Title: Repercussions (Ao3)
Rating: Teen and Up
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death / OFMD
Pairing(s): Steddyhands
Summary: For a prompt on the kink meme: Izzy is not okay following the loss of his toe. This can manifest in any number of ways: difficulty maintaining his balance, pain, phantom pain, maybe even an infection because the wound never healed correctly? Whether you want to go mild or more extreme, I'm not picky.
I just want Izzy hurting and a guilt-ridden Ed (+Stede) to take care of him, above Izzy's protests that caring for him like this is 'beneath him.
Notes: Set a bit into the future wherein Steddyhands is an established throuple. Prompt found here.
Thank you so much to my two betas Nordic_Witch_of_the_Books and tortellini!
Trigger/content warnings for mentions of drug use (for medical purposes), the toe thingTM, descriptions of injury, and home surgery.
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Izzy’s pulled from a restless sleep by a searing, pulsing pain. Fire licks at the sole of his foot, spreading inward, deep into the flesh. His foot contracts in response, toes curling painfully. His back arches off of the bed, and his fingers grasp at the sheets beneath him so desperately that he thinks he might just tear right through them. It’s little consolation for the pain that blossoms from the mess of healing tissue that makes up the space where his little toe had once been.
Belatedly, he thinks of his leathers, of something he can bite into. It won’t detract from the pain, but it would keep him quiet, and that’s a precious ability that he’s lacking at the moment. No matter how hard he tries to swallow down the sounds that bubble up his throat, they still manage to escape, muffled yet undeniable.
His only relief is knowing that he is alone. There is no warmth to his left nor to his right, and the cabin is eerily silent, save for his own pained noises. If he were anything other than utterly alone right now, he would have already been made aware of it. Thank God for small favors.
With tremendous effort, he forces himself to sit up, hands grasping at his calf, as if he can massage away the worst of the pain. If he can at least stop the cramping, then maybe the rest will be more manageable.
Except it doesn’t help at all.
His foot seizes up again, forcing his toes to flex downward until it feels as though they couldn’t possibly be wrenched back into place. Even in its absence, the stub of flesh attempts to tighten, and it’s a burning, sucking, agonizing sensation that feels endless, ricocheting throughout his foot and up his leg. He feels it in his hips, for fuck’s sake, and it’s all he can do to bite into the meaty flesh between his thumb and forefinger and cry until his face is a mess of snot and tears. His cheeks are red, eyes puffy and bloodshot. He knows what he must look like, and, again, he finds solace in being left to his misery on his own. The thought of the Captain—or worse, Stede—seeing him like this makes his already nauseated stomach churn violently.
And, because he’s never really been a good man or a particularly godly one, at that, God forsakes him in that moment when the door to the cabin opens and a cheery voice starts in on him, grating his already frayed nerves in an impossible way.
“Good morn—oh, oh dear.”
“Out,” Izzy tries to say—or growl. He fails at both.
“No,” Stede answers, “No, I don’t think so.” He makes his way to the bed, only pausing long enough to deposit a tray he had been holding. Izzy takes note of the food piled on it, and the nausea somehow worsens, like his stomach is crawling up through his throat to try and deposit itself onto his lap before he can do anything about it.
“Your foot, I take it?” Stede asks as he gets close enough to see the bandages that are still wrapped around Izzy’s foot. Izzy isn’t holding it, hands still grasped firmly at his calf, but it’s an easy enough assumption to make. The damn thing won’t heal. Roach had to open it back up to cut infection out of it, and it’s been a nightmare ever since. Not that it had been going all that well before. An infection, particularly when it’s pressed up against exposed bone, is fucking excruciating. To the point that Izzy hadn’t been able to walk for a time.
“Brilliant fucking guess,” Izzy snarls. He doesn’t mean it, not really, but he hurts. He’s been shot, stabbed, damn near gutted, and somehow this is worse. An unending sort of misery that offers no reprieve. He could laugh, thinking back on it. He wonders if the Kraken had an inkling of an idea of what he truly inflicted upon his First Mate, and he can already see the way Ed would flinch away at such an accusation. It brings the bile back up his gullet.
Stede hums quietly, but otherwise doesn’t respond to the vitriol Izzy spits at him. He’s long since gotten used to the prickly parts of Izzy (which happen to be all of Izzy’s parts). “I can go get—”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” Izzy means it to come out more threatening than it does. As it stands, it sounds more like a plea spoken between inhaled gasps and choked off sobs. For a moment, he is nothing but pain, mind whited out with it, and it’s all he can think about until Stede speaks up again.
“He’s going to find out sooner rather than later,” Stede says, but he doesn’t push the issue. “May I?” He indicates to Izzy’s leg, and there’s a moment where Izzy considers telling him to fuck off. He doesn’t want to be seen right now, much less touched. There’s a chance that any movement might make his foot worse, and he’s terrified at the sheer prospect of that.
Instead of rejection, Izzy gives a helpless, half-shoulder shrug. Stede’s helped in the past. Always seems to know where to put his stupidly soft hands. There’s not much Izzy has to lose here. He’s in Hell already, and his dignity is casually floating to the bottom of the ocean with every tear that he sheds.
“Right then,” Stede moves to slide onto the edge of the bed, careful to not bounce the mattress. The last thing Izzy needs is for his leg to be jostled.
Carefully, Stede reaches out with his hands and places them just below Izzy’s. His thumbs press into either side of Izzy’s calf and work small circles. It’s not the root of the problem, his leg, but the whole thing is a tangle of triggers. The nerve pain comes from the missing toe. Both the stump of it and the non-existent hurt equally, and they cause the rest of his foot to tense horrifically. That same tension extends up his leg, though part of the pain he experiences in his leg is from improper care. Apparently there’s an actual science behind the length of a cane, and using the wrong height has caused a domino effect where his legs each tried to compensate for his injury in different, rather unhealthy ways. In short, it’s his own fucking fault he’s like this.
“None of that, now,” Stede whispers, fingers working bloody magic as they go. It’s enough to get the muscles to relax a touch.
“Wha—?” Izzy croaks, confusion evident on his face.
Stede pauses in his ministrations long enough to wipe at the tears tracking down Izzy’s cheeks. “You’re upsetting yourself with whatever nonsense is going on in here,” he taps Izzy on the brow, right between his eyes. It’s a distraction, and it works. For a moment, but then Izzy is jerking backwards, pulling his leg with him and trying to press it as close to his chest as he can. A litany of curses fall from his mouth.
“—Easy, Israel, breathe. Just like that, there’s a love,” Stede says in a quiet murmur. He’s somehow gotten behind Izzy, using himself to prop Izzy up with Izzy’s back against his chest. Izzy doesn’t remember moving or being moved, but the agony is only now beginning to subside, allowing him to think beyond the throb of his foot.
Instinct is what Izzy will blame later, should anyone ask about the way he curls into Stede, body turning just sideways enough to tuck his head into the other man’s neck. He smears tears and snot across Stede’s collar, but Stede doesn’t hesitate to bring a hand up to the back of Izzy’s head, cradling it gently in his grasp.
Stede’s still whispering gentle nothings. Quiet assurances and promises that he likely can’t keep. Izzy doesn’t call him on it, can’t be bothered to be argumentative in this state. It’s been months of this, and he’s just so goddamn tired. He’s too old for this, body unwilling to handle such a simple injury (he can hear Stede protesting to Izzy framing it that way. Any time an injury gets infected, it’s far from simple. It can be a death sentence in their world).
Stop crying. It’s just the pinky.
Izzy flinches at the memory. The manic glee of having Blackbeard back had only driven him so far, about as far as it took him to realize that he hadn’t gotten Blackbeard back at all. He’d unleashed something far worse, and it’s precisely why he refuses to share in this Hell with Ed.
But, then, life has never cooperated with him. He’s always had to wring everything out of it with his bare hands and the occasional teeth. It’s why Ed barges in, unannounced, and face only barely hiding the mild alarm he must be feeling at having Stede disappear for so long without warning.
Izzy doesn’t need to see to know the exact moment that Edward freezes. He comes to a stuttering stop, damn near tripping himself over his bad knee in the process, and Izzy can hear the way it grinds the same way he can hear Ed bite back a grunt.
“Iz?”
Izzy curses, hands immediately wiping at his face as quickly as he can. Fuck the pain. He’s not ruining Ed’s day over this shit. He can push past it, get himself up and moving and out on deck like usual. He doesn’t need Bonnet to baby him, and he doesn’t need to be blubbering like a child over an old wound, even if it does hurt worse now than it had at the time he’d gotten it.
“No, wait—Iz, Izzy,” Ed’s surprisingly fast, given his knee, already across the room in what seems like three steps at most. He’s pulling at Izzy’s wrists—gently, so as to not inflict anymore pain on him—and doing his best to put himself in Izzy’s line of vision. Whatever expression he’s going for, it fails to hide the horror in Ed’s eyes. The guilt. It’s so obvious that Izzy thinks anyone would see it. “Look at me, Iz. What can we do?” What can I do? How can I repent?
“I don’t know,” Izzy breathes, and he means it. He doesn’t know. Everything is fire, burning him from the inside out, and his leg is pulled too tight, drawing his foot along with it. He wants nothing more than for them to leave.
“Laudanum?”
“No,” Izzy answers immediately. The shit makes everything but the pain worse, and, while it takes that away, it’s not worth it. He can’t do it. He’ll be sick for days the moment he stops taking it, and that brings about its own sort of agony.
“Rum? We’ve got great shit from that last raid.” Izzy knows that already. He’s not entirely useless like this. He can still do inventory, and he knows damn well that that rum had been squirreled away by the two Captains for better times. For celebration and not for relief, yet Ed doesn’t even wait for an answer before he goes to pull it out of its hiding place.
Izzy’s trying his best to work up some sort of response, one that’s at least half-expletives, but Stede’s rubbing up and down his arm with one hand and gently scratching at his scalp with the nails of his other. It’s enough to get him to relax some, though he tenses only seconds later as another wave of pain passes through him.
Ed comes back with the bottle in hand, and he holds it to Izzy’s lips despite the already dying protests. Izzy never has been able to deny Ed for long.
“There you go, keep going, love,” Ed says, voice so quiet and sweet that it kills Izzy a little inside. He doesn’t know how to handle this, and it’s been months since the three of them became three and not two. The pet names are something else entirely; Izzy doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to those, but it does a good job of drawing him out of his own head for a moment.
Izzy’s vaguely aware of the fact that he hasn’t stopped crying. There are new tears replacing those that he attempted to wipe away. Neither Captain draws attention to it.
“Ed, darling, trade with me?” Stede asks from above Izzy. He presses his cheek against the top of Izzy’s head before pressing a gentle kiss over the same spot. He moves then, shifting so Ed can slide in right behind him and let Izzy rest against his chest. Stede returns to the foot of the bed to once more take Izzy’s leg between his hands.
Silence passes between them, with the only exception being the tiny, hiccupping breaths and the occasional gasp from Izzy. Stede redoubles his efforts from earlier, fingers working into the meat of Izzy’s calf. Ed’s fingers find their way into Izzy’s hair, working through the strands that have grown out over the last few months. Izzy’s grumbled about a haircut more than once, but Ed’s yet to help him with it.
“I’m sorry,” Ed breathes against the top of Izzy’s head. “I’m sorry. I—” He chokes up, unable to say much else, though Izzy can imagine it would be a repetitive, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, if Izzy were to allow it.
Izzy shakes his head, unable to vocalize a response. Ed doesn’t owe him anything. He shouldn’t be in here right now. The same could be said about Stede. Izzy doesn’t need this. He can handle himself.
“You think too much,” Ed says in a quiet little whisper. He almost sounds like he could laugh, if he weren’t on the verge of shedding tears of his own.
“Ah, I’m afraid I already told him as much. He didn’t quite listen to me, though, did he?” It might have been a complaint, if Stede’s tone weren’t sickeningly fond. Izzy can barely stand it, the two of them talking over him like this, each determined to distract him from the burning in his foot and leg.
“Don’t think he ever does, mate,” and this time Ed actually does laugh. It’s a quiet, short-lived thing, but Izzy finds himself pressing closer to Ed, trying to absorb the rumble of his chest into his own being.
“What a shame,” Stede answers dramatically, but he hasn’t stopped with Izzy’s leg. It’s actually beginning to relax more and more, causing the tendons in his foot to do the same.
Izzy takes another swig from the bottle and flips the both of them his middle finger. One to share between the two. He gets laughter out of both of them. It’s—nice. The whole thing. Once you get past the burning, nauseating pain. They rarely get moments like these. With the three of them together, wrapped around each other. Izzy hates the reason behind it, but he can't bring himself to really resent the time spent with his two Captains.