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The weather is warm in this windswept expanse of the Australian outback, the soil deep red, the insects chirping merrily in the grass. The cave entrance, when they finally find it tucked into the base of a weathered granite outcrop, is low to the ground, no higher than Stede’s knee.
“Nope,” Lucius says, already backing away. “Absolutely not.”
Stede’s already shucking off his backpack and setting it aside in the low scrub, evaluating. “As if I’d let you get the first look anyway.”
His assistant blows out an amused little huff. “Yeah, well. Obviously. Get on with it, then.”
It takes a minute or two to set up the safety protocols. The sun’s slanting sidelong in the late afternoon; out here it doesn’t just cast everything in gold, but in bronze, the light glowing in a way that burnishes all the wildflowers with a sort of sepia tone. Stede hooks the belt around his waist and fastens the carabiner, tugging it tight, while Pete drills the anchoring point into the ground.
From what’s been reported to them, this cave proceeds into the hillside without much variation, just an incredibly flat and narrow tunnel that ends with a rock wall a few metres in. But the archaeologists who found it had been searching for a rumoured cavern that drops metres down into open air, and he’s got to take precautions just in case he stumbles across what they didn’t find.
“All ready to roll,” Pete says, hands on his hips, sweat beading on his head. He looks sceptical, for a man who claimed to be a cave expert not two days ago. “You sure about this, Cap?”
Stede is going to trust. He nods sharply. “I’m ready.”
He’s got his torch on his wrist and his camera strapped to the back of his belt, and he hops down, face first on the ground—still good and limber for a man of fifty, so he’s been told—and wiggles his way into the dark cave entrance.
Thankfully he’s never been afflicted by claustrophobia.
Less thankfully, this cave might change that. As soon as he’s out of the dry heat of the arid air outside, it’s cool and dank inside, and the walls really are very close on all sides. He couldn’t possibly turn back if he needed to- he’s completely reliant on Pete to pull him out by that rope when he’s finished his search, and for a moment his breath freezes in his lungs, his heart tripping over the next beat.
“Tighten up,” he whispers to himself, the sound instantly absorbed by the shadows.
Through the beam of dusty light the torch is sending ahead of him, swallowed up by the dark, something skitters. He yelps and jerks back, banging his head on the ceiling of solid rock that’s right there, and whimpers.
“I’m not an arachnologist, I’m an idiot.”
His radio crackles, and Lucius’s voice is right there with him. “Why not both, hmm? Just find the damn spider and get out, Stede.”
“All right!” He huffs, the tension having been broken, thank god, by Lucius’s well-timed intervention. “Proceeding!”
There isn’t much of this cave to go, he knows from the field notes. The previous scientists had estimated that they hit the end only a few metres in, and he’s almost there already, wiggling forward in some parody of a commando crawl or a swimming race or a worm race, maybe. Just like a worm, arms extended ahead of him for the light, moving incrementally further in with each wiggle of his legs.
There. The torch beam has finally met a surface that stops it, the light pooling across a wall. He’s kept it dim, because no arachnid wants to get blasted with a couple of thousand lumens, so he has to wiggle a bit more before he gets there.
And… he lets out his breath. “Nothing.”
“Above you?” Lucius says.
Stede twists to look up at the roof—right there, right there, god—but all that stares back at him is more worn granite, smooth and implacable grey and unmoved by his disappointment.
“Not there, either.”
There’s a pause before Lucius speaks again. “I suppose it was a bit of folly to think it might still be sitting in the exact same spot a month later.”
Spiders do move, of course. Stede knows that better than anyone. It’s just that this is only the sixth time this species has ever been recorded, and when they got the photograph sent through last month, a little blurry but undeniable, it had been a moment for Stede, who’s been searching for this very spider for a very, very long time. He’s got a list of rare species that he’s trying to track for the museum to prove that they’re still extant, and this one’s been eluding him.
“Maybe just hang out for a bit? See if it comes home?”
He can do that. Yes, no problem. He rests his head on his arm and stares at the wall beside him. It’s really a perfectly Stede-sized tunnel, a bit tomb-like. If he lets his imagination wander too much he starts imagining cave-ins, nobody ever able to retrieve his bones, spiders emerging from all the shadows to sit vigil over his slowly decaying corpse or, or, to take advantage of the free meal, and—
“No, actually, I think I’d better just—”
He tries to wiggle himself backwards, the need to exit suddenly quite urgent, but there really is very little space here, has he noted how little space there is? He’s not exactly amply endowed in the rear, but his backside still scuffs loudly against the cave roof, and he bangs his elbow trying to drag his arm back, and he’s on the verge of a full panic attack when—
There’s a tinkling sound right beside his ear that makes him stop.
“I’m pulling, babe, he’s not moving!” Pete’s voice is laced with panic through the radio as the ringing in Stede’s ears settles, and he clears his throat, kicking to release the tension in the strap that’s gotten caught around his ankle.
“I’m all right, hold on, just…”
There’s a patch on the wall that’s crumbling where his elbow hit it, low down, thankfully, so he doesn’t have to fear the whole roof falling in. He wiggles himself back just a tiny bit. Picks up a small rock that’s fallen down, and uses that to tap the wall.
Clink. Clink. And then, clonk.
He takes a wondering breath. “There’s something here.”
Another couple of taps with the rock, and there’s more tinkling on the other side, and then a hole opens up and falls through, and for a moment Stede thinks this is it. He’s found the cavern the archaeologists had missed. He’s made a bigger discovery than he intended to!
And then he swings the torch around and—
“Oh.”
“Something good?” Lucius says anxiously.
He sighs. “It’s just more rock.”
“Mm,” Lucius says. “Always is.”
There is a little cavern space, but it’s big enough to fit a watermelon at best, now half full of the rocks he pushed through.
He sweeps the torch around one last time, just in case, and…
There.
Oh, there!
There she is, the spider he came to find, lurking on the ceiling of the little space he just opened, as if he’s flung open the door to her house and caught her dressing.
“I’m so sorry,” he tells the spider, nonsensically. “I’m very glad to see you, but I actually didn’t mean to do that.”
“Stede? Who are you talking to, and have you lost your mind?”
She stares back at him through eight beady eyes, and he feels thoroughly reproached, almost enough to abandon the task. But… no. No, he came here for a reason.
“I found her,” he says quietly, using the slight extra width of the knocked-in wall to get his arm around far enough to pull out the camera, moving as slowly as he can.
It doesn’t feel like it makes much difference. She’s stone-still where she sits, a rare sub-species of Australia’s infamous huntsman spider. Gloriously orange and as big as his hand, counting leg breadth. She’s adorned with intricate stripes of black that band each leg and pull together into the centre of her back like the sort of web she doesn’t build. She’s symmetrical and gorgeous and clever and everything he loves about spiders.
He gets the camera in position, and the scale, apologises one more time for the flash, and clicks.
The cave lights in a flare of white for a moment, and he takes a couple more for good measure, checking the screen to make sure she was in focus before he’s satisfied.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he says, and kicks his foot. “Pull me out, Pete.”
Without the panic, it goes much more smoothly this time. Pete starts to tug the strap that’s looped to his belt, and with Stede wiggling in support, before long, he’s emerging into the bright day, rolling onto his back and taking in a great lungful of air. Christ, he’s never been so glad to see the sky towering over him in his entire life.
“You good?” Lucius says, leaning over him with his hands on his knees. “Thought you might die in there.”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” Stede croaks, and thrusts the camera up into the air. “We’ve got her.”
~
It’s a moment for celebration, when it’s confirmed that they have indeed found this spider, which hasn’t been seen in decades. It’s recorded ceremoniously into several nature databases. Stede and Lucius co-author a paper utilising this, the first ever official live image of it, all prior species being known from specimens in the museum collection, to compare between other sub-species and further define the taxonomy. Co-authoring, by which he means that Stede does all the work and Lucius nods his approval and occasionally adds or subtracts a comma from the draft, but still!
It’s worth it. Attention like this will afford a bit of extra environmental protection to the area, as the resources industry claws through more and more wilderness.
Professionally, it’s a wonderful time.
Personally, less so.
He spends day and night thinking about the spider for so many months that he ends up divorced.
No, really, as if she’s the other woman in the situation, his research doesn’t just clarify the taxonomy of the Heteropoda genus, but also clarifies… him.
Which is why he’s standing in this tattoo parlour a year later, clenching and unclenching his fists as he ponders how exactly to explain all this to the tattoo artist—Ed, he’d said his name was—who’d answered the phone to his spontaneous call half an hour ago.
Stede isn’t an especially impulsive person. He does like a plan, but he’s also trying to embrace a bit of chaos these days, and when the idea had struck him earlier today, he’d known instantly that it was the sort of thing he’d probably ruminate on until he just timed himself out of doing anything about it.
So, seize the day and all that. Do the thing. Strike while the iron is hot!
Call the tattoo parlour, feel his insides go a bit melty as he listened to the warm voice on the other end tell him that yes, they actually did have a free slot at the end of today, come on in and they could discuss, and now here he is.
Oh god.
The place is fairly small, as sterile as you’d hope for in a place that jabs people thousands of times with needles and ink. But the walls are papered with flash sheets, pages upon pages of tattoo designs that one might choose to have inked upon one’s skin. One end features skulls and snakes and ships and knives and arrow-shot hearts, horror movie characters caught mid-scream, tigers and sharks and various other predators hunting, and here’s Stede with his pretty Lucius-drawn design in his hands, feeling a lot like he should probably just… back out the door.
Wouldn’t be polite, though, would it?
No, and the other wall of the parlour has the designs that prompted him to dial this number. Flowers and woodland creatures and celestial designs, filigree lace and loveliness, and he belongs here. He does.
That determination is solidified when the door to the back room swings open and a man steps out. He’s wearing black leather trousers and a tight black t-shirt, the better for showing off the gallery of his own golden skin, which holds dozens of tattoos. His long ink and ash hair is pulled back from his face in a low bun, strands drifting loose to frame a very handsome silver-bearded face, and his eyes crinkle when he smiles.
“Hey, you must be Stede?”
“That I am,” Stede says, holding out his hand, nerves easing immediately as the other man shakes. “You must be Ed?”
“Guilty.” He grins as he surveys Stede. “This is either gonna be your first tattoo, or you’re going to take off that jacket and you’re going to have more than me.”
Stede laughs. “Correct the first time, though that would be quite something.”
“It would.” There’s something heated in Ed’s tone that makes him shiver the tiniest bit, dripping like syrup. “So, you said you had your own design? What’ve you got for me?”
He unclenches his fingers from the paper long enough to turn the page around and hold it up. “Ta da!”
What he deeply did not expect was for Ed to stagger back into the reception desk, knocking over a cup full of pens and yelling, “Fuck!”
“Oh, god,” Stede says, flipping the image back around, pressing it to his chest. “I’m so sorry, I should have warned you first.”
Ed’s got a hand splayed out on the desk, another at his throat, and his voice is rough. “Nope, no, you’re cool, that’s on me. I, uh.” He swallows. “Fuck, sorry, mate. You’re going to have to find somewhere else. I don’t do spiders.”
The disappointment hits much harder than it should, because Stede had really worked himself up to this, like commencing an obstacle course that he only has a single chance to complete. He could go somewhere else, but the thought of having to go home, hunt around a bit more, call someone, talk to them, make an appointment, go in, and risk this happening all over again… it’ll never happen.
“Right,” he says carefully, trying (failing) to keep the wobble out of his voice. “I see.”
Ed’s straightening up again, breathing a bit easier. “Or I could do something else, I dunno, like… a bunny? You like bunnies?”
“Bunnies are fine.” They’re whatever. Stede has no particular feelings about bunnies at all, certainly not enough to justify inking one on his skin for the rest of his life. “It’s just that it’s… it’s not really a tattoo for the sake of getting one. It’s commemorating something very specific and… spidery.”
Ed rubs a hand over his mouth, which brings his hand directly into Stede’s line of sight, which results in him being unable to avoid noticing something quite distinct.
“Ed, you’ve—you’ve got a spider tattooed on your own hand.”
“Hmm?” Ed looks down at the hand with the snake sliding onto it, frowns. Looks across at the other hand and jerks like he’s been jump-scared all over again. “Fuck.”
Stede bites down the hysterical giggle that threatens to escape him. “Does that happen often?”
Ed nods, looking pained. “Every fucking day. Got it tattooed there to try to get over the whole arachnophobia thing, but it didn’t work. Half the time I have to wear black leather gloves so I can’t see it.”
“Oh, that sounds terrible. Not the gloves,” he stumbles to clarify. “I’m sure the gloves are very fetching on you.”
Ed raises a slow brow. “Fetching.”
“Mm.” He suspects nearly anything would be fetching on Ed. And look. He absolutely doesn’t want to compel anyone to do anything they don’t want to do, but… that spider on Ed’s hand feels less like a no and more like a maybe. “I’m an arachnologist,” he says, by way of explanation. “A spider scientist.”
Ed shudders lightly. “Living my nightmare, man.”
“Thankfully, more of a dream for me.” He glances at the window, where there’s a line of pride flags hanging in every variation, one of the other reasons he reached out to this parlour above others. “I want to mark an important moment in my life. My team and I found a rare species in the wild this time last year, and it had the domino effect of prompting me to leave my wife.” He takes a deep breath. “And to finally accept that I was gay.”
Ed’s whole face scrunches in a laugh, which he manages to corral. “Jesus Christ, okay, that’s a lot.” He clears his throat. “Congrats, mate.” And then he quirks a brow. “I need to hear that story. Tell you what, I don’t have any more appointments today. Let’s talk?”
~
There’s no tattooing happening today, they’ve already agreed. Ed’s only just managed to feel like he’s back in his own body after being driven right the fuck out of it by Stede’s monster of a spider, and Stede’s committed as hell to having that particular thing on his body, paying no mind whatsoever to the people it might eliminate from his future gay dating pool.
You know, like Ed, who’s definitely not feeling pissy about that, as they hang out like old mates in his apartment above the shop. “So the short version of all that is, you’re gay for spiders.”
Stede leans back into the soft cushions of Ed’s couch and laughs, his third—fifth? drink in his hand. “I am gay. Not for spiders,” he says gravely, when he gets his breath back.
He’d come in here wearing the coolest jacket Ed’s seen in ages, turquoise in a kind of shot silk material, flowers embroidered on the cuffs, pretty purple stitching down the lapels, and he’s tossed that aside now, the aqua silk shirt he was wearing underneath open down to his sternum. Strawberry blond hair swirling across his chest, pink slacks tight over very, very nicely-shaped legs, loafers kicked off to reveal a pair of socks with snails all over them.
Could’ve asked for a snail tattoo, couldn’t he? Ed could do a great snail tattoo. Ed could lick a long-since-healed snail tattoo on his great tour of a naked Stede, no sweat—
“No, it was really just… I found that anytime I thought about it, I would rather spend time with the spider than my wife.” He glances almost apologetically at Ed. “That sounds terrible.”
“Sounds like you weren’t right for each other.”
“No, we weren’t, it’s true. And we knew it, we did, it just took a bit of a blow-up about the spider situation for her to ask if I’d rather be with any human more than a spider.”
“Oh shit,” Ed says, biting his lip. “And you said?”
Stede’s biting his own lip, eyes sparkling. “I said perhaps if Hugh Jackman came calling—”
Ed howls, can’t help it. Wipes away tears of laughter. “You know what, valid, I wouldn’t kick Hugh out of bed.”
Stede nods sagely. “You get it. She, on the other hand, completely missed the point and asked me if I was going to get into musical theatre now as well. And it hit me like a lightning bolt that I—” He’s giggling now, gasping for breath, “I didn’t give a fuck about musical theatre, actually. I’d just pondered a lot what it might be like to suck his dick.”
Ed can feel his jaw drop at the boldness, speechless, and Stede’s cheeks flush pink. “That might have been a bit much, I’m sorry—”
“Nope,” Ed says. “Nope, no apologising. Uh, who among us hasn’t thought about sucking that guy’s dick?”
Stede lets out a visible breath of relief. “Thank god. Mary didn’t take it quite that well initially.” He snorts. “And then about twelve seconds later it seemed to hit her differently, and she sort of sagged with relief and said it made so much sense.” He looks up at Ed through his lashes; pretty eyes, all hazel-swirled. “It felt better that it wasn’t a rejection of her, just the reality that it never would have worked between us, no matter how hard we tried.”
“Happy for you,” Ed says softly, patting his shoulder. “No small thing, figuring that shit out.”
Stede nods. “Anyhoo, it hasn’t honestly made much difference. Still just me and the spiders.”
Ed could beat the spiders. Not like, a horde of them, or whatever the fuck the collective noun is, no, but one of those big furry fuckers? Pfft, it’s half his size. Probably less, probably. One good whack with a shoe (he’d ask Izzy to do it though), one really good dick-sucking applied to Stede (Izzy can fuck off, that part’s all Ed’s), and maybe Stede would forget all the webbed shit, pivot over to studying other stuff instead. Could study Ed, never think about spiders again.
Unfortunately for Ed, Stede doesn’t seem to have changed his mind at all.
He looks up with those big pretty eyes and says, “So perhaps you understand better now why this tattoo matters so much to me.” His mouth lifts in a hopeful little smile. “Maybe I can help you work through it. Change the way you feel about spiders.”
Ed tips his head, sucks a breath through his teeth. “Getting that tattoo didn’t work. Think I’m a lost cause.”
“I don’t believe that for a moment.” They’re sitting side by side, and Stede tilts his knees across far enough to press them against Ed’s. Leans over and puts his empty glass on the coffee table, and reaches for Ed’s hand. “May I?”
Stede can do whatever the fuck he likes, so… “Yeah.”
Ed slides his hand into Stede’s—smooth skin, neatly manicured nails, thick fingers—and tries not to whimper as Stede delicately touches the spider tattoo.
“Gorgeous,” he breathes, and goosebumps prickle up Ed’s arm, even though he knows Stede is actually hot for the spider. Irrationally jealous of his own spider tattoo, that’s him, that’s— “And so’s the tattoo,” Stede says, looking up through his lashes with devastating directness.
The whimper gets out this time. He can’t help himself. “Go on, then,” he squeaks. “Convince me.”
[Art by GerlindeMoon]
Stede’s fingertip whispers over the body of the beast. “It’s meant to be from the widow family, I think.” A little nose wrinkle. “Questionable accuracy, but—” He looks up sharply. “Oh, unless you designed—”
“Keep going,” Ed says, huskier than he meant it to sound, but he’s not in charge anymore. His brain’s buzzing on a frequency that Stede’s setting with that soft, electric glide. “Made Iz do it, all his.”
Stede lets out a bitchy little huff. “Maybe this Iz could stand to spend a little more time looking at spiders.”
Fuck, Izzy would hate this guy. Just makes Ed like him even more. He’d pay good money to see Stede tell Iz to work on his spider anatomy.
He’s touching the two little white dots on the butt end of the spider now. “I think he’s maybe been going for a sort of redback vibe. Latrodectus hasselti, endemic to Australia.”
“Can’t be a redback without the red back…” Ed murmurs, letting his hand flop a little more, letting Stede take the weight of it. “Guess it’s something else now.”
“It’s yours,” Stede says, devastatingly earnest. “Endemic to you.”
Ed huffs out a breath. “They’re deadly, right?”
“Oh! No. Well, under the wrong circumstances, I suppose, but… there hasn’t been a fatal bite in over half a century.” He’s tracing each of the legs now, slowly following the lines. “They’re actually not aggressive at all. They create an enclosed web tucked away from the world, consume pest insects—quite the public service, really—and only bite if they’re directly threatened.”
Ed’s a little mesmerised by his own spider in Stede’s hands now, and the thought of it just doing its own little thing, wanting to hide away from a world that thinks it’s dangerous and cool, when it’s actually just a homebody, like…
Fuck, is Ed suddenly identifying with the spider?
“Okay,” he says, still a little pitchy. “So they’re the good guys.”
“All spiders are good guys,” Stede says, so soft and gentle that Ed almost believes him. “These ones have a little bit of a battle for survival. The male sacrifices himself to the female during the mating ritual—”
“Fuuuuck,” Ed says. “Sounds like gay’s better for everyone.”
Stede chuckles. “You’re not wrong. And then the babies have a very low rate of survival, once they’ve hatched. You don’t want the details of that, I assure you, but suffice to say they’re survivors, the ones that make it to adulthood.”
Ed’s blinking away tears. Definitely over-identifying with the spiders. “That’s nice.”
“The one I want to get tattooed is a whole other story,” Stede says, but he doesn’t let go of Ed’s hand, and he doesn’t stop his gentle stroking. “Very gentle. Exceptionally rare- I had to crawl deep into a cave to locate it.”
“Look at you, all Indiana Jones.”
Stede tips his head modestly. “I do like a field adventure. Safe to say those little guys aren’t bothering anyone.”
“How little is little?” Ed asks, because okay, scale does matter. The one on that sheet of paper was huge.
Stede actually grimaces. “Ah, well, those ones are about as big as my hand—”
“Fuck, no,” Ed says, and he can’t help the shudder. “Makes my guts go all weird thinking about it.”
“Fair enough,” Stede says. “You wouldn’t have to encounter one, though. Just render it in your beautiful style. Being adorned with your art would be such an honour.”
He’s known this guy for a couple of hours. They’ve spun through half their life stories in that space of time. Practically in each other’s laps here, skin on skin, Stede looking up at him all hopeful, and Ed can’t help it. Adorned with your art?
He closes the remaining distance, and kisses the guy.
Stede lets out a little mmph and goes still for a moment, but before Ed can panic he’s sliding his hand up behind Ed’s head, gripping his hair, pulling him in tighter and kissing back.
Eyes shut, brows pinched in concentration, mouth falling open so easily as Ed deepens the kiss. Does he even know he’s making those little whimpers?
“Oh god,” he gasps, when they break apart. He looks as wrecked as Ed feels. “Is this a bit fast?”
Ed bites his lip. “No faster than meeting each other in a club or something.”
Stede snorts out a little giggle that he’s obviously trying to hold in. “I came to your shop for a tattoo! As a customer!”
“Special treatment, promise.” Ed grins. “Never brought someone back here before. Besides, you’re not a customer anymore, I rejected your request.” Stede’s face falls instantly, all hangdog, and Ed squeezes him. “Cheer up, mate, you’re already making me feel better about spiders. A little.”
Guy’s made of rubber, honestly. His expression reverses just as fast, brows lifting, now hopeful. “Really?”
Ed shrugs. “Dunno, maybe it’s having a more positive association or something.” Like, put a spider in front of him right now and he’s still going to scream loud enough to break a window, but talking about it? Used to be instant shudders. Now it’s making him think about Stede’s soft wonder and also, the feeling of his fingers on Ed’s skin.
“Oh,” Stede says, sounding pleased. They’ve ended up kinda wrapped together on the couch, and his fingers are rubbing firm circles over Ed’s back. “Well. Maybe we can find some more positive associations.”
Ed stares at him. “Yeah?”
Stede’s smile goes molten. “Oh, yes.”
~
He’d already figured that Stede was a lunatic. He had. It’s just that half an hour later he’s realising maybe his scale of lunacy needed some recalibration.
The thing is, Stede’s discovered that he’s also got spiders on both of his feet. Hadn’t thought to mention that. But they’d been stripping down in the bedroom, practically wrestling each other in there, and Stede had shoved him back onto the bed and yanked his trousers and his socks off in one big sweep, and all the breath had stuttered out of him.
“Three spiders, Ed? Three?”
He lay back on the bed and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, laughing. “Figured if I kept trying—”
He’d broken off on a gasp as Stede bent down—bare naked, all peach and gold—and kissed one foot spider, and then the other. Looked up through his lashes, dick out and all, and said, “I think maybe you were made for me.”
Ed’s still recovering from that, not least because Stede’s now sitting cross-legged at the end of the bed with Ed’s feet in his lap, tracing every detail. They’re pretty much the same as the one on his hand, but this time he’s going deeper.
Touching each leg, repeating like a chant, “Coxa, trochanter, femur, patella, tibia, metatarsus, tarsus.” He looks up at Ed between each. “A marvel of natural evolution, that mobility, that agility, god, they’re so lovely, as are you.”
“You sure you don’t want to fuck the spiders?” Ed says it lightly, teasing but not teasing. Stede’s as passionate about this as Ed’s ever been about ink. Goes all trance-like the same way Ed does when the needle’s humming.
“No,” Stede says, gently lifting one foot out of his lap and then the other, leaving Ed with legs spread as Stede goes up onto his knees and crawls up. “Just you.”
The next half hour is maybe the best of Ed’s life.
In the afterglow, Ed’s mind blown in twelve different directions, his whole body turned to jelly, Stede traces an idle finger through the sticky hair on Ed’s stomach.
“It’s sad, that whole sacrificial element of spider mating.”
Ed can only wheeze. What the fuck, who the fuck.
And then Stede goes on. “I understand it better now.” He presses a kiss to Ed’s shoulder. “Desire so deep that you’d give anything for it, lay yourself out on an altar and promise everything?”
Ed's breath catches in his throat. “Sounds pretty romantic when you put it like that.”
“I think so, yes.” He leans up to meet Ed’s mouth again and they kiss lazily for a bit. When they both flop back into the pillows, Stede says, “When was the last time you had a mosquito bite?”
Ed squints at him. “Can’t remember, mate.”
Stede smiles. “You’ve had a little helper you didn’t notice.”
Oop. That right there, that’s a test, and Ed’s about to fail it. He can feel himself going stiff, and not in the fun way. He whispers, “Where?”
Stede nods up to the corner of his bookshelf. “Don’t worry. She’s not a big one, just a little house spider.”
Oh, fuck, there it is. He hadn’t even noticed; hasn’t exactly been present in his own life lately, Christ, what a way to realise that. But now that he’s focussing he can see that spider good and clear. Lacy threads of a web stretching from the top of the bookshelf to the ceiling, and jiggling in the middle of it—
“Stede,” he squeaks, curling in against the guy. “Help.”
Stede doesn’t tell him he’s stupid for the way his whole body seizes up over something the size of a coin. Doesn’t take the spider’s side of the argument, either. “I’ve got you,” Stede says soothingly. “Just give me a minute.”
He’s sliding out of bed a second later, hunting around until he spots Ed’s empty water glass on the bedside table, and an unused bookmark, and then he goes across to the corner.
“Well, hello there,” he says to the spider, while Ed stares at his bare ass. “I’m so sorry, but this is my friend’s bedroom, and you’re going to have to find another spot that’s all yours.”
Gently, gently, he lifts the glass up under the spider and slices neatly through the web with the bookmark, dropping it inside, making Ed shudder again. He peeps back over his shoulder and winks as he scurries for the door, pausing only at the last second to say, “Ooh, is there—a back door? I probably shouldn’t toss her into the street like this.”
The thought of it makes Ed laugh despite himself, but then he thinks about all the other hacks in the world getting a look at Stede doing his dashing spider rescue guy thing without a stitch on, and nope. This view’s all his. “Yeah, mate, just past the bathroom downstairs.”
“Fab. Back in a mo!”
Stede goes thumping off down the stairs, taking the spider with him, and Ed exhales as he melts back into the pillows. Okay. So. Hot guy. Mind-blowing in the bedroom. Rescues Ed from a spider even though he loves spiders?
Might just be his perfect man, fuck, if it weren’t for the whole, you know. Career literally in spiders.
And also, the tattoo he’s going to have on his arm, because Ed already knows, because he’s a complete fucking fool, that he’s going to cave on that.
Stede comes thundering back up a second later, all pink-cheeked and cute as he slides through the door like he’s on Broadway, jazz hands and all. “Ta da, no more spider. I donated her to your neighbours and I’m sure they’ll be very happy together.”
Ed does grabby hands, calling him in, and Stede comes, hopping onto the bed, diving under the covers, and snuggling right up. He’s all chilly from having been out in the garden—lunatic—and Ed needs to warm him up like, yesterday.
A lot of smooching follows. A lot of snuggling. A half-assed attempt to rub out another one that they both fail at, giggling their way to half-hard and back to soft again.
Lights out later, on the edge of sleep, Stede murmurs, “What’s the first time you remember being afraid of a spider?”
Ed sucks in a breath, presses his forehead to Stede’s in the dark, because he knows the answer all too well. “It’s kinda heavy shit.”
“I’m here,” Stede says, thigh locked through his, arm tight around his waist. “If you want to talk about it.”
He doesn’t. But he feels safe to say it to Stede, so… “My dad was a dick. Used to smack me and my mum around when he’d had a drink.”
“I’m sorry,” Stede says softly. “Oh, Ed—”
“It’s okay,” he says, because it’s not okay, but it happened anyway, and it’s over now. “He’s been dead a long time, can’t hurt me anymore.” He’s left a lifetime of wreckage behind him, though, the asshole. And Ed’s gotta live in it. “When he came home from the pub in that kind of mood my mum used to shove me under the kitchen table if she got the time. Trying to get me out of the way. And I’d be hiding under there listening to her crying and him smashing shit, and there was always this—” He chokes on a sob that’s fighting to get out. “This spider in the corner, staring back at me. After a while every time I saw one I’d get that shot of adrenaline, like they were part of it, you know? Like the world was out to get me, but fuck spiders in particular.”
Stede holds onto him while the tears overtake him a little.
And when he’s done crying for that little kid he used to be, the one who’s kinda stuck inside him, Stede says, “I think perhaps she was watching over you, just like your own mother.”
“Oh, fuck,” Ed says, heaving up a fresh sob. “Now I feel guilty about the spider—”
“Shh, shh,” Stede says, an edge of humour in there. “She wouldn’t want you to feel guilt about any of that. It’s not your fault.”
Not him, not the spider, not his mum, and fuck. It’s maybe the first time in his whole life anyone’s really listened and understood and tried to help him feel better about all of that.
“I really like you,” he tells Stede, like that catches even the barest edge of what he’s feeling right now. “I’m glad we met.”
“Me too,” Stede says, never letting go. “Let’s get some rest.”
~
Stede sits in the chair the next morning, trying to settle his own nerves. It’s early, well before the shop would usually open—in the short time he’s known Ed, he’s come to understand a lot, from just how many sugars Ed likes in his tea to the fact that he’d deeply not interested in mornings, so there are no appointments first thing.
Stede did manage to find him some positives when they both woke at dawn today, though, and he’s feeling not a little smug about that.
Ed’s smoothing the stencil paper onto his arm with studied concentration, tongue caught between his lips as he works, hair pulled back into a messy bun. He’s wearing Stede’s silk shirt from yesterday, sleeves rolled up, and he looks devastatingly beautiful.
“So we’re gonna think about this as just a collection of parts, yeah?” he says, as he pulls the paper away and leaves the pattern marked out on Stede’s skin. Flicks his gaze up, eyes deep and serious. “Tell me again?”
So Stede takes a steadying breath as Ed turns on his equipment, and begins to recite the spider anatomy. Palps and chelicera, carapace, cephalothorax. Labium and sternum and booklung, the epigynum of the reproductive system, the abdomen, and the spinnerets that release the fine silk of the webs, and Ed marks each into his skin. The pain is quite blinding in places, and his forehead prickles with sweat, but if Ed can muscle through and do this, Stede’s going to be damned if he wimps out himself.
“How did you get into tattooing?” he asks, over the buzz of the machine.
What does it mean to you, what makes you tick, tell me everything there is to know about you?
Ed glances up at him as he shuffles around, doing all the necessary steps to change to the next ink colour. “My old man was a tattooist, actually. Apprenticed me when I was fourteen, died when I was fifteen. Could’ve just fucked off and left it when he was gone, but…”
The almost soothing whir of the gun starts up again, and as Ed leans back in, so does the pain.
His voice is a soothing balm. “But he was all about that shit.” He tips his head to the far wall, with the skulls and the horror characters and the knives, then tips it the other way. “Those ones are mine.”
The flowers. The suns, the moons, the waves, the nature, and Stede is forced to admit that he’s quite probably in love here already. “They’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.”
Ed lets out a soft breath, but his focus doesn’t waver. Ed’s own tattoos feature snakes and daggers and skulls, yes, but… there are bright flowers now tipping out of the eye socket of the skull that’s on the softest part of his inner arm. A bed of geometric leaves added underneath the snake. A rose on his other arm, next to a gentle octopus which is shaded like the night sky, star-spangled. A pīwakawaka bird sitting sprightly on his shoulder, and that hawk taking flight over his collarbones.
Last night Stede had been lucky enough to get to map constellations and waves and sailing ships and vines down Ed’s torso, his legs, a whole world in one man.
“I grew,” Ed says roughly. “I changed. Reminds me I can keep doing that.” He tilts his head toward that end wall. “Iz and Jim and the boys do the other stuff people want, and it all gets talked up as Blackbeard, because that’s the place. But I know who I am now.”
“And I’m very, very glad to know you,” Stede says.
It takes several more hours of painstaking work before the tattoo is done. Halfway through Ed’s workmate Izzy arrives, and the look of horror on his face at the sight of Stede sitting there in Ed’s clothes while Ed personally tattoos a very large spider on him is deeply worth it.
When it’s all finished, any lingering blood dabbed away, Ed holds up a mirror with visible nerves. “Yeah?”
Stede takes it in and nods, almost too overcome to speak. “Yeah.”
It’s absolutely perfect. A gorgeous Heteropoda sitting on his arm like a protector, a reminder of who he is and how he got here. Ed’s a truly masterful artist, and the colours meld perfectly with his skin tone, every individual feature realistic, each hair and eye perfectly defined in white and black ink.
“I love her,” he says, because it’s too early to say anything else, and he meets Ed’s eye. “What do you think?”
Ed bites his lip. “Still makes me feel all weird, but… I like the canvas.”
Stede laughs. “Well, thank you.”
“And I do like her,” Ed says, all determined. “She gets to look out for you, and maybe for me, too.” He clears his throat, bats his lashes. “I dunno, man, it’s just… now I know there might be a spider anywhere in my house, feels like I need someone here who can talk pretty to them while he moves them the fuck along.”
“I think I might know someone,” Stede says very seriously. “I can probably get you his number.”
“Sweet,” Ed says. “I’ll give him a call.”
And he does, that afternoon, just to remind Stede about his tattoo aftercare, of course. Suggests that maybe he needs some in-person supervision from an expert tattooist, which Stede must admit feels like a very sensible precaution.
By the time the second skin comes off and the itchiness abates, they’ve woven together the web of their lives in a way neither of them could have imagined a few weeks ago, and Ed’s desensitisation is proceeding very nicely indeed, given that he wants to kiss Stede’s spider goodnight every time.
Stede still carts house spiders out of their apartment with quite some regularity, but he’s sure they’ll forgive him. After all, he’s just looking out for the man he loves.