Ed gets an orgasm. As a treat. - "I almost expect you to start purring any second," he jokes. The collar still sits around Ed's delicate neck, jingling softly every time he moves. The thought won't leave his head. He runs a hand slowly through Ed's hair, then smooths it down his shoulder, his bicep, repeats the gesture on his other side. "Stede, are you fucking petting me?"

It's been a few weeks of their newfound domestic intimacy when he feels the need to say the words. He's held safely in Stede's arms, warm in their own bed, in their own room, on this ship that is their home. "You were a mermaid when I almost died." - Ed tells Stede about his near death experience. Stede comforts him.

The collar makes an encore. - He reaches tentatively for Ed's hair, delighted to be allowed to pull it aside to reveal the expanse of his neck. He opens the clasp on the collar and reaches around Ed to slide it in place and close it securely. He doesn't miss the full body shiver that runs through Edward when the collar is resting safely against his skin once again, bell tucked neatly into the hollow of his throat. Ed turns around to look at him. He looks ethereal in the bright afternoon light, hair a halo of silver around him. His next words are like molten lava poured over Stede's head. "What would you have me do, Captain?"

Some days he feels like he never woke up from the dream where magic was real and Stede was a mermaid. Not because this -their relationship, their life together- doesn't feel real, because it does, it feels real like the breeze on his face and the ground beneath his boots and the immensity of the sky above him, but because he never knew any of what he's experienced with Stede over the past few weeks was possible. In his wildest fantasies, maybe, he dreamed of sweet tea and fine fabrics, the warmth of good brandy sliding down his throat while the fire kept his feet cozy and Stede's voice spread like wildfire through his chest. But his imagination failed him so completely when it comes to Stede Bonnet. - Stede takes Ed dancing.

"Do you want to know a secret?" Stede whispers in his hear. "I love you, you nut. I want to spend the rest of my life with you."

Edstede. Rated E Stede draws the curtains shut, enclosing them in the dark, intimate space of the bed nook, anticipation running recklessly through his veins. He turns to Ed, looking up at him expectantly on the bed, the cascade of his hair loose around his shoulders and his eyes huge and vulnerable, bathed in the golden light of the fireworks the crew is setting off on deck. - Ed cries out, grips Stede's arm tight enough to bruise, and Stede will wear the lovely shades of purple on his skin proudly, a mark of their passion to match the ones he left on Ed's thighs earlier. "That's it, hold onto me. Let me give you what you need." He needs to take care of him so very desperately. - Picks up right after Stede closes the bed curtains. Tender, horny sex ensues.

Ed makes his way back to Stede after watching the ships burn. - Something settles into place within him as he hacks and slashes his way back to Stede. He doesn't want to do this anymore, he's certain of that. But maybe he doesn't have to burn his bridges to get to where he's going. Maybe everything he's capable of can serve him well sometimes, maybe there's some middle ground between fisherman and pirate.

The memory flashes through his mind of Ed gifting a couple of kids on the Republic a bag of gold and a pair of knives, and claiming they weren't pirates but inn owners afterwards. How long has he been thinking about this? How long has this been a dream of his?