Chapter Text
Stede’s penthouse suite is fucking enormous.
Ed has just enough awareness of such things as may exist beyond the pounding drumbeat of Stede Stede Stede in his head to realise that he can’t even see the bed from where they’re standing. To their left is a living space, sofas and armchairs and an enormous window with a view of the Flame Towers (ha, thinks Ed, called it) and to the right of that is a kitchen. A set of grand double doors takes up most of the far wall, though; Ed reckons they must lead to the bedroom.
That’s their objective, then. Those doors.
They make it as far as the sofa.
Ed tumbles onto it with Stede beneath him and sucks greedily on his neck. Stede keens; he clutches at Ed’s back as Ed sets himself to the task of undoing the adventure outfit’s many, many buttons.
“These little fuckers,” he growls, tweaking one of them, “have been driving me mad all day.”
“They’re—mostly decorative,” Stede gasps.
“Which are the ones that aren’t?”
“On the left. My left.”
“Right.”
“No, left.”
“No, I meant right, like right I get it.”
“Oh, right.”
“Don’t you mean left?”
Stede starts to laugh. “It’s your right, anyway.”
“Right.” Ed’s laughing too, then kissing the smirk off Stede’s face as he makes quick work of the correct row of buttons. When they’re undone he sits back and treats his eyes to the sight of a bare chest that’s even better than it was in his fantasies.
“Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” he says.
“That’s saying something, coming from you.” With the tips of gentle fingers Stede traces the contours of Ed’s face: forehead, cheekbone, the bridge of his nose, his lips. His manicured nails rake through the short beard that covers Ed’s jaw. Ed catches his breath. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man so beautiful,” Stede whispers.
“You think I’m beautiful?”
“You must know you are.”
“No one’s ever said so.” Hot, yes. Fuckable, sure. But beautiful? Never. Ed gives a little shrug. “Just you.”
“Well, they should have,” Stede retorts. “You should hear it every day.” Ed attempts a scoff, but Stede catches his jaw more firmly and holds his gaze. “Ed, if people haven’t appreciated you in the past then that’s on them. You’re not responsible for blind fools failing to see.” His fingers trail down Ed’s neck to his collarbone. “Do you know what’s been driving me mad all day?”
“No.” Ed exhales sharply as Stede’s other hand slides beneath his shirt and up his chest.
“Your forearms,” Stede says. “The tattoos that disappear under your shirt. I want to see the rest of them. May I?”
At Ed’s nod of assent, Stede tugs his shirt up and over his head then he leans back to do some bare-chest admiring of his own. “You’re a work of art, Ed,” he says, in a tone of near-reverence. “You make me wish I could paint.” His roving fingers trace the lines of ink on Ed’s chest. “I want to re-draw every one of these across your skin with my tongue.”
“Later.” Ed’s so turned on already—just from this, just from words—that if Stede’s tongue touches him he may lose his mind. He needs a distraction. “I get to have my mouth on you first.”
He tugs the little jacket off Stede’s shoulders and Stede wrestles free of it. His fully-bare chest is broad and round, sprinkled with blond hair and gold-dust freckles. The bulge of his pecs, the slope of his shoulders into the taut curves of biceps make Ed think that mind-loss may be inevitable. Stede strokes his back in a gentle caress as Ed kisses constellations across his chest then bites his nipple just hard enough to make him gasp. His hips buck up involuntarily; Ed groans and presses his own down to meet them. Stede’s cock is rock hard and fuck it feels enormous. Ed’s near-delirious with want.
“Bedroom,” Stede pants, “now.”
“Fuck, yes.” Ed wants him naked, spread out on smooth, expensive sheets. Stede, naturally, seems to be thinking along similar lines.
“Clothes off first,” he commands, in the same bossy tone he used on the porter. He tugs at the button on Ed’s jeans.
“I’ll do it.” At this point, Ed would do just about anything Stede told him to, even if that bitchy, bossy voice didn’t send a thrill of excitement through his belly. He tugs off his boots and socks thens shimmies from his jeans. He’s got just enough time to catch a glimpse of Stede—expanses of pale skin and a dick that makes Ed’s mouth water—before he’s dragged by the hand through the double doors and into another beautifully furnished room.
He sees none of it though, except the bed. As vast as the ocean it seems, and the same shade of blue. They fall on it together, then Stede rolls Ed beneath him.
“My turn,” he says, and then his mouth is on Ed’s chest, his tongue tracing the outlines of Ed’s tattoos just as he’d promised. His mouth is hot, the ocean-blue duvet cool against Ed’s back as he loses himself in a haze of sensation. His world consists of himself and Stede and this bed, nothing else could possibly matter or even exist.
“Tell me what you want,” Stede murmurs in his ear. He’s a glorious sight when Ed opens his eyes—hair mussed, eyes dark, lit by the shifting shades of light from the Flame Towers: green, red, orange, gold.
“You.” Ed pulls him close until their chests are flush, their dicks pressed together. “Just you.”
Stede holds Ed’s gaze as he takes his hand and licks first Ed’s palm then his own. Together they bring their joined hands down to wrap around their dicks, fingers entwined. Ed’s brain goes hrngggg momentarily at the length and girth of Stede against him, in his hand, the heat and pressure and blinding pleasure, then they are moving together like they’ve done this a dozen times before, a hundred times, a thousand, the natural rhythm of the two of them as one.
Ed’s breath is coming in short, frantic gasps, the universe careering behind his eyes. This won’t take long.
“Stede,” he whines, but Stede’s right there with him.
“Yes,” he groans as he tightens his grip. “Come for me, darling. Come—”
Ed doesn’t need to be told twice. He buries his face in the curve of Stede’s shoulder and lets himself be swept away. He’s vaguely conscious of a tug on his scalp—Stede’s hand clenching in his hair—and the noise he makes immediately after might have set Ed off a second time if he were about twenty years younger.
How long they remain there, adrift in the sea-like bed, alone together in this liminal space they’ve created for themselves, Ed can’t be certain. He doesn’t particularly care. Part of him—a not insignificant part, possibly a worryingly large part—would be happy to stay here forever in Stede’s arms.
“I feel like I ought to get up but I’ll be honest with you, Ed, I’m not sure I can,” says Stede presently. “That was... well, it was—”
“Fuckin’ amazing.”
“Really? I mean, it was for me.” Stede lifts his head enough to catch Ed’s eye. “Was it for you, too?”
“Mate.” Ed stares at him in disbelief. “Couldn’t you tell? I think you blew the top of my fucking head off.”
“Which one?” Stede quips.
“Uh, both, obviously. We’re wearing the results of one explosion.”
The sucking sound their stomachs make as Stede lifts himself off of Ed audibly confirms this. They catch each other’s gaze again and chortle like schoolboys.
“It’s just, I haven’t had a lot of experience at this,” Stede says. He falls onto his side next to Ed, who gathers him close. “With men, I mean. Sorry if I sound needy.”
“‘Course you don’t. Everyone needs reassurance. And you were incredible.”
“You’re not just saying that because we’re still lying here naked?”
“Nope. Not even because I’m hoping we’ll have another go a bit later.”
“I’m definitely amenable to that.”
“Good.” Ed nuzzles Stede’s cheek as his fingers trace absent patterns through the hair on his chest. “The truth is, I’d have enjoyed myself no matter what because you’re hot as fuck and I’ve wanted this basically since the second I saw you but babe, the way you were? The things you said and how you touched me? There’s nothing you could’ve done better. You’re a natural. No experience necessary.”
“I don’t think I am,” Stede replies after a moment’s pause. “I think it’s just being with you.”
He turns his head and takes Ed’s lips in a tender kiss—beautifully, wonderfully, terrifyingly tender. It makes Ed’s heart soar and his dick twitch; Stede’s does the same but as much as he’s all in for round two—
“Do you think we could—” Ed begins, just as Stede says, “We probably ought to—”
“Shower first,” they finish in unison.
“We’re just really sticky,” says Ed.
“So sticky! And there’s quite a lot of sweat.”
“And mud.”
“And dust! Dust all through my hair.”
“I think there’s some in the crack of my arse, if I’m honest.”
“Oh, well.” Stede gives his arse a squeeze and a little smack as they roll off the bed and head for the bathroom. “We’ll have to make sure to wash that very thoroughly, then.”
Six weeks to the day after Stede’s fateful appearance at Hops Pub, a small charter airplane hits tarmac with enough of a jolt to wake Ed from his nap. He lifts his head from where it rests on Stede’s shoulder and wipes a string of drool from his chin with the back of his hand.
“We there already? That was quick.”
“Not really, you just slept through it. Did you sleep well?”
“Yeah. Out like a light.”
“I’m glad.”
Stede closes the book in his lap and removes his reading glasses. He retrieves his satchel from beneath the seat and tucks both of them away within it. As he busies himself double-checking that everything else is in place, Ed turns to the window. Beyond it he can see a hilly landscape in greens and browns, made dream-like by a wispy fog. He leans closer for a better look as the captain’s voice over the intercom welcomes them to the Faroe Islands.
Stede’s plan was to stay in Azerbaijan for two weeks. He stayed a month and a half. After all, he said to Ed, what’s the point of being your own boss if you can’t shake up your schedule on a whim? Life is short and there are beautiful architects to fuck.
Everything Ed had wished he could do with Stede that first day, they did. They went silk shopping in Sheki, climbed the peaks in Xinaliq, marvelled together at the landscapes that lay between the snow-capped Caucuses and Baku. They went to the tiny restaurant in the birch wood where Stede was just as enthralled as Ed knew he’d be, exclaiming in delight over the sizzling roast meat and fluffy tandir, the crisp veg and herbs and smoky cheese drizzled with lecsó.
“Why does food taste so much better outdoors?” he marvelled. Ed had no reply.
When they weren’t travelling they spent their time exploring Baku together, wandering through Icheri Sheher, the historic Old Town with its maze of winding streets, its ancient stone houses adorned with balconies of carved wood and wrought iron. They strolled its ramparts, oohed at the Shirvanshah’s Palace, browsed the many, many carpet shops where no matter what it seemed Stede always came away with something. (“Do you even have this many floors?” Ed asked after the purchase of what must have been the twelfth or thirteenth carpet. “Mary took most of them in the divorce but I still retain one or two,” Stede replied mildly.) They stood at the top of the Maiden Tower and imagined themselves desperate and romantic, as some legends claimed the eponymous maiden herself had been. (I’d jump if I lost you, thought Ed. “Darling,” said Stede, reading his mind, “let’s hope you never have to put that assertion to the test.”)
They walked along the shores of the Caspian and took a boat tour out to Boyuk Zira, stood together at the prow as the wind whipped through their hair, heavy with the stench of the oil pumped from the sea floor by distant rigs.
They hit all the touristy spots—the carpet museum, grandly housed in a building shaped like a rolled-up carpet (“Bit show-offy,” scoffed Ed), the museum of miniature books, the museum of Azerbaijani literature. An air and space exhibition at the Heydar Aliyev Centre, a blinding-white wave of a structure with no edges at all. (“Zaha really outdid herself with this one,” said Ed approvingly. “Fuckin’ stunning.”) They did not neglect the less shiny parts of the city, those still unpolished by oil money, places of cracked pavements and crumbling buildings that most of Baku’s residents called home. Places of underground bars and hole-in-the-wall restaurants where they ate plov and sajj and haş and drank beer and bootleg vodka and talked with locals in a mix of English, Russian and Azeri that managed, somehow, to be comprehensible to all.
And then, at last, when Stede could delay his departure no longer, Ed announced that he was coming with him.
“Are you sure this is okay?” Stede asked him as they packed up his apartment, filling boxes with all the knicks and knacks and random bits that just seem to collect themselves whenever you stay long enough in one place.
“Absolutely.” Ed didn’t especially care even if it wasn’t but he felt certain everything would be fine. “I’ve left Izzy with enough instructions that he’ll stay busy and think he’s in charge, meanwhile Fang and Frenchie will keep things running smoothly behind the scenes. Project’s nearly finished anyway.”
“And what about the next project?” Stede looked worried. “I don’t want to get in the way of your career.”
“Eh.” Ed waved a careless hand. “I haven’t designed anything interesting in years and honestly I need a change. I’ve been thinking about getting into more creative work. Green housing, carbon-zero, that kind of thing. Something really useful. A break’ll give me time to put some feelers out. And anyway.” He tossed a pillow in a box and reached out to catch Stede round the waist. “I want to be wherever you are. Don’t care where, so long as there’s you.”
“And if I’m sort of… everywhere and nowhere? Travelling constantly with no real home base?”
“Sounds great. I’ve never been nowhere before.”
“Oh, I’ll definitely have to take you then. There’s this great spot right in the middle of it.”
“Think I’ve heard of that.”
“Oh?”
“Mmhmm.”
They melted into each other, the boxes momentarily forgotten.
Is this too fast? Ed thinks now as the plane taxis to their gate. Is it a bit crazy, recklessly precipitate, to throw his lot in so completely with this man he’s really only just met?
Fuckin’ right it is. But Ed doesn’t give a single fuck. He’s in love with Stede and though neither of them has said the actual words he knows Stede’s in love with him too. They get each other, they have from the very first, and Ed’s looking forward to seeing more of the world through Stede’s eyes. There’s an excitement that lives in his chest now, tucked right in next to his heart. Excitement about life, his work, his future. He feels like a brand-new man.
The seatbelt sign turns off and they stand up. Ed slings his carry-on over his shoulder then meets Stede’s bright grin with one of his own.
“Ready for a new adventure?” Stede says.
Ed takes his hand and gives it a squeeze. “Can’t wait.”