#how dare you put these gorgeous words on my dash
Day followed night as it always does. Above the gently lapping waves of the high seas, curtains of the darkest midnight blue shifted almost imperceptibly to velvety purple, then brightened to a glorious pink betokening, ostensibly, impending delight. Slowly at first, then all at once, the sun rose above the horizon.
“Augh!” Edward Teach lifted his head from where it lay pillowed, quite comfortably, on Stede Bonnet’s perfect thighs. “Fuck off, sun!” he bellowed.
An offending ray of light had pierced the porthole of the cabin, stabbing its unwelcome way into the cloistered bedstead of the captain of the Revenge, where two pirates – one a gentleman, one a rogue – slept entwined.
Stede stirred. Without opening his eyes, he lifted a hand to pet soothingly at Ed’s hair.
“Hush,” he said. “It’s early. We’ve at least an hour, still. Draw the bedcurtains and come back to me.”
Ed grumbled, but he was helpless to deny Stede’s smallest request, so he rose and secured the curtain across the porthole, then pulled the bedcurtains snugly around the bed, careful to leave no chinks to let in the offending light.
“There,” Stede said, drawing Ed under the covers, tight against his side. “We’ll pretend it’s still nighttime. Nighttime’s my favourite.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“You know why.” Stede’s eyes were still closed, but he flushed up prettily.
“Maybe I do. Maybe I don’t, though. Maybe you should show me.”
“Mmmm. Maybe I should.”
There was silence in the cabin for several long moments. Silence broken only by the sound of lips on skin, stuttering breaths, small gasps.
“No good,” Ed said, pulling away suddenly. “It’s no good. Not enough time. There’s never enough nighttime for all the things I want to do with you.”
“Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?”Ed had learned that Stede often conversed through the medium of recited verse, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t heard this one before.
“Must to thy motions lovers’ seasons run?
Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide
Late school boys and sour prentices,
Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,
Call country ants to harvest offices,
Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,
Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.”Ed looked at him, unimpressed. “What’s that when it’s at home?”
Stede pondered. “Fuck off, sun.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“Darling. So you are. And considerably more concisely, too, well done.” He kissed him.
“Whatsit called then?”
“’The Sun Rising,’ I think. We’re not the first lovers to protest it.”
Ed’s eyes turned impossibly soft at the word “lovers.” Stede couldn’t bear it. He kissed him again.
As was so often their way, they lost themselves to each others’ lips, soft and wet and increasingly desperate. Hands wandered, tracing paths of love that quenched arid skin.
“I’ll show you something rising,” Ed murmured into Stede’s mouth. “Got it right here for you, mate.”
Stede shivered. There was no more talking after that.
