Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ed Teach is having a very cool, very calm, very fucking normal day at work. He shoves his hands in his pockets, the usual uniform of ripped black jeans and an old band tee under his leather jacket, and makes himself saunter from the kitchen down the hall, chin-nodding to people he passes, tossing out the usual insincere greetings.

Hey.

How’s it going.

I’m good, mate, good.

The last one’s not usually true in this soul-sucking desk job but today he’s fucking amazing, actually, because for almost a year, he’s been waiting for this moment to arrive, and now here it is. He promised himself he’d take this chance, and fuck it. He’s going to do it. He’s going to say the thing, at last, or some version of it.

That lasts as long as it takes for him to wander out into the godforsaken open-plan maze of Shuttlecock Environmental Solutions and make a beeline for Stede Bonnet’s desk. All of a sudden he’s acutely aware of how surrounded they are by other people. Jackie, the manager of accounting, whips her head up and narrows her eyes just as he passes, always on the hunt for gossip. Down the aisle, Jeffrey from legal leans back on his chair with a hopeful look, probably either praying for a distraction or a swift death.

Ed’s giving him neither. He makes it to the most brightly decorated cubicle in the whole place, the whole thing shining like a fucking rainbow beacon, a stylish one, mind you, and leans an elbow on the partition, super casual. Very relaxed right now, even though his heart’s hammering in his throat and he might have lost the feeling in his hands, a little bit.

“Stede,” he hisses. “Stede!”

Stede’s got his blond head down, typing studiously away on his keyboard, noise-cancelling headphones on to zone out the relentless chatting, typing, sniffing office noises they both hate. There’s yet another report up on his screen and he’s pecking out line after line, and it’s all so fucking boring. The single only upside to treading water here is that they’re doing it together, Ed and his best friend.

Or, Ed and the guy he’s fallen so in love with over the last three years that it aches in his bones, and as far as he knows, Stede’s still every bit as oblivious to that as he’s ever been, even though he’s sure Stede feels the same way, deep down. Ninety-eight percent sure, and it’s the two percent that’s terrifying.

One way or the other, Stede won’t be clueless for much longer, because Ed’s got a plan.

It’s a great plan. Ed’s a fucking tactical genius.

The only variable he can’t control is Stede.

He taps the guy on the shoulder, and Stede’s arms and legs go flying, jerking in all directions with a comically ridiculous excess of surprise. He swipes the headphones off as a scream dies on his lips and a smile slowly replaces it, one relieved hand planted on his chest. “God. Ed, fuck, I thought you were—I thought you were—“

“Let me guess, some kind of cryptid?”

His cheeks flush. “Maybe.”

“Listening to another podcast, hey?” Ed leans out and gives his chair a little kick. “Never know, I might be the kind who’s come to kidnap you off to a new life in the woods.”

Stede’s nose does that adorable wrinkle that’s point #17 on Ed’s Top 20 List of all the reasons he’s head over heels with this guy. “They don’t—you know they don’t really do that.”

“Maybe you just haven’t met the right kind of cryptid,” he says smugly. He nudges Stede, nods to the subtle little line of stickers and pins and prints that are tacked up with loving precision along the partition behind his screen. They’re arranged by colour, shifting right through the spectrum of the rainbow, trees and waves and flowers and the occasional actual rainbow, and it’d be easy for them to look like appropriately-themed decoration for an ecologist working in an environmental non-profit. But they’re more than that. “Ask Tāne and Rupert, they’ve met enough cryptids in fics.”

Some of them fics Ed’s written, some Stede has. Stede’s smile quirks a little at the side, and he leans back in his seat. “Oh, it’s that kind of day, is it?”

“Every day’s a Tree Change day.” He doesn’t know what the fuck happened to his brain when he watched the first episode of the television show they both love three years ago, but as each one aired, he’d seen himself more and more in it. A hot as shit Māori hero committed to protecting the environment by any means? I’m not an eco-terrorist, Rupert, I’m a fucking eco-pirate.

Ed’s the best fucking real-life ecologist there is, outside of Stede, but he joined this place thinking he was going to be saving the world, just like they do in that show, and instead he spends his days filling in form after form to make it easier for the government to smash up the very places they’re meant to look after.

He’s a box-ticking machine. That’s all there is.

Can anyone blame Ed for escaping with his whole brain into something like this? It’s about all the shit he loves. Helps that the show is queer as fuck, a whole found family of misfits just like the ones they’ve gathered at this place, most of them principled as hell, smart, innovative, under-appreciated. Helps that the whole show sings with neurodiversity, too. He’s not sure he’s ever seen anyone as exactly like him as Tāne, with all his fast spinning gears and more energy in his brain than he can get out, and he’s not sure he’s ever seen anyone more like Stede than Rupert, nerdy and quirky and cuter than he knows.

Which of course is exactly why Stede also imprinted on Tree Change like a baby duckling. Stede’s been amicably divorced from Mary since before Ed met him, but Rupert’s storyline had inevitably ended up trickling down into the whole coming out thing last year. Everyone but Stede had been completely unsurprised.

The show’s why they finally started talking to each other in the first place, after the first season finale aired, when Stede came in wearing a button on his shirt that again, looked like an ordinary tree. But Ed would’ve known the Elm of Wisdom fucking anywhere, and it’d finally shoved him over the line from staring heart eyes at the cute guy six desks up, to sliding past him and murmuring, “Sometimes I think I could find every bit of wisdom I need right here in your face.”

The look on Stede’s face at the canon line had been absolutely worth it, holy shit. His eyes had lit up and he’d beamed. He’d dragged Ed off to the kitchen and while he brewed tea for both of them—seven sugars and a dollop of milk for Ed, the guy had been paying attention—he’d launched into a five-minute info dump in which he’d barely paused to breathe. Ed had been glued to every single word. There's been a second season since that one, and Ed’s only ever gotten more interested in both the show and his fellow fan.

“We need to make like a tree and leave,” he says now, quoting one of Tāne’s famous quips under his breath. “Before they find us.”

Stede glances over his shoulder, but everyone’s gotten bored of wondering what they’re up to, and they’ve gone back to their own versions of paperwork hell. It’s their code, and Stede knows as well as Ed does that it means something’s up. He leans forward suddenly, hands pressed to the desk, papers sliding everywhere as his eyes go round. “It’s not the trailer, is it?”

Ed huffs a quiet laugh. “Mate, I wouldn’t be standing here like this, would I? I’d be coming to you live from the ceiling.”

They’ve been waiting not at all patiently for over a year for a single glimpse of their heroes and the final season that’s been promised, filming all wrapped up, just… not being handed over, yet, while the studio waits on who knows what. They'd had the same wait after the first season, but this time it’d all ended in a heartbreaking cliffhanger, and they need to know what’s going to happen next. He needs them to be happy together, because Ed needs… he and Stede to be happy together. It’s become his whole fucking life mission, and seeing it all fall apart on the show instead has hurt like hell, especially right after they finally got their shit together and agreed to run away to a new life in the penultimate episode.

And then after a little kidnapping, Rupert never showed up, and Tāne slid into a dark, dark place, and that’s where it left off.

The only thing they’ve been able to do in the meantime is write a shit-ton more fic about it, but Ed’s got a new plan of attack now. He nods to the hallway again, brows raised in challenge.

Stede sighs. “All right, okay, keep your mystery for the five seconds it’ll take to get from here to somewhere else.”

Yes. No, wait. Fuck. Stede’s getting up, he’s waiting for Ed, and Ed’s going to take him down the hall and just… say shit. Out loud. About his feelings. And it’s going to be fine, Stede’s definitely going to be all, hey, wow, I wish I’d known earlier you were holding these feelings, because I’ve also been holding a lot of feelings and just—passionate making out’s going to ensue, probably. Ed’s even spritzed with breath freshener, just to be absolutely sure he’s ready.

“Ed?” Stede’s brows have drawn together in that way that makes him look like a lost puppy. Reason #13, actually. “Did you want to—“

“Yeah! Uh, fuck it, yeah, let’s—“ He throws two very cool finger guns in the direction of the hall, and goes back to being super fucking casual about everything as he strolls past Jackie again. Stede offers her a bright, passive aggressive compliment about her hideous desk plant on the way, even though they both know he calls it a fuchsia-tinged weed on steroids in private. That bitchy attitude’s right up there on the list, about reason #4, and Ed can feel the daggers Jackie’s staring after him as he steers Stede away from her.

Out in the hall, which is dim, because they turn out the lights to save energy—meanwhile Nigel Badminton’s in his CEO’s office down the hall with thirty more lights on than anyone else—Ed dares to grab Stede’s hand and yanks him along to the storage closet. He does a dramatic Tāne-style recce, glancing in both directions, before he flings open the door and hauls Stede inside after him.

It’s only when the door’s closed and they’re plunged into pitch darkness that he goes to flick on the light, and—“Fuck.” It’s not working. One more bulb maintenance hasn’t bothered to replace, and they’re suddenly caught blind.

Ed scrambles for his phone, gets it out of his pocket, flicks the screen open, and when he looks up Stede’s all lit up in the glare of the screen, staring at him from maybe half a foot away. Ed clears his throat. “Hey.”

It comes out with a real teenaged kind of squeak that he’d thought he left behind thirty years ago, and Stede smiles. “Hello. And what exactly is all this about?”

In for a fucking penny, pulse pounding through his veins. He turns the phone Stede’s way and gives it a good flourish with his other hand. “Kinktober prompts just landed.”

Stede stares at the screen, tiny glowing rectangles reflected in his eyes. “Oh.”

Oh? Ed’s, uh. He’s not sure that was the tone he was going for here. “We’ve been waiting all year, since they said they were finally doing it!”

Stede’s eyes flick up to his. He’s kinda frowning a little. “Ed, it’s—it’s only August. We’re only just starting AUgust! I can’t think about October now!”

Stede’s got a bunch of shit going on for AUgust, he knows, because Ed reads everything that spills out of Stede’s fucking fascinating brain, and Stede reads everything Ed writes, too. They’re joined at the fic writing hip. Nobody’s got a better story brain than Stede, and Ed fucking loves the unhinged stuff he comes up with. Drives him to whole new heights, makes him so much more excited about his own ideas. But this is the first time the fandom’s run this event, and Stede has said he’s keen to give it a go. “Plenty of time to let it marinate, mate. Our first collaboration.”

“I don’t—I don’t know. Anything. About any of this. Now that it’s actually here…”

Ed’s keenly aware of how close together they are in this closet, hemmed in by shelves of paper and stationery and cleaning equipment. Stede’s knee bumps against his, he can smell the guy’s sugar-sweet cologne wafting up. He’s near enough that he could run a hand through Stede’s hair if he wanted, see if it’s as soft as it feels brushing against his neck when Stede nods off against him on their marathon Tree Change rewatch nights. Say the words. Say the fucking words.

But when he opens his mouth, all that comes out is, “I can help.”

Stede’s golden brows shoot up, silvered from the screen’s light. “Help?” And then his expression softens. “Oh, Ed, you already do so much for me.” He reaches for the phone, and Ed hands it over. Realises how sweaty his hands are, fuck, wipes them down on his jeans. Stede scans through the list, brows going higher and higher. “Oh. Oh, you weren’t joking, there are some—“

“More advanced tricks of the trade, yeah, mate. I could… I could run you through them.”

Stede gets to the end of the list, scrolls back up again. Pauses over one that makes him bite his lip and shit, fuck, okay, what if Ed just shoved him back into the tangle of mops there and kissed him, right now? What if?

He doesn’t. Stede hands the phone back and sighs. “You know I’d rather hear it from you than Google any day, but I’m just… I’m not sure I’m experienced enough to make this believable.”

Ed scoffs as he sets the phone down on a shelf, stabilising the light in an upward-beaming wash of blue-white, leaving them both cast in dramatic shadows. “I’ve read your smut. Your smut’s amazing.” Stede’s smut, the thought of him typing out those words, has had Ed coming so hard he’s seen stars on more occasions than he’s willing to admit. “Just a little stretch.”

Stede lets out a laugh. “I don’t even know what some of those things are. Snowballing? What’s a sex machine? How does one—" He makes a big exaggerated set of fingers in the air. “‘Titty-fuck’ someone?”

Every word Ed’s ever known has been knocked clean out of his head as the blood rushes south, away from his brain. And maybe that’s why he doesn’t manage to think it through before he says, “I could show you.”

The brows are so tightly drawn together they’re almost one unit. “As in… porn? Maybe not in the office—“

“No!” It comes out all indignant before he can even register that Stede didn’t just not say he’d watch porn with Ed, like… okay. “I meant, uh. I meant I could show you.”

There’s absolute silence in the closet, Stede staring up at him, gone so still he might as well be frozen. Ed begs a god he’s never really believed in to let the floor open up and drop him through it. At long, long last Stede takes a ragged breath and says, the most incredulous Ed’s ever heard a person sound, “Titty-fucking?”

Oh god, Ed’s going to die. And he’s going to die with blue balls and a heart that’s still yearning, reaching out, desperate for the one person who’s made him feel genuinely seen in years, maybe ever. He pulls up all the courage he’s got left in him and steps closer. Slides a hand up to cup Stede’s cheek and says, “All of it.”

He feels Stede’s gulping swallow under his hand. Ed stands there, looking into his eyes, projecting calm, like he’s trying to fucking… get a wild horse to settle or something, like Tāne would in the middle of busting up an illegal poaching operation. “Oh,” Stede whispers, faint as anything. “Uh.” He squints. “Muzzles?”

“Christ.” Ed takes a step back and lets himself slump dramatically against the opposite wall. “I’m sorry, I’m not—I should just say what I’m thinking, not wait for you to guess it. Don’t want you to feel confused, mate.” He’s still grappling for how to say it, nearly there.

Stede still looks confused, maybe more than ever. But he also looks like he’s summoning up something, and there’s a flare of hope in Ed’s chest. “I’m interested, actually.”

“In—“

“Everything. All of it.” His eyes, if Ed’s not mistaken, have gone a little darker. “You know me. You know I don’t have any experience in, well, anything much.” Stede, who hasn’t dated since the divorce, who only figured himself out last year, learning all the possibilities through this show, this fandom, these stories he’s reading and soon writing with Ed. They both know that’s been a big thing for him. “I want the experience, I do. But I can’t make any promises, Ed. The only thing I feel looking at that list is… panic.”

“The only thing?” Ed’s shoved himself up straighter now, hooking his thumbs in his belt loops, covering the whole two steps back toward Stede, trying for playful. “Nothing else?”

Stede opens his mouth to say something, and then, like the fucking curse that it is, Nigel Badminton’s little bell goes ringing out in the hallway. Like he’s running a fucking school for orphans a hundred years ago, not an actual company full of professionals. Ding ding ding, Nigel’s smarmy voice rising above it. “Conference room, everyone, immediately!”

Ed groans. “Dickfuck, I’m not—“

Stede’s eyes go wide with panic, and he reaches out and grabs Ed’s arm, reels him in so fast that they crash together, puts a fucking hand over his fucking mouth. “Shh. Shh, shh.”

Oh, Ed’s not saying anything. Ed’s just staring at Stede, pressed against his solid chest, getting so hard he might fucking burst on the spot just from that one golden curl that always slips over his forehead (reason #8).

When all the clatter has died away, Stede lets out his breath, and takes his hand away, and Ed’s all out of fight, brain fully gone to jelly. Words don’t matter anymore. He leans in, and takes Stede’s cheeks in his hands, and kisses him.

Stede’s breath rushes out. It’s soft at first, and then it’s not. It’s maybe five of the most awkward seconds of Ed’s entire life, actually, but his lips are on Stede’s and Stede’s staring at him stunned, not moving, and he makes a noise that Ed feels through his mouth, and Ed lets go and steps back abruptly.

Stede’s mouth is hanging open, and he looks like Ed just slapped him.

The panic’s already coursing through his veins, crashing back in like a wave to the shore, and Ed says, “Fuck. Sorry.”

“No.” Stede reaches out and grabs his sleeve before he can turn away. His cheeks are flushed, and he seems like he’s struggling to get a breath in. “No, that was… that was a good start. A good move. An… an orientation, as it were. Before we start this project.”

“Project?”

He nods, almost manages to look decisive. “Before you show me how to do every single thing on this list.”

Every. Single. Thing. All of a sudden, Ed’s grinning again, relieved. “Yeah?”

Stede’s smile is growing, too. “I think so, yes.” He takes a deep breath, lets it out. “Friends with benefits, I think they call it? Or at least that’s what Rupert and Tāne called it in Leaf It To Me.”

Christ. Fucking Christ, Stede’s really taking fics like they’re a manual here. Ed’s so normal about all of this, just so deeply fucking normal that he almost doesn't care Stede went straight to friends and not all the way to lovers. Almost. He shrugs, like he’s not fighting for his actual life here. “Guess it is.”

He sticks out his hand, and Stede shakes it, as if they just had a nice old business meeting in the storage closet, and they didn’t just fucking kiss each other, fucking hell, he’s still short circuiting, brain still screaming mouth! Stede! Lips! Just then the bell goes clanging back the other way, Badminton yelling, “Bonnet? Teach? This is a mandatory attendance situation.”

Ed sighs. "Maybe we should reconvene this later?"

His hope stays afloat as Stede gives a cautious nod, and Ed scrapes his phone up and switches the screen off, dropping them back into full darkness. They wait for Nigel to fade away into the distance and then Ed eases the door open and peeks out. Gestures for Stede to follow, but Stede waves to the floor. “Got my foot a little bit… a little bit stuck in this bucket, unfortunately.”

Ed can’t help the euphoric laugh that cracks out of him, because god. Kissing in a storage closet was never them before, but this kind of mayhem? It’s them all the way through, and it’s a bloody relief to feel that familiarity again, mixing in with all the new. “All right, let’s get you out of there.”

They turn up to the conference room five minutes late, after a Monty Python level of falling over each other laughing trying to get Stede’s bloody hoof out of the bucket, and the whole room goes silent when they walk in. Ed runs a hand through his hair, suddenly self-conscious, like they can all see it on his face. Maybe they can. His blood feels like it’s on fire, and he can’t imagine his eyes are anything but manic right now, beaming his feelings all over the place, a torch in the dark.

“Good of you to join us,” Nigel says, through gritted teeth. There’s an older man standing next to him up the front, a natty little guy in a very expensive suit that Ed can already see, from the corner of his eye, Stede is judging for quality and fit. “This is Mr. Carmody, and he’s got a very important announcement to make.”

“Carmody,” Stede whispers, leaning in, frowning. “Where have I heard that before?”

Ed narrows his eyes at the guy as he starts to talk, because he knows the name, all right. He just doesn’t know the context of the specific guy standing here, and there are probably plenty of Carmodys across the world. “Not sure.”

“Thank you all for coming along today.” Carmody smiles across at a photographer who clicks off a few frames, and shit, there’s a news camera filming, too. “I’ve had a very lucky life, very lucky circumstances, but as I reach my twilight years it’s important to me to make a difference. I’ve given a lot of long, hard thought to my legacy, and I’ve decided that the best thing I can do for the world is bequeath a significant property to Shuttlecock, for restoration.”

There’s a little gasp around the room, but it doesn’t mean shit all to Ed, so he only looks to Stede, confused. Stede looks back at him just the same way.

Nigel gestures. “If I can get Edward Teach and Stede Bonnet up the front, that would be wonderful.”

Ed stares back at him blankly, and Nigel gives a big jerk of his head, eyes spelling out murder. Fuck him. But Stede tugs his sleeve and starts to make his way up there, and fucked if Ed’s going to leave him alone with that, so he follows.

They’re nudged to shake the old guy’s hand, and Nigel grins at the cameras. “Mr Teach and Mr Bonnet—“

“It’s Dr. Teach,” Ed chucks in, because hey, he rarely pulls the PhD card, but after four years in this place, a little basic respect is not too much to expect. “And also Dr. Bonnet.”

“Doctor Teach and Doctor Bonnet are our senior ecologists, and they’ll be tasked with assessing the property and writing up a conservation plan for it next month. Mr. Carmody has generously provided a cabin and all necessary resources.”

Ed stares at the guy. Stede’s staring at the guy.

“But Nigel—“

“Wonderful,” Nigel says. “There’s afternoon tea in the kitchen, thank you very much.”

Everyone scatters the way they always do when they hear there’s free food happening, and look. Normally Ed would be in there first, making sure he gets his hands on the good donuts if they’ve actually stumped up, but this time he and Stede seem to be in complete agreement. They both stand back and watch everyone else file out, until all the noise has dropped away, and it’s just the two of them left in the high-ceilinged brightness of the conference room. Them, and childhood memories battering around in his brain while he tries to swat them like flies.

Stede turns to face him, biting his lip to hold back a scowl. Reason #11, that lip bite. “Well, so much for the plan.”

The plan, the one they just hatched in the closet, to fuck each other senseless for a month. There’s a fizz of feeling in his stomach knowing that Stede’s still thinking about it, too, before anything else. Not who’ll pick the kids up from school on Fridays, not who’ll water your plants, Edward, not what about all the other work we’ll have to put aside. Just the plan. “Don’t know about that, mate.”

Stede’s brows go up again. “I think, if I was hearing correctly, that Nigel just saddled us with doing… some kind of public arse-kissing of a shrunken elderly capitalist Bond villain, in the middle of bloody nowhere!”

Ed tries not to grin. Doesn’t really manage to hold it back. “I think what he said was, we get a month to ourselves in a fucking cabin in the middle of nowhere.” He gives Stede a significant brow, reaches out and taps his shoulder. “Feel like that lines up pretty nicely with the plan. Enhances all the possibilities.”

Stede huffs out a breath as it computes, and his mouth quirks up in that little sideways smile Ed loves the shit out of, enough to put it at reason number three.

He sees it now, Ed knows. Just the two of them, out there in the wilderness alone. Well, no, the crew’s going to be there on and off, probably, because that’s how these things work. They cycle in and out with their expertise, they write up their part of the report, Ed and Stede pull the whole thing together, and it goes off and… does whatever Nigel wants it to do, whatever that is this time.

They’ve always been aligned in their thinking, and he can see Stede’s cogs turning now (reason #18). “Am I—am I misremembering, or are the Carmody family involved in oil? Mining? Something environmentally destructive.”

Ed nods slowly, trying to remember what he’s heard. “Yeah, I think you’re right.”

“Is that suspicious, a little bit? That he’s handing over his property right after that big spill in the sound? I mean, they haven’t figured out who was responsible yet, but the timing.”

“Bit of a distraction, yeah. Might be something to it.” He eyes Stede up, steps a little closer. “What would Rupert do? Refuse to get involved?”

Out here, where there’s enough light to see his face, Stede’s eyes flutter shut a little at the heat in Ed’s voice. “That depends on whether you want canon Rupert or fanon Rupert.”

“Either,” Ed says, an easy rumble to his voice. “I like every kind of Rupert.”

“Fuck,” Stede says under his breath. He snaps to look at Ed a second later. “Rupert would use his time on that property to suss out anything out of place, and he’d turn it back on said villain, if he found anything. He’d turn it back on Maxwell Corporation, too, if they were complicit, you know?”

Maxwell Corporation, the fictional company where their television heroes met, that turned out to be a front for the villains all along. Technically taken down in season two, but the bad guys are very much still present and active, still getting in the way of the happy ending they all want so badly. “Oh, I know. That’s exactly where he and Tāne would agree, too.”

“I thought they agreed on everything.”

“They do.” Stede’s facing him fully now, looking into his eyes, and he can see a whole new spark there. Ed clears his throat. “Dunno, Tāne’d probably suggest they go back to the broom closet for a minute, just to… you know. Test that the whole arrangement was working first, or whatever.”

Stede nods seriously. “Is that—is that a thing? That it doesn’t work?”

“Not if you get the two absolutely perfect people for the job.” He reaches out and knocks his knuckles against Stede’s and whispers, “To the canopy and beyond.”

He turns and walks, and he already knows, before he makes it past Jackie’s empty desk, that Stede’s going to follow him. Out in the hallway, the laughter from the kitchen is rising up as everyone eats their cheap as shit packaged cookies and drinks their dirt-adjacent coffee and tries to live a little, from behind a desk. Ed yanks open the broom closet door again and Stede’s right there, right behind him, shoving him through.

They don’t bother with a light this time. He’s barely got the door closed when Stede crashes into him and smacks him back against the wall, and their lips meet a second later. This time, this time, it’s what he’d hoped for all along. There’s something about not being able to see each other that makes it that much more heated as Stede’s mouth falls open, desperate, searching against his, and Ed claims it right back. Stede’s hands are yanking at his belt, more forceful, more confident than he’d ever have believed possible. Truly bringing his Rupert game, right? God, they waited almost two entire seasons for the guy to snap and take what he wanted, and when he did, nobody was ready, least of all Tāne.

Ed thought he was ready for this, but fuck, he was not. His jeans are yanked open, shoved down, and he tips his head back against the wall and shoves his fist between his teeth as Stede goes down on his knees, and a second later his mouth closes hot around Ed’s cock.

Ed might, it’s just possible, have a whole new reason #1. It’s going to shove aside the current #1, which is just… Stede. Himself. Being himself. Ed still loves that a lot, but maybe not as much as he loves Stede’s mouth.

Stede sucks his cock like he’s trained for it all his life, like he needs it to survive. And the unexpected enthusiasm has Ed bucking into his mouth for the whole minute it lasts, out of control of his own body, until Stede does some complicated kind of sucking thing and fuck, that’s it. He comes on a low moan, clinging to the shelf behind him as all the ephemera of their daily work rattles and clanks with the movement of his body.

It’s like the aftermath of an earthquake, all the tremors inside him slowly fading into silence. All he’s left with is his own breath rasping in his ears as Stede pulls off him and sits back on the floor, just a shape in the darkness.

“Stede,” he whispers, when he manages to get his breath back. “You okay?”

“Yes,” Stede whispers right away. “Fine.”

He doesn’t entirely sound fine. Ed fights his shaking hands to get himself packed away and zipped up, and then he pats around for a minute before he gives up and sinks to the floor himself. “Stede?”

“Over here.”

Two feet away at best, legs all bent up and in the way, and Ed feels his way over, until he can sit next to Stede. His chest’s still heaving, and Ed wishes like hell he could see his face. “Rupert’d be proud, mate. I’m proud of you.”

Stede lets out a weak laugh. “Well, thanks.”

“Do you, uh. Do you want me to—“

“Ed,” he says. “I’m sorry, I… I got a little too enthusiastic.”

It takes him a second to understand, and he pats out, finds Stede’s damp jeans just as Stede flinches and grabs his hand. “Ah. That, uh. That happens to the best of us, mate, I promise.” It’s so incredibly hot that his dick throbs again at the thought of it. Stede so turned on that he came in his pants just from sucking Ed off, fuck. “You did it right.”

“I did?” He sounds small and uncertain. “I wasn’t sure.”

Ed drops his forehead sideways to Stede’s shoulder, fond. “I just came so hard it nearly put me through the wall. Would’ve been quite the spectacle in the kitchen, me just… Kool-Aid man smashing my way through, bare ass and dick out, and—“

Stede shakes with laughter against his arm, and when he speaks again the warmth is back. “I’m glad you stayed in here with me instead.”

They lapse into silence for a bit, just leaning against each other, and Ed tries to process all of this. This morning he’d seen that prompt list, the starter flag he’d been waiting for to kick off the next phase of all of this, and not an hour later he’s sitting amidst the mops and buckets with Stede, and they are, without a doubt, off and racing. And he’s excited, yeah, but he’d be lying if he didn’t think he was also a little fucking terrified.

“Will this make things weird?” Stede asks softly, reading his mind, like Stede always does.

“Not if we don’t let it.”

Because a month of this, and he knows there’s no way they can come back from that trip just friends. He’s not just going to seduce the shit out of Stede, he’s going to woo him. Make him see just how desirable he is, how wanted, how much he wants Ed in return. He doesn’t want to spook Stede by going too hard, too early, but sex? Sex, they can do, before love is so much as whispered.

It’s inherent in everything he does with Stede, anyway, and he’s going to do his level best to make Stede feel it.

“Good, then,” Stede murmurs. And then he shifts a bit and says, “Would you… would you happen to have a spare pair of jeans?”

Ed chuckles against him and twists far enough to plant a kiss on his temple, the rules of the game be damned. “Got a whole change of outfit in my locker. Want to do something weird?”

He can see the light seeping in under the door now that their eyes have adjusted, just enough to light their feet, and their hands, where they meet on the floor. Stede loops his pinky finger through Ed’s and squeezes. “More than anything.”

So next month, fuck. They’ll both be embarking on the weirdest thing they’ve done yet, and suddenly Ed’s never been so ready for anything in his life.

Reason number two: Stede’s brave as hell. Ed’s going to be brave enough to match him, just the way Tāne’s always matched Rupert.

They’ll be their own kinky tree change, wait and see.