft hands," he adds, all warm and amused and maybe a little bit suggestive, and Stede obliges by trailing a couple of fingertips over the back of Ed's shoulder and up to the silver curls at the nape of his neck.

"Do you?" he murmurs, too relaxed for any real teasing but enjoying the closeness of the moment. It's strange and lovely to feel this isolated, only the two of them and their beloved puppy cradled between a curve of mountains and the deep green forest with no sounds of other life anywhere except for the birds and the gentle lap of the edge of the lake against the sun-warmed stones.

"Oh yeah. Love 'em. Soft hands and hard—"

Stede kisses Ed to shut him up, swallowing down his giggle. He stripped his t-shirt off at some point, wanting to feel the sun on his skin after being cheated out of a whole day of basking by yesterday's storm, and he feels warm and very slightly sweaty when Stede curls a hand around the side of his neck to tilt him to a better angle, the other sliding to rest on the place where Ed asked to tattoo Stede's model ship. The thought of it makes him feel dazed and strange and deliriously thrilled, the same way he did the evening they went round to Ivan's place after work and he tattooed the weird shark and retired kraken on their wrists.

"If you get my ship here," Stede says, a little bit muffled against Ed's mouth because they're both so reluctant to let the lazy kissing stop, "maybe I should get something too."

He feels more than hears Ed's interested hum, buzzing against his sucked lower lip. "A tattoo?"

"I don't know. Probably not. I don't think tattoos are really me—does that make sense?" he asks, and Ed pulls back to look at him, a flicker of a frown briefly touching his eyebrows before Stede stretches up to kiss him again and reassure him. "No, darling, I love the ones I've got. Wouldn't change them for anything. But I'm not sure I want any more."

Ed gets it now, his breath catching a little bit as his fingers return to touch one of the seaglass nipple bars he commissioned from a local jewellery designer. "Where?" he asks, softly avid.

Of course his hand starts the predictable journey downwards, but Stede laughs and covers it with his own before it even reaches his navel. "Not where you're probably thinking. I don't think it's a good idea to put us through that no-contact hell again." He feels Ed grin against his bare shoulder, pressing a lingering kiss there. "Ear, perhaps?"

Another kiss, lingering even longer. "Like a pirate," Ed murmurs. "I'll find you a gold hoop if you want. A proper old one. Antique pirate jewellery for my favourite captain."

Ridiculous for the mere idea to be swirling Stede's tummy as much as it is. Ridiculous that he somehow, without even looking, found probably the one man on Earth who not only accepts his lifelong thing for pirates but enthusiastically encourages it.

"Gold wouldn't go with the collars," he points out, a little bit rueful. Ed put the chain around his neck for him this morning instead of the leather, for extra security fixing the O-ring to one of the links with a lobster clasp he pulled off one of his own necklaces in case it managed to slip free in the water and sink to the bottom of the lake somewhere they'd never be able to find it again, and it's resting there at the hollow of this throat now: almost weightless, the steel links and ring and bar strong but delicate, and yet somehow always noticeably, comfortingly there.

"I'll make you another," Ed says immediately. "Could make you a million. Any colour you want. Any style. Any anything. Just ask."

"I'd love a rose gold one, actually," Stede admits. "Will you make me one like that to match when you make those arm restraints we talked about?"

Ed's tongue darts out to wet his lips and his voice is a touch lower when he replies. "Yeah. Still want the lilac leather?"

"Yes, please."

The tip of Ed's nose touches Stede's, gently rubbing side to side, making him smile. "You're so fucking pretty," Ed murmurs, the tone of his soft voice pleasantly prickling all the hairs on Stede's arms and the back of his neck. "You like being pretty for me, hmm?"

Stede tries to keep the self-consciousness out of his laugh and very nearly succeeds. "You know I do."

"Good," Ed says, sounding satisfied, like he just needed to check.

Trying to be nonchalant about it but probably only managing to blare that he's hiding something, Stede grabs the chance to do a bit of digging. "Well, what about you?" he prompts, keeping his voice as casual as he can and trying to distract Ed with more nose-bumps and gentle little smoochy kisses all over his mouth and his short silver beard.

It works, he thinks. Ed breathes out a quiet giggle, tilting his face for more. "What about me?"

"You like being pretty for me, too, don't you?"

"Mm. I guess, in theory, sure," Ed says, a bit evasively. "Takes a bit more work for some tattooed old grey-haired leather guy than you. You're all gold and pink and freckly." He punctuates what he's saying with more kisses, brushing over some of the freckles already blooming darker on Stede's bare shoulder.

"A bit ginger and quite prone to sunburn, you mean," Stede points out. He's not going crispy yet, but the sun is really blasting down now as it nears its zenith so he's going to have to call it a day before too much longer. "Anyway, what on Earth are you talking about? You're all soft"—he kisses Ed's fluffy grey curls in imitation of the way Ed was just kissing his supposed pretty bits—"and... and illustrated," he settles on, moving his mouth to the beginning of Ed's snake tattoo. "And wearing that cute little skirt to woo me the first time you asked me out. You're so pretty."

Ed's nuzzling against Stede's neck now, hiding his face. He sometimes turns so uncharacteristically shy at a compliment that Stede wishes he could go back in time and throttle anyone even slightly responsible for the trouble he seems to have believing this stuff. "Maybe it's like a seesaw," he suggests, lightly joking to hide a bit of the raw vulnerability in his voice and not succeeding particularly well. "I'm getting prettier the longer I spend with you. And you're in your rock out with your cock out era."

"I don't think I've ever 'rocked out' in my life," Stede reminds him, maybe a bit ruefully.

Ed shrugs, settling back on the blanket after one last kiss to Stede's thumping pulse and closing his eyes against the bright sunlight, lazy and feline. "Chill out with your dill out, then."

"I've got the worst urge to push you off the jetty."

Ed just laughs, patting around the remains of their picnic brunch to find Stede's hand and squeeze it, winding their fingers together. "You're coming with me if you do."

"Always," Stede says immediately. He covers their clasped hands with his other one, then Ed's joins it, then there's nothing left but a sweet, awkward little tussle of fingers and thumbs until Stede runs out of spare digits and Ed triumphs with a soft ha!

It's nice to run out of things to say sometimes. It's always been uncomfortable with everyone else. Stede learned to dread the painful dragging silences and got into the habit of filling them up with desperately cheerful babble instead, which Mary once snapped at him was so much worse than just nothing. It's never awkward like that with Ed. Never has been. Conversations just ebb and flow with ease, like the rise and fall of music, and when silence happens it's never a trigger to panic and start filling it up again. Instead, Stede stretches out on the blanket and settles his naked body comfortably against Ed's side, unashamedly letting his bare cock press against the warm tattooed skin of Ed's thigh below the hem of his stolen trunks, and lets the silence be.

He could fall asleep out here, Stede finds himself idly thinking some minutes later. Ed definitely could. That man will fall asleep anywhere, and look beautiful doing it, too. Stede's only likely to drool and snore and fart and embarrass himself, and then wake up two hours later with angry blisters and a white patch shaped like Ed's draped arm in the burn all up his side.

"Tell me about Blackbeard," he says.

Ed sounds drowsy, but still awake enough to be amused and playfully teasing. "Why?" he asks, sliding his hand down Stede's hip to give his arse a cheeky little pinch. "Eager for my nasty birthday plans, are you?"

"I'd have to be dead not to," Stede points out. "Besides, I was just thinking about London earlier. How thrilled people were to see you wandering about the club again, and that devoted pin-drop silence when you took me on stage and cuffed me to the arch. It's hard to imagine Blackbeard in private now I've seen Blackbeard in public, that's all."

Ed thinks about it for a minute, trailing his fingers lightly up and down Stede's back. "I don't think it was that different, really," he settles on eventually. "By which I mean every time was different, didn't matter if it was on stage or in one of the private spaces. That was just another detail in the whole shebang, you know? And people wanted all kinds of different stuff. Sometimes they were after some elaborate roleplay about being in trouble with a mob boss or teacher or whatever. Some of them wanted the release, no story or anything, just the sensation of letting go. Sometimes they just liked the thrill of getting a session with Blackbeard more than they actually liked the stuff they asked for? And those people used to really piss me off. Izzy tried to filter them out when he could, but we still got these rich pricks just wanting to show off about paying for something rare they didn't even really want. Got less of a ball ache when I started only seeing regulars, or people the regulars vouched for. A few of my long terms just wanted to be stuffed in a cage and ignored for a couple of hours. They were my favourites by the end."

"What, really?" Stede asks, fascinated. "They'd pay you to ignore them?"

Ed grins, scratching lightly at the shoulder freckles he seems to have taken a real liking to. "Not gonna spew any personal deets, obviously, but we made a fucking fortune off this one guy, some kind of ambassador or, I dunno, something in an embassy somewhere. Every January for like fourteen years he booked up a whole year of Thursday nights and just sat in my cage for hours watching me read or braid flogger handles or wank or whatever like he wasn't even there, then I'd tell him time's up mate and he'd go well that's great, thanks Blackbeard, and fuck off with a pep in his step. And he worked away a lot so didn't even show up half the time, just wanted to make sure his spot was always free."

"Well, that doesn't sound so bad." Stede wriggles under Ed's fingers, crawling clumsily up the blanket to resettle half across his lap, silently demanding more back scratches. "Hope you've not caused some international incident by moving his coping mechanism away."

"Last I heard he was going to Jackie instead so I'm sure he'll survive."

From the few terrifying times Stede met her on their London trip, Stede is decidedly not sure. "Scratch," he demands, feeling petulant when Ed dares to move his hand to get a sip of his sun-warmed lemonade. "Tell me more."

"Pushy," Ed scolds gently, but there's laughter in his voice again. Stede hears the creak of the cooler lid and the plop-clink of ice tumbling into the glass, then jolts in surprise at the cold wet slide of the cube across his heated skin.

"Ed!"

"You'll burn," Ed murmurs, quiet like he's concentrating on something enthralling. Slowly, he pushes the ice cube down Stede's spine, back up again, letting it melt over his shoulders.

"The sunscreen is right there, I don't know what you think ice is going to do!" He shivers, half-laughing, when a second ice cube drops onto the small of his back and immediately begins to melt there, and raises himself onto his elbows to twist round and look at Ed.

Ed looks back, one eyebrow raised. "Want me to stop?" he asks, walking his cold wet fingers teasingly from the melting ice cube to the curve of Stede's bare arse.

The laugh bursts out properly now, a frantic stupid little giggle as he turns back to bury his face in his folded arms. "No," he says, muffled, and jerks again at the sudden cold shock of another ice cube held to the crack of his backside.

"Serves you right," Ed says, faking severity. He nudges the ice a little deeper, just enough to be held there. "You can't go round naked like this all holiday and just fucking get away with it."

"Not all holiday," Stede protests, somehow feeling a flush of heat rocket through him even as the melting ice drips down to the back of his balls and thighs. "Fuck! Don't you dare unlock another thing for me, I can't take any more."

It's Ed's turn for a stupid giggle when the rapidly melting ice escapes Stede's behind's hold on it and clatters onto the jetty boards. "Isn't that literally what you're asking me to do with this whole birthday thing?"

"Not really." He sighs happily, spreading his thighs wider to let Ed's hand tuck in between them, the cool water refreshing instead of shocking now it's slightly warming from their shared body heat. "I already know I like at least some of what's on offer. Maybe not the cage part. What else did people want?"

"Boot stuff," Ed says. He pinches and pats Stede's backside, wordlessly directing him to bring it closer until Stede shifts up a bit more, draped across Ed with his swelling cock wedged now between Ed's thighs. "Would it be fucking gross if I stick my fingers in the picnic butter?"

"Have we got more in the house?"

"Yeah."

"Not gross, then," Stede says firmly. He hums at the first greasy slide of Ed's fingers between his cheeks, not quite a moan yet, at least not until the tip of one starts rubbing slowly, teasingly, over his hole. Breathless, he coaxes, "Tell me about the boot stuff, please?"

Ed sounds breathless too as he squeezes Stede's cheek with his other hand, spreading him wide in the bright summer sunlight. Stede's not even embarrassed any more by this kind of scrutiny, like his brain is finally starting to accept that somehow every part of him really is desirable to this sensational, ridiculous man. "Boot blacking," Ed says, moving his fingertip in gentle, delicious circles. "Or licking them clean. Sometimes wanted me to kick them really fucking hard with my boots on, or stand with my boot on their chest or neck or dick or face. Or they'd just, like, smell and lick and kiss the leather, like worship."

"Fuck," Stede whimpers, pushing back against Ed's touch only for him to move his hand back the exact same distance so Stede's no better off for the effort.

"That stuff sound good to you?" Ed asks softly.

"Not the kicking," Stede clarifies, a bit apologetic, like he always is when he bumps up against a limit. "But all the rest—god, yes, you know it does."

Like a reward, Ed's finger starts circling with a bit more pressure. "Yeah?"

"Yes," Stede moans.

"If I come home with my boots all dirty, you gonna get down on your knees for me and clean them up?"

"Yes, please."

There's the cool, slick slide of more butter on Ed's stroking middle finger. "Good boy," he says, his voice low and encouraging. Then: "How about the piss?" which feels like a very unfair question to ask when you're fondling someone's insides, especially in that taunting tone.

"What?" Stede asks, startled, batting Ed's groping hands away from him. "People paid you to piss on them?"

"Yeah, and spit. Right in their face, hair, mouth, whatever. More common than you might think."

"Who cleaned all that up? No wonder Izzy's always cross with you." Stede's brain feels a bit like tv static. Just when he thinks he's learned everything about Ed, something new appears. "Did you ever poo on anyone?"

There's something very witchy about Ed's cackling laughter sometimes. "Why, you interested in being my first?"

"Edward! Yuck."

"You started it!"

"Are there any other firsts left? I think I should get something," Stede complains, feeling a little bit sulky about being the last one to every single Ed experience, even the ones he absolutely doesn't want, despite knowing how absurd that is.

"Shut up," Ed tells him fondly. He taps another fat overripe strawberry against his lips until Stede relents and takes it from his juice-stained fingertips, finding it warm from the sun and bursting with sweetness when he chews. "You're the first bloke who took three fucking hours and way too many prompts to fall for the skirt and garters trick."

"Come on!" Stede objects, trying not to laugh now. He butts his head at Ed's thigh, making him lift his leg enough for Stede to wriggle under there more comfortably and very gently bite the half-hard bump of his cock through his shorts. "I'm clearly feeling fragile. Maybe it's sunstroke. Tell me a nice one."

Ed's voice is softer and slower when he speaks again, dropping into what Stede's started to vaguely think of as his anti-Blackbeard mode for lack of any better term. "There's loads," he says. His eyes crease beautifully at the corners when he smiles down at Stede, fingers starting to curl lovingly through the hair still damp from his morning spent floating lazily in the lake. "First boyfriend I've gone on holiday with, just the two of us. First time I've trusted anyone to guest design my merch. First time I've not been scared to let someone I'm with know I need magic pills every day to function."

"Oh," Stede says softly, surprised and touched by the sincerity when he was expecting something cheeky and rude. He pushes at the middle of Ed's bare chest, easing him back until he's propped on his elbows and hungrily watching Stede fight with the drawstring knot on his pilfered shorts. "Well, my mouth is about to be occupied but please feel free to continue if you want to."

Ed's laughter turns to a quiet little hum of pleasure when Stede finds his cock and cups the soft curve of it in his palm, kissing tenderly down the shaft as it starts thickening under his touch. "First bloke I've ever been with who loves Ed more than Blackbeard."

"I will fight every single person who ever made you feel unloved," Stede says fiercely. He manages to get Ed's shorts down, although not all the way, too impatient to care that they're left hanging off one ankle. "All of them. I mean, I'll lose, obviously. Never been in a real fight. But I hope the effort makes me look very cool and sexy."

"Nobody gets to hit you except me," Ed tells him, breathless with anticipation as Stede nudges his shoulders under Ed's knees.

"Lie back," Stede says. He licks his lips and kisses the very tip of Ed's cock, listening for the familiar pretty wobble in the happy way Ed sighs at the touch. "Be good for me now and I'll let you whip me to ribbons out here later. Imagine the way it'll echo round those mountains."

"Fuuuck," Ed groans around a desperate bubble of laughter. "You'll regret putting that idea in my head."

"I assure you I will not." The only thing he thinks he might regret is butter in his hair from Ed's messy fingers twisting convulsively in his drying curls and how he soon starts to smell like a rotting dairy in the sun, but even that's not enough to make him hurry things along, not when Ed's making such strawberry-sweet little sounds.

Stede is breathless after, rather smug, swishing his mouth out with leftover wine and theatrically spitting it into the lake like a fountain jet while Ed just lays there on the blanket trembling and giggling with one arm thrown lazily above his head and his hair all fluffed up from the friction of his writhing against the blanket. He always seems to find some messy, inexplicable sort of comfort in playing with the proof of Stede's pleasure, and he dips his other fingers—not the buttery ones—in the puddle of come Stede splashed all over his furry stomach when he brought himself off there after Ed finished, idly rubbing it against his tattooed skin like lotion.

"Oh fuck," Ed says suddenly, too dreamily content to actually sound annoyed. "I brought the Polaroid out and fucking forgot. Missed all the dirty action."

"Don't move," Stede tells him at once, leaning over to clatter through the crockery and bottles in the wicker picnic basket looking for the camera they couldn't resist in London. "Not missed you all messy and giggly, have we?"

"Guess not," Ed agrees, swiping through the remaining streaks and bringing his fingers up to his mouth so Stede can snap the moment when a fat white drop falls onto his waiting tongue. "Or your nudity revelation," he adds, taking the offered camera and gesturing for Stede to recline on the blanket so he can capture him surrounded by their cheese rinds and breadcrumbs, which doesn't seem particularly sexy to Stede but does at least get him giggling as well. It's all just so silly. He likes silly, he's found. He likes weird. Nobody's let him explore that until Ed.

He scrambles back up—ugh, smearing his buttery behind all over the blanket like Daphne on the duvet cover when a chance encounter with someone's dropped kebab on the promenade led to a bout of extra clingy consequences—and settles between Ed's legs, back to his chest, so he can take the camera and turn it towards them for what turns out to be a surprisingly well-aimed selfie considering there's no screen to guide him.

Together they watch the photo colours fade into the blank square, an unfolding magic you can never get from an iPhone. Ed is leaning over Stede's shoulder and Stede is leaning away from him just enough for them to see each other properly, both of them caught in easy smiles that crease the corners of their eyes. Ed's hair is standing up in a pencil-scribble mess from where he tangled his own fingers in it while Stede was making him writhe and whimper before. The bright midday sun is glinting off the O-ring and dangling steel bar of Stede's chain collar. In the distance, visible in the gap between them, Daphne is leaping in a ridiculous contortion on the shore to snap at a passing dragonfly that's far too high too reach.

"We look happy," Ed says. He returns his chin to Stede's bare shoulder and both arms around his waist, and Stede puts down both camera and photo to start stroking the soft hairs on his tattooed forearms above his black leather cuffs.

"We are happy." He's never going to get used to that, he thinks. Just—knowing. Believing it. Not having to trick himself with caveats and half-truths and excuses. He almost hopes he doesn't get used to it, just so he can feel the spreading warmth of this perfect contentment every day for the rest of his life until Ed dies in his arms aged a hundred and five like they agreed.

Ed calls Daphne over—insect bullying seems wonderful entertainment but leftover cheese bribery beats it every time—and they take several more selfies with her in between them: both of them kissing her fluffy cheeks while her tongue hangs out in a delighted doggy grin, one of her licking Stede's face while he screws it up in pretend-disgust, a few of her flopped over onto her back with her limbs all splayed out at ridiculous angles begging for belly rubs, which of course she receives in abundance.

"Had an idea," Ed says, turning to search through the picnic basket after Daphne gets bored and races back off to do some very important digging on the shore, where the dirt below the dried top layer is still soft from yesterday's downpour. "Might be a dumb one. Could be fun, though."

"Hmm?" Stede prompts, feeling drowsy again with his head resting on Ed's thigh and only opening his eyes when he feels something placed on his chest.

It's the Moleskine notebook Ed uses for the diary his therapist likes him to keep, one that Stede gave him from his unused stash to replace the tatty old spiral bound pad he recently finished filling up. Just a few daily words about his moods, usually, but sometimes he writes things down that he wants to talk through with her later, or things he just wants to try and work through by himself. Sometimes he uses it for what he says is very bad angsty poetry, which Stede is dying to read but isn't allowed to. On top of the notebook, Ed drops three biros: black, blue, red.

"Read me a poem," Stede teases, knowing it'll make Ed smile.

"Absolutely fucking not, I'm not looking to get dumped," he says at once, picking one of the pens back up to bop Stede lightly on the nose. He starts sorting through the Polaroids, selects the first one they took together, and leans on the notebook cover to write something along the white space at the bottom.

They roll most of the annotated photos and push them down the neck of an empty wine bottle, plugging it tight with screwed up food wrappers and moulded wax from the outside of fancy little cheeses, and cap it with some waxed paper and several layers of cling film secured by one of Ed's old hair bobbles that he found at the bottom of the picnic basket from some long-ago pre-makeover lunch date in the park.

They bury it in one of the impressive holes Daphne's been working on, and mark it with a fossil nicked from the back of the rockery that the house owner hopefully won't notice has been moved.

They don't know yet that in forty-nine years, more than their entire lifetimes so far, they'll return back here with three more generations of their family and find the photos again. For now it's just a sweet, silly secret to commemorate their first holiday, and their beloved puppy, and a day spent feeling the warm sunshine on each other's skin.

Stede's been acting fucking weird all week and he thinks he's being so sneaky about it. Ed's not worried, really—it doesn't feel like he's trying to hide anything bad or concerning, and it's not like Ed's not got a secret of his own that he's been trying to find the right time to bring up. Still. It's just about reaching the point where it's making Stede antsy, dithering between launching into whatever's eating him or leaving it to brew a while longer, and that's starting to get to Ed a bit as well.

And he's still got something Stede said to him yesterday rolling round like loose marbles in his head, which isn't helping matters: Be good for me now and I'll let you whip me to ribbons out here later. Imagine the way it'll echo round those mountains.

Might as well combine them, right? Settle Stede's twitchy nerves, get him nice and relaxed in the way he's only this year learned really works for him, then maybe he'll find it easier to share whatever's bothering him. If that means Ed gets a bit of his own fetish for al fresco fucking indulged, well, that's just a nice bonus and not at all a selfish little treat grab.

"Fuck off, nature," he mutters, swiping away a slender branch that's trying to pull his hair. It's not that he doesn't like nature... the soaking up the sun for hours at a time part is fucking great. He's just still not really sold on these endless dreary hikes that Stede enjoys so much, at least not for their own sake. He does at least love seeing Stede all bouncy and happy (and a bit flushed and sweaty), blathering excited facts he's retained from somewhere or other about every flower or bug they encounter, so they're more than worth it for that.

Ed thinks. And thinks a bit more. Then the next time a springy fucker of a twig tries to grab him, he reaches up and snaps it off the tree. By the time Stede pauses in his actually really interesting monologue about a nutrient sharing system thing for trees that he's calling the wood wide web, finally noticing what Ed's up to, he's carrying a good little bundle of thin twigs in his hand and he's sorting through them, chucking the ones he can't snap enough of the leaves and pokey bits from back onto the forest ground.

"What have you got there?" Stede asks, curious, not getting it yet.

"Thought I'd have a go at making a birch rod," Ed tells him, cheerful and conversational, not feeling like flinging the birdcage sheet off Blackbeard just yet in case Stede is really not into the idea. There's not been anything yet that he's outright rejected, in fact he seems thrilled any time he encounters something new, but there's got to be a first time for everything.

Maybe this is it, Ed thinks, watching Stede's nose wrinkle and one eyebrow raise like he's working up an objection. But what he says, gently after he's smoothed his face back out, is, "These aren't birch trees, Ed."

"Yeah. That's just what it's called. Doesn't have to be birch. Reckon anything's gonna work in a pinch. Hazel's good. Willow's really good. But this'll do the job alright."

"Like when you used my nice acacia wood cheese serving board because you couldn't be bothered to go and fetch a real paddle," Stede reminds him reproachfully, and Ed can feel the grin spreading on his face is probably pretty fucking devilish.

"Maybe don't bend all slutty over the dining table right in front of my face if you don't want me doing weird things to your arse."

"I was cleaning the table!" Stede exclaims, but there's restrained laughter in his voice and he playfully nudges Ed's elbow with his own as they walk along the dappled forest path. "I barely even have an arse, anyway. Flat as a pancake. It's a mystery to me why you enjoy it so much."

"Shut up," Ed tells him, elbowing back a bit harder but no less fondly. "I fucking love your arse. I'd have its babies if I could."

Stede snort-laughs at that, the unexpected sound surprising him into genuine giggles that go straight to Ed's tummy and just stroke him there. All warm and gentle and comfortable. He's so fucking pretty like this: laughter bringing out his dimple and showing off his cute uneven teeth with the werewolfy little fangs, the green-gold light of the afternoon sun coming through the lush foliage overhead and illuminating the scruffy waves of his hair. He's beautiful when he gets all dolled up and fussy and careful with his look, of course he is, but there's something weirdly special about being the only person in the world who ever gets to see him like this: no image concerns, no hair products, not even a cheeky smear of tinted moisturiser to even out a bit of the mild sunburn he got on his nose yesterday. Just Stede, laughing and lovely, entirely himself.

"If you think my hypothetical arse babies would turn out any easier to parent than Louis, I'm afraid you're deluded."

"Fuck, no. Let's stop this line of thought right now."

Stede doesn't bother pointing out that Ed started it, only watches with interest as he slides the twigs through his grip, finding the right length to fan the tips just a little bit to his liking. "Would you like some string for that?" he asks.

"Might be nice, but where am I gonna find string in the forest?"

"My backpack," Stede announces proudly, slipping it off his shoulders and finding a bit of old fallen tree to sit on so he can start digging through one of the side pockets.

Ed's laughing again now, he can't help it. "The TARDIS backpack saves the day once more. Fuck me."

"And you mocked me for wanting to bring my hiking supplies on a leisurely little woodland stroll," Stede says, pretending to be reproachful again but only landing somewhere around the region of 'a bit smug' as he comes up with a little ball of brown twine, presenting it to Ed with a ta-dah sort of flourish.

Ed takes a seat next to him on the mossy trunk, feeling Stede's fervent eyes on him the whole time he's tightly wrapping a handle for the thing and trimming off the unnecessary length below with the secateurs that Stede also seems to find it important to carry in his ridiculous, wonderful hot pink hiking pack.

"So," Stede says eventually, never taking his eyes off Ed when he starts testing the appropriate force of the twigs against his own palm, then his own thigh below the hem of his first date skirt. Stings like hell with barely a tap. It'll easily raise welts if he swings it properly, probably break the skin before long. Gonna have to be careful. But he knows that hunger in Stede's voice by now, even from just a single syllable. "Do you make a lot of these?"

"Nope." He offers it to Stede, letting him take it and inspect it, running a curious thumb and fingertip along one of the twigs to feel it bend. "Never made one before. I mean not directly from a tree, anyway. I've done kinda fancy versions in the workshop like massive matcha whisks, they're basically the same. Fang does a few like this, though. He's got some regulars who are into, like, old-timey kinda roleplay situations, sometimes they order a new one. But I reckon for most people who like this stuff, making the person you're gonna use it on go and pick their own switches is half the game. Fuck 'em up a bit psychologically before you even get going."

"I suppose you're right," Stede says, thoughtfully. He takes a long swallow from his water bottle and hands the not-birch rod back, turning it so Ed can grip the twine end again. "I would, you know. If you told me to."

Ed takes the offered bottle and drinks, eyeing Stede the whole time. He's starting to blush a bit, and it's definitely not because of sunburn. Fucking gorgeous. "What about when we get home?" Ed asks, finally feeling like it's the right time to slip into Blackbeard's lower, gravelly tone. "You gonna go to the park in front of the whole town and bring me something to use on you, hmm?"

"If you told me to," Stede says again, soft and intense.

Something about Blackbeard's low voice always presses some kind of internal button in him, and that's nothing new, really—Blackbeard's had that same effect on people ever since Eddie the runaway created him aged eighteen and began to learn how to live as two people—but still, it's different somehow. Not the devotion part. Ed's used to people thirsting to fling themselves on their knees in front of him and beg to be abused until they come sobbing. Maybe it's just that with Stede, what he actually craves from Ed is a collaboration. Nobody's ever seemed to want that before. None of the people who used to pay him a fortune to flay all the skin off their backs seemed to give even a fraction of a fuck what enjoyment Ed was getting out of it. Blackbeard was more like a tool to them, no more sentient than the whips and floggers he made and wielded. To Stede, he's just Edward, always, and they're playing with their toys together.

Stede's khaki shorts are short, like scandalously short, showing off the thick muscles and scattered freckles all up and down his pale legs. Ed reaches over, not saying anything yet, and very gently drags the tip of the bundle of twigs up the exposed inside of one thigh. The reaction is instantaneous, a shuddering inhale and a tightening of his fists, and he turns his wide eyes up to meet Ed's again.

"Please," he says, soft and breathless.

Ed trails the tips across the other bare thigh. "Please yes, or please no?"

"If it was no, you know what I'd really say."

Swoop. That's Ed's stomach doing somersaults, because—fucking hell, what did he ever do to get this lucky?

"Probably gonna really fucking hurt," he warns, tracing it higher to scratch lightly up the khaki shorts towards where Stede's cock is visibly trying to express its interest.

Stede shrugs, one corner of his mouth lifting in a relaxed, genuine little smile. It strikes Ed like he's the one begging to be hit: Stede's really not worried at all, is he? Stede trusts him. Stede notices him building a weapon in broad daylight on a nice forest ramble and just goes, yeah, cool, do it.

"Only if you want it to," Stede says, and he's right, of course. Nearly thirty years Ed's been playing with this stuff. He knows what he's doing as well as anyone anywhere in the world, and he's proved it on Stede's soft body time and time again these last eight months: drawing sweetly contented sighs of pleasure and helpless sobs of pain from him with the exact same tool, depending on what he needs or wants.

"Do you want it to?" Ed checks, still teasing him with the flexible green tips of the longest few twigs.

Stede's legs fall open a bit just as his eyes fall closed, and he leans back with his palms pressed flat on the weather-smoothed old fallen tree. "I think that's a question for Blackbeard to answer."

"Fuck," Ed mutters. "Yeah. Fuck. Okay."

It's getting so much easier to slip back into his Blackbeard mode these days, knowing how much Stede enjoys it. By the time Ed and the boys were preparing to leave London it felt like squeezing into one of those iron maiden torture contraptions every night. Now, it's more like slipping into the soft, silky robes Stede has so many of and enthusiastically shares with Ed.

He snaps the twigs down, not hard enough to do damage, just enough to sting and rattle against the soft white inside of Stede's thigh, and Stede gasps, clearly not expecting quite how sharp those springy ends would feel. He's more prepared the second time, breathing carefully through it and digging his hiking boots into the dirt path so he won't flinch.

"Good," Blackbeard murmurs. He's never been the sort to praise his subs—that's just not what any of them ever came to him for. Stede, though. He can't not praise this man, sitting there in streaks of sunbeams spreading his legs wide without having to be asked and breathing in that slow, practised way that always helps to get him higher than a row of colourful fruity cocktails at the Hornpipe's happy hour.

"Thank you," Stede whispers back. He doesn't open his eyes, not even when Blackbeard tells him to take his shorts off and get on his knees in the dirt. He simply does it, trusting him to lead them through this the way Ed trusts him to know his way home through the trees.

It fucking works, too—eventually. Stede dithers on a bit longer, but a lengthy swim around the lake the next morning uses up the last lingering dregs of his energy left behind by the birching, and after a lazy lunch of sandwiches and strawberries and a few hours snoozing on the sofa, he finally spits it out.

"I brought you a present."

"Did you," Ed says, grinning to himself. He slides his fingers through Stede's hair, like he's been idly doing this whole time he's been napping, and closes the shitty old horror paperback he's been enjoying way too much around the bookmark that Stede insisted he started using when he caught Ed about to dog-ear a library book several months ago. "Not my fake-birthday til November, babe."

Stede pushes against the soothing scratch of his fingers. "Not a birthday present," he explains patiently. "Only, you know. An I love you present. An I just think you'll like it present."

"Well, you've not been wrong yet," Ed points out, and lets himself be led back into the bedroom, where Stede produces a pristine white gift box from its hiding place in his t-shirt drawer and sets it down anxiously in the middle of the bed like he thinks he might have accidentally managed to pack a bomb instead of whatever it actually is.

And what it actually is... Ed thinks he can guess even before he slides the wide chiffon ribbon loose by one of its ivory tails. The thought makes him feel strangely giddy, and like he might laugh, and also a bit like he might cry? Then he lifts off the lid and makes his way through several crinkling layers of soft white tissue paper, and, yep, it's the tears that win in the end. They don't fall—they don't even gather enough to wet his eyes, really—but he can feel the burn in his nose and the ache in his throat as he lifts the soft turquoise lingerie out of the box and right to his face where he once touched a ball of royal purple cashmere yarn on the day he and Stede first met.

"Is it silk?" he asks, low and longing into the breathless silence between them.

"Mmhm," Stede confirms shyly, not any louder. He watches Ed lay the sheer babydoll garment carefully on the white duvet, then the matching knickers with lines of ruffles across the arse and lilac ribbons on each hip to match the one that ties the front of the babydoll together. Lilac. No fucking wonder this poor man blushed so hard the other day when Ed mentioned making him a lilac collar.

"Pretty," Ed says, still so soft, half-believing that raising his voice above a breath might break something fragile that he's not quite sure he understands fully yet but knows is there between them waiting to be acknowledged. There are white silk stockings in the box, too. He's afraid his work-rough hands are going to snag the gossamer fabric.

"I thought so," Stede whispers. Hesitantly, he reaches for the lingerie too and strokes the ruffled hem.

Oh, Ed thinks. There it is. That's what I was missing.

His hand inches closer on the gauzy turquoise silk, his thumb just grazing Stede's stroking forefinger. "Will you wear it for me?"

"Well... I got it for you," Stede says. He looks so sweetly confused, still flushed a little bit from the thrill of asking at all. "I thought, you know, with the skirts and knee socks already, you might... I mean, you did kind of say... didn't you? God, did I misread you?"

"I think I'll dress you up in silk stockings instead of wool and cashmere one day. You'll have to wait and see."

"Waiting. Not my strongest skill. What else?"

"To go with the stockings?"

"Yeah."

"Well, suspenders, naturally. Pretty, delicate ones, no steel rings or buckles. Something with lace or satin, or ribbons tying you up like a gift for me."

"Uh-huh. And?"

"If you want me to spin some dirty fantasy about fancy unmentionables you can ask me for it nicely."

Ed takes Stede's pink face between his palms and kisses him to halt the looming spiral. "Babe. You did not misread me, okay?"

Stede's eyebrows flicker at that, a hopeful little smile lifting one corner of his mouth so the dimple appears in his cheek, all gold and glittering in the low evening sunlight beneath its soft layer of stubble. "No?"

"No. And yeah, I will absolutely wear the fuck out of that stuff if you want me to. It's just, well..."

Ed leans over, stretching to snag the handle of the thick white paper gift bag he stashed under the cabin bed days ago as soon as Stede's attention was on his own unpacking.

"Here," he says, pretty sure he's about as blushy and squirmy as Stede by now. "I kinda bought some as well. I mean, for me. Cos I got the feeling you'd like to see it. But yours is loads nicer. Kind of, you know, elegant. Pretty. Soft. Like you." Ed touches the ruffles along the back of the knickers again, frothy and delicate as seafoam, and imagines them warmed and rumpled and stretched across Stede's broad body, the elastic leaving a map of pink pressure marks for Ed to discover later when he finally undresses him: every single one of them bared for him, one at a time, to track with his fingers and his tongue. "So I wanna see you wear that," he says, and it's Ed speaking, Ed admitting a desire, Ed even pleading a little bit, and not Blackbeard making a demand because that's just how they usually like to play. "And I'll have a go with the slutty one, yeah?"

"Well, I'd hate to deprive you of the spectacle of me in something slutty," Stede says, greedily fumbling past the tissue paper in the bag to lift out a black lace bralette and knickers set that seems to steal any ability to tease that he'd just started to regain. "Oh, Ed," he says softly, letting his surprised, delighted smile bloom wide. "What are you talking about? It's not slutty, it's beautiful. It's—oh."

"Just realised it's crotchless, have you?" Ed asks knowingly, and grins when Stede falls against him, giggling against his neck with the definitely a bit slutty underwear held tight in both hands like he might be contemplating carrying it round with him like a comfort blanket after all this.

"God," Stede mumbles, clumsily kissing Ed's throat between helpless, slightly overwhelmed giggles. "Are we really doing this? Both of us?"

Ed starts tugging insistently at the hem of Stede's t-shirt, because fucking yes, actually. "I didn't bring that all the way out here to not feel lace on my nuts," he says. "And yours... fuck, babe, if I don't see you in it right now I think I'm gonna die."

"Okay," Stede says against his fingers, trying to stifle his unstoppable mild-panic laughter. Starting to undress Ed does the trick, fading the giggles to a fond smile as he kisses down his twitching stomach and unzips his holey old cut-off jeans.

Lace on his nuts, Ed decides when he's got the new gear on, black fishnet stockings and all, is gonna take a bit of getting used to. Stede looks way more comfortable in those vintage looking mesh frills. At least his pubes are adequately contained behind the sheer fabric. Ed's are just kind of poking through every lace hole, snagging when he moves. It's not exactly unpleasant, to be fair. Just new, and weird.

But Stede is staring at him like they're in a romcom or something, like the Prince first seeing Cinderella waft into the ballroom in her dress of lies, and if what Stede is seeing is anything like what Ed is seeing he can understand why.

"Hey, beautiful," Ed says. For a lingering moment he feels weirdly bashful, uncomfortable even in a way that's got nothing to do with the insane volume of his pubes—but that smile breaks over Stede's face again, conjuring his cheek dimple, and Ed suddenly remembers so clearly that first view of him through the shop window back in January and how a part of his brain seemed to know what he'd found before the rest of him did, before they'd even had a conversation: I'm gonna lick that one day. Lick him right in the dimple.

"Hi, beautiful," Stede echoes quietly, and lets Ed draw him into a kiss that goes on and on forever, near enough.

Ed feels dazed when they break for breath, a little bit disoriented to find himself lying pressed against the pillows now, half on top of some discarded tissue paper that he has to wriggle to free from under his hip and push off the side of the bed with the empty box and gift bag. But more kisses follow, and he melts into them humming needy little sounds of pleasure into Stede's mouth, and thinks maybe he's never felt more at home before than right here, his arms around Stede's body, Stede's tongue in his mouth, his dick hanging out the front of some slutty black lace underwear that he bought half-expecting to need an excuse to make a joke of it all. Ha-ha, look, here's my cock all framed like a picture for you, now let's do some kinky sex about it. He didn't expect it to feel so... nice? Normal? Comfortable? Him? And he definitely didn't expect Stede to be grinding against the front of him wearing ruffled silk undies and a filmy frothy little babydoll held together over his broad chest by just a lilac satin ribbon and a prayer.

"I'll come," Ed warns, because he thinks he really might. The soft glide of Stede's cock against his own separated by nothing but a translucent whisper of silk is just too fucking much for him, even worse when Stede ducks his head to brush a line of kisses along the lacy top edge of his bra thing.

"Not yet," Stede begs, breathing hot and ragged against Ed's chest. He eases his hips away, both of them whimpering a bit pathetically at the loss, and then climbs right over Ed's leg to lie beside him instead of on top of him.

"Noo," Ed groans, trying to pull him back and only managing to grab a handful of silk.

"Edward," Stede scolds gently, but he's laughing as well and Ed settles down with a sheepish sort of grin, trying to will his dick to remember that it's forty-eight and not eighteen, and blasting off in five seconds just because his boyfriend looks really hot in fancy pastel undies would be pretty fucking embarrassing.

Watching Stede watch him is always going to be one of his favourite things in the world, and if that's arrogant or self-indulgent or whatever then fine, who cares—Ed thinks he's earned a bit of indulgence, actually, especially from himself after so many years of rejecting anything soft and sweet because it didn't sit right with his brand. Stede's face is peaceful and a little bit pink, and his eyes are doing that sleepy, pleasure-drunk, fluttering Disney princess sort of blink that Ed saw after their first kiss and immediately knew he needed to see again every day and night for the rest of his life. When he touches Ed through the black lace of his bralette, drawing eight light tickling trails with his fingertips down his soft bare belly, Ed feels the muscles there twitch and Stede must feel it too because he smiles, pleased, like he's been given another present.

"This is what I couldn't stop thinking about," he says softly, trailing his fingers back up the lines of tingling heat they just left in Ed's skin. "Black lace over your tattoos. All the shapes sort of blurring together. I don't know why it's this, specifically, knocking all the sense out of me. But, god, I just want to eat you."

That makes him laugh, dazed and a little bit breathless, because come the fuck on. "You wanna eat me while you're sitting there looking like a... a fucking rococo Parisian sweet shop window?"

Stede's already way past his bashful phase and he's somehow zoomed straight on to looking and acting like he's been wearing this fancy stuff forever. Maybe it's less of a giant step for him. Still kind of a fucking big one, but he's at least comfortable already in macaron pastels and delicate vintage lace. Ed watches him smile, pleased enough with the compliment to make his cheek dimple appear as a darker little shadow in his grey-flecked golden stubble, and Stede glances down at himself like he can't quite believe they're really doing this even after they've shared so much more with each other and half the world already.

"It is rather nice, isn't it?" he says, sounding a little bit dazed and dreamy himself. One hand leaves Ed's belly and comes to rest on his own instead, skimming lightly down to find the hem of the high-waisted frilly knickers like he's not quite sure yet that they're real and just needs to check. The frosted green colour of his favourite seaglass suits him so well. Of course he'd look sensational in something this soft and pretty. He is soft and pretty.

Maybe he feels Ed's gaze on him, all warm and hungry. He catches him looking, and for a moment Ed thinks he's gone too far with the sexy bedroom eyes and lured Stede's embarrassment out from wherever it retreated to—then Stede takes a shaky breath, and a steadier one, and lets his fingers continue their gentle path downwards to cup the distortion of his own cock through the fabric and slowly start to stroke.

"You in the mood for anything specific?" Ed murmurs, rolling closer to start pressing soft little kisses against Stede's sweating neck. "What exactly did you have in mind when you picked this up and imagined fucking me in it, hmm?"

Stede tilts his head to wordlessly beg for more. "You choose," he says, then adds, "please," in a breathy, needy sort of way that means both please choose the tone of the rest of the night and please don't stop the kissing.

No problem, on both counts, at least in theory. Apparently the reckless bit of Ed's brain that's constantly shouting over the sensible bit feels otherwise, and without really realising he was even about to speak he hears himself ask, "What if I choose something you don't want?"

"There's nothing I don't want," Stede says at once, all warm and reassuring and Stedey. He slides his fingers into Ed's curls, tugging just a little bit too hard maybe because he anticipates and wants the sharp warning slap on his thigh. It's loud in the sweaty silence of the bedroom, immediately chased by a hungry little mmm when Ed grips him by the chin and kisses him.

"You really think it's wise to lie to Blackbeard, do you?" Ed asks, slipping with ease into the low, velvety, threatening tone of his once-loathed persona.

Stede's struggling gently against the grip, trying to steal another kiss. A second slap makes him go still, breathing harder now and already looking thoroughly fucked, all pink cheeks and messy hair and dopey little grin. "Never. But I'm not above a small white lie to Edward every now and then."

It's the sort of teasing, easy banter that Ed usually loves. This flirting with boundaries stuff, characters and likes and dislikes and dominance and submission all kind of shaking together like a cinema pick 'n' mix, has become their normal over the last few months, their baseline, and figuring shit out and testing new things to see what works and doesn't has become part of the fun. He's just feeling contrary suddenly and doesn't know why. Probably a bit of the old 'if things seem too good to be true then they very likely are' self-preservation kicking in, here in the middle of this suspiciously perfect holiday with this suspiciously perfect man.

"Fuck off," he mutters, back to his normal voice, but there's no real venom or hurt in it, and he starts gently rubbing his palm over the pink patch on Stede's thigh to show he's not really mad. "Don't lie to me, either."

"Oh... darling," Stede says, softly apologetic. He touches Ed's wrist, the leather cuff still firmly buckled there like it's a permanent part of him, then down to rest his hand over the tattooed back of Ed's so he can feel the cuffs' linking chain that Stede wears as a bracelet every day. "It's not really lying. I think you know that."

"Do I," Ed mutters, feeling ridiculously sullen and stubborn and not inflecting it like a question.

Of course Stede knows how to take charge and draw him back from whatever edge he's subconsciously heading for. "I think so, yes," he says, twisting them so Ed's the one with his head against the unfamiliar pillows again and Stede is propped on one elbow beside him, carefully stroking a single fingertip along the lacy top edge of his bralette.

The touch tingles, warming Ed to the spiky core, and Stede must know it because he smiles then, fond and sweet and a little bit dorky. Ed's got no immunity against that smile, no matter what kind of a weird mood he's in.

"Sometimes," Stede says slowly, taking his time to choose the right words with care, "my enjoying a thing for its own sake isn't the point. The pleasure's in enduring something I don't particularly like, knowing that you do. Like yesterday, on our walk."

Ed pulls a face, but lets Stede touch his brow and lips and smooth them back to neutral without resisting, and kisses his fingertips after. "I don't want you to endure shit, I want you to like it. We don't have to do stuff you don't like, ever. I mean, there's plenty you do like. No big loss to scrap the rest."

"You're misunderstanding," Stede tells him, gentle but insistent between kisses to the closest of Ed's exposed shoulders and collarbones. "I think I'm saying it all wrong." His hand slides lower, grazing past the stretch of bare skin between Ed's bra and the top edge of his knickers to cup his wilting erection through the gap in the silky lace fabric, and he tries again. "I know your world, Blackbeard's world, isn't really my world, not yet. I know things are done a certain way sometimes, and that's for any number of very good reasons. But I know myself, too," he goes on, quiet and thoughtful like it's only occurring to him right in this moment, in someone else's cute little lakeside cabin with Ed's half-soft dick nestled in his palm. "I like to find my own path to a common destination, sometimes. You do, too. I think perhaps that's why we work so well. When you hold your hand out to me and say here, let's try this way, I bet the view's fucking brilliant, I'll always take it. Even if the view doesn't particularly do it for me after all, that's okay. It doesn't matter, not at all. Just holding your hand and exploring with you makes it the best day of my life."

Something seems to ping in Stede's brain then, as obvious as a lightbulb flashing on over someone's head in a cartoon. Ed just watches, hungry to see what he's up to and then downright fucking feral for it when Stede climbs off the bed and wriggles out of his frilly undies, leaving him in just the sheer babydoll and white hold-ups. He climbs back up, gently shushing Ed when he starts to speak, and straddles his hips so he can reach over for the lube bottle they've not bothered putting away all week.

"Take this, for example," Stede says, his breath catching when he reaches back with his slicked fingers to touch in between his cheeks. He goes quiet for a minute, readying himself and then Ed's cock with another handful of lube before guiding the tip of it to his hole and carefully easing himself down.

"Fuck," Ed groans, sounding hilariously strangled. The tight wet heat is one thing, and always a fucking incredible one at that, but seeing Stede like this is something else entirely, something new. His nipple bars are showing through the thin silk. His cock keeps peeking out the gap between the long tails of his lilac ribbon, all pink and hard and leaking onto every bit of fine silk it brushes against. He's found some courage somewhere, some more of the confidence in his own undeniable fucking hotness that he so often struggles for. "Stockings make you brave, hey?"

"I find the feel of silk very invigorating," Stede explains, nonchalantly testing out a little rock of his pelvis that gets Ed gritting his teeth and nearly whimpering again. The sound makes Stede grin, pleased with himself for causing it, and he reaches out to brace both hands on the wrought iron bedstead, a move that lets his dripping hard cock press deliciously against Ed's belly when he starts rocking harder. "As I was saying," he goes on, clearly trying to keep his voice steady but not doing a very good job of it, "take this. Your lovely, clever cock inside me."

"Stede," Ed begs, shaking with laughter and desperation. "You've got a fucking dirty mouth for a gentleman."

He smirks, finding a deep, rolling rhythm that feels so fucking good Ed's not sure he can take it. "Me, riding this big, beautiful cock of yours," he says, clearly relishing the enunciation of cock for no reason other than he can see it driving Ed wild. "I know the other way is your favourite. I know you like being fucked more than anything on Earth. But are you going to tell me to get off you now I'm here?"

"No," Ed insists, grabbing for Stede's thighs like there might actually be a possibility of that horrific idea happening. His fingers and thumbs find the wide bands of white lace holding the silk stockings up, stroking him, squeezing him, pleading without any more words for him not to stop.

"Exactly," Stede says, sounding not quite smug about it, but maybe triumphant. Maybe just relieved that he's managed to make his point so thoroughly. Ed can barely remember what the point even is any more. "So we'll have no more silly talk about me not enjoying the things you do to me, thank you."

"Gonna make you go out there after this and cut a thousand switches and break every fucking one of them over your smart arse," Ed threatens, but somehow he can't quite find his serious Blackbeard tone any more and when they come they're both breathless and giggling deliriously and covering each other's faces in silly smoochy little kisses, Ed's hands clenched tight around two sweaty fistfuls of crumpled turquoise silk.

"We could retire here," Stede says, idly slipping his fingers through Ed's curls as the late summer sunshine dries them as soft and fluffy as dandelion clocks after their swim. "Or somewhere like here. Quiet, peaceful. Close enough to the rest of the world not to be completely isolated, but annoying enough for people to get to that they mostly won't bother."

Ed snorts a laugh, maybe imagining Lucius and Izzy and all the other potential visitors getting as frustrated as he did by the overgrown state of the forest paths around here and the insistence of nature, flora and fauna both, on constantly getting in your city boy face. He twists carefully, only slightly rocking the drifting rowboat, and resettles his head on Stede's lap so he can squint up at him, shading his eyes with his hand. "Wouldn't mind being isolated with you, forever. Feels like there's nobody else in the world out here."

"You'd get bored," Stede tells him, amused by how quickly Ed's gone from frustration about too many bugs to sleepy and docile in an old red rowboat in the middle of a silent lake, having his hair played with and daydreaming about dying here.

Ed smirks up at him, one eyebrow raised. "Not likely. Reckon I can wake up all kinds of other sick little fetishes in you if I keep digging."

"Maybe I'll wake them in you," Stede counters, gently tugging Ed's hair. And yeah, maybe he will. Ed can't fucking wait to find out.