Work Text:
It’s sweaty in the back of Stede’s car and the humid air has long since fogged up the windows. The distant lapping of the waves is indiscernible from the sound of rushing blood in Ed’s ears. They’re kissing; hot and wet and desperate and fuck this is a bad idea. This is dumb, so dumb, so monumentally fucking stupid of them.
Stede is meeting his future wife tomorrow and Ed? Well, he never planned on sticking around this sorry excuse for a town for any length of time anyway.
And yet, here they are; necking like they’re teenagers-- they’re barely adults- in the backseat of a car, kissing like tomorrow isn’t coming.
Monumentally fucking stupid.
Stede’s lips trail down Ed’s neck, teeth gently grazing the tendon and Ed throws his head back and moans. Who knew Stede fucking Bonnet could kiss like this?
“Stede-”
Stede sucks a mark into the soft flesh at the junction of Ed’s neck and shoulder, moaning a query as his tongue soothes the spot he’s just bruised. Ed’s dick is straining against his jeans and the last rational thoughts are quickly losing the fight with his desires.
“Fuck, Stede-”
Stede pulls back to meet Ed’s gaze in the dim light afforded by the street lamp they’ve parked near. His pupils are blown and he’s panting like he’s just run a marathon. They share a few huffed breaths, Ed sliding his arms around Stede’s neck and bringing their damp foreheads together. They sit, breathing each other in, bodies thrumming with want, before Ed swallows and continues.
“Stede…we should— we should stop. Yeah? I mean, you... tomorrow…” his voice trails off. “We should stop.”
He feels the minute nod of Stede’s head where their foreheads are still pressed together. Stede swallows, takes several deep breaths and he nods again.
“Yeah. Yep.”
They don’t move, still sharing humid breaths, bodies taught with desire.
“Stede… do you...? Do you want to stop?” Ed asks and it comes out sounding much smaller and more vulnerable than he’d like.
He hears the inhale from Stede, feels his hands slowly trail back up his arms, pinpricks of electricity leaving goosebumps in their wake. Stede threads those hands through his hair, now tangled and damp, and so carefully pulls Ed’s head back so he can look him in the eye.
His gaze is weighted, and Ed can see the spectres of expectation and obligation haunting those eyes. He can feel himself tearing up with rage and sadness for this beautiful man. This man who loves flowers and books and silly knick-knacks and who has resisted every attempt so far to be stripped of all the wonderfully brilliant things that make him human.
Ed can see it. He knows, they both know-
Ed’s right: they should stop. This thing could fucking fracture them. There’s no going forward from here, as friends or otherwise. Tomorrow, Stede will be engaged and there’s no way in hell Ed plans on sticking around to see that take shape.
So Ed has done the right thing, the brave thing. He’s given Stede the out. He knows Stede’s answer before it comes; he knows because Stede Bonnet has obligations and those obligations are to his family and his new fiancé and not to boys like Ed. Not boys who ride motorbikes and wear crop tops and have their nipples pierced. Who come from the shit part of town and have long hair and nail polish and tattoos. So it’s only right that Ed ends this before it can really begin. He knows this; he knows that Stede will answer him with a-
“No.”
Ed stares at him for a hot minute, stunned. Stede smiles softly, absently brushing Ed’s curls off his sticky forehead. His brain has turned to some kind of sludgy liquid that his thoughts are currently struggling to keep afloat in.
“No?” he mutters, dumbfounded.
“No. I don’t want to stop,” Stede responds with confidence, almost to himself as though he’s tasting the feeling; hesitant but steadfast.
Well.
Well.
Fuck it.
Ed grins.
It’s not like this was going to stop them falling any more in love with each other. And even still, well, Ed was the king of bad decisions. One more wasn’t going to kill him.
Stede’s answering smile is radiant, almost blinding in the half light of the cars interior and yeah, ok, Ed’s gone on this ridiculous man.
He dives back in, teeth clacking in their haste to resume the frantic and wet kisses from before. Ed shifts on Stede’s lap, both of them groaning from the resulting friction. The air has shifted from tense and heavy to giddy and electric and Ed can feel that electricity tingling down his arms, into his toes and at every point of contact his body shares with Stede’s. Ed shifts, trying to gain some more leverage, and the seat makes an awkward sound under his knee, causing Stede to pull his lips away in a giggle.
Ed pulls back too, eyes crinkled with mirth-
“Bit ungraceful, yeah?”
Stede snorts. “A tad inelegant, yes.”
They sit for a moment in stillness, sharing breath, before Ed slowly positions his hands on Stede’s shoulders and Stede’s in turn naturally move to Ed’s waist. Ed smirks and then, very deliberately, grinds.
Stede’s eyebrows shoot up and his hands tighten against Ed’s denim covered hips and Ed does it again. The friction rips a moan from Stede’s throat and Ed grins before capturing his mouth to swallow the sound of it. For a moment the car is filled with the wet sounds of their mouths, only inter-cut with the occasional squeak of the car seat and more muffled moaning.
Ed pulls back with a gasp, the speed of his hips increasing as they both chase that too-much-not-enough electric feeling from the place where their clothed dicks are straining against each other.
“God, Ed,” he pants between moans. “You feel… so good. Fuck.”
“Yeah, yeah, so good, Stede. Imagine how I’m gonna feel ‘round your dick.” He ducks his head into Stede’s neck and sucks, hips driving down in a particularly tortuous grind. Stede cries out, hands slipping under Ed’s shirt to grasp at his sweaty back.
“Ed. Ed. Do you… mean that? I- shit. I don’t have any-. You know I’ve never-. Ed, please.”
“Relax, gorgeous.” Ed pulls back to yank his shirt over his head, arms awkwardly hitting the roof of the car as he does. “Not going to have the first time you’re inside me happen in the back of a car your dad bought you.”
Stede almost shouts a moan as his hands fly to Ed’s arse, guiding his hips into another luscious grind.
“Can we please not mention my father right now?”
Ed snickers and tilts his head back as Stede leans forward to start kissing a trail down his neck towards his chest. Stede’s tongue finds his nipple and licks curiously at the cool metal there. Rewarded with a moan from Ed, he places his whole mouth over the nipple and sucks.
“Fuck! Stede.” Ed’s hips buck at the sensation. Encouraged, Stede pulls off with an obscene pop and moves to the other nipple, lapping at the sensitive bud, tongue working around the metal baubles.
Ed shudders at the sensation and continues: “Yeah, ‘m gonna lay you out on those fancy sheets of yours the first time I ride you.” He punctuates the word ‘ride’ with a particularly devilish circle of his hips that has Stede moaning vibrations against his chest as he continues to tongue his sensitive nipple.
Stede pulls back with a gasp, the grip he has on Ed’s hips becoming almost painfully hard. Ed smirks.
“You’d like that, hmm?”
The frantic way in which Stede is bucking beneath him answers for him. Ed’s smirk almost falls off his face at the way Stede bites at the corner of his own lip and responds hesitantly but determined-
“Maybe I’ll… maybe I’ll lay you out.”
And fucking hell, if seeing Stede testing out his confidence in this context doesn’t almost have him ending in his pants like he is fifteen.
“Oh, yeah? Gonna lay me down? Rail me into that expensive mattress of yours? Make a mess of me and those silky sheets?”
Stede nods his head, a little uncertain, as though he can’t quite believe his own words. He leans forward to suck at Ed’s bottom lip momentarily, nipping at it softly before pulling back again, this time with a little more gusto.
“Yes. I think so.”
Ed grins like a loon, hoping to encourage Stede to continue. “Yeah? Then what? Hmm?”
“Then I’m... going to tell you how beautiful you are. Going to treasure you.” And of course Stede has to make it sentimental. Of course he does.
“Fuck, Stede, you can’t just say shit like that.” Ed feels the words caught in the back of his throat and tears prickling his eyes. How embarrassing,Jesus.
“Why not? It’s true. You’re beautiful and you deserve to be treasured.”
“Fuck. Fuck. I need-”
Ed starts fumbling with his belt, his motor functions seemingly haven taken a dip in the last 20 minutes or so as he struggles with the buckle. Stede cottons on and starts working his own trousers open.
“Yes, Ed. Me too. Both of us, together, yeah?” Ed shoves his underwear aside and looks across to see Stede reaching in his own to free his cock. Ed takes a moment to just stare at it, flushed red, tip shining with precum, and licks his lips.
“Fuck yeah.”
He reaches for Stede’s cock and runs his fingers up the length of it experimentally. Stede’s reaction is instant: his head slams back against the headrest, eyes squeezed shut, and his hands shoot to Ed’s knees in a vice-like grip. Ed leans forward to kiss him again softly and sickeningly sweet, an unspoken check in- still ok? Some of the tension leaves Stede immediately, his grip on Ed’s knees softening and his gaze coming back to meet Ed’s in an equally unspoken answer - yes.
Ed grasps Stede’s cock, getting a feel for the girth of it. He gives it a few tugs, experimenting with the grip and the speed, though Stede seems on board with all of it. He shifts forward until his own cock is flush with Stede’s and grips them both in his sure hand. They both moan at the sensation and Stede looks down where they’re joined and whispers an, “Oh, fuck”. Ed concurs; this is not going to last long.
Stede is leaking precum which helps slick things just perfectly and shit, Ed’s never wanted to suck a dick more in his life. The indecent sounds mix with their shared moans and grunts as Ed jerks them both deliciously. He can feel the tension coiling in Stede, notices the increasingly frantic jerks of his hips and he’s almost giddy with the thought that he is responsible for that. Stede’s face is redder than the time he fell asleep in his backyard reading and had sunburn that lasted weeks. His hair is a sweaty tangle of ruined waves and watching him chase his completion is the most beautiful Ed has ever seen him. Stede’s grip tightens as his hands move up Ed’s thighs and he manages a strangled few breaths before-
“Ed, shit, sorry I’m going to-”
Ed’s free hand moves to cup Stede’s neck. He leans in and, panting, gives him a sloppy half-kiss.
“Don’t you dare fucking apologise. Are you kidding? You’re the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. Fuck, don’t hold back Stede. Let go, I want to see it.”
Stede lets out his breath in a woosh and does exactly that. His hips jerk up, almost knocking Ed off in the process, as he hits his peak and comes.
Ed jerks him through it, strips of cum painting his hand and his cock and both their pants. It seems to go on forever and if Ed thought his precum was wet, that was nothing compared to the sheer volume that is spurting out of Stede now, as though he’s been holding onto it all his life.
Eventually it stops and Ed slows his hand as Stede starts to whimper from the overstimulation. Ed can feel his own peak coiled and tingling at the base of his spine; it’s a miracle he didn’t shoot at the sight of Stede’s own.
“Christ, Ed, that was… wow. I-,” he trails off, breath slowly returning to normal.
Ed grins. Stede grins back.
”Congrats on losing your v-card Stede.”
Ed giggles and Stede’s shocked outrage quickly melts into giggles too. The movement serves to remind both of them that Ed is still painfully hard and awkwardly gripping his dick against Stede’s softening one.
“May I?” Stede asks, voice still wobbly from his orgasm, reaching to move Ed’s hand out of the way.
“You may,” Ed acquiesces with a grin, pulling his cum-covered hand away to unceremoniously wipe it off on his jeans. Stede pulls a face and Ed laughs at him, a laugh that quickly turns into a choked off moan as Stede grips his cock and starts to move. Stede’s cum really is everywhere and it’s making the slide of his hand deliciously smooth against the hard heat of Ed’s cock. Not that this was going to take long anyway, but the way Stede starts whispering words of praise into his neck (“That’s it darling, look at you, Ed, you’re so beautiful, so lovely like this...”) as he continues to twist his hand perfectly and swipe his thumb across the slit of Ed’s cock has him coming much sooner than he anticipated.
The cry he lets out as his orgasm crashes into and out of him is closer to a wail and Ed can feel tears pooling in the corners of his eyes as he spills desperately between them, his own spend joining Stede’s mess.
They sit in the afterglow for a moment, their slowing breaths the only sound other than the distant crashing of waves, as Eds brain slowly starts to switch back online.
His knees, he realises suddenly, are screaming at him and his neck is starting to ache from the weird angle his head adopted to avoid hitting the car roof. He’s fairly certain one of his feet has gone to sleep, but one feeling that he certainly doesn’t feel is regret.
He sighs contentedly and kisses Stede again softly; a sweet and indulgent thing. Ed feels Stede’s smile against his lips and they trade chaste little pecks, softly licking into each others mouths before Ed pulls back enough to notice Stede’s hand awkwardly hovering in between them, streaked with the mess they both made. Ed sniggers and Stede scrunches his face in disgust before jostling Ed onto the seat beside him so he can reach for some wet wipes he keeps in the centre console. Once they’ve cleaned up as best they can with Ed giggling through most of it (“Stede, seriously, I’ve never seen someone cum that much outside of a porno.”) and readjusted their pants, they wind down the windows to let the fresh sea breeze air out the thick muskiness of their activities.
Stede leans back into the corner where the seat-back meets the door and Ed lays against him, back to chest, while he plays idly with Ed’s curls. Their breathing has mostly returned to normal, Ed occasionally interrupting Stede’s movements to press a kiss to his wrist or the back of his hand, humming happily when he receives one on his temple in return. As hot as the proceeding experience had been, Ed thinks that if he could capture this feeling and bottle it, he’d never feel awful again.
The beep from Stede’s Casio watch (which thankfully had been removed and thrown into the foot-well along with Ed’s shirt) signals it’s midnight and Ed can feel Stede’s body go tense beneath him. Tomorrow isn’t some undetermined point in the future any more; it’s today.
Ed wants to scream. He wants to cry. Wants to do anything to stop the well of panic he knows is rebuilding within Stede right now. He flips to face him, nose to nose, and cups his jaw in an attempt to stop this bubble of joy they’ve made from popping.
“Hey, hey, Stede. Listen to me. You don’t have to do this, ok? We can… fuck, I dunno, we can leave this fucking place, yeah? Get out of here, leave this miserable town and all its bullshit behind. Just you and me, starting our lives, wherever we want to go. Whatever you want, Stede.”
Ed can’t keep the panic from his voice and Stede is crying and fuck Ed didn’t want this to happen.
(Monumentally fucking stupid . )
Stede breathes in a great big heaving sob and shakes his head. “Ed, we can’t.. I... How would we even survive? If I run away my father will cut me off. I won’t have anything.”
“We can do it. I have all that money sitting in the bank from my old man’s payout… There's enough Stede, I swear. Enough for us to go somewhere, start fresh.”
Stede wipes at his face, hiccuping back more tears. “But you said you weren’t going to touch that. That you didn’t even want it.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I just found enough motivation to. We could go tomorrow. Well today... In the morning. Head down the coast? Set up that little shop we always joked about- Petal and Ink, or whatever. We can workshop the name, it doesn’t matter. I’ve finished my tattoo apprenticeship and you’ve got that natural talent with flowers and shit. My aunt never shuts up about that centrepiece you did for her 50th.”
Stede lets out a wet chuckle. “You… you mean that Ed? You really think we could? Just… go like that? Leave it all behind?”
Ed grins, nodding in encouragement and practically vibrating against Stede’s chest. He feels, not for the first time tonight, something like hope curling in his chest.
“Of course we can, can do anything we want. I’ll hook up my little trailer to the bike, shove our shit in there and we can just go. Stede, you’ve been so brave tonight, man. You are so brave I just… I need you to be brave with this too.”
Stede pulls their foreheads together and calms his sobs. Ed is strung so tightly with anxiety, fear, excitement, waiting for Stede to respond. Because that’s what it comes down to really. Stede has to be the one to take the leap here. Ed can leave this town with no regrets and never look back but there’s no denying that Stede leaving means blowing up his entire world. Ed can feel his skin pebbling from the chill of the atmosphere in the car, cool sea breeze and a sinking feeling of dread pooling in his stomach. He lets out a heavy sigh and starts to think about pulling away and shrinking into himself when Stede lets out a barely audible, “Yeah.”
Ed pulls back abruptly, eyes searching Stede’s face for any sign that he misheard him.
“Yes?” Ed asks once more and Stede, biting his lip, nods again.
“Fucking-- yes! Let’s do this!” Ed practically jumps with glee, punching the air before diving in to kiss Stede again; quick and messy and brimming with mirth.
“Alright, let’s each go home and pack a bag, yeah? Just the essentials. We’ll meet back here, by the docks at sunrise. Sound good?”
Stede nods again and brushes his hand across Ed’s forehead and strokes down the side of his face. He cups Ed’s jaw and runs a thumb across his lips. A thousand thoughts are running through Ed’s mind but none are more prominent than the one about how much he loves this brave man. His chest is tight to bursting with all the feelings he is experiencing in this moment: pride, fondness, fear, love.
They kiss some more, soft little pecks broken by smiles and giggles, and then both jump out of the back seat into the brisk night air. After Ed has crowded Stede against the car door to kiss some more he pulls away to put his shirt back on and re-tie his hair into a pony.
“I’ll see you in a few hours, yeah?” Ed still holds a frisson of fear in his gut at the prospect of Stede backing out of this.
Stede pulls Ed to him again, smashes their lips together and kisses him like he’s starved for it. He licks into Ed’s mouth while his hands squeeze at his arse and pulls their hips flush against each other. It’s hot and wet and filthy and Ed’s dick is already starting to get interested again. He groans embarrassingly loudly when Stede pulls away with a grin.
“Absolutely. Sunrise, by the docks.”
Fucking maniac. Ed loves this man.
Ed reluctantly pulls away and sets off down the street in a dreamy sort of haze, high on the prospect of a future with guy he’s been in love with for the last 3 years. As he hears the distant rumble of Stede’s engine starting against the constant, steady soundtrack of crashing waves, he hopes with everything in him that Stede will be there in the morning.
Maybe in the morning, Ed will be waiting by the docks with a steadily cooling coffee against a purple sky that drips depressingly into a grey and sombre morning. A cold and biting ride down the coast with nothing in his stomach but bitter regret and mediocre coffee, leaving the last of this town and the memories of Stede Bonnet in his rear vision mirror.
But maybe the morning will bring a pink-cheeked Stede, frosty breath curling in the dawn light after taking a sip of Ed’s disgustingly sweet hot chocolate while Ed tries to stuff Stede’s duffle bag (“I packed lightly Ed, I swear, but I couldn’t leave without a robe for goodness sake!”) into his bike trailer. They’ll share a tender kiss and Ed will feel his heart flutter at the feeling of Stede’s breath on his neck as he sits behind him on the bike, arms curling protectively around Ed’s middle. Maybe they’ll set off down the road, engine rumbling beneath them and future ahead of them, taking one last look at the town that has brought them misery but also brought them each other.