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“Ah”
Stede realises Ed is probably looking for something more than that as a response and so he adds “Um”
Ed’s face is doing something that Stede can’t really read properly so… Yes. Probably something more still required.
“Is that… usual?”
Now, Stede would be first to admit he’s not altogether the most experienced in bedroom matters when they concern other men. Or women now that he thinks about it. But he has seen other men nude in artworks and statues and during swimming as a boy and the crew aren’t exactly prudish and of course there’s Buttons. Not that Buttons can really be deemed “usual” in any way.
He’s wandering off his own point here, but the main thing is that he has seen other men’s members before and he’s fairly certain they usually have less tentacles than Ed’s.
He’s pretty sure that no tentacles at all is the usual number in fact.
The tentacles had, like Ed’s member, been looking rather perky and happy to be introduced to Stede directly after Ed had (with some difficulty) peeled himself out of his leather, but now everything was starting to droop and look rather sad and forlorn.
“You don’t like them. No, no, that’s – should have expected that I just thought-”
Ed starts to pull his leathers back up with jerky movements, not meeting Stede’s eye. And that won’t do at all, oh no. Stede lunges forward to stop Ed redressing, and Ed rears back – probably because people lunging at him hasn’t generally been a good thing in his life, which might explain why he’s frantically trying to get at his knife while tripping over his half-mast trousers and falling backwards onto Stede’s cabin bed. The wind knocks out of him.
There’s a brief pause. Ed sighs deeply and puts his hands over his face. Stede sits down next to him on the bed and pats his elbow hesitantly. It seems the safest place to touch.
“Sorry” says Stede “I think I put that badly. I often do. It’s not that I don’t like them, just that… Well, I’ve not had much experience with even the general model of men parts and yours look rather specialised.” Ed lowers his hands slightly, so his dark eyes are showing and Stede gives him a nervous smile before he says softly “I don’t want to mess up or appear foolish.”
Ed’s hands go down completely to rest on his chest and his voice is gentle when he tells Stede “You don’t ever look foolish. Not to me”
Stede beams at him and then risks a glance down. “Actually, they’re rather pretty”
And they are. They surround Ed’s otherwise quite usual looking member in a ring and look more like the waving fronds of an anemone than the tentacles of an octopus or squid, smooth and tapered to slim tips and still retracted a little in reaction, like the anemones he used to see in rock pools by the seashore. Stede bends down a little to study them closer as Ed says “Yeah, blokes don’t usually like their pricks being called pretty you know” but he’s smiling when Stede glances up to check, and the tentacles are lengthening and starting to move again so Stede doesn’t think he really minds. Besides, Ed should be told he’s pretty more often, because he is.
Stede says as much, adding absently as he studies them “And your tentacles are too. What lovely colours”. Fittingly, given how much it suits him, Ed’s tentacles are shaded in purple. A deep, deep almost Tyrian purple at the base, shading through plum and violet and periwinkle to the lightest, brightest lavender right at the tips. They flush a little brighter under Stede’s fascinated gaze, and he follows the blush of blood causing it as it races under Ed’s beautiful dark skin up his belly and over his chest, visible under his open jacket, till it disappears under his beard. There’s a flush over his cheeks above the beard when Stede meets his eyes. Ed’s voice is rather gruff when he asks, “You really don’t mind them?”
Stede merely smiles in reply and cautiously brushes his fingers over the tentacles closest to him. He shoots a glance back up at Ed’s gasp, but it doesn’t seem to be a bad thing, so he carries on with his examination. The tentacles at the edge of the ring they’re arranged in are the longest and are waving and moving more now, a couple even curling around Stede’s fingers a little as he touches them. Then they get shorter but more numerous and closer together the nearer to the centre and Ed’s member they get. The densest cluster is just below the base, their numbers almost hiding the small, neat testicles they grow out of like sea creatures on rock, and they ripple in waves when Stede runs the tips of his fingers across them.
There’s a moisture on the tentacles now, oozing out in some form that Stede can’t fathom, and a fresh, brackish scent grows in the quiet warmth of the cabin bed. Ed is panting softly and making tiny broken-off sounds and Stede wants to look at his face to check those are good sounds but he’s too fascinated to drag his eyes away. The tentacles curve around his wrist and try to grasp his fingers as he plays with them, and he hasn’t even touched Ed’s member yet… no, his prick. That’s a better word. His prick, lying flat against his stomach and hard and thick, flushed nearly as dark as the base of the tentacles that brush over and against it like they do Stede’s fingers, getting both slick with whatever fluid it is they’re producing.
Stede would have thought his first touch of Ed’s prick is far too shy and gentle to produce the moan it does, and he tightens his grasp in surprise, pressing some of the tentacles against the larger organ accidentally and fingers sliding on the fluid to give a firm stroke that makes Ed cry out and arch his hips up as if following the sensation.
Holding Ed in place by throwing a leg over his and pressing down on his belly is almost instinctual, Stede needs the other man to keep still if he’s to explore properly, but when he sees how Ed grips at the sheets, how being held down makes him shudder and his eyelids flutter, Stede presses a little harder, makes his hand tighter as he gives a deliberate second stroke and he’s rewarded by a groan that seems to come from the depths of the ocean and Ed saying “Stede… Please” in a choked, pleading voice.
“Shhsh, it’s alright, I’ll take care of you”
Stede nearly doesn’t recognise his own voice, not certain if he’s ever sounded so confident and sure of himself before, but he’s right. New experience or not, he knows how to take care of Ed – knows like he’s read a whole library just on that subject. Like that’s what he was born for.
He pulls and strokes at Ed’s prick with a steady rhythm, stopping every so often when he can feel Ed tremble and can tell he’s getting close to tangle his fingers in the slick fronds at the base and tug firmly, which makes Ed keen in the back of his throat but draws him back from the edge. Ed started off swearing softly but all words slip into incoherence as Stede works him higher and higher with each wave of frigging and the only one left is Stede’s name, breathed out among the moans. Finally, Stede quickens his hand till it can’t go any faster and reaches out the other, that’s been holding Ed down till now, to firmly pinch one small, firmly peaked nub of a nipple.
The extra sensation is all Ed needs and his body tightens up and quivers like a bow before the wave crashes down on him and he cries out, grabbing Stede’s arms and any part he can reach as he streaks Stede’s hand in pulses of white.
Stede is breathing almost as hard as Ed, and though he hasn’t had a release he’s so nearly overwhelmed with warm, wonderful feeling as he watches Ed’s face relax that he nearly cries out as if he has. He’s never felt like this before. He never wants to stop feeling like this.
He’d almost forgotten he still has a hand on Ed’s prick until Ed’s own fingers grab it and bring it up to that grey streaked beard. Before Stede can ask what’s happening Ed pops Stede’s fingers in his mouth and starts to lick them clean.
Stede's breath leaves him in a woosh and then he can’t seem to draw it again properly as Ed’s tongue wraps around his fingers and chases any last bit of the release they were coated with. Finally, he tugs them free and the slight scrape of Ed’s teeth over his knuckles makes him shake, his stomach jumping with sensation. Ed grins up at him, wide and lazy, and Stede has to reach out and tangle his damp fingers in Ed’s hair, tug a little to make Ed’s eyelids droop and his mouth open in a little gasp. He has to lean down and kiss Ed, to murmur how lovely he is, and lick into his mouth.
Ed tastes of salt, and a faint bitter sharpness like iodine. Ed tastes of the sea, and adventure, and of everything Stede loves.