Work Text:
The first time it happened, they’d been alone at the inn for three days.
Ed woke up feeling restless and afraid. It wasn’t like the way he felt when a storm was coming, though it was similarly ominous and preternatural. No, a storm focused him, sharpened his mind to a point. A storm turned him into a weapon. Whatever this was, it dulled his senses, leaving him feeling confused and helpless. Whatever this harbinger pointed to, he had no knowledge of how to prepare for it.
Stede didn’t seem to notice right away that something was off. If Ed had been more clear headed, he would have thought that was fair; he usually took some time to get in sync with a new day.
Ed wasn’t clear headed.
He stared down at the broken teacup at his feet, struggling to find the next step in this sequence, unable to find the words to communicate to Stede that he needed help, and increasingly annoyed that Stede wasn’t figuring it out on his own.
“Darling?”
The word floated through the air, on the periphery of his awareness.
“Darling?”
A hand came to rest gently at the back of his neck. Ed tried to shrug it away, but it stayed there.
“Are you alright?”
“Broke a cup,” Ed said gruffly.
“I can see that.”
To Ed’s relief, the hand lifted away from his neck. Two slippered feet came into view in front of him, next to the china shards. Stede sighed.
“Why don’t you go sit on the porch, dear?” he asked. “I’ll clean this up and make you a fresh cup. I think the water’s still hot.”
Ed grunted and did as he was told. It was easier, he found, to stop trying to think and just do as he was told instead.
The sun reflecting off the water made him squint and shrink back into the inn. He found himself trapped on the threshold, unable to make a decision about what to do next. The sun seemed too bright. It hadn’t been that bright yesterday, had it? Or the day before?
Stede came up behind him and cleared his throat.
“Ed.”
Stede paused. Ed didn’t move.
“Ed, please move, you’re blocking the door.”
Ed shuffled out onto the porch. He dropped heavily to the floor with his back against the outside wall of the inn. He felt suddenly drained, like he wouldn’t be able to hold himself up on his own.
“I don’t feel so good,” he said. It came out too quiet for Stede to hear, over where he was fussing with the campfire they’d built in the sand. He cleared his throat.
“I don’t feel so good,” he said, a bit too loud this time. Stede looked over at him, frowning.
“What kind of not good?”
Ed shrugged.
“Dunno. Just. Off.”
Stede hummed.
“Well, let’s get some food in you and then see how you’re feeling.”
They didn’t get some food in him.
Stede watched disapprovingly as Ed played with the bit of fish and seaweed he’d cooked up.
“You know, it took me quite a while to catch that fish,” he said finally. “Aren’t you going to eat any of it?”
Ed shook his head haltingly, then grimaced. Oh, he should not move his head like that, no sir.
“Nauseous,” he said, by way of explanation.
Stede softened a bit at that.
“You know,” he said. “It’s only been, what, two weeks since you suffered a pretty serious head injury? Maybe you’re still healing.”
Ed started to nod and then caught himself.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”
“Why don’t you go lie down for a bit?” Stede suggested.
Ed felt relief wash over him at the suggestion. Yeah. A lie down. That would be better than fighting to remain upright, like he was doing now.
He felt a bit better in the cool darkness of the inn. He hadn’t realized how much the light outside was making the nausea worse. With a hand out in front of him and his eyes barely open, he felt his way along to their bedroom and shuttered all the windows before collapsing with a groan onto the bed.
Stede came in and rubbed his back. Ed wished he wouldn’t; the pressure on his skin felt like fire, but he found that he couldn’t speak. Soon, he fell asleep.
When he woke up, a little before sunset, he felt hungover, like he’d just been on a bender, though he hadn’t had a thing to drink all day, or the day before.
They didn’t talk about it. Later, Ed would wonder if they should have, if it would have made a difference.
The following week, the sense of impending doom fell over Ed in the evening. He rushed to tell Stede right away, while he could still talk.
“I don’t feel good,” he said, picking at the rabbit Stede had caught that day. Stede looked at him, questioning.
“Like last time, I think. Maybe. I don’t know. I just feel… off. Again.”
Stede nodded.
“You felt better after you slept last time,” he said. “Why don’t you go to bed early tonight?”
Ed nodded gingerly and left his bit of rabbit uneaten.
He dropped all of his clothes on the floor beside the bed, not bothering to fold them and put them away. The cool sheets were a comfort against his bare skin.
He woke at dawn to pain like nothing he’d ever experienced before.
He’d felt pain, of course, excruciating pain. He’d felt the pain of wrenching his knee when he’d first injured it and the ghost of that pain every time he’d strained it since. He’d felt the pain of being stabbed, repeatedly. He’d felt the pain of hunger, the pain of penetration without adequate preparation, the pain of being beaten by his father, and later by Hornigold.
He hadn’t felt the pain of being hit in the head with a cannonball, because he’d lost consciousness immediately. He thought maybe he was feeling that pain now.
It washed over him in slow, nauseating waves of burning heat that engulfed his whole head, even as an entirely different pain, sharp and jagged, made his right eye water. His mouth fell open and he heard a soft sob fall from his lips, but he couldn’t speak, couldn’t move except to press the heels of his hands to his eyes and rock gently back and forth.
His breath started coming quicker, and soon he was hyperventilating as he sobbed into his hands.
“Ed?”
Stede sounded like he was speaking underwater, sleepy and far away. Ed could only cry harder in response, his eyes stinging.
He was so scared. He was so fucking scared.
What if there was something really wrong with him? What if he was dying, these couple of weeks only borrowed time after all? What if this pain never stopped?
“Ed, darling,” Stede said, smoothing Ed’s hair back. Ed tried weakly to bat him away, to no avail. “I think you’re having a panic attack.”
A panic attack. Yes, that was probably right. But that was incidental, really. That didn’t matter.
“I’m going to try to help you calm down, okay?”
Ed could feel Stede’s hand, the one not in his hair, traveling down his body, lower and lower. He shook his head, hard, and was punished for it by a wave of nausea as the pain in his eye doubled.
Ed retched. Stede shushed him.
“This is going to make you feel better,” he said. “I’m going to take care of you.”
Ed whimpered as Stede’s hand closed around his soft cock. He tried to roll over onto his side, away from Stede, but the movement made the room spin.
“Just stay still,” Stede said.
It was an order. Ed remembered that it was easier to do as he was told. He did his best to go limp, while keeping his hands over his eyes. He was still crying, still breathing too quickly.
“Good boy,” Stede said, twisting his fist around Ed’s cock.
He was getting hard. That was good, right? It felt overwhelming, too much, but it felt a little good too. He tried to focus on that good feeling, but he kept getting distracted by the pain.
Stede must have moved, because suddenly his hand was gone, replaced by his mouth, wet and hot. Stede still wasn’t very good at this, and while Ed had enjoyed his enthusiasm the couple of times they’d done it before, the slight scrape of teeth grated on him unbearably now. He tried to force his hands to move down to Stede’s hair, to pull him off, but they wouldn’t move from over his eyes.
Stede sucked, hollowing his cheeks, and Ed gasped. Tears spilled down the sides of his face, around his fingers. His scalp felt like it was on fire.
A finger ghosted over his hole, making him jolt.
Stede pulled off his cock with a popping sound and slid off the bed.
“I know how much you like this,” he said, mostly to himself, Ed thought, from the way he was speaking under his breath as he moved about the room.
Ed didn’t have to wonder long what “this” was. Soon, a cold, oiled finger slipped inside him.
“Oh,” Stede said. “Wow! You’re so tight like this.”
Ed whined and shivered as the sensation of Stede’s finger moving in and out of him fought for his attention with the all-encompassing pain and nausea. The sun was rising, and he wished he’d thought to close the shutters before falling asleep. The growing daylight was like a deafening noise, filling the room and overwhelming his senses.
When Stede’s finger brushed over his prostate, Ed found his voice for just a moment.
“Fuck!” he squeaked, distress dripping from the word.
“Yeah,” Stede said, his voice heated. He pressed a second finger past Ed’s tight rim.
The seconds oozed by, thick as honey but bitter and hard to swallow, each sensation felt and struggled through as Ed fought to gain control of his breathing. He tried to think of something that would calm him, but he kept finding himself thinking about Stede, and Stede was here. Stede was here, with three of his fingers now stuck up Ed's ass, either stupidly or willfully ignorant to the fact that Ed didn’t want them there.
“You know,” Stede said cheerily. “Lucius told me that climax is a wonderful remedy for pain. Can you believe that? I thought it was silly at first, but I asked Roach and he agreed! Isn’t that interesting?”
Ed groaned.
“Yes, I thought so too. Alright, I think you’re ready now, darling.”
Ed thought dazedly that if Stede really were concerned with giving him an orgasm as pain relief, he would be paying more attention to his cock. As it was, it had flagged considerably after being removed from Stede’s mouth, and it was now being ignored entirely as Stede focused on pressing his own much larger cock to Ed’s entrance.
“That’s it,” Stede said as he pressed the head of his cock against Ed’s unrelenting rim, the pressure making Ed shake with stomach-churning dread. “Nearly…”
The head popped inside suddenly and Stede, taken by surprise, Ed supposed, by the sudden lessening of resistance, fell forward with a grunt, his arms coming to rest on Ed’s splayed out curls and his cock plunging into Ed with all the violence of a knife.
“Ah!” Ed shouted. “Ah ah ah!”
“Sorry, sorry,” Stede said. He would have been eye to eye with Ed now, except that Ed’s hands were still covering his face. Stede paused a moment, presumably to allow Ed to adjust.
Ed’s hole burned with the intrusion. Stede felt impossibly large. Normally, Ed would have relished his size, the stretch, the challenge of it. Now, it felt like a violation, one more part of his body that was no longer under his control.
“Jesus, Ed,” Stede said, his voice hoarse. “You’ve never been anywhere near this tight for me before. Christ.”
He pried one of Ed's hands away from his face. Ed squeezed his eyes shut. When Stede pried the other hand away, Ed brought the first flying back up to his face.
It took some struggling, but finally Stede got both Ed’s arms pinned at his sides. Ed gave up, going limp.
“Open your eyes, dear,” Stede cooed. “Come on now, I want to see you.”
Ed’s brain felt full of cotton. He couldn’t think. He didn’t know what to do. Someone was telling him what to do.
He opened his eyes.
Stede moved inside him.
Ed’s eyes widened as he felt the painful drag of Stede’s cock. Stede pulled nearly all the way out of him, then slowly slid back in, so that Ed felt each and every centimeter of friction and stretch. He wished that Stede would fuck him into the mattress, rail him so hard his mind would go blank, but instead he just kept his pace slow and deliberate, his eyes locked on Ed’s.
Ed wondered if he looked as scared as he felt.
Stede moaned, letting Ed’s arms go so he could grip his slender waist, pushing his middle into the mattress. Ed let his arms stay limp at his sides.
“I realized,” Stede said, breathing heavily. “That first day, when the crew sailed away, that we’d never been alone together. Not really,” He exhaled slowly as he sank his cock back into Ed’s hole.
“And now here we are.” Stede pulled back. “Just the two of us. Entirely alone. And you’re all mine.” He started pushing back in. “God, you feel good, Ed.”
Tears flowed freely down the sides of Eds face as he stared at the ceiling. Stede lowered the rest of his weight onto Ed's body and tucked his face into Ed's neck.
Stede was breathing heavily into Ed’s ear.
The world slipped sideways.
Ed felt his breath fall into sync with Stede’s. For a moment, his mind was filled with nothing but the sound of their breathing.
The pain was still there, but muffled.
He noticed absently and without emotion that he was hard, his cock rubbing against their bellies.
“Huh,” he thought. “I’m going to come.”
A moment later, his spend spilled out between them as he opened his mouth in a silent gasp.
Empty and floating, limp as a doll, he took Stede’s cock. He noticed with mild interest that the pain really was subsiding.
Finally, after what felt like a long time, Stede spilled inside him with a huff. When he pulled out, Ed could feel his spend dripping out of him, thick and hot.
Stede pecked him on the lips and rolled off him, onto his back on his side of the bed.
Ed took inventory of his body. He cleared his throat.
“Stede?”
Stede was still catching his breath.
“Yes?”
“Thanks. That, uh. That helped.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I, uh. I feel… better.”
Stede rolled onto his side facing Ed and gave him a peck on the cheek.
“Good. We should do this every time you have an episode! You get some pain relief; I get you under me, tight and easy. Win win!”
“Yup,” Ed said. “Win win.”
He rolled onto his side, away from Stede, who wrapped himself around him from behind, hot and sticky. In a minute, they would get up to make tea, but Ed wasn’t ready to get out of bed just yet.