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“Oh, Ed! You look terrible!”
Stede realises a second or so too late that this probably isn’t the most diplomatic thing to say. In his defence, Ed really does look terrible. His cheeks are somehow flushed and pallid simultaneously. There are bags under his eyes like bruises, and his hair is all knotted and tangled as it escapes his braid. He’s even got a square of red silk — an old handkerchief, Stede realises — tucked over his tummy like a blanket.
Ed crosses two tiny arms over his tiny chest, covering up his tiny skin markings, and scowls. “Fuckin’… yeah, thanks, mate. Just what I wanted to hear. Nothing quite like feeling like shit, and having someone tell you that you also look like shit. Surefire fuckin’ way to make a guy feel better.”
Stede’s tail works overtime to hold himself in one spot, a safe distance from Ed’s predictable grouching. “Is it that time of your cycle again?”
“Sure, just because I’m pissed off, I must be hormonal?” A burst of cloudy, purple-black ink spills into the water from under his blanket. Ed lets out a whining huff. “Okay, fine. Yes, it is, but my point stands.”
“Understood. Being a grumpy little shit, totally independent of your cycle. Can happen any time.”
Ed uses three tentacles to do a complicated gesture that Stede has been well-informed is crude.
Still, he’s sort of honoured that Ed’s here at all. Two cycles ago, Ed just disappeared without a word for over a week, didn’t want to talk about why or what or where he’d gone until Stede managed to gently coax it out of him. Last time, Ed at least told him what was going on, but still refused point-blank Stede’s offer to ride it out in the comfort of his place.
Don’t read anything into it.
Easily said, much harder to do, especially when harbouring a crush as big as Stede’s.
Especially when Stede’s been harbouring said crush ever since the day he caught the tiny creature rummaging through his one of his treasure chests, rings stacked up his tiny tentacles like glittering bangles, thin strips of dyed silk draped around his neck like a cape, and he had asked the intruder if he fancied a fine fabric, instead of the more obvious question of, y’know, what the fuck are you doing?, or similar lines of inquiry.
Especially if you’ve been harbouring said crush since the creature, those eyes all big and full of wonder and surprise, had not taken its loot and scarpered, but instead used one of its many arms to brush the cloth to its stubbled cheek and said, “Think maybe I do.”
The trouble is, that was two years ago, and that one chance meeting turned into many not-so-chance meetings turned into maybe the most bizarre friendship of Stede’s life — the only friendship of his life, actually — and that should be enough, shouldn’t it? That should be plenty, but also, Ed is Ed. He’s funny and he’s bitchy and he’s smart, and he looks at Stede’s life — solitary but free — like it’s something to aspire to, instead of something to be pitied.
The trouble is, Stede knows that even now, he remains first and foremost a curiosity to Ed. How could he not? Ed had never met a merperson before him, and Stede had never met a kraken before Ed. He’s twenty times Ed’s size, a different species, a different world; it’s only by coincidence that they ever met at all, and it’s too much to ask that fate could give him any more than that.
And yet, after months of Stede pretending that he’s happy with just friends, after months of protecting his heart an unrequited wreckage as best as he can, Ed’s still here. With him. Hunkered down in Stede’s grotto for safety, security, comfort, as his cycle hits, with all the vulnerability that that brings.
The trouble is, Stede would take a trident to the gut in exchange for Ed sticking around just a little longer, without a second thought.
Ed’s rocking himself, a trio of tentacles tucked under the red silk blanket, his brow furrowed in pain.
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Nah, just… dunno. Distract me? Feed me those yummy sweet coral chips until I’m so buzzed on the sugar I forget about all this entirely?”
Stede can’t promise that, but he does drag a little parcel of coral chips out of the stash of snacks he keeps around solely for Ed’s benefit. Each one is about the size of Ed’s head, and yet he puts away three before setting the parcel down.
“Better?”
“Not really,” Ed admits. “Fuckin’ hurts, man, and I feel like a goddamn whale.”
Which is particularly funny to Stede given Ed can easily sit in the palm of his hand, but he presses his lips together to halt the smile.
“And it’s a conspiracy, right, coz like… just wanna press in, right here, feels fuckin’ great—” He points at a spot on his stomach, still covered up by his blanket, “and the tentacles can’t get the angle right. Like, just doesn’t work. Stupid fucking bodies, man.”
And while he flexes to prove his point, the tentacle not quite curving in the right way no matter how he strains, the blanket slips just enough for Stede to get a proper view.
Ed's skin is stretched so taut across the bulge that it looks like it could rip open with a single touch. It throws his proportions off, the rest of his torso tiny in comparison. The snaking mass of tentacles struggle to find space around the protrusion, pushed right down at the front of his body, and Stede’s never seen anything so breathtakingly beautiful in his life.
“Oh, Ed,” he says softly, just in time for Ed to swear and huff and tug the blanket up again, covering himself from view. “No wonder you’re in pain.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Look all bloated and disgusting and ridiculous, but that’s—”
“Not at all,” Stede interjects. “The strength it must take to be able to do that! You’re incredible, Ed.”
“Awghh,” he says, voice soft, cheeks flushing dark, eyes big and wide like he’s been thoroughly disarmed. “Thank you.”
And with that, Stede gets a little braver. Just helping out his friend, isn’t he? Ed said this would feel good, and making other people feel good is what friendship is all about, isn’t it? If Stede can make Ed a little more comfortable, it’d be rude not to offer.
“Would you like me to… um. I could help?” Stede gestures at Ed’s tummy again, where one tentacle is still trying and failing to massage the swollen skin. “If you told me what to do, I could do the honours, as it were?”
Ed looks so hopeful, even as he mutters out a reluctant, “It’s fine, I’m okay, you don’t need to—”
“I want to,” Stede insists. “I mean… I want to help you. Make you feel better. That’s all.”
He reaches out his hand, palm facing up, an invitation. This is familiar territory and Ed relents quickly, plopping himself with a sigh of relief right into the palm of Stede’s hand. His tentacles wind behind Stede’s fingers, hair trailing in the water behind his head, his own tiny hand gripping the side of Stede’s thumb to secure himself as Stede straightens up, brings Ed up to his chest.
“What do you need me to do?” Stede asks.
“Can you just… need you to touch me, right here.” He points at his own stomach, right in the centre, only the width of Ed’s hand above the join where tentacles become flesh.
“I’ll be gentle,” Stede promises.
Ed holds his breath as Stede extends one careful finger to the swollen curve of his belly.
It’s a weird sensation. He’s… he’s touched Ed before, obviously, but never like this. Never such a careful brush of a finger pad, and never when he’s been so full. Where his body turns from skin to tentacle, he’s usually jelly-soft and flexible. Now, it’s rock-hard, the swell of the eggs pushing under the surface, and there’s no give when Stede’s finger, almost half the width of Ed’s entire torso, presses against the solidity of him.
“Like that?” he asks, breathless. “Is that okay? I’m not hurting you, am I?”
Ed huffs a laugh. “Uhh, you could be a bit less fuckin’ gentle, actually. Just… don’t fuckin’ crush me, okay?”
Stede nods, and tries again.
Ed laughs at him. “You’re not gonna break anything, mate.”
He pouts. “But— the eggs—”
“Practically calcified, you’re fine. If you’re not breaking literal bones, you’re all good, just… fuckin’ touch me, please?”
It’s as close as Stede’s ever heard to Ed begging, the desperation creeping into the edge of his voice betraying any sense of detachment. His face screws up in pain as another wave of cramping hits, and Stede does as he’s asked and presses hander.
Under his finger, something inside Ed shifts. “Oh my god?”
“S’okay, it’s—”
“The eggs! Wow! Gosh, I can feel them. And that doesn’t hurt?”
“No, stop asking that! Feels good, feels fuckin’— again? Please?”
It reminds Stede of the netted bag he uses to hold his collection of pearls. Each egg slips and slides over the others, and he knows they must be tiny, but under his index finger, they feel huge, and the motion of them has Ed shivering, eyes closed tight.
When Ed doesn’t object, Stede presses a little firmer, working the eggs loose in their sac through the surface of Ed’s skin. “Fuck, fuck, Stede—” Ed gasps, and that time, it’s unmistakeably pleasure, and Ed’s already hiding his face in the crook of his elbow as he shudders. “Goddddd.” It comes out as a hiss, pained and embarrassed, and Stede, very carefully, hooks a finger under his arm and pulls it away from Ed’s face.
“It’s okay,” he soothes.
“It’s embarrassing!”
“Bodies are embarrassing,” Stede says, and the bright orange of his tail — so different to the aquas and greens of his peers — flashes in the water as it twitches involuntarily. “But you’ve only got the one, hmm? Take it from me, life is much easier when you’re nice to it.”
Ed nods, shaky, and then swallows. “Could you do that again, please?”
“Of course,” he says, and as his finger rubs against Ed’s skin again, a cloud of ink bursts from his underside and dissipates in the water around him. “That’s a good sign?”
“Yeah,” Ed admits, still embarrassed, yes, but not hiding any more. He tips his head back to rest on the curve of Stede’s fingers, melting into the cradle of his hand. “Means I’m… well. S’a good sign, anyway.”
“And it doesn’t hurt?”
“Mmmm, no. Feels nice.”
His eyes have fluttered closed, all the tension melting from his body as Stede strokes careful circles. His tentacles have a life of their own, curling and uncurling like Ed’s clenching a fist, and Ed barely stirs even when one wraps around Stede’s finger, holding it in place.
“Uh, Ed?” Stede asks, not sure whether he’s done something wrong or done something right. “Are you—”
“More,” he murmurs. “Need more. Another finger. Harder. Fuck.”
“Can’t try another finger until you let me go.”
Ed swears, and the tentacle retracts. With his index and middle fingers pressed together, Stede’s covering most of Ed’s belly, and he rocks and rolls and whimpers in relief as Stede massages his aching, bulging belly. It must be doing something, because the water around Stede’s hand is hazy with dispersing ink, and one of Ed’s tentacles is already twisted beneath himself, the tip prodding at his soft underside.
“Fuck, Stede, yeah, just like that, I’m nearly— hnnnng. Fuck, getting there.”
“Can I…” Stede starts to say, and then stops himself. Because yes, he wants to see. Yes, he’s curious, because he’s curious about everything involving Ed. He wants to know how he works, what makes him tick, what he likes and what he hates and what his favourite colour is and, yes, what it looks like when he’s about to pop with a clutch of eggs pushing against his insides. But there’s only so much awkwardness they can suspend for one evening, and even Stede, and his eternal inability to say the right thing, knows that’s a step too far. “No, it’s— never mind. I’ll just—”
Ed has other ideas. His tentacles lift out of the way, and in the midst of glistening, jelly-soft flesh, there’s a small pucker, the glint of an off-white pearlescent sheen just visible past its rim.
It’s gorgeous. Mesmerising. Stede’s seen his fair share of differing anatomy over his life, curiosity often his downfall, but Ed is something else entirely: a body that can twist and contort and grow and change as it needs to, so much packed into such a tiny form.
He doesn’t know exactly what inspires him, or what leave of absence his sense has taken, but with Ed still nestled in his palm, Stede raises his hand up to his mouth and presses the lightest kiss he can to Ed’s forehead.
Ink spills so thick and fast that it leaves streaks down Stede’s wrist.
“Jesus—!” Ed moans, covering his face again. “That’s… Stede, mate, please, I can’t— this is bad enough as it is, I don’t… can we just focus. On the issue. Please.”
And Stede feels like he’s taken a cannonball to the gut, but it’s his fault, got carried away, overstepped, and he trips over his tongue to apologise, shouldn’t have done that, not without asking, not when Ed’s so vulnerable, so exposed, and Stede’s—
It isn’t like that, they aren’t like that, no matter how much Stede wishes they were.
“Sorry,” he whispers, shame crawling down his spine. “I shouldn’t have done that. Sorry.”
Ed’s hot with anger, maybe, or embarrassment, and Stede swears his tentacles are thicker, firmer, more imposing than they were a moment ago. “Look, it’s fine, it’s— fuck, just, can you keep fuckin’ touching me? Please? Get this over with.”
Stede nods, bites his tongue between his teeth like the pain might help him focus, and presses his fingers to Ed’s stomach again. Except now, with his tentacles twisted out of the way, Stede can see everything. Ed’s opening pulses and flutters along with the pressure from his fingers, and it’s intoxicating. He’s doing that! Or helping, at least, suppose Ed still gets some of the credit, but as he presses in deeper, more of the egg becomes visible, just for a second, before his body folds closed around it, and Ed groans.
Stede can’t look away.
He shouldn’t be enjoying this. He knows he shouldn’t find this so arousing, not when Ed’s suffering so much, but there’s only so long he can last in holding off his own arousal before his folds swell and engorge enough to push past the discrete fold of scaled skin that usually keeps him covered. “Oh my god,” Stede whines. “Sorry, sorry, this isn’t—”
Ed peels open his eyes, glistening under their glassy outer lids. “What’s wrong? You’re doing— oh.”
And there’s an unmistakable throb of his opening, a gush of ink that surrounds Ed like a cloak, and the moan he makes is different to before. Still pain, of course. Still agony. But a little something else too. Something Stede is all too familiar with, knows what it looks like, even on an unfamiliar body.
Arousal.
“You’re, um.”
When Stede glances down, he’s horrified by how obviously he’s glistening with lubricating fluids. “Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t— it’s just, well, you’re very… very attractive, Ed, and your body, it’s—”
“It’s fine,” he says, “stupid fuckin’ bodies, right?”
Right.
Of course.
No big deal.
Just biology. Can’t be helped. Nothing to be embarrassed about.
And that’s all true, except Ed hasn’t stopped looking, eyes wide. The tip of his tongue keeps wetting his lips. Stede…
Well, Stede never thought Ed would look at any part of him like that.
And he knows that he shouldn’t, that’s it’s too far, that he’ll come to regret this, but Stede has never been one to not do something just because he shouldn’t.
Besides, he’s still just trying to help, isn’t he? He’s trying to make Ed as comfortable as possible, and that’s what matters above all else.
Just Ed’s comfort.
“Last time,” Stede says, fighting to keep his tone somewhere around casually interested, “you said it was easier to lay them inside someone?”
Ed wrinkles his nose. “Like, yeah, that’s the idea, but… it’s fuckin’ parasitic, man. Not cool.”
“Well, what if someone volunteered?”
“Sure, fine, but who the fuck would volunteer?”
Stede says nothing, but the blood flooding to his cheeks is like a lighthouse alerting sailors to the rocks.
Ed lets out a low whistle. “Nah. No. Nope. Fuck no.”
“Why not?! If it’s easier—”
“Stede, c’mon, be serious, that’s… can’t ask you to do that for me, man.”
“You’re not asking,” Stede points out. “I’m offering.”
“You’re a lunatic.”
“And you like that about me,” Stede reminds him, and Ed rolls his eyes but doesn’t argue the point. “I just want to help, Ed. Really.”
“You’re already helping. The… the place to crash and the blanket and the snacks and shit. That’s plenty. Offering yourself up for some fuckin’ oviposition is a bit beyond the reach of good hospitality.”
“What if I want to?”
“What if you want to what?”
“Offer myself up for some oviposition.”
Ed looks at him like he’s crazy.
“Because you’re my friend!” Stede adds. “I don’t want to see you suffer if I could… well. You know. Help.”
“You’re serious?”
“Of course.”
“You know I’d, uh... have to get pretty up-close-and-personal?”
Stede wishes he weren’t blushing. “I don’t mind. It’s for a good cause.”
Good cause. Jesus Christ, he shouldn’t be allowed to speak, should he?
“It’s dangerous, mate. If they take—”
“Oh, come on, they’re not going to take. Look at the size of me! They’ll pop right out!”
Ed says nothing for a while. Won’t even look at him, and Stede’s regretting mentioning it, regretting bringing it up, is already detangling words in his head to undo this whole conversation, the mistakes he’s made by opening his fucking mouth, when Ed finally speaks up.
“…Okay.”
It’s so quiet Stede isn’t sure he heard right.
“Sorry, what was—”
“I said okay.” Ed overcompensates, and he’s almost shouting. “Just. To see if it helps. Right?”
“Right,” Stede agrees.
What any good friend would do, really.
No ulterior motive at all. Just a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Nothing here that he, or anyone else, could ever possibly regret.
Stede carefully arranges himself on a comfy ledge, padded out with a precisely selected range of soft mosses and seaweeds. Once he’s settled, Ed pushes himself out of Stede’s palm and swims down to where his folds are already slightly spread.
“Here?”
“Yeah, just…” Stede demonstrates, pushing a finger between the folds of scales to show Ed how easily they part. “Like that.”
“And you’re… you’re sure about this?”
“As long as you don’t get me pregnant,” Stede quips back, and Ed laughs, short and sharp.
“I’ll try my best.”
Ed turns serious, running his hands along Stede’s fold, fingers curling under the edge, followed by the tips of a couple of tentacles. That alone has Stede squirming. “No, no, it’s good!” he squeaks when Ed jolts backwards. “It’s good, it’s… just, um. Been a while. Since anyone else. Um. Touched me. There. Like that.”
“A while?” Ed repeats.
And there’s the whole backstory that he’s told Ed before, his father and the claustrophobia of where he grew up, of all the jostling for rank and power, for the right partner and the right offspring, and how he never wanted any of it. How he left, came here instead, half an ocean away, alone, and carved out his own life. He told Ed all of that, but he skipped this bit.
“Not since Mary.”
“Stede—”
“Don’t! I want to! Please! Just… be gentle?”
“Of course, mate. Doing me a massive fuckin’ favour, least I can do is be sweet on you about it.”
Stede is not going to cry. Just, like. For the record.
“Alright. Ready?”
And Stede nods.
It happens so fast, no further warning. Something cool and soft pushes between the crease in his tail, nudging inside him with dexterity unrivalled by anything Stede has ever put inside himself, but Ed doesn’t lie; it’s still gentle as anything, a caress, a polite, soft stroking touch. Each of Ed’s tentacles is only about the same width as one of Stede’s fingers, but while they’re smooth on the top, the undersides are rough and raised with tiny suckers, just enough cling to them to drag out every sensation for a hair longer than Stede’s prepared for. It feels like Ed is everywhere, swarming him, more pleasure than Stede has ever felt at once, and then he looks down to see there’s only the one tentacle pressed inside him.
Just one.
Seven more and two hands going entirely unutilised, and it already feels like this?
“Fuck.”
“Are you okay?” Ed says, panicked. “I can stop, I can—”
“Don’t you dare stop,” Stede gasps, and he should be embarrassed, should feel desperately achingly mortified for how quickly he’s turned to jelly at Ed’s touch, but he isn’t. He doesn’t. He just wants. Wants Ed, wants more, wants to climax with Ed touching every inch of him that he can. “Need— can you…”
“What do you need?”
“You,” he gasps. “All of you.”
He means it, but he maybe doesn’t mean to say it quite like that, quite so honestly, and now Stede’s blushing, and Ed’s blushing, and it’s all a bit too raw, that sharp, scraping yearning in his chest threatening to puncture all his vital organs, and he doesn’t know how to take it back.
“I…”
“Stede—”
He reaches out his hand, and Ed curls a tentacle around one finger, intertwined. They stay like that for a long moment, better than words, better than promises.
And then Ed grunts. “Sorry to kill a moment,” he says, and Stede’s mostly just thrilled that Ed agrees that was a moment, because he doesn’t really trust his instincts on these things— “but I am kinda still in fuckin’ agony here.”
“Right!” Stede says, back to business. “Right-ho, yes, well—”
His words choke into nothing when tentacles plunge into his folds, followed by a scrambling apology from Ed and a sharp admonishment to be fucking gentle, and it takes Stede a second to realise Ed’s talking to his tentacles. He wants to ask, wants to know everything there is to know, but any capability to form sentences is vanished as they probe his opening, just two at first, slipping alongside each other, and then the third when he’s acclimated to their size. Unlike Stede’s usual toys, Ed’s tentacles can move independently, slide beside each other, press out sideways as well as inwards. And while they might only be finger-width, they’re almost twice as long, and they keep pressing deeper and deeper, curling around the gentle spiral of Stede’s cunt in a way that he has no hope of managing without some assistance.
His head falls back as Ed methodically works him open. “Need to get you loose enough that the eggs definitely won’t take,” Ed explains, a little apologetically. “A… a precaution, really, but better safe than sorry.”
“Feels— god, Ed, feels incredible.”
“Yeah?”
“Mmm.”
“Can you handle another one?”
Stede babbles out a yes without taking a second to think, too lost in his own pleasure. Despite his own discomfort, Ed is gentle and patient; the fourth tentacle is hard work, won’t fit alongside the three already inside of him, but Ed never rushes, never tries to cut any corners at Stede’s expense. Instead, he pulls out entirely with an awful squelch and rearranges himself, and as Stede breathes steadily out, Ed tries again, and pushes the fine tip of four wriggling tentacles into his hole.
“Fuck,” he gasps, and Ed freezes. “No, wait, don’t— just need a second.”
He can feel each one moving, pressing on his inner walls as they feel him out, and Ed’s apologising again, got a mind of their own, can’t… can’t fully control them like this, fuck, shoulda warned you, and Stede’s shaking his head because it feels good, it feels fucking wonderful, actually, but it’s all so much, pleasure and the sweetest lick of pain, and it’s Ed, it’s Ed, and between the sensation and the swarming arousal and how gentle Ed is being, it’s getting harder to remind himself that this doesn’t mean anything.
“It’s okay,” Stede says, voice thick. “I trust you. Whatever you need.”
With four inside him, it’s impossible to keep track of where any sensation comes from. The throbbing heat spreads from the inside out, and Stede knows Ed can’t actually have wriggled that deep, but he swears Ed could reach out a tentacle and squeeze at his heart if he goes any further. His cunt pulses in time with its racing beat, and Stede has a horrible feeling that he’s going to climax before Ed even manages to lay a single egg.
That’s embarrassing too, isn’t it, everything is embarrassing, except Ed’s looking frenzied in the eyes, no hiding the ink swirling through the gentle current, no hiding the swell of eggs distending his tender stomach, and Stede swallows back his nerves, his shame, and he speaks. “Ed, I’m… if you keep— I’m going to come, if you keep—”
Stede swears the tentacles inside him go stiff, just for a second, and he clenches around them involuntarily.
“Can you manage a few times in a row?” Ed asks. “Or is it a one-and-done thing for merpeople?”
“Few times,” Stede admits.
“How many?”
“Um, well, I think eight is my record in one sitting, but usually three or four?”
Ed barks out a helpless laugh. “Eight? That’s overkill, mate.”
“What about you?”
“One and done.” He sounds rueful, and then almost defensive when he adds, “Plenty of limbs, though, to keep the party going.”
And oh, Stede can imagine it. Stede has imagined it, long before tonight. His imagination didn’t come anywhere close to the real thing.
“D’you want to come first?” Ed asks. “Would that… d’you think it’d be easier?”
Stede has no idea if it’d be easier, but he does know this: he has never needed to come so desperately in his life. “If, um. You don’t mind?” he says uncertainly, because there’s no etiquette guide for this situation, and it feels selfish, demanding, even though Ed’s offered. “I don’t want you to have to suffer even more on my account.”
“Nah, course I don’t mind. Least I can do, really.” Ed’s smiling now. A small tight smile, granted, not enough to hide his discomfort, but it’s reassuring, a little of his normal self making a reappearance. “Taking requests, one-night only. What do you like?”
One-night only, Stede reminds himself. Doing Ed a favour. That’s it. That’s all it is. Helping out a friend. He forces an unconvincing smile right back. “My… um. Cock. Please. Don’t think it’ll take much.”
“Here?” Ed asks, tracing the tip of a tentacle over the bulb protruding from the top of his fold. He giggles when Stede gasps at the feeling. “Sensitive, huh? Alright, you heard the guy. Easy does it.”
And those prickling, tiny suckers latch themselves onto his cock, and Stede comes, fast and hard and before he even has a chance to shout a warning. His muscles seize, his cunt contracting and squeezing around the tentacles so tightly that it makes Ed gasp out. It passes as quickly as it arrives, the whole thing lasting a second at most, leaves him shuddering through the over-sensitivity as Ed pulls out with an obvious wince.
“Fuckin’ hell, mate!” Ed splutters, but he’s laughing as soon as the shock passes. “Like you’ve got a goddamn jaw in there. Expected to see bite marks.”
“God, did I hurt you?” he says, mortified. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think, I’m used to—” Well, he’s used to his own fingers, and other foreign objects, but he doesn’t need to advertise that. “It’s— to stop the water, um, you know— when we’re… fertilising— oh, shut up!”
Ed’s laughing his head off, and okay, Stede can see the funny side as Ed makes a whole show out of inspecting the four slick tentacles he’s pulled from Stede’s hole like he’s looking for signs of damage. “If it bruises, I’ll be expecting compensation,” Ed snickers.
“Oh yeah? What’s the going rate for sexcapade injuries?”
Whatever Ed mumbles under his breath, Stede doesn’t quite catch, but it doesn’t really matter. The easy laughter disappears like it’s fallen into the abyssal zone, and Stede knows the mistake he’s made.
It’s not… it’s not sex, is it? That’s not what’s happening. It’s sex-adjacent, perhaps. It looks like sex, yes, and feels like sex, but it’s— sex means something. Sex implies a depth of something that doesn’t exist between them, no matter how much Stede wants it to. It’s not sex: he’s helping Ed out of a tight spot, that’s all. Anyone could do it. Anyone might, if Ed had happened to be around them instead when his cycle hit. It’s not sex.
He’s not having sex with Ed.
He knows that, deep down.
He just got a little carried away, pretending otherwise.
Ed pulls back, settling down on the curve of Stede’s hip, and the scaled fold of skin only half-conceals Stede’s arousal. “Sorry. Cramp,” he mutters.
Neither of them say anything more. Ed stares at Stede like he’s trying to read secrets in the lines in his face, and Stede stares back. Tries not to think about how he knows now, how it feels to have Ed inside him. How he’ll always know that, even when he wishes he doesn’t. How he’ll never be able to forget.
It’s worth it, he thinks.
He hopes.
“Think I’m ready,” Stede says. It doesn’t sound as confident or as certain as he wants it to. It doesn’t sound as detached either, a painful little squeak caught in between the syllables, and through it all, his heart pounds like there’s a great white snapping at his fins.
“You sure?”
“Positive,” Stede says.
“Because I will survive, y’know?” Ed continues, an edge to his words that wasn’t there before. He’s twitchy. His tentacles jolt in the water like he doesn’t know quite how to let them settle. “S’not fuckin’ life and death. Got through every other cycle in my life, and I’ll get through this one, without...”
Stede frowns when he doesn’t finish the thought. “I know you don’t need anything.” One hand extends, a single finger reaching to graze Ed’s chest, and Stede can’t fight the smile spreading when Ed — still scowling — leans into his touch, one loose feeler reaching back, intertwining around Stede’s fingers. “I still want to help, if I can.”
Ed’s expression softens for just a second, and then all the softness vanishes. Impossibly brief, but even as Ed’s tentacles untangle from Stede’s fingers, even as he’s pushing himself away with such force that he tumbles ten feet before Stede even has a chance to react, Stede swears he doesn’t imagine it.
“Can’t do this,” Ed mumbles. “Can’t— fuck, thought I could just… Thought I could just act all goddamn normal about this, no biggie, but… nah. No. Bad fuckin’ idea.”
“What do you mean? What’s wrong?”
“Everything! God, what? We do this and, and, and... and then everything just goes back to being like it is now? Like it was before?”
“Yes!”
It doesn’t reassure Ed like Stede hopes it will. Instead, he swears, and then laughs, and then spits, “Fuck you, Stede Bonnet,” as he wraps three tentacles around his belly and groans through another wave of cramping. Even from this distance, Stede can see the iridescence peeking out between his tentacles, the flesh around it shiny and sore.
“I’m trying to help! You don’t need to be such a dick about it.”
“Oh, so I’m being a dick now, am I?”
“A bit, yes!”
Ed huffs, and the water around him goes dark with a large burst of inky discharge. By the time Stede’s vision clears, Ed is nowhere to be seen.
Great.
“Ed, don’t be ridiculous. We don’t have to… if it’s too much, with me, we can— you can just stick to your little nest, hunker down for a few days, whatever you need to be comfortable. Just stop bloody hiding.”
“M’not hiding,” a little voice argues. Stede traces the sound downwards, a tangle of seaweed and corals on the seabed. Hidden amongst them, Ed blends in with near-perfect camouflage. His tentacles are wrapped around brown skin, and have taken on a shimmering hue, swirls of orange-pink and muted yellow and dark glossy greens. The only thing that gives him away is a quiet sniffling, and the round protuberance of his belly that the tentacles can’t quite cover. “Leave me alone.”
“No.”
“You’re so annoying.”
“I’ve been told that before.” There’s a reluctant laugh, and that feels a little like an olive branch. “Come on, Edward. Let me help you.”
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because!”
“Well, now you’re just being childish.”
Ed’s body appears out of nowhere. Tentacles unravel, each limb flushing back to purple as his camouflage clears. His brow is furrowed, expression pinched. “I can’t— Not with you. Because what, I’m meant to fucking— and then we just go back to, to, to whatever this is? Friends? Like that’s gonna hurt less than this does. Nah.”
“Ed, will you just tell me what’s wrong?”
“Fuckin’ in love with you, aren’t I?” He mumbles it, scuffs up a cloud of sand with a stray tentacle like that’ll help him hide again. “Won’t be able to go back to friends, after. Won’t be able to stop thinking about— well. Not really got enough friends to start losing them over shit like this.”
Stede is certain he’s misheard. Hallucinating, maybe. A horny, hungry fantasy spun into terrifyingly realistic life, because Ed’s burying himself in the sand like he might dig right through the seabed, and he’s saying—
He’s saying—
“You’re in love with me?” Stede blurts.
Ed swears. “Sorry for the goddamn inconvenience, I guess.”
“No, that’s not what I—”
“Not what I woulda chosen either, mate, but here we fuckin’ are. Ridiculous, you and your whole goddamn—” Five tentacles gesture vaguely in Stede’s direction, and he scowls. “A merperson, fuck, like that’s ever going to work. All fuckin’ fancy and proper, your ridiculous cave of wonders, didn’t even give a shit I was trying to rob you. Made this shit fun, made me feel fuckin’ happy—” He shakes his head. “Just… let me ride this cycle out, okay? Then I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Ed.” He’s drifted, while he’s been ranting, and as Stede’s hand reaches out to catch him, his tentacles wind around his wrist, familiar and soft, the suckers attaching them together with a light kiss of skin on skin. “I love you too, idiot.”
Ed stops trying to force his tentacles to detach. “…What?”
“I love you too,” he repeats. “I didn’t think— well, I suppose I felt the same? That you could never… not with someone like me. But I love you. Always have, I think, ever since I saw you with all those rings looped over your tentacles.”
“O-oh.”
“Is that… is that okay?”
Ed laughs, and flips himself around so he can sit in Stede’s palm again, tentacles unwound. “Okay?! Mate, of course it’s— fuck. Extremely goddamn okay.”
“Yeah?”
“Stede—” Ed takes a deep breath, puffs out his chest until he’s as big as he can make himself. “I’m gonna need you to kiss me. Like, right now.”
Ed’s so small in his palm, and he giggles helplessly as Stede lifts him through the water, kisses him — his whole fucking face — and Ed kisses him back, a gentle press to Stede’s lower lip. “Fuck,” Ed says, and Stede can taste the word on his skin. “This is… huh.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah, god yeah, just—” A tentacle traces over Stede’s mouth, pushes between his lips before Ed slaps it back, burning pink. “Fuck, sorry. Can’t— it’s sorta subconscious? They’re hard to control when I’m, um. Distracted. Brain signals sometimes skip a step.”
Stede feels a little dizzy, trying to keep them in sight. “So it’s a good sign that they’re trying to fuck themselves into my mouth?”
“This is so unfair,” he whines, bundling them up in his hands and clutching them together as best he can. “Trying real hard to play it cool and they’re betraying me.”
Stede’s laughing harder than he’s ever laughed in his life. Giddy with it, euphoric. It’s not even that funny, but it’s Ed, and it’s Ed wanting him so much that it’s impossible for him to control it for another second, and who could have seen that one coming?
It’s only Ed’s hiss of pain that disrupts the giggling. Amidst everything else, Stede has forgotten that Ed is still struggling.
“You can nest instead, obviously,” Stede offers, “but if this, um. Changes things? If you want to— inside me? The offer is still there.”
“I want to,” Ed croaks. “Like, yeah, fuck— probably things we should talk about, like, that’d be all smart and sensible or whatever, but— fuck, I want to. So badly.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. Please.”
Stede keeps Ed in his palm as he swims them both back to Stede’s soft bed, stretching himself out flat. Ed lands carefully on Stede’s chest, and immediately, his tentacles spread to steady his body. As they latch on to Stede’s skin, one drifts a little too close to his left nipple, and the prickling sensation makes Stede gasp.
“Sorry,” Ed says, trying to yank it back, but Stede shakes his head.
“It feels good.”
Feels good.
And for the first time, it’s allowed to feel good, and he’s allowed to admit it.
The tip of a single tentacle circles his nipple with careful precision, curls around it and pinches. On sensitive skin, the suckers feel like a sharp bite, a blooming pain that swells within a half-second into glorious, all-consuming pleasure. Stede can’t even be embarrassed about his folds parting again, slick with thick lubrication. Two of his own fingers slip inside — needs it, needs a little more than he can get — as Ed’s touch spreads over the expanse of his chest.
His second climax is sudden and jolting, following immediately from the moment two more of Ed’s tentacles push past his lips. Head to tail, Stede’s whole body vibrates with pleasure, a sweet, pure-tone song unravelling from his throat as he comes. The tingling doesn’t stop, even after he gets his breath back. When he looks down, he sees the culprit — a trail of tiny dots snaking over his skin, the suckers leaving micro-bruises in their wake.
“Sorry,” Ed says, stifling a laugh. “They’re needy little fuckers when I’m… uh.”
“Broody?”
“Was gonna say turned on.”
“Oh! Well, that’s good too.”
“Are you still good to keep going?”
“Hardly got started,” Stede says brightly, which is half-true, even if it doesn’t come out quite as casually as he hoped it would.
There’s no subtlety to Ed’s tentacles as they push their way down Stede’s torso, stretching and reaching for the fold in his scaled tail. It’s sensitive, still reeling from his last climax despite what Stede claims, but Ed is gentle with him, each tentacle exploring his folds like he’s something precious.
When Ed looks up at him, Stede’s propped on his elbows to get the best view that he can, and too aroused to be embarrassed about that.
“Are you, um—”
“I’m ready.”
Stede is furious about how breathless he sounds, but he chalks it up to the heightened emotions, the fact he’s come twice already, the prickling tendrils licking against sensitive skin. Can’t help it. Nothing to be embarrassed about.
“If it… if it’s too much,” Ed starts. “If it hurts, or… or—”
“I’ll tell you,” Stede promises.
Ed nods.
A tentacle prods at Stede’s opening, slipping inside easily, and then another follows. The tips curl around sensitive flesh and scales, and when Stede tries to clench, all he feels is fluttering resistance against something surprisingly rigid, tucked shallowly into his cunt and holding him open like a vice.
It feels… weird.
Not bad. Definitely not bad. But…
But weird.
Each sucker grips and releases its hold on Stede’s most sensitive skin faster than he can process, a thousand tiny adjustments making his folds sing with pleasure. While two hold him open, a third wriggles to brush the underside of Stede’s cock, and it’s enough to make his elbows wobble, his tail flap boldly as he thrusts up into the contact. “Fuck, sorry—” he gasps as he knocks Ed off-course, a tentacle shooting out to push himself back into place.
Ed sounds cranky. “Just… try to stay still, will you?”
“Easier said than done!”
They manage it, though — a fumbling, awkward dance of tentacles and Ed’s hands and Stede’s fingers guiding them together. When Ed is in place, slotted neatly against Stede, his tiny body is almost entirely swallowed by his folds, the swell of golden-orange scales coming up to the markings weaving over the centre of his chest. Stede can’t see, but he doesn’t need to. He can feel everything: the scramble of eight tentacles pressing into him, the solid mass of Ed’s stomach against soft flesh, where he’s perched inside Stede’s folds.
“Oh!” Stede splutters. It’s a totally unfamiliar sensation. The closest Stede could compare is the feeling of a mouth clamping around his hole, but it’s not suction. It’s pushing into him, not pulling out, the tentacles flexing to adjust for the ring of pulsing pressure. “Ed, is that you doing that? Is it happening?!”
Within the ring of building pressure, something presses against his hole. At first, Stede thinks it’s another tentacle, except it’s not pointed and cool and slick, this time. It’s round, and warm. Hard as a rock.
“Christ.”
Stede’s whimpers are drowned out by Ed’s groaning. Maybe pleasure, maybe pain, definitely relief, as his body finally cooperates, and Stede feels a single bead of an egg push past the ring of muscle and settle inside his opening.
He expects it to be a bit of a stretch, but Ed’s stretched him out so nicely that the egg just slips inside, barely needs to adjust for it at all. The tentacle prodding it along its way elicits more feeling, and even when he clenches, he can only just feel the solid mass of it sitting inside his opening. When he relaxes, the egg threatens to drift back out until a tentacle shoves it back in, and the whole thing is ridiculous, silly, the hottest thing that has ever happened to him. He clenches around the single egg, and Ed lifts his head just enough for Stede to be able to see him.
“Relax,” Ed urges him. “Don’t need you to do anything. Just… just stay still for me, yeah? Let me do the hard bit.”
Stede nods, and despite it being harder than it should be, he forces himself to relax.
Now Ed’s body has found its rhythm, the eggs come quickly, and Stede takes Ed’s advice and just lets it happen. Stays still, breathes deep, exhales as Ed pushes, and grunts, and the second egg slips inside beside the first one, helped on its way by the tip of a flexing tentacle.
They’re warm, and that’s the oddest thing. Not much, even at this shallow depth, is truly warm, but each perfect egg holds just enough of Ed’s body heat that Stede can feel it inside him, that throbbing, burning life. With one inside him, it was an oddity, but with two, it’s a glow, filling him from within, and by the time Ed’s laid four inside him, Stede’s cunt is throbbing with heat and sensation. The eggs rock and click against each other, pressing against sensitive spots Stede didn’t even know existed. He’s panting with the exertion of it, the warmth and the fullness and the brush of Ed’s tentacles holding the clutch of eggs inside him. “You doing okay?” he asks, which doesn’t even begin to cover what he really wants to ask, but it’s all he’s capable of right now.
“Y-yeah,” Ed says. “Fuck— just… one more?”
“Does it hurt?”
“God, yeah, but good fuckin’ hurt.” He laughs, hysterical. “Didn’t know it could feel like this. Heard, y’know. Stories. But always figured it was an exaggeration.”
“Wait, you’ve never…—”
“Nah. Guess I never had anyone I trusted enough to— hnnng, fuckfuckfuck—”
The push of the egg against Ed’s opening is strong enough that Stede can feel it himself too, a throbbing heat where they are fused together, Ed’s body finally doing what it was made to do, no compromises required.
Stede tries not to think about how this is Ed’s first time doing this. Tries not to think about the fact that there had been others, other opportunities, other offers, and Ed turned them all down, and yet he didn’t turn Stede down.
Definitely tries not to think about Ed loving him.
Ed loves him.
Ed is in love with him, and they’re—
The last egg is a squeeze. A nightmare of choreography, two tentacles pressing inside him to hold him open, and two more to stop the others floating out. Another stroking at his cock, not enough to get him off but enough to help him relax as his cunt spreads, aching and sore and burning up. Ed sinks into his folds, ink spluttering against the sensitive flesh, and as his hole pulses for the final time, as the warmth of the egg passes from Ed to Stede, the tiny suckers finally break the seal holding them together, and Ed shudders with squeaking cry.
The water around him goes dark.
“Ed?” Stede asks, wafting a hand through the water in a futile attempt to clear the ink.
He doesn’t know exactly how Ed’s anatomy works, but Stede could take a good guess about what just happened. The tentacles inside him have gone soft, back to the squishy jelly that Stede is so used to. When they detach and pull back, leaving him full only of Ed’s eggs, one soft tentacle rests flat over his opening to hold them in place. Stede can’t help but clench around them, feeling the shifting as tiny spheres jostle for position inside his cunt.
The pressure on his folds is whisper-light as Ed goes limp, and when the ink finally floats away, Stede can see him, just about poking out of the opening, silver-shining hair a sharp contrast from the gold of Stede’s tail.
“Ed?”
“Mmm?”
“Are you okay down there?”
Ed lifts his head from where it rests on his folds. “Mmmm. M’fine. Good. Great, actually, I’m fuckin’ great.”
“Did you just. Um. Come?”
“Nah, just needed to take a fuckin’ nap. Course I did, fuck.”
Stede laughs. It’s mostly hysteria, he reckons, at this point. “Was it good? For you?”
“Gonna need like, five minutes to recover before you start all that feelings shit, man.”
Ed sounds exhausted. Looks exhausted too, cheek resting on the soft swell of Stede’s folds. “Come up here,” Stede says, reaching his hand down for Ed to clamber on to. “You can get comfy.”
As soon as Ed’s last tentacle releases its seal on Stede’s opening, there’s nothing he can do to hold them in. They slip out of his hole, helped along by ample lubrication, and drift in the water, slowly sinking towards the sea bed.
Stede leans down and catches them easily, inspecting them in his palm. They’re a pearly cream, with speckles of deep purple and black, iridescent and shimmering.
“God, they felt a lot bigger inside me,” Stede says.
“Think about how I fuckin’ felt. C’mon mate, get rid of them.”
“No! They’re lovely. And you made them.”
“I’m gonna argue with you about this later,” he promises, “when I’m not, y’know. All fuckin’ weird and emotional and tired.”
“Okay, darling.”
Stede smiles, and when Ed isn’t looking, tucks the eggs into a nook in the ledge for safe-keeping.
Ed’s right, though: up close, he looks exhausted. There are circles under his eyes, and his fingers are stained dark with ink. His opening is puffy and sore, and he winces even from just settling onto Stede’s chest, tentacles delicately snaking across Stede’s chest and shoulders to anchor himself. He breathes slow and deep and steady, and nestles in happily when Stede strokes a thumb over his hair and down his back.
“Y’only came twice.”
After a few minutes of silence, the voice startles him; Stede thought Ed had fallen asleep.
“Hmm?”
“You said— you said eight. I only made you come twice.”
“I said my record was eight!”
“So I didn’t leave you hanging?”
“Not at all,” Stede lies, and it’s clear from Ed’s frown that he doesn’t believe him. “Okay, yes, fine, I could have come again, but really— it was great as it was. It was perfect, actually.”
“Just don’t want you all pissed off, thinking I’m some loser who lays eggs in a guy and then half-asses the orgasms. Gotta finish with the good shit.”
“Definitely not half-assed. Just, um. Quality over quantity?”
“Oh my god, you are pissed off!” Ed’s grinning, though. His chin’s propped up on the tip of a tentacle so he can see Stede’s face better, and he’s grinning so widely it makes his whole face shine even through the tiredness.
“I suppose I can let you off with a warning this one time, given the circumstances.”
“Next time, I swear. IOU, like, at least six orgasms.”
Next time.
Stede suppresses the fucking shoals of rainbow fish trying to burst out of his chest.
“Six?”
“Mmm. Yeah. Best six orgasms of your life. Promise. However good you’re thinking, they’ll be even better. Won’t be able to swim properly for like, three hours by the time we’re done.”
Next time.
And the time after.
And the time after that.
“I’ll hold you to that,” Stede says, and Ed wraps a tentacle around his finger, and holds him right back.