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Ed had been having a rather pleasant afternoon. He was fully settled into what had become somewhat of a routine over the past few weeks on the Revenge—reclining in a comfortable armchair in the library with a book for some post-lunch reading while Stede bustled around in the main part of the cabin getting some tea and snacks together for them to share. Everything was good. Great, even. Until he caught a sudden movement out of the corner of his eye. An awful, scuttering, skittery movement.
The resulting scream was completely involuntary; the knife flung across the room, an unfortunate reflex.
Stede came rushing right over, of course. “Ed! What happened? Are you alright?” He took in the whole scene—Ed, practically climbing the back of his chair like the floor was lava and he needed to get as far away from it as possible, Ed’s book splayed open upside down on the floor where it had landed during the commotion, Ed’s dagger embedded in the wall and still vibrating slightly—and seemed to understand immediately. He grabbed a teacup off the tray he’d been in the middle of preparing, walked over to look at the row of books just a few inches to the left of where the dagger had hit and—there really was no better way to describe it—fucking cooed, “Hello there! Oh, aren’t you a pretty little thing?”
And this is where things got extremely confusing for Ed. Because on the one hand that particular combination of words and tone of voice sounded really fucking good coming out of Stede’s mouth, and that was maybe something he would like to explore further sometime in the preferably-near future. On the other hand, they were currently being delivered to a massive, terrifying, creepy-crawly demon spawn behemoth of a SPIDER, which really, really complicated things on the emotional reaction front. What did you even do with that?
One of the first things Ed ever said to Stede the day they met was that he was a lunatic, and that had never felt like a more accurate descriptor than it did right now because the next thing Stede did was scoop the fucking thing up in his bare hands and examine it for what seemed like a truly excessive amount of time before finally letting it just casually stroll off his finger into the cup, which he then covered with a saucer and set back on the tea tray.
“Well!” Stede announced, far too cheerfully for the subject matter at hand. “I’m not an expert on araneae but this looks to be a species of—”
“I don’t care what its fucking name is!” Ed kept his eyes glued on the teacup, like at any moment the saucer might spontaneously fall off and the spider come leaping out straight at him. “I care that it’s gonna come over here and crawl all over me with its too many fucking legs—” Seriously, eight of them? Who thought that was a good idea? It made Ed feel all twitchy just thinking about it. “—and bite my face off!”
“Shit, I’m sorry, Ed. I wasn’t trying to—it’s just that they really are fascinating creatures. I mean, did you know there’s a whole group of spiders called pirate spiders? They’re like us if we were spiders! Well, except for the cannibalism. Unless it isn’t technically cannibalism with them being from different species? At any rate, what they do, see, is they raid the webs of other spiders and—” At this point Stede caught on to the ‘about to puke and/or run screaming from the room’ look on Ed’s face and quickly course-corrected. “Anywho. The important thing is, you really don’t have to be worried, I promise. Most species only bite people if they feel threatened, and even then only a few can actually hurt you. They’re really quite misunderstood! And as for this little lady,” he said, giving the saucer covering the trapped intruder a firm tap. “Left to her own devices she’ll just spin webs and catch bugs all day. Would only hurt a fly.”
Ed couldn’t help letting out the tiniest little huff of laughter at Stede’s wordplay there, then shook his head and looked away. With the burst of adrenaline from the initial shock wearing off he could feel embarrassment starting to creep in, like it did every time this stupid frustrating phobia raised its ugly eight-eyed head (seriously, why did the fucking things have to have so many of everything?). He was fucking Blackbeard and he got this out of sorts over a fucking bug? Pathetic.
Only…Stede hadn’t mocked him for panicking, had he? He hadn’t shown even a hint of amusement at Ed’s plight. He’d just tried to talk it through with Ed like he always did; had taken him seriously, like defensively pulling knives and stabbing up the furniture at the mere sight of a spider was a perfectly reasonable problem to have. Huh.
“If you’d like,” Stede suggested in a gentle voice, “I do have a few books about spiders that you could borrow. Maybe learning more about them will help them feel less scary. I mean, the more you know, right?” He made a little starburst gesture with his hands, like a firework exploding. (Or a spider bursting in half.)
It wasn’t a terrible idea. “That could be cool, yeah.” On the other hand…Ed suddenly remembered the book of butterflies and moths Stede had excitedly showed him after their treasure hunt, and more specifically the massive, full-page, incredibly detailed— “Um, these books though…have they got pictures in them?”
“Ah, yes.” Stede frowned. “Afraid so.”
Ed gave a small involuntary shudder.
“Too much?”
Ed nodded.
“Let’s just shelve that idea then, for now. I’m sure we can figure something out. In the meantime…” Stede turned his attention back to the covered teacup and its prisoner. He picked it up and tilted the saucer back to address the spider directly. “What shall we do with you? You’ve caused my co-captain here no small amount of distress today, and I do not take that lightly. So what’ll it be?” He glanced over at Ed and cocked an eyebrow, the same conspiratorial gleam in his eye that he’d had watching those pompous fucks set their own fancy party boat alight. “The plank, for your crimes?”
He’d really do it, Ed realized with an odd jolt. If Ed wanted, Stede would (somehow) make that creepy little maybe-not-actually-all-that-dangerous-even-if-it-did-look-scary beastie walk the fucking plank straight into the ocean. Stede, who loved plants and nature and let even the skin-crawliest of insects walk right onto his hand and talked to them like they were fluffy kittens or something, wouldn’t even hesitate. For Ed. For nothing but the simple fact of it having upset him. And that was—it was a little bit wonderful and a little bit heady and terrifying and altogether too big for words.
“Maybe…” Ed took a deep breath. He could do this. “I mean if the little fucker really is harmless…I reckon it would probably be ok if you just took it…out. Somewhere not here.”
“Right!” Stede gave a decisive nod. “Duty reassignment it is. You’re lucky to have such a merciful co-captain,” he told the spider. Then, addressing Ed again, “Perhaps the galley? Roach said something about a recent increase in fruit flies, probably from all those oranges we have now. We can put her straight to work!”
“Yeah, that sounds good.” Ed replied, with a deliberately casual shrug. “Fuck those fruit flies, right?” It was fine, he could just avoid the galley for the next—how long do spiders live? He took most of his meals here or out on deck anyway. Not. A. Problem. (Hey, he was letting the thing stay on the ship, alright? Baby steps.)
As soon as Stede and the teacup were out of view Ed slipped his glove off and flexed his bare hand, making the spider tattooed on the back wiggle in the afternoon light. “I suppose it’s not your fault people are scared of you,” he mused, after staring at it quietly for a long while. “You just want to go about your little spidery life in peace, don’t you?” It would take a lot of work, but Ed thought he could maybe learn to live with that.