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In the dream, it’s all very pleasant.
It doesn’t even feel like a dream. While he’s in it, for Stede, it just feels like a regular day; nothing seems strange, or out of the ordinary, or particularly dream-like. In hindsight, that’s a bit reassuring, actually. His life is so pleasant that any day passed could just as easily be a sweet dream.
Not that he remembers how he got here, but he’s enjoying a warm afternoon on the shore. The ship’s just off in the distance; he knows this to be true, even if he doesn’t see it. There’s no anxiety, no fear. The Revenge is safely nearby, and he thinks nothing of it.
All he has the capacity to think about is Ed. His mouth kissing along Stede’s throat, his hands holding gently his soft waist, his entrance tight and slick and hot around his cock.
Though he knows Ed is speaking, he can’t make out the exact words. The sound of his voice is just a pleasant rumble, rather than anything distinct or specific, and Stede dissolves into it, eyes fixed on the bright blue sky above. The sun doesn’t sting him, not even in this cloudless, shining vastness. He can stare right upright and see the shape of Ed against the sun and not even need to squint.
Ed’s heavy in his lap, moving downwards, closer and closer, until he’s practically curled up with him. His thrusts are deep, until he’s too near, his face practically buried in Stede’s chest, arms winding around his shoulders, burying himself into him. Then, he starts to grind into Stede instead, taking his cock as deep as he can get him.
A gliding kiss finds Stede’s jaw, and he hums, smiling. It’s all just lazy, lethargic warmth, comfortable and cozy, drifting in this sunny, hazy purgatory-space.
“I love you,” he tells Ed, heat flowing through him, like the sun shines through his words to glow inside him.
He gets a murmur of a response, something dark and bass-deep; he tilts up into it, trying to find his arms to wrap them around Ed in return. Their weight is strangely absent; thinking about it is confusing, so he relaxes again, ignoring his bewildered mind as it scratches at him.
There’s heat everywhere, and Stede just drifts in it, enjoying the pleasure, basking in their snug, close-together hold, relishing the balmy weather and the thick humidity and Ed’s body on and around and along his.
It’s as though he blinks, and then he’s blinking again, something heavier, sleepier, drowsing. The sun disappears in bleeding jumps, becoming darkness and window-granted moonlight and a body moving above his. For a moment, the dream is still real, though the transition is confusing—
And then, he understands, and he relaxes, a tired smile spreading across his face. Contented, relieved heat spreads through him, and he slumps down into their bed, a melting mess of limbs and bones, letting his eyes blink back open again.
He’s sure he’s been asleep for a few hours; his eyes are plenty adjusted to the darkness, and he can see Ed plainly above him, a dream creature, a beauty, a vision, all long lines of heat and grinding longing, bathed in the silvering moonlight as he is. He’s held just as close here as he had been in that dream-space, but now, Stede can actually find his arms. Lifting them, he winds them around Ed, receiving a sleepy mumble against his throat in response.
“Hi,” Ed says, heavy and warm and close.
One of his hands tracks up into Stede’s hair, fingers threading through to weave into thick curls and hold him tight, tilting him down so he can lean up for a kiss. Stede can feel the smile against his lips; something delighted sparks in the base of his spine, the deepest part of his stomach, the root of his cock.
“Good morning,” Stede rasps back to him. His voice is still sleep-scratching and thick with disuse; Ed kisses the corner of his mouth, then nuzzles into the juncture of his neck and his shoulder again, gliding kisses down his jaw and into the meat of his throat. “Is it morning, even?”
“No,” Ed tells him. “You can get some more sleep.”
His voice breaks in a straining way, his hips still moving in these tight grinds against him; Stede’s cock is buried inside of him, Ed fully seated on him, holding him as close as he can keep him. It’s something they’ve long since agreed to; they’ve woken each other up this way several times, and— in all honesty, from Stede’s point of view, there’s no better way to wake up.
Heart racing, a smile of his own spreading sleepily across his face before he yawns, Stede stretches a bit before curling himself around Ed.
“Are you close, darling?” Stede asks him. He lets one arm drift around Ed’s shoulders; the other, he weaves through his hair, stroking softly along through the thickly-curling strands, scratching his scalp and tracing down his back.
“Yeah,” Ed tells him, rumbled into Stede’s throat. He kisses the top of Ed’s head, shifting to push his hips up, meeting his grinds downward with deep thrusts upward. “Oh, fuck.”
Though he keeps holding him close, hand stroking through the frizz of his sleep-tangled hair, he releases Ed just enough to wriggle his other hand between them. He can feel the place Ed’s cock is trapped between them, his only friction from the rub of their nightgown-covered bellies together over and under his shaft, his balls.
His fingertips make enough space for him to wrap around Ed before he’s doing just that, spreading to tighten his fingers around the pulsing, hot length of his cock between them.
The noise that Ed makes then is broken, whining, desperate, aroused, buried in Stede’s chest, his throat. His hand comes up to grasp with digging fingers at his belly before gliding up to his tits, squeezing in tight there; the other takes Stede’s waist beneath his hold so he can shift himself just slightly upwards and move, fucking himself down onto Stede’s cock, folded in so close around him, nestled on Stede’s lap, curled up into him where he’s woken up flat on his back in bed.
“So close,” Ed tells him. He’s sleep-rasping, too, his voice quieter and thicker than it is in the daylight hours. “Fuck, I’m— Fuck, ‘m so close—”
Stede uses the hand he has woven through Ed’s hair to tilt him upright, giving him a proper kiss. Into that kiss, Ed’s breath catches; Stede can feel it in his throat, senses the gasp inside his chest, just before his body’s tensing and he’s cumming in spurting bursts of slick-dripping heat over Stede’s hand, soaking into their nightgowns.
The sensation of Ed’s body tightening, every muscle pulling together towards his release and then giving, all at once, is nearly impossible for Stede’s systems to manage. He’s drunk on him, pulling him up for another kiss while he grinds himself upwards and chases his own orgasm.
It comes then, fast, slamming into him and rattling through his limbs. The heat and feeling all surge through him, down his spine, through his belly, into his cock, and out, and he thinks he’s bursting from the inside out, soaking Ed with the release he just can’t stop shuddering through inside of him. All he can do is fuck up into him, in these twitching little thrusts, and wring his orgasm out of himself, and ride each wave of incredible good amazing everything everything everything sensations until his hazy mind starts to come back into itself, a bit.
Blinking again, Stede takes a shaky breath, then another. They’re each trembling, just like his limbs, and his head, and his vibrating heart inside him.
One of Ed’s warm hands glides along the side of Stede’s face, tilting him downwards for a soft, slow kiss. For a beat, Stede doesn’t even close his eyes; he just wants to look at him, enjoying the blushing, heated sight of him in the shining moonlit darkness, sweat-damp and pleasure-soaked and adored and happy.
“Take it off,” Ed murmurs against his lips. “I’ll scrub ‘em out tomorrow for us.”
Stede wriggles, the two of them working slowly and gingerly together to tug their nightgowns off without disconnecting from each other. They just barely accomplish it; Ed’s able to toss their nightclothes to the floor before curling back into him. Stede’s soft cock still fills him, his spend dripping in tiny dribbles as it leaks out around him. Neither of them makes any move to change that, though. They can always bathe themselves in the morning.
“That was a very pleasant dream,” Stede tells him.
“Mm?” Ed asks, nuzzling back into his throat, arms winding close around him. “Was I there?”
Smiling, Stede kisses the top of his head.
“Of course you were,” Stede tells him. “Aren’t you always?”
Ed huffs a laugh against his throat, fingers threading up to rest over his chest, stroking along the wiry layer of hair and his freckles beneath, thumb stroking over a dark cluster of three beside his nipple.
“Must’ve been a good dream,” he mumbles. His jaw cracks around a yawn, pressed into Stede’s shoulder.
“Oh, the best,” Stede murmurs to him. “Thank you very much.”
“Thank you,” Ed says back, barely awake. “Go back to sleep.”
In this hazy, cozy closeness, Stede is content to do just that, twining himself up with Ed and holding them both near, as near as they can get, locked in together until morning comes.