[Not that Stede had been worried solely about his co-captain, surely. The thought simply slips out, like the connection between his mind and his lips has relaxed a bit under the gentle attention. Stede's heart is confusingly large. There would have been space in there for worrying about Edward specifically.
There's a slight crinkle at the corners of his eyes as he studies Stede's quiet features. Abruptly, Edward sits up a bit more, twisting his arm under the other man's grip without snatching it away--simply twisting to show the more fulsome extent of the ink and scars covering the very skin now being gently bathed.] What all this is about.
[The scars (mostly thin and spider-like on his arm, a slice here or there; clean and hard to see compared to the gnarled knots that pepper his chest and back) are a bit literal. The tattoos, by and large, are also fairly literal, but a half-step removed in abstraction.]
Fuckin' years of it.
[No years of being delicately pampered like this, of course.]
no subject
[Not that Stede had been worried solely about his co-captain, surely. The thought simply slips out, like the connection between his mind and his lips has relaxed a bit under the gentle attention. Stede's heart is confusingly large. There would have been space in there for worrying about Edward specifically.
There's a slight crinkle at the corners of his eyes as he studies Stede's quiet features. Abruptly, Edward sits up a bit more, twisting his arm under the other man's grip without snatching it away--simply twisting to show the more fulsome extent of the ink and scars covering the very skin now being gently bathed.] What all this is about.
[The scars (mostly thin and spider-like on his arm, a slice here or there; clean and hard to see compared to the gnarled knots that pepper his chest and back) are a bit literal. The tattoos, by and large, are also fairly literal, but a half-step removed in abstraction.]
Fuckin' years of it.
[No years of being delicately pampered like this, of course.]