#blitzwrites

[blitzturtles]

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.

-

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.

#steddyhands #blackhands #stizzy #blackbonnet #gentlebeard #steddy hands #ofmd #our flag means death #stede bonnet #edward teach #blackbeard #izzy hands #israel hands #blitzwrites #blitz

[blitzturtles]

Title: Your Light In The Windowpane Said Come On In (Ao3) Rating: Teen and Up Fandom: OFMD, Our Flag Means Death Pairing(s): Steddyhands, Stizzy Summary: For a prompt on the kink meme: Izzy is sick. Everyone assumes that he'll either attempt to power through until he keels over or that he'll hide himself away in some dark corner of the ship until it passes. Neither occurs. Instead, Izzy bundles himself up in Stede's bed, surrounded by Stede's scent, and decides to take a much-deserved nap. Stede thinks it's the cutest thing in the entire world.

Notes: Set a bit into the future wherein Steddyhands is an established throuple.

I was about halfway through writing this when I realized it had already been filled.

Title from "Victory" by Trampled By Turtles.

CW: light emetophobia.

-

Izzy hears the whispers. The crew isn’t exactly subtle about their speculations. He’s certain Lucius doesn’t actually know how to lower his voice, and the rest of them aren’t doing much better. They’ve noticed that something is off, and it’s apparently more interesting to talk about what’s wrong with Izzy than it is for any of them to do their goddamn chores.

He ignores the lot of them, choosing to focus on the task at hand. If he can just get through until lunch, then he can make himself scarce. He’s already done the most vital of the day’s tasks. The ship will survive even if the entire crew were to sit on their asses for the remainder of the day (as he strongly suspects that they will. Ed and Stede have been caught up in one another all morning long, so Izzy doubts there will be many orders given in his absence.)

The problem with focusing is, well, the focusing. His eyes tend to cross every time he looks at the knot in his hands, a consequence of both the dizziness and the bone-deep exhaustion that settled over him no more than an hour ago. The heat from the day’s sun doesn’t help. It bears down on him, making him sincerely reconsider his wardrobe for the first time in years.

His skin is sticky with sweat, and his hair is slick with it. To say he’s overheated would be an understatement, and that’s to say nothing of the rest of his symptoms, the most concerning of which is the nausea. The last thing he wants to do is run for the railing in front of the entire fucking crew. He’ll never hear the end of it, but the heat isn’t helping that either. It’s cooking him in his leathers, making his stomach churn more violently the longer the hour drags out.

By the time Roach calls for lunch, Izzy’s at his limit. He knows he could push through, if he really had to. He’s worked through worse; gunshot wounds, stabbings, storms the likes of which The Revenge has yet to see (and thank God for small favors), the sort of headaches that threaten to split his skull apart, food poisonings, regular poisonings… certain amputations. Ed had once joked that Izzy was a bit like a cockroach—damn near indestructible and always lurking.

“Thank fuck,” Izzy grumbles, more to himself than anyone else. It’s a near fatal mistake as his guts violently twist, and he almost loses the contents of his stomach (nothing more than a bit of water and a bite of hardtack) all over the deck. He clamps a hand over his mouth and twists around, away from the crew, and waits for the nausea to pass before he risks dropping his hand again. If anyone notices, they don’t say anything, but, then, they’re probably all more concerned with food than whatever Izzy is up to. He’s not yelling at them, and they’re more likely to take advantage of that than question it.

He waits a bit longer. Both so his stomach will settle further, and so that the rest of the crew files down to try to stake their claim at the front of the line. Truly, the whole bunch turns into children when it comes to food. As if the last of whatever’s in Roach’s pot isn’t better than the best Izzy ever got on The Queen Anne.

The only stragglers are the Swede and Frenchie, and Izzy only just manages to catch the words Frenchie says, “Y’know, like a cat,” and, for some godforsaken reason, the two look directly at him. The Swede nods after a moment, and they both go on their way as if the whole thing weren’t weird. Izzy shrugs. He expects more bizarre shit out of the crew at any given moment. He can’t get hung up over every little eccentricity.

His stomach rolls painfully, and he’s reminded of his plan to escape. He makes his way toward his own quarters, pauses, reroutes himself. His room is small, stuffy. The single cot inside is far from comfortable. Worse, the only clothes he has are different versions of his everyday getup, and, frankly, he wants something more than that. Something light and airy and soft against his chafed skin.

He pushes open the door to the Captains’ quarters. It’s brighter than he expects, thanks to the light coming in through the windows. Whoever rolled out of bed last (Ed) hadn't bothered to close either set of curtains. Izzy can’t help being drawn inward. He barely remembers to kick the door shut behind him as he makes his way to the bed nook, only stopping short when he remembers the heat beneath his skin and the nausea in his belly. As tempting as it is to crawl into bed like this, he knows he’ll regret it the next time he manages to peel his eyes open. He’d be lucky if he managed to avoid sun sickness, and that would be on top of whatever he’s already dealing with.

With a heaved sigh, Izzy makes his way to Stede's wardrobe, fingers fumbling with his vest all the way. It feels like a monumental task, certainly far more difficult than it ought to be, but he’s dead tired and his bones ache, deep and constant. Without much to distract himself with, his head is going much the same way, starting at the crown of his skull and spreading outward in all directions. It’s only a matter of time before it’s all encompassing, and he would very much like to be asleep before that happens.

He sheds the rest of his clothes in a slow, clumsy process that takes entirely too long and leaves him stark naked. It’s almost instantaneous the way his skin ripples with goose flesh and chills grip him. He hadn’t expected to swing so abruptly from overheated to freezing. The cabin isn’t exactly cool by any means, yet his body protests being exposed. The sweat drying on his skin only worsens the shivering that racks his body, and the nausea crawls up his throat dangerously. Rather than acknowledge it, he focuses his attention on the wardrobe.

The robe he chooses is deceptively simple. The pattern on it is only a shade or two darker than the rest of it, making it appear solid when it, in fact, isn’t. It’s what drew his attention to it the first time he saw it, and it’s what draws him to it now.

It’s too big on him, easily swallowing his frame. It’s tailored specifically to Stede’s body, which means its shoulders are wider, and the length of it reaches well past Izzy’s knees. He pulls it tight against him, uncaring that he’s dirtying the expensive fabric. He’ll wash it later, when no one’s paying attention. For now, all he cares about is its warmth and familiarity.

What Izzy won’t readily admit to is that he sought to raid Stede’s wardrobe for more than the texture and weight of the fabrics inside. Every square centimeter of every piece of clothing smells like Stede, like lavender soap and expensive hair products and sea salt. It’s familiar, comforting. For a moment, he forgets about his nausea and the pain in his joints.

The reprieve only lasts for so long before reality slams back into him in the form of a stabbing pain just above his right eye. It feels like a pick being driven into his skull. His foot chooses that moment to make itself known, and it’s all the convincing he needs to crawl into bed and curl up lest they get much worse.

The bed is a mess, with pillows and blankets strewn about. Izzy can’t sort out which direction Ed must have been lying in, but he knows for sure that it had to be Edward. He’s the only one of the three of them that doesn’t bother making the bed upon waking up. That and Stede always closes the curtains.

Izzy crawls under the blankets and grabs for one of the pillows. He shoves his face into it, inhaling deeply and focusing on the scents that mix together. They’ve become so similar now that he can barely differentiate the two. Edward and Stede use the same shampoos, wash with the same soaps. They constantly share clothes between them (not unlike the decades long habit between Ed and Izzy.) It goes without saying that their scents are almost completely intertwined, but Izzy’s known Edward for decades, and he’s had plenty of time to grow intimately familiar with Stede’s distinct smell over the last several months.

It’s only a matter of minutes until Izzy’s eyelids grow too heavy to bother keeping them open anymore. He curls into the sheets, fingers gripping tightly. His face remains pressed into the pillow, and he puffs out a quiet sigh when his stomach finally settles and the ache in his body gives way to weightlessness.

The next time Izzy wakes, it’s to quiet whispers, one voice shushing the other, then silence. He squints against the light coming in through the windows, wishes he’d had the good since to pull the curtains. His head is pounding viciously, and the light is only making it worse. The uneasiness in his stomach is impossible to ignore with his guts roiling and his mouth watering. He has barely enough time to lean over the side of the bed.

Someone’s speaking. Whispered words of soft reassurances that mean nothing, and there’s a bucket shoved under his chin that he only notices when it’s being pulled away, replaced quickly with a cup of water.

There are also hands in his hair, brushing it back and away from his face in long, gentle strokes that are wholly unnecessary. His hair is stuck in place by drying sweat. It’s not at risk of being in the way should his stomach rebel again, but he can’t help leaning into the touch.

“Drink, Israel,” someone says in a voice that’s entirely too familiar.

Izzy considers telling Stede to fuck off, but he doesn’t have it in him. Instead, he does as told, taking several, large gulps of water. It’s only sheer willpower that keeps him from downing the rest of it. He knows what will inevitably happen if he does.

He moves to lie back down, grumbling all the way when calloused fingers move from his hair to his shoulders. They support his weight as he shifts, settling back into the absurdly soft mattress that’s admittedly grown on him over time.

Half a dozen questions run through his mind just as Ed takes up stroking through his hair once more. It’s enough to nearly fry whatever is left of his brain, but he has just enough wherewithal to ask, “Why?” He frowns at his own voice, at how brutalized it sounds, though he’s far more irritated by the half-formed question. It’s all he can muster up with the way his head continues to throb viciously.

“Overheard the crew, mate. Said you looked like shit,” Ed pauses, then adds, “They weren’t wrong.”

“Actually, I believe they are under the impression that you’re dying,” Stede adds before Izzy can tell Edward to go fuck himself.

“Yeah, like a cat,” Edward adds, and Izzy tries to parse that out, he really does, but he doesn’t know what to make of it. It’s the second time he’s heard those exact words, and he still doesn’t have a clue as to what the fuck they mean.

“Ah, what Ed means is that Frenchie informed us that cats often go off to die alone. Of course, he says that has something to do with their nine lives and something about transformations,” Stede’s brows draw together in obvious confusion. Good, at least Izzy isn’t alone. “But I believe the sentiment is the same.”

“‘m not dying,” Izzy says with a scowl that falls short of displaying any real ire.

“No, no, of course not. We just—” Stede flounders for the words, but Ed cuts him off.

“We wanted to check on you.” Ed shrugs in a way that’s almost dismissive. Almost. His eyes give him away, the same way they always have. He’s worried. Seeing Izzy hasn’t done much to soothe whatever anxiety he’s feeling, and it makes Izzy feel a guilty sort of uneasiness.

“‘m fine,” fucking fantastic, really. It’s not like someone’s driving a train through his skull, or his stomach isn’t attempting to turn itself inside out.

Ed snorts, “And I’m a fucking mermaid.” He pauses, “We’re just worried about you, Iz. Let us, yeah?”

Izzy waves at them weakly with his scarred hand. He can’t exactly stop them on his good days, never mind when he feels this poorly. What’s a man to do other than give up? He knows when to spare his dignity and admit defeat. Sometimes.

Stede grabs his hand gently and presses a kiss to the back of it. “Thank you, dear boy,” and Christ, if Izzy weren’t already flushed, he certainly would be now. He still doesn’t know how to handle their affection. It’s one thing seeing them with each other. Sickly sweet and obnoxious. It’s another when they turn it on him, back him into a corner that he can’t get out of, and right now he’s especially fucked.

“Whatever,” Izzy breathes out. “I’m going back to sleep, though.”

“That’s quite alright with us,” Stede says simply, and Ed echoes the sentiment.

Izzy bundles himself back into the blankets. His skin is still too cold, though he knows it’s from the fever he’s running. Logic doesn’t make him any more comfortable, but being surrounded by softness and familiar scents does.

His eyelids slide shut, and he begins to drift almost immediately.

“Rather cute, hm?” He hears Stede say just before consciousness swallows him completely. He doesn’t know what the man is on about now, but he’ll just have to ask about it later.

#steddyhands #blackhands #blackbonnet #gentlebeard #stizzy #ofmd #our flag means death #stede bonnet #edward teach #blackbeard #izzy hands #israel hands #blitzwrites #blitz

[blitzturtles]

Title: Rum (Ao3) Rating: Teen and Up Fandom: OFMD, Our Flag Means Death Pairing(s): Steddyhands Summary: “Is he typically this…” Stede motions vaguely with his free hand. He can’t find the words to express what he means, or, rather, the words don’t exactly fit because ‘affectionate’ is not a descriptor he would have used for Israel Hands under any other circumstance.

-

“Is he typically this…” Stede motions vaguely with his free hand. He can’t find the words to express what he means, or, rather, the words don’t exactly fit because ‘affectionate’ is not a descriptor he would have used for Israel Hands under any other circumstance.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Ed says with a laugh, “Wait until you try to get up.”

Stede pauses, momentarily considering that. He has no real urgent need to move, but he has a feeling that Ed is right. It would be fairly difficult to dislodge Izzy in his current state. Between the way he’s attached himself to Stede’s side—tucked firmly into place with his head nuzzling against Stede’s neck—, and the fact that Izzy’s fairly drunk… Well, Stede may just have to accept his fate.

“You have experience with these matters, I take it,” it’s not really a question, more an acknowledgement. He can already picture it, hard as it would have been before tonight. He’s certainly never imagined Izzy being the cuddly sort before, but now he can see it. Izzy pressed against Ed, doing his damnedest to try to burrow his way under Ed’s skin. (Really, it’s as if he can’t get close enough.)

“Since he was, oh, I don’t know, sixteen?” Ed snorts at the memory that must pop into his head. “He denies that he gets like this, but he always has. At least when rum is involved.”

“Sixteen,” Stede repeats, a bit of awe finding its way into his voice. He had known the two were together for a very, very long time, but it’s… Well, it’s difficult to imagine Izzy ever being sixteen. Part of Stede had been convinced that Izzy was simply born to the world, a fully formed, grumpy bastard of a man.

“Yeah, mate. Shoulda seen him. Used to keep his hair kinda long. Was real pretty, y’know, and he might be small, but, back then? He was smaller, and he was just limbs. No meat.”

Whatever part of Stede that had been convinced that Izzy had tuned them out—or even fallen asleep—is quickly corrected when Izzy flips Ed the bird.

“He’s a fucking liar,” Izzy mutters as he moves impossibly closer.

Ah, so his vocabulary hasn’t changed, at least.

“About what, Iz? You being a wee lad, or the fact that you were pretty?”

“Were?” Stede asks at the same time Izzy snaps, “Fuck off.” It’s precisely then that Izzy goes rigid against him, though he doesn’t pull away.

Ed snorts, “You’re right. No ‘were’ about it, huh?”

Stede feels the heat of Izzy’s cheeks against his neck, and he has to bite his lip to keep from reacting. He’s somewhere between a startled breath and a laugh, and he knows Izzy wouldn’t appreciate either.

“Twat,” Izzy grumbles.

Stede rubs at his arm with one hand. “He isn’t exactly wrong, darling,” the pet name slips out before he can think better of it, but there’s no knife to his throat. Then, he’s not sure Izzy’s coordinated enough to stab him right now. He might just do it later.

“Twats,” comes Izzy’s amended reply. It has Ed peeling with laughter, and Stede doing his best to do anything but.

#steddyhands #stizzy #blackhands #gentlebeard #blackbonnet #ofmd #our flag means death #stede bonnet #izzy hands #edward teach #blackbeard #blitzwrites #blitz

[blitzturtles]

Title: Equal (Ao3) Rating: Teen and Up Fandom: OFMD, Our Flag Means Death Pairing(s): Steddyhands, Stizzy, Blackhands Summary: For a prompt on the kink meme: Ed loves both Stede and Izzy. Izzy loves both Stede and Ed, but believes that Stede only loves Ed, as is only with Izzy as a means of appeasing their shared lover.

Izzy is injured protecting Stede during a raid (Ed doesn't ask him to do so, he does so of his own volition). The wound isn't lethal, but it is fairly serious (a through-and-through gunshot wound, a stab wound to a non-vital area, etc.). Izzy tends to it, and then hides it while it is healing--going about his everyday tasks like nothing is out of the ordinary. He's able to hide it for a while, until something happens to divulge the existence of the wound to Stede and Ed.

Notes: Set a bit into the future wherein Steddyhands is an (poorly) established throuple.

Full prompt: Ed loves both Stede and Izzy. Izzy loves both Stede and Ed, but believes that Stede only loves Ed, as is only with Izzy as a means of appeasing their shared lover.

Izzy is injured protecting Stede during a raid (Ed doesn't ask him to do so, he does so of his own volition). The wound isn't lethal, but it is fairly serious (a through-and-through gunshot wound, a stab wound to a non-vital area, etc.). Izzy tends to it, and then hides it while it is healing--going about his everyday tasks like nothing is out of the ordinary. He's able to hide it for a while, until something happens to divulge the existence of the wound to Stede and Ed.

Stede doesn't even know where to begin... should he be more horrified at the fact that Izzy was injured and hid it, or that he thought Stede wouldn't care one way or another?

Content Warning: medical use of opium and blink-and-you'll-miss-it references to PTSD. (Izzy doesn't like being drugged, even if it's for his own benefit.)

-

The wound isn’t the worst Izzy’s ever received, just a small gash to the side from a well timed blade. It’s shameful, really. He should have had enough time to parry the attack with his own sword, but he had leapt into action without thought, seeing Stede fucking Bonnet come so close to his own demise. Whatever their relationship—and all the turmoil that encompasses—Izzy happens to have a soft spot for the bastard, and so, here he is, hiding away in his quarters, tending to a wound he never should have received.

He had stolen supplies from Roach’s kitchen, which, in itself, is a good way to wind up injured. Some part of him is convinced that the cook is aware. Roach always seems to know when someone’s snooped through the galley, yet here Izzy is, with a needle and thread and no Roach in sight, left to his own devices, just the way that he prefers. Edward tends to get fussy, and Bonnet… Bonnet tolerates him on the best of days. Izzy’s a living compromise between Ed and Stede and nothing more, so he stitches himself with no more than a shot of rum and his own belt lodged between his teeth.

He does just fine like that for days. The stitches hold for the most part. He keeps his side wrapped with makeshift bandages, torn from an old shirt of his. (Of Ed’s, really.) They do well to protect the wound when he happens to twist the wrong way or brush his arm up against it. It’s not until they hit a storm that it becomes something of a problem. And then a massive fucking disaster.

Izzy hates storms on the best of days. They rock the boat violently, making his stomach turn, but he hasn’t sailed this long to be outdone by a bit of rain. He shouts orders over the thunder, busies himself when the crew proves to be as useless as ever. He’s midway through tying off a knot when a particularly vicious wave knocks him off balance, sends him careening into the railing. Under any other circumstances, Izzy would have let out a grunt and pushed himself off once it was safe enough to do so. He would have gone on with his duties until they were safely through the storm, and then he would have gone down to his quarters to wait out the nausea. Now, now he crumbles.

There are a few things that go through his mind all at once. He’s in an incredibly dangerous position, given the way The Revenge is rocking. He could go over so damn easily, and there would be not a thing he could do to stop it. Not when he has one hand grasping desperately at his side, and the other barely able to close in around the wood of the railing. His hold is too weak, and he thinks he hears screaming. It lasts for only a second or two before he’s biting down on his tongue, chewing it relentlessly in an effort to distract and silence himself.

He tries to move, to get to his feet, to do anything, but his body won’t cooperate. He can’t get his feet underneath himself. The rain pelts down on him, mixes with the blood that’s beginning to stain his hand, and fuck. Those stitches are as good as gone. He’s bleeding freely, head growing more woozy as the seconds tick by, and the pain is somehow worse than when he first took that godforsaken cutlass to his side.

There are hands on him. One set, then two. They seem to be looking for something with the way they pat him down from his shoulders to his hips, and he tries not to yelp when one hand comes to rest over his own. He can hear voices in the wind, shouting back and forth, and then he’s moving against his will, body no longer doing as he asks of it. Later, he’ll be mortified for having to be carried off deck in such a way. All he does now is allow his eyelids to slide shut.

The next time Izzy comes to, it’s to hushed shouting. The sort of whispered yelling that’s always made him wonder what the fucking point is. He can’t make out the actual words, not with the way blood pulses in his ears, and his vision is blurry when he opens his eyes. He barely makes out the shape of two different figures, but his surroundings are lost on him.

One voice must forget their attempts to be quiet because Izzy’s wincing when it shouts, “He’s awake!”

Both figures descend on him then, touching him, speaking to him. They ask so many questions that it makes his head spin, and he can’t keep up with any of it. It takes him entirely too long to realize that he’s been drugged stupid. His mind isn’t only sluggish from sleep and blood loss, but laudanum as well. He pushes down the panic that spikes in his chest. He’s fine, he’s fine.

“Iz,” Ed’s voice cuts through the mantra in Izzy’s head. It startles him, causes Izzy to jump back slightly, and that pulls a groan as a dull tearing sensation blossoms across his side. “Easy, easy,” Ed says, hand coming to rest on Izzy’s shoulder. “It’s just us. Just Ed and Stede, yeah?”

There’s more talking. To him, over him, he doesn’t know. It’s not until Stede’s face is directly in front of his, eyes looking like they do whenever he and Edward fight. “Dear boy, why wouldn’t you tell us?” He asks like the answer isn’t obvious. The pet name twists Izzy’s insides unfairly. He knows it’s only performative, but he wishes it were real.

“Didn’t think you’d care,” Izzy says honestly because that’s what laudanum does to him, takes away the filter that no one thinks he possesses.

Stede suddenly looks pained as he asks, “Why ever not?”

Izzy shrugs, winces, puffs out an irritated breath at his body’s own limitations. He’s never been good at accepting those. “You,” he starts, pointing to Stede with unnecessary emphasis. He folds his index finger in and jabs his thumb at himself, “Tolerate me.” It’s obvious, isn’t it? Were they supposed to pretend that that isn’t the truth? For what, Stede’s delicate gentlemanly sensibilities? As if Izzy could be bothered with such a thing.

“Oh, oh Israel—”

“Mate, that’s not—”

Ed and Stede both go quiet before either of them can finish their sentences. They look to one another, blurry features going through a series of complicated expressions that leave Izzy with a pang in his chest.

“Perhaps we should have this conversation when you’re feeling a bit more like yourself,” Stede says after what feels like an eternity and no time at all. He speaks slowly, like Izzy might not understand him otherwise, and it would irritate Izzy, if he were capable of such a thing at the moment.

All Izzy does is shrug again. It hurts like the first time, but he doesn’t have the words to form a reasonable response. More importantly, he doesn’t think he can trust himself to speak, which must be a good sign. The laudanum is beginning to wear off.

“Get some rest, Iz,” Edward says in a way that probably isn’t meant to be interpreted as an order, but it’s the only way Izzy finds peace in the darkness that encompasses him when he closes his eyes.

The second time Izzy awakens, it’s to pain blooming across his side, spreading outward in every direction, wrapping around his ribs, squeezing, pulsing. It takes his breath away and pulls a hiss out of him. The opium is almost completely out of his system, and he swears the wound hurts worse than it has yet, which seems impossible and nonsensical all at once. It should be better, yet here he is, agony coursing through his torso.

He lays there like that for several minutes, forcing himself to breathe through the pain. He’s done this before, and he’s certain he’ll do it again. Such is the life of a pirate, and he just happens to have a bit of a death wish. It’s not a conscious one, but he’s long been made aware of its existence.

Another few minutes pass before he forces himself to begin the arduous process of sitting up. It’s damn near impossible when half of his abdominal muscles are screaming their protest, and he nearly falls back to the bed when two hands suddenly materialize from nowhere and catch him by the back of his head and between his shoulders.

“Easy, Iz,” Ed’s familiar voice filters in with a worried edge to it. His face appears in Izzy’s line of vision, and his brows are scrunched together.

Izzy huffs, less at Edward and more at himself. He allows Ed to lower him back down against the bed. The Captains’ bed that he so rarely spends his nights in, choosing instead to stay in his own quarters. It’s easier that way, less humiliating to think that Bonnet is merely tolerating Izzy’s existence in Bonnet’s fancy fucking bed. Admittedly, it’s the softest thing Izzy’s ever laid on, and it’s a welcomed relief to a body that feels like it’s been keelhauled.

“You’ve got yourself a nasty infection,” Ed explains without needing to be prompted. “You’re lucky you aren’t dead.” His tone is monotonous, impossible to read, but his eyes—his eyes always give him away. Edward’s never been able to lie to Izzy for long. He isn’t disappointed as Izzy’s Captain; he’s worried as Izzy’s lover, and that makes Izzy’s already gnarled insides feel that much more twisted up.

“Indeed,” Bonnet cuts in, “We were quite worried about you.” He pauses, lips pursing like he wants to say something more, but whatever it is, he lets it go.

Izzy has half a mind to say something himself, but he bites his tongue. There’s no need to be cruel when Bonnet’s donated his time and his bed for Izzy’s wellbeing. He’ll be up and moving in no time, making his way back to his own cabin to sleep off the rest of this infection. With any luck, they won’t hit another storm before he’s healed, and they can all forget this whole thing happened.

“Israel.”

Goddammit.

“What?”

“I do believe the two of us have some words that need to be said,” Stede starts, voice taking on that idiotically determined tone that he gets when he’s made up his mind about something. It means that Izzy isn’t getting out of this, not that he has a choice, being stuck in bed and all.

“If you insist.”

“I do,” Stede pauses, looks to Ed. Ed nods his encouragement, and Stede takes a deep breath. “I find it very concerning that you thought that we wouldn’t be worried.”

“Not ‘we’,” Izzy says with a hiss as he tries to adjust himself to better look at the two. He hates this. Hates lying down while the two of them stand there. It’s awkward and unbalanced. It makes him feel exposed, put on the spot. He has nowhere to run, and everyone in this bloody room knows it.

“I, then,” Stede amends with surprisingly little hesitation, as if he expected Izzy to correct him. “I find it more alarming that you believe I, what was it, 'tolerate' you?”

Izzy could die. Right here, on this very spot, and he would be fine with that if it meant that he could get out of this conversation. He doesn’t need Bonnet’s false fucking reassurances. He doesn’t need to be lied to. He’s had enough of that in his life, especially when it comes to these two. The last thing he needs is for Bonnet to try to reassure him like his sensibilities are that fucking delicate.

“Bonnet.”

“Stede,” Ed and Stede say at the same time.

“Stede. It’s fine. I understand the arrangement,” he motions vaguely between the three of them, “I don’t need it explained to me.”

“No, no, I don’t think that you do, actually,” Stede’s voice takes on an edge to it. Something almost dangerous. He sounds—angry? Izzy must be imagining it. “You are part of us. Both of us, and am I correct in my assumption that you were injured in that last raid?”

Izzy grits his teeth, but he answers, “Yes.”

“Protecting me?”

“Yes.”

“And you think that I wouldn’t care?”

“I don’t need your fucking pity,” Izzy snaps, and that does it. Stede’s determined expression falls away, and he looks helplessly at Ed, who shrugs in turn.

“Toldja he’s stubborn.”

Izzy’s frown only grows, and he considers a few choice words. They’re on the tip of his tongue, locked and loaded, but they’re swallowed in an instant as Stede leans down and presses his lips to Izzy’s. It’s a short kiss. It’s far from the aggressive, teeth gnashing kisses he’s gotten out of Stede in the past, usually initiated by himself in a moment of petulance. It’s certainly nothing like the kisses he gets from Ed, arguably far more passionate or aggressive—or both.

“What the fuck?” Izzy asks when he comes up short of any other reply.

“I don’t tolerate you, Israel. In fact,” he pauses, eyes sliding sideways to look at Edward, “I’m rather fond of you.”

Oh.

What?

“It’s true, Iz,” Ed adds, probably because Izzy’s more likely to listen to him.

“Oh.”

What the fuck is he supposed to do with that?

Rather than speak again—and thank fuck for small favors—Stede chooses that moment to kiss him once more. This time he lingers, pressing into the kiss. It’s gentle, but there’s some urgency there. A desire to communicate with actions what he’s so clearly failed to do with words. Izzy responds after a beat of hesitation, pressing back into the kiss. He tries to reach up with his hands, to grab onto Bonnet’s stupid fucking fancy coat, but his body won’t cooperate.

Stede breaks the kiss. One of his hands strokes Izzy’s hair back from his face. It’s slick with sweat, and Stede’s hand is cool against his forehead. Izzy unashamedly leans into the touch, and Stede allows his hand to linger there before he speaks up.

“Understand now?”

“Yes.”

Stede beams at him, and God help him, Izzy gives the faintest of smiles in return.

The wound isn’t the worst Izzy’s ever received, just a small gash to the side from a well timed blade. It’s shameful, really. He should have had enough time to parry the attack with his own sword, but he had leapt into action without thought, seeing Stede fucking Bonnet come so close to his own demise. Whatever their relationship—and all the turmoil that encompasses—Izzy happens to have a soft spot for the bastard, and so, here he is, hiding away in his quarters, tending to a wound he never should have received.

He had stolen supplies from Roach’s kitchen, which, in itself, is a good way to wind up injured. Some part of him is convinced that the cook is aware. Roach always seems to know when someone’s snooped through the galley, yet here Izzy is, with a needle and thread and no Roach in sight, left to his own devices, just the way that he prefers. Edward tends to get fussy, and Bonnet… Bonnet tolerates him on the best of days. Izzy’s a living compromise between Ed and Stede and nothing more, so he stitches himself with no more than a shot of rum and his own belt lodged between his teeth.

He does just fine like that for days. The stitches hold for the most part. He keeps his side wrapped with makeshift bandages, torn from an old shirt of his. (Of Ed’s, really.) They do well to protect the wound when he happens to twist the wrong way or brush his arm up against it. It’s not until they hit a storm that it becomes something of a problem. And then a massive fucking disaster.

Izzy hates storms on the best of days. They rock the boat violently, making his stomach turn, but he hasn’t sailed this long to be outdone by a bit of rain. He shouts orders over the thunder, busies himself when the crew proves to be as useless as ever. He’s midway through tying off a knot when a particularly vicious wave knocks him off balance, sends him careening into the railing. Under any other circumstances, Izzy would have let out a grunt and pushed himself off once it was safe enough to do so. He would have gone on with his duties until they were safely through the storm, and then he would have gone down to his quarters to wait out the nausea. Now, now he crumbles.

There are a few things that go through his mind all at once. He’s in an incredibly dangerous position, given the way The Revenge is rocking. He could go over so damn easily, and there would be not a thing he could do to stop it. Not when he has one hand grasping desperately at his side, and the other barely able to close in around the wood of the railing. His hold is too weak, and he thinks he hears screaming. It lasts for only a second or two before he’s biting down on his tongue, chewing it relentlessly in an effort to distract and silence himself.

He tries to move, to get to his feet, to do anything, but his body won’t cooperate. He can’t get his feet underneath himself. The rain pelts down on him, mixes with the blood that’s beginning to stain his hand, and fuck. Those stitches are as good as gone. He’s bleeding freely, head growing more woozy as the seconds tick by, and the pain is somehow worse than when he first took that godforsaken cutlass to his side.

There are hands on him. One set, then two. They seem to be looking for something with the way they pat him down from his shoulders to his hips, and he tries not to yelp when one hand comes to rest over his own. He can hear voices in the wind, shouting back and forth, and then he’s moving against his will, body no longer doing as he asks of it. Later, he’ll be mortified for having to be carried off deck in such a way. All he does now is allow his eyelids to slide shut.

The next time Izzy comes to, it’s to hushed shouting. The sort of whispered yelling that’s always made him wonder what the fucking point is. He can’t make out the actual words, not with the way blood pulses in his ears, and his vision is blurry when he opens his eyes. He barely makes out the shape of two different figures, but his surroundings are lost on him.

One voice must forget their attempts to be quiet because Izzy’s wincing when it shouts, “He’s awake!”

Both figures descend on him then, touching him, speaking to him. They ask so many questions that it makes his head spin, and he can’t keep up with any of it. It takes him entirely too long to realize that he’s been drugged stupid. His mind isn’t only sluggish from sleep and blood loss, but laudanum as well. He pushes down the panic that spikes in his chest. He’s fine, he’s fine.

“Iz,” Ed’s voice cuts through the mantra in Izzy’s head. It startles him, causes Izzy to jump back slightly, and that pulls a groan as a dull tearing sensation blossoms across his side. “Easy, easy,” Ed says, hand coming to rest on Izzy’s shoulder. “It’s just us. Just Ed and Stede, yeah?”

There’s more talking. To him, over him, he doesn’t know. It’s not until Stede’s face is directly in front of his, eyes looking like they do whenever he and Edward fight. “Dear boy, why wouldn’t you tell us?” He asks like the answer isn’t obvious. The pet name twists Izzy’s insides unfairly. He knows it’s only performative, but he wishes it were real.

“Didn’t think you’d care,” Izzy says honestly because that’s what laudanum does to him, takes away the filter that no one thinks he possesses.

Stede suddenly looks pained as he asks, “Why ever not?”

Izzy shrugs, winces, puffs out an irritated breath at his body’s own limitations. He’s never been good at accepting those. “You,” he starts, pointing to Stede with unnecessary emphasis. He folds his index finger in and jabs his thumb at himself, “Tolerate me.” It’s obvious, isn’t it? Were they supposed to pretend that that isn’t the truth? For what, Stede’s delicate gentlemanly sensibilities? As if Izzy could be bothered with such a thing.

“Oh, oh Israel—”

“Mate, that’s not—”

Ed and Stede both go quiet before either of them can finish their sentences. They look to one another, blurry features going through a series of complicated expressions that leave Izzy with a pang in his chest.

“Perhaps we should have this conversation when you’re feeling a bit more like yourself,” Stede says after what feels like an eternity and no time at all. He speaks slowly, like Izzy might not understand him otherwise, and it would irritate Izzy, if he were capable of such a thing at the moment.

All Izzy does is shrug again. It hurts like the first time, but he doesn’t have the words to form a reasonable response. More importantly, he doesn’t think he can trust himself to speak, which must be a good sign. The laudanum is beginning to wear off.

“Get some rest, Iz,” Edward says in a way that probably isn’t meant to be interpreted as an order, but it’s the only way Izzy finds peace in the darkness that encompasses him when he closes his eyes.

The second time Izzy awakens, it’s to pain blooming across his side, spreading outward in every direction, wrapping around his ribs, squeezing, pulsing. It takes his breath away and pulls a hiss out of him. The opium is almost completely out of his system, and he swears the wound hurts worse than it has yet, which seems impossible and nonsensical all at once. It should be better, yet here he is, agony coursing through his torso.

He lays there like that for several minutes, forcing himself to breathe through the pain. He’s done this before, and he’s certain he’ll do it again. Such is the life of a pirate, and he just happens to have a bit of a death wish. It’s not a conscious one, but he’s long been made aware of its existence.

Another few minutes pass before he forces himself to begin the arduous process of sitting up. It’s damn near impossible when half of his abdominal muscles are screaming their protest, and he nearly falls back to the bed when two hands suddenly materialize from nowhere and catch him by the back of his head and between his shoulders.

“Easy, Iz,” Ed’s familiar voice filters in with a worried edge to it. His face appears in Izzy’s line of vision, and his brows are scrunched together.

Izzy huffs, less at Edward and more at himself. He allows Ed to lower him back down against the bed. The Captains’ bed that he so rarely spends his nights in, choosing instead to stay in his own quarters. It’s easier that way, less humiliating to think that Bonnet is merely tolerating Izzy’s existence in Bonnet’s fancy fucking bed. Admittedly, it’s the softest thing Izzy’s ever laid on, and it’s a welcomed relief to a body that feels like it’s been keelhauled.

“You’ve got yourself a nasty infection,” Ed explains without needing to be prompted. “You’re lucky you aren’t dead.” His tone is monotonous, impossible to read, but his eyes—his eyes always give him away. Edward’s never been able to lie to Izzy for long. He isn’t disappointed as Izzy’s Captain; he’s worried as Izzy’s lover, and that makes Izzy’s already gnarled insides feel that much more twisted up.

“Indeed,” Bonnet cuts in, “We were quite worried about you.” He pauses, lips pursing like he wants to say something more, but whatever it is, he lets it go.

Izzy has half a mind to say something himself, but he bites his tongue. There’s no need to be cruel when Bonnet’s donated his time and his bed for Izzy’s wellbeing. He’ll be up and moving in no time, making his way back to his own cabin to sleep off the rest of this infection. With any luck, they won’t hit another storm before he’s healed, and they can all forget this whole thing happened.

“Israel.”

Goddammit.

“What?”

“I do believe the two of us have some words that need to be said,” Stede starts, voice taking on that idiotically determined tone that he gets when he’s made up his mind about something. It means that Izzy isn’t getting out of this, not that he has a choice, being stuck in bed and all.

“If you insist.”

“I do,” Stede pauses, looks to Ed. Ed nods his encouragement, and Stede takes a deep breath. “I find it very concerning that you thought that we wouldn’t be worried.”

“Not ‘we’,” Izzy says with a hiss as he tries to adjust himself to better look at the two. He hates this. Hates lying down while the two of them stand there. It’s awkward and unbalanced. It makes him feel exposed, put on the spot. He has nowhere to run, and everyone in this bloody room knows it.

“I, then,” Stede amends with surprisingly little hesitation, as if he expected Izzy to correct him. “I find it more alarming that you believe I, what was it, 'tolerate' you?”

Izzy could die. Right here, on this very spot, and he would be fine with that if it meant that he could get out of this conversation. He doesn’t need Bonnet’s false fucking reassurances. He doesn’t need to be lied to. He’s had enough of that in his life, especially when it comes to these two. The last thing he needs is for Bonnet to try to reassure him like his sensibilities are that fucking delicate.

“Bonnet.”

“Stede,” Ed and Stede say at the same time.

“Stede. It’s fine. I understand the arrangement,” he motions vaguely between the three of them, “I don’t need it explained to me.”

“No, no, I don’t think that you do, actually,” Stede’s voice takes on an edge to it. Something almost dangerous. He sounds—angry? Izzy must be imagining it. “You are part of us. Both of us, and am I correct in my assumption that you were injured in that last raid?”

Izzy grits his teeth, but he answers, “Yes.”

“Protecting me?”

“Yes.”

“And you think that I wouldn’t care?”

“I don’t need your fucking pity,” Izzy snaps, and that does it. Stede’s determined expression falls away, and he looks helplessly at Ed, who shrugs in turn.

“Toldja he’s stubborn.”

Izzy’s frown only grows, and he considers a few choice words. They’re on the tip of his tongue, locked and loaded, but they’re swallowed in an instant as Stede leans down and presses his lips to Izzy’s. It’s a short kiss. It’s far from the aggressive, teeth gnashing kisses he’s gotten out of Stede in the past, usually initiated by himself in a moment of petulance. It’s certainly nothing like the kisses he gets from Ed, arguably far more passionate or aggressive—or both.

“What the fuck?” Izzy asks when he comes up short of any other reply.

“I don’t tolerate you, Israel. In fact,” he pauses, eyes sliding sideways to look at Edward, “I’m rather fond of you.”

Oh.

What?

“It’s true, Iz,” Ed adds, probably because Izzy’s more likely to listen to him.

“Oh.”

What the fuck is he supposed to do with that?

Rather than speak again—and thank fuck for small favors—Stede chooses that moment to kiss him once more. This time he lingers, pressing into the kiss. It’s gentle, but there’s some urgency there. A desire to communicate with actions what he’s so clearly failed to do with words. Izzy responds after a beat of hesitation, pressing back into the kiss. He tries to reach up with his hands, to grab onto Bonnet’s stupid fucking fancy coat, but his body won’t cooperate.

Stede breaks the kiss. One of his hands strokes Izzy’s hair back from his face. It’s slick with sweat, and Stede’s hand is cool against his forehead. Izzy unashamedly leans into the touch, and Stede allows his hand to linger there before he speaks up.

“Understand now?”

“Yes.”

Stede beams at him, and God help him, Izzy gives the faintest of smiles in return.

#steddyhands #stizzy #blackhands #blackbonnet #gentlebeard #gentlehands #our flag means death #ofmd #stede bonnet #blackbeard #edward teach #izzy hands #blitzwrites #blitz

[blitzturtles]

Title: End Scene (Ao3) Rating: Mature Fandom: OFMD, Our Flag Means Death Pairing(s): Ed/Izzy Summary: For a prompt on the kink meme: Something where Izzy and Ed are doing their 'usual', ya know the bad bdsm thing we expect from them, when Izzy suddenly asks Ed to stop. For whatever reason - Ed's finally gone too far, something in Izzy realizes it's all gone too far/it's not what he wants, he's finally hit a breaking point, etc. - he asks (in a quiet broken voice) Ed to stop. Whether you wanna go full dark!Edward/Blackbeard and he doesn't stop, or Ed's shocked and actually does and either comforts him or is scared of how far they've gone is up to you.

Notes: I have literally zero idea as to when this is set. Prompt found here.

Content Warnings: PTSD, panic attacks, subdrop, questionable BDSM practices...

-

The shift is abrupt. There’s no warning. One moment, he’s floating, mind a hazy thing without coherent thought, the next, he’s falling too quickly for him to recover. His breathing comes in short, desperate gasps, and he reaches for something—anything—to hold onto. His hands are bound together, held above his head, and he knows that what comes next is a sinking darkness that will swallow him whole.

The air around him turns frigid, and he expects to hit the water any second now. The pain he feels instead is not his body breaking the water’s surface, but something else entirely. It ripples across his back, pulls a silent cry from his deprived lungs. It’s all consuming in the way it spreads outward and over and through him.

Reality slams back into him, and he remembers where he is. The panic doesn’t cease. He still can’t get a lungful of air, and there’s a burning prickle at the back of his eyes with a familiar wetness already trailing his cheeks. He tugs at his wrists again, a pathetic attempt with no real drive behind it. He can’t summon the energy to really fight.

“Stop,” he breathes, voice raspier than it’s ever been. He can hardly believe it’s his own. It sounds so weak, so pathetic… For a moment, he considers clamping his mouth shut. To take this punishment like a man, but his heart is racing, his chest too tight, the edges of his vision have blackened. Whatever’s left of his sanity snaps with the next strike that falls across abused flesh.

“Edward!” He tries again with unrestrained urgency. He can’t be certain that he’s been heard, hopes that he isn’t being ignored. The whip lands across an existing welt, and he screams without a sound. He yanks at his wrists frantically, forcing the ropes to dig into bruises both old and new. He’s babbling now, a litany of desperation, “—Ed, please stop, please.” It's quiet, broken, barely audible to even Izzy's ears.

The sound of a knife being drawn startles him into gasping in a breath, and, still, it does nothing to ease the searing agony that has wrapped around his lungs. He half-expects the blade to be pressed to his throat, to bite into the thin skin that covers his jugular. Never has he interrupted his Captain during one of these sessions of theirs. He’s always taken every crack of the whip, every smack of Edward’s hand, every bite of iron from the very knife now pressing against his wrists.

“—Izzy, Izzy, man, c’mon,” Edward’s voice filters in through the frenzied thoughts. His hands are on Izzy’s wrists, rubbing sensation back into his fingers. The ropes are long gone, cast aside like something offensive. “Israel,” the name comes out firm yet free of any harshness. One of Ed's hands catches Izzy’s jaw, and Edward wrenches Izzy’s head to the side.

Izzy looks at Edward, unwilling to defy his Captain further, but his eyes are wide, frantic, bordering on a sort of ferality that’s typically reserved for bloody battles. He opens his mouth, working his jaw several times, but nothing worth being spoken falls from his lips. All he manages are distressed, whispered apologies.

His body moves without his input, shifting from his stomach to his side. It takes him a moment to realize that it’s Edward manhandling him so that Izzy isn’t straining to look at his Captain. It’s all Izzy can do to keep his eyes open when he wants nothing more than to squeeze them shut against the tears that have yet to stop.

“Iz,” Edward says with a soft sort of awe to his tone. There’s alarm in his gaze, and one of his hands finds its way into Izzy’s hair. “You’re alright now, mate,” Edward says as if he’s trying to convince both of them. With a bit more confidence, he adds, “Not gonna hurt you anymore.”

Izzy doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. Every muscle in his body is stiff, every tendon pulled tight. His body wants to run, to get away, but he’s frozen. Unable to move no matter how desperately he wants to. His thoughts are a jumbled mess, half-formed, half-mad. He stops processing Edward’s touch, Edward’s voice, Edward’s smell… Edward.

“Fuck, shit.”

Izzy flinches.

There’s more curses from above him before he’s being maneuvered again. This time so that his head is resting on something, and it takes him entirely too long to piece together what. The thigh beneath him is stretched out to match its mate. A flash of clarity runs through his mind; Ed can’t bend his bad knee.

And then, Ed.

He gasps on his next breath, feeling like a man being pulled out of the sea’s unforgiving grasp. His head is pounding, stomach churning. It’s like they’ve just gone through a bad storm only for him to get tossed over the railing by a particularly brutal wave.

“Shit, Iz,” Edward breathes above him, his own voice a near whisper. His hand is back in Izzy’s hair, combing it back from his face and into a poor attempt at Izzy’s usual style. “You with me?”

No.

Yes.

He wishes he wasn’t. He nods anyway.

“Good,” Ed breathes. “Good, stay with me, alright?” He pauses, waiting for something, but he sighs after a moment. Izzy misses the cue, only recognizes it for what it was after it’s already passed. “You’re alright, Iz. Not gonna let anything happen to you, okay?”

Belatedly, Izzy thinks that Edward sounds like he’s been caught up in the waves himself. Out of breath, a bit shaky. His hand in Izzy’s hair is unsteady. It’s wrong. It’s all wrong, and it feels like it’s Izzy’s fault. Like Ed wouldn’t be here, in this situation, if not for Izzy fucking everything up in the first place. As if Izzy isn’t a seasoned professional more than capable of handling whatever nature—or his Captain—throws at him.

Something squeezes the back of his neck, just firm enough to catch his attention, drawing him out of the spiral he’s rapidly working towards. It takes all of his energy to focus on Ed, to try—and widely fail at—silencing the cacophony of nonsense in his head. It’s repetitive, unending, miserable.

“Stay with me,” Edward says again, in a tone that sounds so much more like Blackbeard than Ed. It’s an order; one that Izzy isn’t meant to question or ignore, so he tries. He does his best to focus on something small—the hand in his hair, the texture of Ed’s skin under his cheek. It’s a damn near impossible task.

Ed, for his part, doesn’t stop talking, nor does his hand leave Izzy’s hair. The words are a repetitive mixture of reassurances and promises that sound wrong coming from Edward, particularly in that uncertain tone, but he doesn’t stop, and, God help him, Izzy clings to every word like they’ll be the last he ever hears.

Exhaustion begins to take hold, gripping Izzy so tightly that he almost forgets about how poorly he feels. The room is still too cold, causing him to shiver. Every movement pulls at the skin surrounding the welts on his back. The combination of the two makes the nausea worse. He’s thirsty, mouth drier than he ever remembers it being, and his eyes still burn from the tears that continue to run down his face. He doesn’t know what to do to make it all stop. Sleep would be a welcomed reprieve, but his eyes refuse to stay closed for longer than a second or two at a time.

“You’re too good for me, Iz,” Ed whispers, and it triggers something in Izzy. He grasps at every word, holding them close to his chest, but there’s one that stings in a way that makes him feel worse. It twists the whole meaning of what Ed says, turns it into something poisonous, and it’s not Izzy that Edward is feeding that toxin to.

Izzy reaches up to grab at the hand in his hair. He squeezes it tight. There are so many things he could say, yet nothing comes out no matter how hard he tries. Ed’s gone quiet above him, evidently waiting. The pressure of it nearly splits Izzy in half. He can’t handle much more. He’s too raw already, body and mind torn open just the same as his back. It’s not even the only part of him that hurts. His joints ache, though none as terribly as his bad hip, which comes from lying on his side for too long. He feels ill, like he’s caught something that’s causing him to be too cold when he knows he’s sweating from what must be a fever.

“You’re always so good for me,” Ed continues in a voice that’s only barely audible now. “In here, like this. You’re perfect, Iz.” And oh, does that do something to Izzy’s brain. Short circuits it, is what it does. There’s a tiny warmth in his chest; it’s blink-and-you-miss-it, but it’s there. “Oh, heh, you like that?”

Izzy feels his face heat up. He hadn’t realized he’d reacted at all, but there he is, practically preening under the little bit of praise like a child chasing after daddy’s approval. It’s embarrassing. And utterly pathetic. He turns his head, tries to bury his face in Ed’s thigh.

Ed barks out a short laugh that startles them both. “Sorry, sorry,” he’s quick to say. “It’s just—cute ‘s all.”

If Izzy weren’t red before, he definitely is now. Of all the things Israel Hands has been called in his life—bastard, asshole, fucker, prick—never once has anyone thought to call him—or anything he does—cute. He’s way too goddamn old for someone to start now, but who is he to question his Captain?

Ed shakes Izzy’s hand loose and goes back to petting his hair. “I mean it, y’know? You’re amazing like this. You take everything so fucking well, Iz.”

The blush spreads from Izzy’s cheeks to his ears and down his neck. He’s starting to reconsider his opinion on drowning. It might be a small blessing right about now. Praise for a job well done is one thing. He can handle that, rare as it is, but this? This is overwhelming, devastating, unbearable. It’s too much all at once, but Ed doesn’t stop. In fact, he uses the hand in Izzy’s hair to force his head back and his face up. Worse, he bends down and plants a kiss right on Izzy’s forehead.

“You’re mine, Israel Hands,” he uses his free hand to tap the tattoo on Izzy’s cheek and then the ring still tied around his neck. Even Ed doesn’t try to take it off Izzy. If his First Mate wants to leave it on, then so be it. “And I don’t fucking take scraps.”

Before Izzy has a chance to recover from that little proclamation, Ed’s already moving again, this time wiping at the tear tracks on Izzy’s face.

“Should probably get you some fucking water. You gotta be dying,” somewhere between the crying, the sweating, and the general intensity of what they had been up to before everything went south. Ed makes a move to slide out from under Izzy, but Izzy’s quick to grab at his leg, digging nails into tattooed flesh.

“Ow, shit, okay, got it,” Ed rubs at his leg when Izzy relaxes his hold. “You gotta cut those.”

“You like them,” Izzy snarks, surprising both of them when he finally, finally speaks. His throat is notably sore for not having been choked out. It has to be the crying. Or maybe the screaming. He’s almost forgotten about that entirely. The whole thing is becoming a distant memory, too far removed from the easy place he’s falling into now.

Ed snorts, “If you say so.”

“I do,” Izzy says without pause.

“Fuck off.”

“No.”

It’s odd—yet comforting—the way they fall back into this banter. He’s reminded vaguely of when they were boys, still young enough to be green around the ears. The ghost of another memory brushes against his conscious mind, but he stomps it down before it can sour the image of Ed. Hair dark as the depths of the ocean, beard more stubble than anything remotely impressive, eyes bright and eager. It’s a shame that there is no portrait of that Ed, though it’s probably for the best. It’s a marvelous mental image, one that Izzy can appreciate in its entirety, but it doesn’t exactly paint the picture of Blackbeard.

They lapse into silence then. Izzy stares off at the far wall, still not quite trusting his eyes to not betray him the moment he tries to close them. It’s amazing what you can see when your eyes are closed. Edward’s hand works through his hair, over and over, without pause. Neither dares move much more than that. Ed, for reasons Izzy doesn’t understand, and Izzy, because he’s slowly slipping further into a warm, foggy state, so much so that Ed damn near startles him when he speaks again,

“I need to at least clean your back. Can’t leave it like that, man.”

Izzy waves a non-committal hand. He’d prefer Edward to stay exactly where he is, but he won’t fight Ed on this, doesn’t have it in him.

Ed slides out from underneath him, easily replacing his thigh with his hand and then a pillow. Izzy barely hears his footsteps as he walks away, disappearing long enough to grab soap, water, and a cloth.

“On your stomach, Iz,” Ed prods at him gently, encouraging Izzy to roll back onto his belly. It takes a bit more poking to get him there, but he manages in the end. Ed sets the bowl of water on the bedside table before climbing onto the bed. He crawls up Izzy’s legs, straddles his hips.

There’s a pause where Ed does nothing, and Izzy does his best to not think about what that might mean. The cloth, already damp, touches down a moment later, and he barely bites back a yelp. It’s ridiculous. He’s taken worse with less complaint, and here he is with renewed tears pricking at the corners of his eyes.

“Easy, Iz,” Edward murmurs, and even in spite of his words, his next touch is somehow softer, slower. The kindness is almost worse. It’s too much, mentally and physically. Damn near overwhelming, and it burns up his renewed resolve to keep quiet. Edward, for his part, says nothing.

With the blood and sweat wiped away, Ed goes back around with the cloth again. This time it’s been soaped up, and Ed is just as careful as he was before.

By the time Ed is done wiping away the suds, Izzy’s back is on fire in a way that he’s not particularly enjoying, and that’s so jarring compared to how this typically works, that he doesn’t know what to do with himself other than try to remove his thoughts from his body. He’s done it before, separating the two. It’s a practiced skill that he’s unfortunately been forced into developing. It’s how he misses the way Ed wipes down one arm with a fresh cloth, though he’s snapped back into his body abruptly when Edward carefully works the cloth over each of the fingers on his typically gloved hand, mindful of the webbed scar tissue.

“Edward—”

“Just go with it, Izzy,” Ed says in a hushed voice. He doesn’t stop what he’s doing, merely moves onto Izzy’s other arm. It’s a reach to get the whole thing, but Ed manages the way he manages to do everything else.

By the time Ed gets to his legs, Izzy’s eyes have begun to droop, and his head has slowly shifted from a dissociative fogginess to something fuzzy, not quite as unattached, yet calm, relaxed. There’s not much going on between his ears. His body feels unnaturally heavy, limbs weighed down with lead. He doesn’t know how Ed can move him around like he’s a ragdoll when he’s all deadweight.

Izzy’s eyes burn for a whole new reason as exhaustion ebbs inward, wrapping around him like a vice. He hears Ed above him, talking about something and nothing. He thinks he can pick out individual words, bits and phrases, but none of them go together.

Ed sprawls out beside him once he’s finished, tangles their legs together in lieu of wrapping an arm around Izzy’s waist. He presses their foreheads together, causing Izzy to briefly open his eyes, but they slide shut almost immediately. It’s too hard to keep them open, and Ed says nothing as he wipes at the mostly dry tears on Izzy’s face. It’s the last thing Izzy processes before sleep finally takes him.

#blackhands #edward teach #blackbeard #israel hands #izzy hands #ofmd #our flag means death #blitzwrites #blitz

[blitzturtles]

Title: Salt (Ao3) Rating: Teen and Up Fandom: OFMD, Our Flag Means Death Pairing(s): Steddyhands, Stizzy Summary: “Doesn’t hurt so bad,” Bonnet says, words largely (blessedly) muffled by the cloth stuffed into his mouth. He looks dazed, eyes failing to fixate on any particular point, and he keeps wandering around the cabin, fingers grazing this and that only for him to spin around and open his maw to make some other useless observation like he isn’t actively losing blood from the now gaping hole in his mouth.

Notes: The prompt my wife gave me was 'salt', hence the title. Content warnings for medical use of opium and some mild tooth trauma. Also, they're all super married.

-

“Doesn’t hurt so bad,” Bonnet says, words largely (blessedly) muffled by the cloth stuffed into his mouth. He looks dazed, eyes failing to fixate on any particular point, and he keeps wandering around the cabin, fingers grazing this and that only for him to spin around and open his maw to make some other useless observation like he isn’t actively losing blood from the now gaping hole in his mouth.

Izzy grabs him by the jaw, none too gently, “That’s because of the laudanum. Open,” and, to his surprise, Stede does. Without any biting remarks or stupid comments, even. Izzy should savor the moment, but he has a job to do, and unfortunately, that job is seeing to his idiotic husband while his other husband gets to do all the fun stuff like threatening hostages and procuring spoils for himself. It’s entirely unfair, and he’s certain it’s some sort of punishment for last night when he—Izzy shakes his head. No point getting riled up now.

Izzy pulls the bloodied cloth out from between Stede’s lips and reaches back to grab a glass of what looks to be water off the nearby table. “Gargle this, don’t swallow.”

It’s his own fucking fault that he ends up coated in salt water a moment later when Stede spits it out like a petulant child being forced to drink medicine. It takes all of his willpower to not dump the rest of it over Stede’s head. Instead, he wipes at his face and motions toward the glass, “Try again.”

The second attempt goes better than the first. Bonnet doesn’t spew salt water all over him, so Izzy counts it as some sort of win. Not a very good one, but he’ll take what he can get.

“Now spit it ba—in the cup!” Izzy’s quick to yank the glass from Stede’s hand and get it underneath his chin before the man can make too much of a mess of himself.

“Sorry,” Stede says without sounding sorry at all.

“Whatever, here,” Izzy forces Stede’s jaw open once more and crams the cloth back into place. “Bite down and hold it.” Hopefully that’s a simple enough command for even Bonnet to follow, but he’s not all that optimistic.

Rather than leaving Stede to his own devices, Izzy grabs at his upper arm and leads Stede over to the sofa. “Sit, and stay put for two fucking minutes,” and he’s gone and out of the room before Stede can try to respond.

It doesn’t take him long to find and wet another cloth, this time with the coldest water he can find. He returns to the Captains’ quarters to find Stede stretched out on the sofa, legs kicked up and his arm tucked under his head. He’s staring up at the ceiling like it’s the most interesting thing in the world, and the cloth is still in his mouth, much to Izzy’s relief.

“What’s that for?” Stede asks once his senses catch up to him, and he (belatedly) takes note of the footsteps approaching him.

“Your eyes,” Izzy says easily. He approaches the sofa and moves to lay the cloth out over Stede’s face once he closes his eyes. “That broken nose of yours is going to come with two black eyes.” Truthfully, the bruising has already begun to develop, and there’s swelling on the lids that will undoubtedly be much worse in the morning.

On second thought, Edward might be having a different sort of fun. The very sort that Izzy wishes he could participate in right now. He wouldn’t have any qualms about running the bastards through that thought to touch one of his Captains, but he supposes that’s what the rest of the crew can make themselves good for. If only for today. Izzy can go back to the maiming and killing himself when he isn’t busy babying Stede.

“Fucking—don’t—” Izzy snatches Stede’s hand away from his face before he can do anymore damage to himself.

“But I can’t see it.”

“And you don’t fucking need to,” Izzy growls, exasperation getting the better of him. Ed really would be better at this. “You’re going to be one big, swollen fucking bruise tomorrow, but it will heal. If you leave it the fuck alone.”

Stede pouts up at him, which looks frankly ridiculous with the one cloth covering his eyes and the other hanging out of his mouth. It’s a shame the boy isn't here to capture the image on paper. Izzy would love to have it to show Bonnet when he’s more lucid.

The door creaks open, and Izzy barely pays it any mind as he adjusts the cloth in Stede’s mouth and pushes at the bottom of his jaw, checking that there’s at least some pressure being applied.

“You look entirely too satisfied with yourself,” Ed remarks from the doorway. He leans against it a moment, taking the scene in, as if he isn’t, himself, quite a sight, what with blood streaking across his face and his hair in disarray around his head. It’s a good look on him, and Izzy isn’t ashamed to let his gaze linger.

“Yeah, well, you fucking stuck me with him,” Izzy shrugs like he hadn’t made that vow himself in front of God and everyone some six months ago. Christ, what the fuck is his life?

“‘Him’ is listening,” Stede points out, voice still muted.

“We know.”

“Don’t care.”

The pouting returns, and Izzy actually snorts out a laugh at the sight of it. Edward shoots him a semi-judgmental look that Izzy’s content to ignore. It’s not Ed that’s been dealing with a fucked up Bonnet. Stede had been a blubbering mess before the laudanum, and he’s been a nuisance since. Unable—or unwilling—to sit still for any length of time. This is the longest so far. The opium must really be setting in.

“Shoulda put him in bed first,” Ed points out as he comes to crouch down at Stede’s side. Izzy shoots him an unimpressed look. They both know how Ed’s knee will protest later, but it’s wasted breath to say anything about it now. “I don’t think he’s gonna move anytime soon.”

“Probably not,” Izzy shrugs. He looks back down at Stede and notices the way he’s settled more thoroughly. His body is relaxed, melting into the cushions, and his breathing is slower. He looks back at Edward, contemplating a moment, but his curiosity gets the better of him. “What about those two—” He waves a hand. An assortment of colorful words come to mind, and he eventually settles on, “Fuckwits?”

“Jim.”

“Ah,” good choice.

“I had a go at them first,” Ed adds with a shrug of his own.

“Good,” is all Izzy has to say to that. At least one of them should have gotten the opportunity.

“I’ll tell you all about it later,” Ed promises as he moves to try to unfold himself. Izzy doesn’t hesitate in offering him a hand up. “Thanks. For taking care of him.”

Izzy hums dismissively. The index and middle fingers of his free hand find his cravat, and he brushes over the two rings tied into the fabric. He doesn’t say anything else, but, then, he doesn’t really need to, does he?

#steddyhands #stizzy #blackhands #blackbonnet #gentlebeard #edizzy #ofmd #our flag means death #edward teach #blackbeard #izzy hands #israel hands #stede bonnet #blitzwrites #blitz

[blitzturtles]

Title: Tear & Tear (Ao3)

Rating: Teen and Up

Fandom: DC Comics, Batman

Pairing(s): JayTim / TimJay

Summary: Of all the things to take him out, Tim never would have guessed that it would be a simple landing gone wrong.

I asked my wife for prompts, she gave me 'tear'. When I asked her if she meant tear like crying or tear like ripping, she told me both, so here we are. FYI, I (accidentally) squicked her out with the descriptions of the knee injury, so, if knee stuff bothers you, this might not be for you.

Also, I'd love anyone that could point me toward a JayTim discord.

TW: IV drug use for pain management/medical purposes.

-

Of all the things to take him out, Tim never would have guessed that it would be a simple landing gone wrong. He hits the roof too hard, too fast, and his knee hyperextends until he’s rolling head over feet. The first shock of it steals his breath away, sucking, searing, suffering. He manages to stop himself from rolling over the edge of the building, but only just. His hands clench the concrete edge, and he looks over without thinking, sees how far he would have fallen. It’s dizzying, or maybe that’s the pain shooting through his leg, up his spine.

He takes several minutes to regain his composure. It takes multiple tries to get his breathing under control with it wanting to come in too fast, too short bursts, not dissimilar to the way the pain thrums in his knee—or under? He can’t tell the difference, can’t focus well enough to assess the situation properly.

It’s instinct that makes him push up with his arms, in his best effort to get himself to his feet, but his leg screams with agony, and it’s all he can do to try to cushion the blow as he falls back to the roof in a helpless heap, tears building in the corners of his eyes. It hurts, it hurts in a way he hasn’t felt in awhile, and he has no idea how he’s supposed to stand like this, let alone catapult over rooftops. He’s alone, on patrol, with no one around to help him. The closest person to him is probably Steph, and she’s miles away, circling back on a tip-off they’d received not an hour ago.

He thinks of calling for help, knows he has little choice, but he hesitates when he reaches for his comm. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to explain this, how he can justify such a simple mistake having turned so catastrophic. He flops flat on his back, leg as still as he can hold it, but it doesn’t help. It doesn’t stop the throbbing that seems to beat in tandem with the pulse rushing in his ears.

Minutes pass with Tim laying there, prone, exposed. He’s an easy target for anyone lucky enough to stumble upon him, and, for some reason, he still hasn’t called in for assistance. Instead, he rolls over with a grunt of pain and props himself up on his hands and one knee. He tries to get his other knee under him, but bending it sends a burning, tearing feeling through him. It’s enough to pull a strangled cry from his throat, and he drops his head against his arms as tears finally fall. He can’t bring himself to move again, can’t roll over so his hands are free. Can’t do anything but exist in blistering agony. Breathing has become a chore, and his heart is beating too fast in his chest. It’s all he can do to hold his body in one place, to not move an inch.

He stays like that until his arms burn and his muscles begin to tremble with the effort to hold himself upright. He only barely manages to lower himself flat without jostling his leg too much, though the pressure of his knee pressing into the roof is enough to make him swear under his breath, a whispered sound not to spare the innocent, but because he can’t pull enough air into his lungs to make much more noise.

Then there’s a hand on his back, pressing flat against the small of it, and he startles so badly that he knocks his knee into the concrete underneath his body. It’s only the hand over his mouth that keeps him from screaming audibly. He considers biting into the meat of it. It’s all he can do to protect himself, but then there’s a quiet, familiar voice,

“It’s just me,” and he doesn’t need to know who me is to feel relief flooding through him. He turns his head enough to look at Jason, and he could cry—if he weren’t already—at the mere sight of the other man. He had no idea Jason was in the area. He certainly hadn’t said anything about it, but Tim can’t bring himself to care right now. It’s not important; the only thing that is is that Jason is there, with him.

Gently, Jason pulls Tim’s arm up until he can get it over his shoulders. It’s an awkward thing, with Jason crouched as low as he can, and Tim laid out on the ground, near flat. He does his best to push himself up, but it’s incredibly difficult to do without the use of one of his legs. Every movement hurts, no matter what way he turns or tries to compensate. Jason does his best to take the majority of Tim’s weight, but it’s an entire process to get them to that point.

“I have my bike, we just have to get to ground level,” Jason tells him, unprompted. He looks between Tim and the edge of the roof. The distance is nothing to them under any other circumstances, but it’s a hell of a way down when one of them is barely ambulatory. Tim just shakes his head when Jason gives him a considering look.

“I can’t, Jay,” he says, his voice weak. Jason just grunts at him and crouches down again, his weight falling out from under Tim so suddenly that he almost lands on his bad leg. Jason scoops him onto his back before he can fall, and then he’s throwing his arms around Jason’s neck to fasten himself like a koala to its tree.

“What’re the chances that door’s unlocked?” Jason asks, motioning vaguely with one hand to the door that leads to the roof, while the other stays tucked under Tim, supporting the bottom half of his weight.

Tim’s blurry vision drifts upward and over, catching sight of the all black access door. He can barely think, with the way his leg is pressed against Jason’s hip. It hurts—fuck, it hurts so much, but he can’t stand on his own. This is his best shot at getting out of here, but it wouldn’t be their luck for the door to be unlocked.

“Thought so,” Jason mutters. He stalks toward the door anyways, apparently determined to at least give it a try. The handle jiggles but doesn’t give. Tim sucks in a shaky breath as he tries to consider their options. It’s so damn hard to think like this, when his brain is an addled mess, more consumed with the pain than with the precarious situation that he’s found himself in.

Suddenly, Jason’s reaching inside his jacket, startling Tim and pulling out—is that a gun? What the hell—

Three shots ring out in the air. Tim yelps. First, because he’s alarmed, and second, because he jerks in a way that knocks his knee right against Jason. There isn’t much give there, and the tearing sensation is back with a vengeance, bouncing from one end and ripping through to the other. His arms loosen around Jason’s neck, allowing him to slide part way down Jason’s back before Jason grabs at him and pulls him back up by his arms.

“Hold tight,” Jason tells him, and Tim can do nothing but nod against the worn leather of Jason’s jacket. It’s cool against his skin, a welcomed distraction that doesn’t quite take him out of his own head, but there’s a moment where his entire existence isn’t pain. He chases that desperately, and then redoubles his efforts when they begin moving and every step is torture.

Jason hooks both of his arms under Tim’s thighs and walks on without hesitation. He doesn’t so much as give Tim a chance to catch his breath, and it’s all Tim can do to hold tight and wait for this hell to end.

There’s several flights of stairs to get through. Jason moves quickly, but time still passes in a vacuum where every landing feels the same, and they never get closer to the end. Tim can do nothing but breathe. In and out, in and out, in and—

“Almost there,” Jason says, and it’s so quiet and gentle that Tim can’t help latching onto the words, replaying them in his mind on a loop. Almost there, they’re almost there. They’re close to the bottom, and all that’s left is—

His heart drops into his stomach, and his stomach drops into his feet. The bike. Jason’s motorcycle. That’s Tim’s surest bet out of here, but it’ll be a bumpy ride on the ragged streets of Gotham. They’ve been eaten up by ice and time, spit back out in craggy potholes and jagged edges. A strangled sound escapes his throat. Jason rubs his thumbs into Tim’s thighs, and it momentarily breaks him out of his thoughts, which are mostly consumed by pain, pain, pain. A continuous mantra, constantly cycling, never ending.

They reach the ground floor without incident. No one ever comes to see what the bang, bang, bang of Jason’s gun was. Then again, who would? Tim thinks of the people that live here, of how they are either asleep or huddled up in their homes, convinced that they’re safer there than out here.

Jason’s bike is parked in the alley between the apartment complex and the next building over. It’s between multiple dumpsters, still in sight, but less of an attractive nuisance than it might be otherwise. Tim doesn’t know whether to be relieved at the sight of it, or if he should be arguing against it. They can call Bruce, have the Batmobile here in—not quick enough, Tim realizes. Because Bruce is probably busy, and this isn’t an emergency, despite what his brain is telling him. His leg isn’t going to get any worse (just like it’s not going to get any better). There’s no rush to retrieve him, which means Jason’s bike is the best thing he’s seen since the man himself appeared on the one rooftop in all of Gotham that Tim had been on when he—broke? Tore? Damaged his knee.

Tim’s chest is heaving by the time Jason straddles the bike, moving as if completely unhindered by Tim’s firm hold. Jason situates the both of them, ensuring that Tim is holding on tight enough that he won’t slide off, and that he, himself, can move relatively unrestrained.

It takes everything in Tim to bend his injured knee, so that his foot is resting on the bike rather than dangling off to the side. He grinds his teeth together, squeaks out the most embarrassing sound he’s made since Damian dumped ice in his bath that one time. He only barely manages to get his leg settled where it isn’t at risk of falling off, and he’s alarmed by the way he had to use his hand to do so. His leg won’t move otherwise, no matter how hard he tries to will it.

Jason pulls Tim’s arms forward and around his midsection, patting them once, then twice before Tim gets the hint and squeezes. They’re off a second later, with Jason driving at a surprisingly reasonable speed. It doesn’t stop Tim from feeling like he might fall off at any moment, and he hugs Jason that much tighter for it.

Despite Jason’s best attempts, the ride is hellish. Every bump sends shock waves through Tim’s leg, spreading down to his toes and ricocheting up through his spine. He’s relieved that the noise of the motorcycle drowns out the sounds he’s making. His face presses into Jason’s back hard enough for it to ache, and he’s sure it’s uncomfortable for Jason. It’s the only thing he can think to do to try to curb the pain; it doesn’t help much.

Rarely has Tim been so ecstatic to see the Cave as he is right now. It means this nightmare of a ride is about to come to an end. He hopes Alfred is there, waiting, somehow aware of what’s going on. Maybe Jason told him, comm’d it in when he found Tim. Tim wouldn’t know. He’s barely paid attention to anything but the litany of misery going on between his ears. It’s almost impossible to take his mind off of it.

Tim nearly slides off the moment they come to a stop. He’s only stopped by Jason roughly grappling with his arms, dragging him back inward and against his core. Tim bites back a cry, and neither of them move for several minutes as Tim tries to catch his breath. There are fresh tears tracking down his cheeks, but he barely notices their existence. He’s more focused on how he’s going to get off this bike without causing himself anymore torment. Jason can’t so easily swing his leg over it with Tim clinging to his back. It’s much easier to get on the bike that way than it is to get off, and Tim recognizes that, hates it.

There’s someone talking above his head. Two someones. He wonders when Alfred appeared, his usual greeting on his lips before the inevitable frown had set in, but Tim doesn’t get a chance to think about it too much before he’s being manhandled off the bike by four sets of hands. Two of which hold his leg perfectly still. He’s grateful for it, but the contact hurts. Like someone digging their fingers into a bone-deep bruise.

A third voice cuts in, but Tim doesn’t process her words either, only vaguely manages to recognize who she is. He thinks he should be more embarrassed by the pathetic display he’s putting on, eyes inevitably red and puffy with cheeks that glisten and noises tearing their way out of his throat and past his lips at the slightest movement. He’s better than this, stronger. He’s been through worse. Hell, he’s missing his spleen! He’s had two recent run-ins with knives that could have killed him, and he’s certain that he handled all of that better than he is this one little tear.

“Careful,” he hears Alfred chastise about the time that the pain kicks up several notches. His leg is stretched out, placed flat on a familiar table with the rest of him doing much the same. He can’t bring himself to sit up. It’s too much effort, too much air from already overworked lungs. He feels hands on him, and his suit being shed from his body. It takes effort, of which he puts in very little, and the movement makes his leg worse. He barely processes it as a limb anymore. It’s more of a throbbing, pulsing mass attached to his body. There’s a prick in his arm, and suddenly there’s nothing at all.

The next time Tim opens his eyes, he’s blinking them blearily at a too-bright light that stares down at him. He squints up at it for entirely too long before he thinks to look away. To try to determine where he is because he doesn’t actually remember, and that sends up all sorts of alarms in his head, except that his head is a foggy, cloudy mess of a thing. Barely coherent in any way that counts, and uncooperative with his best attempts to push past the haze. The rest of his body feels much the same.

“Good morning, princess,” someone says from beside him, and it takes Tim several tries to focus in on the shape that’s sitting on the chair by his bedside. It’s really only the white forelock that divides Jason from anyone else that comes to mind. The voice should be enough, but he feels a lot like he’s listening to things under water; distorted and far away.

“Where?” Tim tries to get the words out, but he really only manages the one. It’s fortunately the most important one, but it doesn’t frustrate him any less to know that his mouth won’t connect with his brain.

“In your room, at the Manor,” Jason answers easily. He’s dressed in casual clothes. A simple t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans. There’s nothing wrong with it at all, except for the way Tim’s head keeps telling him that there’s something off. He feels like he’s missing something important, but he can’t get his mouth to work or the words to fall into place in an order that is coherent.

Jason seems to sense Tim’s struggles. He leans forward on his elbows, a frown on his face, and he looks Tim up and down, like he’s looking for something in particular. His eyes stall somewhere near Tim’s feet, but Tim can’t make heads or tails as to why. “You took a fall,” Jason pauses, lips pursing together as he reconsiders his words, “We think.”

And oh, right. Right, Tim. Tim remembers pain. He remembers tears pricking in the corners of his eyes. He remembers not being able to move. It all comes back to him in uneven flashes of images and sounds and—the smell of leather in his nose as he presses his face as hard as he can into Jason’s back. It all swirls together in an incohesive jumble of time and movement.

“Tim,” Jason calls his name with an alarming amount of concern in his voice. He waves a hand in front of Tim’s face, no longer leaning on his elbows, and that same frown has deepend with his brows creasing together. There’s concern written across his features, which would be weird on him if Tim weren’t used to this from Jason. If he hadn’t seen Jason panicking over Tim’s wellbeing before, but this feels different. There’s no pain he can identify, no significant blood loss to make him feel woozy, no—anything, really. He’s simply existing, floating along in an—oh. He’s high.

“I’m high,” he says aloud like it isn’t already terribly obvious. The words come out crystal clear in his head, but they’re slurred together aloud. A total mess of the English language that may or may not be recognizable to Jason. There’s a snort from him that makes Tim lean toward may.

“Yup,” Jason pops the ‘p’ unnecessarily. His eyes haven’t once left Tim, but he looks calmer now. More relaxed. The frown is gone, replaced, instead, with a half-smirk. “You’re definitely wasted.”

Wasted, Tim repeats the word in his mind, and yeah, that sounds right. He feels wasted. He feels—bad, like there’s an undercurrent of something that he can’t quite perceive, but still exists under his nose. It’s his turn to frown as he looks at Jason, but it’s just as difficult as before to come up with the right words in the right combinations. His mind is slowly, slowly coming around. He can feel the gears turning, more a stutter of movement at the moment, but they’ll be spinning soon enough.

“We’re going to take you to get an MRI on your knee when you sober up a bit. Alfred thinks you tore some ligaments and maybe the meniscus or whatever,” Jason’s hand finds Tim’s on top of the blankets, and he gives a light squeeze. A gentle bit of reassurance that juxtaposes the almost dismissive tone in his voice. Tim squeezes back and smiles; he’s not sure what for, but he can’t help it.

“I’m wasting my breath on you, aren’t I?” Jason asks with a roll of his eyes, but Tim sees right through him to the fondness of a relieved partner. Even drugged to the gills, he can read Jason like a book.

There’s more words after that. Jason’s mouth is moving, lips forming syllables that Tim doesn’t process. He has that feeling that something is wrong cropping back up, taking root in his chest and spreading outward like a disease. His eyelids feel impossibly heavy, and he can’t keep them open to save his life. He tries, he really does, but it’s not long before the darkness crowds in on him. Jason’s words peter out into nothing just as Tim loses his battle to a drug-induced sleep.

Tim wakes up a second and third time, each going about as well as the last, though he’s steadily becoming more aware of his surroundings and, unfortunately, the pain in his leg. He follows the conversation with Jason better, understanding now what happened in the interim between his last patrol and his arrival to the Manor.

It’s on the fourth time that he awakens that they take him in for an MRI and x-rays. He’s mostly sobered up and insistent that he only be given ibuprofen from now on, but it doesn’t take the doctor long at all to order morphine when he sees the state of Tim’s knee.

“Frankly, I’m impressed that you’re sitting up,” the man says to Tim, who is sitting up in the hospital bed of his private room, looking increasingly distressed with every passing detail. Alfred had been right, of course. His ACL and meniscus were both torn in a single go, and there is even a chip off of his patella that is pressing directly into the damaged areas. Momentum had not been kind to him after the initial injury. The bad landing had caused the tearing, and the subsequent crashing into the roof had led to the fracture. All Tim can do now is listen as the doctor rattles off estimates. How long the surgery will take, how long he’ll be in a cast, how long until he can ‘play sports’ again. It’s all mind-numbing, miserable news, and all for what? Because he miscalculated one landing?

Jason pops into his room the moment the doctor leaves. He’s a welcome distraction to the inevitability that is surgery. Tim beckons him up on the hospital bed. He’s unconcerned with whoever might walk in next. He can’t bring himself to care when he’s in pain—the morphine hasn’t kicked in yet—and stressed. He presses into Jason’s side as well as he can when his mobility is so limited. Jason doesn’t hesitate to wrap an arm around him and let Tim pillow his head against his shoulder.

They talk for a while, about everything and nothing. Jason fills him in on his latest case. It’s the whole reason he had been lurking where he was at the time of Tim’s injury. Tim fills him in on what happened, and he’s relieved when all Jason has to say about it is, that sucks in a tone that’s oddly comforting.

Silence settles over them around the time that the morphine kicks in. It leaves Tim feeling spacey and distracted, like he can’t focus on a thing to save his life. The pain is still there, a niggling sensation that won’t quite go away. It makes him wonder what Alfred gave him before to make him not feel it at all, but he supposes there’s a good chance that sedatives had been involved. Actually, the more he thinks about it, the more certain he is that Alfred knocked him out when he got to the Cave. It certainly explains why he passed out so abruptly.

“You’re thinking too hard,” Jason says, “There’s steam coming out of your ears.”

Tim huffs, putting on an affronted expression as he responds, “At least one of us should use our brains.” It earns him a well-deserved noogie. It’s worth it when Jason takes his hand a minute later and finds something on the TV that is simultaneously mildly interesting and mundane. Tim leans his head against Jason’s shoulder. Jason wraps his arm around Tim’s waist. The prospect of surgery is troubling, but Jason is here, and Tim isn’t alone. If he’s down one knee, at least he has that.

Jason pushes an impulsive kiss to the side of his head. It brings a tired smile to Tim’s face. He closes his eyes for a doze, Jason’s arm tightening around him. At least he has this.

#jaytim #timjay #jason todd #tim drake #dc comics #blitzwrites #blitz

[blitzturtles]

Title: Unexpected (Ao3)

Rating: Teen and Up

Fandom: DC Comics

Pairing(s): JayTim

Summary: Jason knows, the moment he breaks into Tim’s apartment, that something is wrong. There’s something unsettling about the scene that’s laid out before him.

Notes: Been struggling with writer's block/burnout, so this is just a bit of whumpy nonsense to hopefully get me going.

-

Jason knows, the moment he breaks into Tim’s apartment, that something is wrong. There’s something unsettling about the scene that’s laid out before him. What, with the likely confidential documents strewn about carelessly (some are even on the floor), and the half-full mug of cold coffee being left next to them. The WE letterhead is visible from Jason’s position, and he knows how Tim is about leaving these things lying around.

He pulls one of his guns from its holster and advances carefully, taking further inventory of the mess spread throughout the apartment as he goes. A quick glimpse into the kitchen shows that it’s a disaster, with drawers seemingly ripped open and things thrown on the floor. He makes his way down the hall next, to where Tim’s bedroom is, and passes the bathroom on his way. It looks almost as bad as the kitchen.

His only solace is that there is no blood. The mirror is intact, and there’s no obvious signs of a struggle. Only the hallmarks of someone having ransacked the place.

The bedroom is the only place left to check, so Jason follows the hall there until he’s at the door. Carefully, he pushes the handle down and nudges the door open as quietly as he can. The room is dark, too dark for him to make out anything beyond the oddly shaped lump on the bed. He thinks it might be pillows stacked oddly at first, but then it moves. A slight shift, a small snuffle. Jason raises an eyebrow at the display.

“What the actual fuck, Timmy?”

Only there’s no response. The form stays completely still, and Jason wonders for a moment if it’s really Tim under the covers. He’s not one to leave his apartment in such disarray, after all, but this isn’t Goldilocks and the three Fucking Bears, which means it has to be Tim. Every logical part of Jason’s brain is telling him it is, but he’s never known Tim to be a deep sleeper. None of the Robins are, except maybe, on occasion, Damian.

He crosses the distance between the door and the bed in a few, long strides, and yanks the blankets off. It’s then that Tim startles, jerking violently awake and flailing for the nearest object that he can use as a weapon. Jason holds his gun on him for a moment, if only to make a point, “You’re dead.”

Tim looks at him through squinting eyes and groans. “Good, now let me go back to sleep.”

“Like hell.”

“Jason.”

“Timothy.”

“Please,” and it comes out so desperate and pathetic that Jason almost obeys. Almost.

“Wanna tell me what’s going on first?”

Tim shoots him what might be a glare, but he’s too busy digging his fingers into his hair, nails grabbing at his scalp. He drops his head down, and a small whine escapes him. A half-bitten sort of animalistic sound that puts Jason right back on edge, but he’s waiting for an explanation, and he’s not about to leave without one.

“Migraine.”

“Oh.”

And now everything makes sense. Jason can see the whole night playing out in his mind. Tim on the floor at his coffee table, sipping coffee and working on non-Bat related business for a change, when the mild headache he had been sporting all day had grown into something intolerable. He can see the way Tim must have stumbled to the kitchen, looking for medication that he’s probably long since misplaced and growing increasingly distressed the longer things went on. That’s when he would have moved on to the bathroom, where he must have found some success, considering his bedroom hasn't also been taken apart.

“Yeah, go, please?”

“Nope.”

“Jason.”

“Shut up,” Jason’s whispering now, in a soft enough voice that he hopes that it’s at least hurting Tim less than if he were talking at a normal volume, and he’s already stripping out of his leather jacket and, with it, his suit. Tim watches him with weary eyes that are still only partly open, but he seems to accept this new development, considering the way he ducks back under the blankets with only part of his hair sticking out.

Jason crawls onto the bed and pulls Tim against his chest, ignoring the half-bitten squawk he gets in return. Tim, despite his size, has never appreciated being manhandled. At least not by Jason, though it’s never stopped him from doing it in the past. It certainly won’t stop him now as he rearranges them until he has Tim’s back flush against him with the blankets now cocooning both of them.

Tim settles against him and goes so quiet and still for so long that Jason assumes he’s fallen back asleep. Probably drugged himself to the gills to get to this point, but then Tim’s talking and startling Jason, albeit, much less dramatically.

“Thank you.”

“Sure,” Jason says easily, “Just call me next time.”

#jaytim #timjay #jason todd #tim drake #dc comics #blitzwrites #blitz

[blitzturtles]

Title: Petty (Ao3)

Rating: Teen and Up

Fandom: DC Comics

Pairing(s): JayTim

Summary: The problem is that Tim hasn’t done anything to incur Jason’s ire in so long that he’s forgotten what it’s like when he’s well and truly upset about something, which is to say: he’s relentless.

-

When Jason is upset, he makes it known. Not always in the most traditional sense, but… well…

Tim finds himself staring up at the top of the cabinets, to where his newest favorite mug (thank you, Damian) is currently sitting precariously on the edge.

It’s not that climbing up there is a problem. He’s a Robin, after all. It won’t take him but a few seconds to retrieve his coffee cup, but it’s the principle of the matter.

And, because Tim is just as petty, he decides that the best way to address the situation is by ignoring it entirely. If Jason wants to talk about something, then he can do it like a grown adult.

The problem is that Tim hasn’t done anything to incur Jason’s ire in so long that he’s forgotten what it’s like when he’s well and truly upset about something, which is to say: he’s relentless.

Every single time Tim turns around, something of his has gone missing. An entire set of pens when he goes to the bathroom. His favorite stashed snacks when he wakes up one morning (alone, might he add). A single page from a very important stack of documents when he gets a call from Wayne Enterprises about said documents.

All of it is typically found up high. More often in places where it’s obvious that Jason barely had to stretch on his toes to reach, while Tim has to climb counters and use chairs to compensate.

It’s not until he returns home from patrol that things finally come to a head. His apartment looks--off, and it takes him a bit to realize that the lightweight chairs of his are gone, along with the coffee table. Anything and everything he could use for a makeshift stepping stool has disappeared, and all he can do is stand in the middle of his living room and stare up at the assortment of things staring back at him, hidden away on a high, probably flimsy shelf.

“Jason!” He yells, uncaring about the neighbors, because he’s had enough of these games. He hasn’t so much as retaliated once, yet things have only escalated. Whatever had triggered this is apparently still a problem.

And, to his surprise, Jason actually appears around the corner to look at him with a poorly hidden half-smirk. “What?”

“What do you mean what?” Tim waves his hand dramatically in the direction of the shelf. “How the hell am I supposed to get those down?”

“Dunno. Guess you’ll figure it out,” and the smirk is wider now, driving Tim to his breaking point. He stomps up to Jason with a finger jabbing at his chest.

“What the hell is your problem?”

“Me? I don’t seem to have the problem here.”

Tim pauses a moment, takes a deep breath. “Fine. What did I do that was so horrible that you’ve been tormenting me for--five days?”

“Tormenting is a strong word, Tim Tam.”

“Jason--”

“And to be honest…” Jason’s grin shifts to something sheepish, and Tim’s eyes narrow.

“Jason.”

“I mean--”

“Jason, I swear--”

“Hold on, I’m sure it was something.”

“I’m going to kill you,” Tim growls and lunges. He catches Jason off guard, and they both topple to the floor. Tim scrambles to recover control when they both land in a pile of sprawled limbs, but Jason flips him over with relative ease, pinning his hands above his head.

“Oh, I remember now!” Jason announces, eyes bright and smile cheery. He isn’t even out of breath, despite the effort Tim is putting in to try to kick him. He holds both of Tim’s hands in one of his own like it’s nothing.

Silence falls over them, with Jason looking down at him with that stupid look on his face, and Tim inevitably giving up on doing any physical damage.

“Well?” Tim asks with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh, I’m not telling you.”

“You don’t actually remember,” Tim says, a tinge of disbelief seeping into his tone.

“Do to,” Jason insists, but his expression wavers. He’s not looking at Tim so much as past him, directly through him.

Tim snorts a disbelieving laugh. Jason’s more or less incapable of lying to him, and his bad attempts only confirm what Tim has already deduced: Jason really doesn’t remember whatever started this all, which shouldn’t be funny, but it kind of is, and he’s laughing again before he can stop himself.

Jason looks at him, perplexed at first, but then he’s laughing, too.

“You’re--such an asshole,” Tim manages to get out between gasps for air, and he would smack Jason in the chest or on the arm if he were able to get free.

“Tell me something we don’t both already know.”

“I hate you so much.”

“Now that’s news, and definitely not what you were saying--”

“Jason!”

Jason dissolves into giggles. Honest to god giggles, and it’s such an enjoyable sound that Tim (almost) forgets about his irritation entirely.

#jaytim #timjay #jason todd #tim drake #batfam #dc comics #blitzwrites #blitz

[blitzturtles]

Title: Not A Concussion (Ao3)

Rating: Teen and Up

Fandom: DC Comics

Pairing(s): JayTim

Summary: “You have a concussion.”

“No I don’t.”

Notes: Technically this is supposed to be for Day 1 of Febuwhump, but I'm too impatient to wait a couple of days to post...

-

“You have a concussion.”

“No I don’t.”

Tim raises an eyebrow, eyes narrowing, but Jason is unwavering in the way that he stares back. Except for the part where he’s actually wavering, body swaying slightly as the world undoubtedly spins around him. His gaze is unfocused at best, though it doesn’t stop him from glaring up at Tim from his position on the couch.

“You can’t even stand up. You can barely sit!” Tim doesn’t know why he bothers arguing. He could simply walk away, leave Jason to his own devices, and wait until he’s called on for assistance. It would be the easy thing to do. Better than arguing pointlessly with a man that’s nearly cross-eyed from the effort it takes to keep his focus forward.

The problem is that Tim cares too much, worries even more. He’s already imagined half a dozen scenarios that could play out should he leave Jason alone, and they all result in further injury. Like Jason’s foot catching on the leg of the coffee table, and him taking a tumble right into the metallic edges of one of its corners. Or Jason passing out in the hallway and cracking his head on the hardwood floor. Or Jason falling asleep on the couch instead of doing literally anything about his injury and asphyxiating on his own vomit. Or—

Tim pinches the bridge of his nose and tries to shake the thoughts loose from his head. He tries harder to avoid thinking of how Jason had probably done half those things before. Before they became friendly. Before Tim had fallen head-over-heels with the most infuriating man in Gotham, Bruce notwithstanding. Before their relationship had actually developed into something much deeper than Tim could have ever imagined.

“Jason—”

“Tim-Tam.”

And, just like that, Tim’s back to contemplating the merits of leaving Jason on the couch, probabilities be damned.

Or. Or he could call Dick. It would be cruel, but effective. If there’s anyone that can harass and annoy Jason into cooperation, it’s Dick. The man just doesn’t give up, and even Jason’s stubborn tendencies can’t outlast Dick when Jason’s like this, unable to escape.

Instead, Tim sighs and shoves at Jason’s shoulder. “At least lay down. Please.” It’s rare for him to beg, and it seems to strike a chord in Jason.

“Fine, but only for a minute,” Jason says, and it speaks to how he must be feeling, both because he’s giving in far too easily, and because he looks relieved. The expression on his face eases, and the stiff line of his shoulders relax.

Lying down is something of a struggle for a man that supposedly doesn’t have a concussion. Jason misses the arm of the couch and ends up lying flat on the cushion instead, and he doesn’t look like he can be bothered to try to move more than he already has. Tim has enough compassion in him still to offer Jason a pillow.

“I’ll be right back, don’t go to sleep.”

Jason rolls his eyes. A regrettable decision on his part, considering the way he lurches forward slightly.

Tim’s convinced, for a moment, that he’s going to be covered in vomit, but Jason waves him off after a minute or two and settles his head on the pillow tucked beneath him. Tim makes a note to grab a trash bag on his rounds around the safehouse.

One first aid kit, an ice pack, a trash bag, a flashlight, and a blanket later, Tim returns, mouth open, mid-sentence when he realizes that Jason’s eyes are closed. “Hey. What part of ‘no sleeping’—”

“‘m not,” Jason argues, his words sluggish and strung together, “Just got my eyes closed.”

“You’re slurring,” Tim says with a frown. He should call Alfred.

Jason ignores Tim and groans as he forces himself into a sitting position, one hand firmly pressed into the cushion with his fingernails digging into it, either for better grip or out of pain. He slumps forward with another groan. “Can we make this quick?”

“Yeah, I—” Tim looks down at the supplies he’s gathered. He sets the majority of it on the coffee table before rearranging everything in the order that he’ll need them. He presses the trash bag into Jason’s hands and notes the way they shake under his fingers. They grasp weakly at the bag anyways, and Jason doesn’t bother asking what it’s for. Next comes the flashlight. It’s the closest that Tim has to one of those penlights that Alfred has in the Cave.

“You’re not going to like this,” is all the warning Tim gives before he clicks the flashlight on and shines it in Jason’s left eye. He jerks back violently, hands almost letting go of the bag. There’s a quiet string of curses that escape past his lips, and he shoots Tim the worst glare he can manage when one eye is squinted shut.

“Sorry, one more?”

“Sure, why not.”

Tim brings the flashlight up again, this time shining it in Jason’s right eye. Both pupils respond well enough, though the sensitivity is another on a growing list of symptoms Jason’s shown so far.

“I need to clean up the wound,” Tim says after setting the flashlight down and picking up the first aid kit. He sets it to the side of Jason’s thigh before popping it open. It’s stocked well enough. There’s gauze and alcohol and a suture kit, the latter of which he’s hoping he won’t need. Jason hasn’t been actively bleeding for awhile; a good sign, considering the way head wounds tend to be.

“This might hurt.”

“What, like the light didn’t?”

Tim hums but otherwise doesn’t respond. There’s no point rising to the bait right now. So he focuses on parting Jasons’ hair until he finds the source of the crusted blood clinging to the strands. The external injury is largely superficial. A small cut that could use a bit of disinfectant and not much more. It’s not surprising, considering most of the damage had been taken when Jason’s head bounced off a wall, sans helmet, leaving the majority of the wound buried under Jason’s thick skull.

It does little to settle Tim’s nerves, but he makes quick work of cleaning the cut and attempts to get some of the blood out of Jason’s hair before Jason gets fussy and boots him off.

“Alright, alright,” Tim says with his hands held up in surrender, bloodied gauze clenched in his fist. “Here,” he holds out the ice pack as a sort of peace offering, one Jason takes wordlessly and presses to his scalp. It unsettles Tim, the way Jason hasn’t spoken much.

“Thanks,” Jason says quietly once he’s settled back on his side, ice pack held close. He doesn’t move once he’s there, and his eyes are clenched shut.

“Do you want something for the pain?” Surely there’s something in the kit for that, but Jason waves him off.

“‘m fine,” he says for not the first time, and Tim doesn’t believe it now anymore than he did earlier, but he’s pushed Jason enough. So, instead of arguing, he reaches behind himself to grab the blanket, spreads it out across Jason’s curled up form, and moves to go call Alfred, if only for advice. He’s dealt with plenty of his own concussions in the past, but this is different. This matters.

The conversation is short and simple. Alfred lays out the rules and the symptoms to watch for, even offers to come by, but Tim declines, and Alfred accepts that as if he had expected it.

By the time Tim gets back to the living room, Jason is dozing. Tim sets a timer on his phone and grabs for the remote. He takes up the spot on the floor between the coffee table and the couch, nearest Jason’s head, and settles in for the next two hours.

#jaytim #timjay #jason todd #tim drake #dc comics #blitzwrites #blitz

[blitzturtles]

Title: Bad Night (Ao3)

Rating: Teen and Up

Fandom: Batman, DC Comics

Pairing(s): JayDick

Summary: “What do you want, Dickiebird?” Jason asks with irritation evident in his tone. He doesn’t so much as look up to meet Dick’s gaze, though the choice in nickname at least means that Jason isn’t too upset with him. It doesn’t stop Dick from hesitating in the doorway, hovering over the threshold like something that has to be invited in, and it’s only after a solid minute of silence that Jason finally looks up, exasperated and annoyed. “Dick.”

Notes: Having a bit of writer's block while working on another piece, so I thought I would have some fun with tumblr prompts.

"I just wanted to make sure you're okay."

TWs: child trafficking, death of a child character, mild violence, death of unnamed villains. It's all implied/mentioned but there.

-

“What do you want, Dickiebird?” Jason asks with irritation evident in his tone. He doesn’t so much as look up to meet Dick’s gaze, though the choice in nickname at least means that Jason isn’t too upset with him. It doesn’t stop Dick from hesitating in the doorway, hovering over the threshold like something that has to be invited in, and it’s only after a solid minute of silence that Jason finally looks up, exasperated and annoyed. “Dick.”

“What?” Dick says on reflex, as if he weren’t the one to start all this, to come looking for Jason just to bother him, but he can’t help being frozen in place by Jason’s glare. It’s not the heat behind it, because there’s not any, it’s the redness to Jason’s eyes. The swelling that speaks to the sort of mood Jason’s really in, and it’s not good.

“Are you just going to haunt me from across the room, or what?” It’s a little sharper, but no more painful to Dick than any of Jason’s other quips on any other day, which is to say, it’s not at all.

“No,” Dick starts. He finally steps into the room and closes the door behind him as gently as he can, like he might spook Jason if he makes a sound. It earns him an eye roll in response. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“Peachy,” is the first word that comes out of Jason’s mouth, and it’s said with a surprising amount of venom. Jason sighs and scrubs a hand over his face. He takes a deep breath before letting it out and trying again, “I’m fine.”

“I don’t think you are.”

“Yeah, well, it’s been a really, really shitty night.”

Dick nods his understanding, “I know.” He had been there, he gets it to some degree, but this hadn’t been his case, and he hadn’t spent months working on it, night and day only for it to all fall through the cracks at the last minute. For one of the kids involved to wind up—he tries not to think about it. Compartmentalization works best for situations like these, and he needs that right now. He can’t be the one breaking down.

“I’m not—,” and Jason cuts himself off before he can finish, but Dick knows what he means to say, a child. Of course he’s not, but children aren’t the only ones allowed to cry shamelessly. He’s not about to let Jason think otherwise.

“No, but you are hurting,” Dick says, because someone should acknowledge it, even if Jason won’t.

“It doesn’t matter,” Jason’s feelings never matter according to Jason. Dick thinks—knows—he’s wrong.

“It does,” Dick argues. He’s not surprised by the glare he receives in turn. He shrugs. Jason will have to try a lot harder than that to scare him off. In fact, he just moves closer, closing the distance between them and coming to a stop only when he’s mere inches away from Jason.

Jason looks up from where he’s sitting, “Crying isn’t going to help anyone.”

“It might help you,” Dick says. He hooks his fingers behind Jason’s head, brings it forward until Jason’s forehead is resting against Dick’s stomach.

Jason huffs a laugh, or maybe it’s a sob. It’s hard to tell, but his hands fist in Dick’s nightshirt all the same, clenching into the fabric so tightly that it pulls down and on Dick’s shoulders. Dick hums quietly. A soft, near tuneless thing that’s from a time he’s more or less forgotten, and he holds Jason against him until he feels a wetness pressing against his stomach. It doesn’t surprise him to see Jason crying, and he can see it, mostly in the way Jason’s shoulders shake.

The thing is, Dick had known this was coming, because he had watched Jason rip through all the other stages of grief in an alarmingly short period of time, the most prominent of which had been the anger. There are a few extra traffickers out there with a spray of bullets in them than there might have been otherwise. Jason had hunted them down like an animal, wiping them out until there was nothing left. Nothing mattered anymore. The kids that made it out were safe. The one that hadn’t…

Dick locks the thought away in a nice, neat little box. He can work it out later, preferably alone, because he’s nothing if not hypocritical.

“Jay,” Dick starts after what feels like several minutes. “You did everything right.”

“She’s dead, Dick. I can’t undo that.”

“No, you can’t,” Dick can’t deny that part, “But the rest of those kids get to go home now, because of you.”

Jason snorts a humorless laugh, “Yeah, and they’ll be fucked up,” just like me. Jason doesn’t say it, but Dick’s gotten good at reading the parts of Jason’s words that never make it to the surface.

“Well, hopefully they get some therapy,” which would be more than Jason ever got.

Jason laughs, and though Dick hadn’t meant for the words to be funny, he laughs too.

They lapse into silence once more. Dick wonders, briefly, if he should interrupt it, but Jason is still against him. Calmer now than he has been since the night started, and it’s not until Jason whispers, “Thank you,” that Dick breaks his own silence.

“Always, Jay.”

#jaydick #dickjay #jason todd #dick grayson #dc comics #blitzwrites #blitz

[blitzturtles]

Title: Spiral (Ao3)

Rating: Teen and Up

Fandom: DC Comics

Pairing(s): JayTim

Summary: “Jay,” Tim repeats, softer now, in that voice he knows gets Jason’s attention.

Notes: This is probably a bit earlier on in their relationship than I usually write but still established. Also a fill for Day 17 of FebuWhump, "Self-Inflicted Wound". This is not about intentional self harm, but there is still a self-inflicted injury.

-

“You wanna tell me what happened?” Tim asks as he circles Jason, who’s sitting on the toilet. Tim surveys the damage as he goes, taking in cuts and bruises and a dislocated shoulder and—

“What the hell, Jay?” He reaches, on instinct, for Jason’s wrists, but Jason flinches back, pulls his hands closer to himself. Blood smears across his chest, and he winces from the contact of raw flesh against bruised skin.

Tim doesn’t know how he missed it before, can’t understand how he wouldn’t have seen the damage to Jason’s wrists. Both look as if they’ve been flayed open, and there’s a long laceration that runs up one arm at an odd angle.

“Jay,” Tim repeats, softer now, in that voice he knows gets Jason’s attention. Tim crouches in front of him, holds both of his hands out without reaching out, and it kills him that Jason looks like he’s ready to run. Like fight or flight kicked in, and he’s chosen the latter, but there’s nowhere for him to go.

“It’s nothing,” Jason says, but his voice is far from convincing. He only gives up his wrists when it becomes obvious that it’s his only way out of this particular situation. “Just a little rope and a bad angle, ‘s all.”

“You cut yourself free,” Tim says with realization as he finally takes Jason’s hands in his own and takes in the damage. They must have used ropes, tied too tight for Jason to squeeze himself free, though it looks as if he tried. He wonders how Jason managed to get his hands on a knife like this, and he’s not surprised that it must have slipped, cutting into Jason before he was able to ultimately free himself.

Anger burns through Tim, starting in the center of his chest and spreading outward until it’s nearly overwhelming, but then he looks at Jason again, sees the anxiety gnawing away, and Tim pushes it all down, stomps every last ember of it out. None of it matters right now. There’s nothing he can do—nothing he should do until he gets Jason taken care of. Then maybe…

“Something like that,” Jason says after what feels like forever, and it’s so far removed from the Jason he knows, the Jason he loves, that it kills Tim a little to hear. But he’s always known this part of Jason exists. He’s seen it before; he’ll see it again. It doesn’t make it any easier to bear, and it makes his chest ache to think of how much harder it is for Jason, to go through this in the headspace that he’s in. It makes Tim wonder how long Jason had been bound before cutting himself loose. He wonders why no one noticed, but he knows that it’s because Jason has been insistent about working on his own on his current case, knows that there’s no way for anyone to have known, himself included.

“Let me clean these up,” Tim starts, “And then we can watch a movie or something, okay?” Something light-hearted and devoid of violence. He thinks Jason’s had enough of it for the day (and for a lifetime, but Jason won’t retire any sooner than Tim will.)

Jason nods, “Whatever makes you happy, pretty boy.”

And there’s a little bit of Jason there, enough that Tim doesn’t even feel the usual itch of irritation at the god-awful pet name. He rolls his eyes anyways, because Jason expects him too, and Jason hates being treated as though he’s fragile, breakable. “Just stay put,” Tim says as he lets go of Jason’s hands to retrieve the first aid kit.

Cleaning up the mess is surprisingly easy. Jason’s pliant like this—too pliant. He gives this way or that with a simple nudge, and he barely flinches when Tim sets his shoulder back in its socket. Jason’s sinking, and he’s sinking fast. Tim’s doing his best to finish up, so he can try to catch him before it’s too late, before Jason’s stuck in his own head, replaying memories of a time best forgotten.

“There,” Tim says as he finishes with the last bandage. He looks up from where he’s crouched on the floor, in front of Jason, and he tries to catch his eyes. “Jay,” he calls when he’s unsuccessful, and he’s relieved when Jason looks up, mildly startled, if a bit vacant. “I’m done. We can go to the couch or to bed?”

Jason shrugs at him with his good shoulder.

Right. Even simple decisions get complicated in times like these. Tim gets that, even if he hasn’t quite racked up the trauma that Jason has under his belt, “Let’s go with bed,” at least then they wouldn’t have to worry about moving. He’s not sure Jason would budge anyways.

Slowly, they make their way to the bedroom. It takes Jason a minute to get up and balanced on his feet before either of them can—or will—move. Tim steps out into the hall first, casually glancing left and then right to be sure the space is clear of any danger. He doubts Jason had been followed, but it’s better safe than sorry. He won’t risk any more damage befalling his partner when a little bit of vigilance—and a touch of paranoia—will go a long way to avoiding that.

Tim leads them to the bedroom after that. He looks over his shoulder every so often, half-expecting Jason to glare back at him, but he just looks lost in his own world, zoned out completely, except that he manages to follow behind Tim without running into anything. That’s good. Tim’s seen where Jason’s head can go, has seen him borderline catatonic, frozen and expressionless for what felt like hours at the time. Tim knows just how steep this slope is, and he’s determined to put the brakes on before Jason steamrolls his way to the bottom.

Jason stops short of their shared bed, his hands automatically going to the waistband of his pants, but then he freezes, motionless save for his uneven breaths.

“I’ll get you some pajamas, Jay,” Tim turns to grab a pair of bottoms from the dresser, and it’s then that he actually hears Jason begin to move again, while he’s free from anyone’s gaze. Tim takes his time going through the drawer, as if he doesn’t already know the exact pair to grab. Jason’s favorite pair, when he actually bothers with things like pajama bottoms. It’s a rare sort of thing, usually saved for when Jason’s lazying around the apartment rather than for when he’s sleeping.

Tim passes them along, and goes back to rummaging to create the illusion of privacy more than anything. He’s already wearing a pair of loose sweats and a t-shirt—one of Jason’s at that—he’s more than comfortable as he is, but he changes into a pair of boxers simply for an excuse to keep his back turned.

By the time he turns back around, Jason is climbing into bed. He looks a little more comfortable now than before, though it’s easy to tell that his body aches in more ways than one. Tim thinks about offering him painkillers, but he knows that Jason will likely turn him away. The pain is a double edged sword, both grounding and upsetting. It’s a reminder, that he’s alive, that he survived… that he fucked up enough to get caught, that he made mistakes that left him vulnerable, at risk of far worse things than a few cuts and bruises and a dislocated shoulder. It makes Tim queasy to think about, and he wants to ask—needs to know—what happened. His needs aren’t important right now, so he swallows the question like he swallows the anxiety pulsing away in his ribcage.

Instead, he retrieves his computer and the external harddrive that he keeps an unholy amount of media on. The ‘fun stuff’, as Jason has taken to calling it. Movies and music and television shows that Tim will probably never find the time for, but it’s good to have, for nights like these.

He picks a movie from a collection of Disney films that he has, some for nostalgia, others by Dick’s suggestion, and a few he specifically picked for movie nights with Cass and Steph, then he crawls into bed with Jason and sets the laptop between them, fixes the screen so that both of them can see, and hunkers down for the foreseeable future.

The thing about a spiraling Jason is that anything can be a catalyst, and Tim isn’t always sure where Jason is. Sometimes the quiet is indicative of a horrific headspace, the likes of which make up Tim’s worst nightmares, and sometimes it’s Jason being withdrawn without being lost in his own head. Sometimes he’s simply out of words, and sometimes he can’t form them at all. Sometimes Jason wants contact, and either can’t ask or won’t, and sometimes he reacts to touch like he’s being burned. Tim’s still learning all the nuances, the little tells that point him in the right direction.

He risks taking Jason’s hand in his own, careful of the bandages there, and runs his thumb along Jason’s. There’s no immediate jerking motion, no attempt to wiggle free, and Tim takes that as a good sign, especially considering Jason had been bound by his hands.

“‘m not gonna break,” Jason says, more croaks the words, and it’s all the less convincing because of it. Tim hums anyways, takes the response at face value when he answers with,

“I don’t expect you to.”

Jason huffs, either out of irritation or amusement. It’s hard to tell when his gaze is currently focused anywhere but Tim. “It was just…” And he trails off, gnawing on the inside of his lip as he does. A frustrated sound builds up in the back of his throat.

“A little bit of torture?”

“Yeah, exactly,” Jason says all too quickly, and he’s definitely irritated now. Tim’s just relieved he’s emoting again, letting things out rather than holding them all in, reacting to what’s being said and speaking what’s in his mind, if in a limited way.

“Jace,” Tim starts with a bitten back sigh, “Torture is torture.”

Jason doesn’t respond, doesn’t look at him either. He simply stares off in the direction of the bedroom door, tense as he can be, like he expects someone to come through the door at any moment, and he probably does after the ordeal he’s been through. Tim can imagine that he had been held captive somewhere, locked away in a room, only to be hurt whenever someone came through the doorway.

“Jay?”

“You—” but Jason bites off whatever he was going to say and shakes his head.

“I know,” he doesn’t. He’s completely out of his depth here, still learning, still uncertain. He feels like he’s making the wrong choices, stepping in the wrong direction. The movie plays on in the background, but that’s all it is: noise. He imagines that’s what’s going on in Jason’s head, just a cacophony of unending sounds. At least, that’s what it’s like in Tim’s head when he’s going through something similar.

“It should be easier,” Jason says, and the words startle Tim. Of all the things he expected to come out of Jason’s mouth, that hadn’t been one of them. “How many times?” The question is vague, but Tim understands now. How many times has Jason done this? Gone through this? More times than Jason can count on two hands, and he still has all ten fingers, so why isn’t this any easier?

“I don’t think it’s ever going to be easier,” Tim says in a voice that’s all too solemn, because he knows that’s not the answer Jason wants, not the answer that he’s looking for. Because reality hurts more than the pain in Jason’s body. There’s no painkillers to soften that particular ache, that unending hopelessness that goes along with the truth of the lives that they live, that Jason has lived. It will never be easier.

“Fuck,” is all Jason says, and it’s as succinct as it gets.

Tim closes the laptop and moves it out of the way, presses himself closer to Jason and then closer still when Jason responds by curling around him. One hand rests flat against Jason’s chest, right over his heart, and he lets out a quiet sigh before he speaks again, “I wish I could say that it would, or that it matters that this time wasn’t as bad as last time or the one before that or—” the first time, “But it doesn’t, Jason. It’s all bad.” He pauses a moment to gather his thoughts before he adds, “And it’s alright to be upset.”

“I guess,” Jason mutters, almost petulant. He rearranges them so Tim’s wrapped up in his arms, held against his chest and stuck between his legs, and Tim lets him do it without any fuss over being manhandled. He’s not sure why Jason feels the need to move them, but he’s content as long as Jason is happier for it.

It’s quiet for a bit after that. Tim presses his arms over Jason’s, though he keeps his touch light so as to avoid aggravating Jason’s injured wrists, and he curls his fingers over top Jason’s. His head cranes back, leaning against Jason’s neck, and Jason rests his chin on top of Tim’s head.

Tim gets lost in his own thoughts all too easily, rethinking over everything that’s happened since Jason got home—and the fact that he considers this Jason’s home now. He commits details to memory, so that he can do better next time. He should have recognized the signs earlier than he had, should have intercepted the spiral before it really had a chance to take hold, but that’s part of all this, the two of them, together.

“Still sucks,” Jason says, very nearly startling Tim out of his thoughts.

Tim lets out a quiet laugh, “Yeah, it does.”

Jason huffs at him, goes quiet for a moment, then says, “Put the movie back on.”

“I can’t,” Tim taps one of Jason’s arms.

Jason huffs louder before letting Tim go. He instantly rewraps his arms around Tim the moment he returns with the laptop. Tim hits the play button, and the two settle down, comfortable in each other’s hold.

#jaytim #timjay #jason todd #tim drake #dc comics #blitzwrites #blitz

[blitzturtles]

Title: Wrist (Ao3)

Rating: General Audiences

Fandom: Miraculous Ladybug

Pairing(s): Lukanette

Summary: “There,” Luka says when he’s finished wrapping Marinette’s wrist. He looks up at her from where he’s crouched on the ground, “Does that hurt?”

Notes: The wife wanted some Lukanette, so here we are. Also fills the prompt "Does that hurt?" from Febuwhump Day 16.

-

“There,” Luka says when he’s finished wrapping Marinette’s wrist. He looks up at her from where he’s crouched on the ground, “Does that hurt?”

“Yes—no—I mean,” Marinette sputters before she motions vaguely—uselessly—with her uninjured wrist. “It feels better,” and it does, but it still hurts underneath the compression the bandages offer, a steady throb that radiates from the inside of her wrist and spreads outward, then up and down, from her elbow to her fingers. It’s not as bad as when she first injured it, but it’s certainly grating.

“Good,” Luka smiles warmly, “Hopefully the pain killers will kick in soon. We can try putting ice on it, too. Might help reduce the swelling.”

Marinette nods as she half-listens to Luka. The other half of her is caught up in her own head, thinking about her wrist and how she managed to injure it. She berates herself mentally for being so stupid. All it takes is one little fall, and she’s ruined everything. The day, their date, probably the next week or so, she doesn’t even know how she’s supposed to be Ladybug like this.

“Marinette?”

“Huh?”

“You weren’t listening,” Luka notes, but the smile hasn’t dropped from his face.

“I’m sorry, I’m just—” Again with the vague, nonsensical hand motions.

“Overthinking?”

“Yeah,” Marinette puffs out an exasperated sigh and looks at Luka with a frown. “How am I supposed to do anything like this?”

“I’m sure Alya will help you take notes. Drawing might be a little harder, but…” He doesn’t have a solution for that one, so he lets his words trail off with his brows knitting together, obviously trying to come up with a better answer.

“What about…” Ladybug.

“Just be honest with everyone,” Luka says like it’s truly that easy. His eyes crinkle when he smiles, and, for a moment, Marinette forgets about her suffering. It’s so easy to think that everything will be okay with Luka there to cheer her on.

“Okay,” she says after a long moment. “Okay,” she says again, as if to solidify the resolution in her head.

“We’ve got your back. Trust us?”

“What?” Marinette startles at the question, as if unable to believe that it even had to be asked. “Of course I do!”

“Alright then,” Luka moves to stand and reaches his hand out to take her’s. She takes it without hesitation, and he pulls her up and forward until he can lean down to press his forehead against her’s. “Everything’s going to be fine,” he says, and for all her worrying and overthinking, she believes him.

#lukanette #luka couffaine #marinette dupain cheng #miraculous ladybug #blitzwrites #blitz

[blitzturtles]

Title: Dirty Tricks (Ao3)

Rating: Teen and Up

Fandom: Batman, DC Comics

Pairing(s): JayTim

Summary: “Just let me see it,” Jason says for the umpteenth time as he tries to pull Tim’s hands away from his stomach. He can already see red staining the fabric of Tim’s night shirt, and that tells him everything he needs to know.

Notes: This is how my other fic was supposed to go... before it got angsty. This one is much more light-hearted, but it does briefly reference the events in the other fic. You don't have to actually read it to read this one, though.

-

“Just let me see it,” Jason says for the umpteenth time as he tries to pull Tim’s hands away from his stomach. He can already see red staining the fabric of Tim’s night shirt, and that tells him everything he needs to know about what Tim won’t show him.

“No.”

“C’mon, princess, how do I know you’re not hiding something horrific under there, huh?” Jason says it with a roll of his eyes that doesn’t suit the anxiety he’s feeling under his skin. It hasn’t been that long since the last time Tim managed to take a knife to the abdomen, and the blood isn’t doing either of them any favors. In fact, the only thing that does make Jason feel better is the obnoxious persistence on Tim’s part. He’s not dying if he’s capable of being this stubborn.

“I’m not, now quit—” And before Tim can finish the words, Jason lunges up from the crouch he’s in to kiss Tim square on the lips. He nearly knocks the smaller man back into the couch cushions, either from the force of his momentum or the surprise, whichever it is doesn’t really matter, because the only thing that does is the fact that Tim’s hands are out of the way. Both too busy shoving at Jason to hold over his stomach.

“Gotcha,” Jason says against Tim’s lips, and he’s grinning from ear to ear for all of a second before reality sweeps back in, and he’s looking down at the unhindered bleeding. The red stain isn’t growing at an alarming rate, but it’s presence alone is alarming. He tugs at Tim’s shirt while smaller hands fight him.

Underneath he finds a small wound, about an inch across, with two steri-strips keeping it closed shut. Well, one steri-strip. The other is loosely hanging from the top, which at least explains the active bleeding. It’s impressive, to say the least, given how strong the damned things are.

“Did you even try?” Jason asks with a frown and a pointed look at Tim.

“Obviously!”

“Obviously not,” Jason grouches, but he lets go of Tim’s shirt to go find the first aid kit. That shouldn’t be hard, given that it’s probably still spread out all over Tim’s bathroom floor. “How deep is that thing anyways?” The words are tossed over his shoulder as he walks, not bothering to stop and listen for the answer.

By the time Jason gets back from collecting the first aid kit back into something vaguely presentable, Tim’s resigned himself to his fate. His shirt is gone, tossed somewhere in the direction of the kitchen, and he sits with a frown fixated on his face as he pokes around the wound.

“It’s not that bad,” he insists, because he can’t quite help himself but to be stubborn. Jason would be a hypocrite to call him on it. He does it anyways,

“You’re bleeding all over the place,” which was a bit of an overstatement, but there was just enough blood to be this side of concerning. Half an inch deep his ass. “And it could have been worse.” His eyes catch sight of the scar left on Tim’s side. It’s still in the red and angry stages of healing, new enough to be fresh on Jason’s mind, and he doesn’t need a reminder of what it had been like to have gotten to Tim first, to have found him more than halfway dead and sprawled out next to a dumpster like yesterday’s garbage.

“I know,” Tim says, clearly cowed. He leans back against the couch to give Jason more surface area to work with.

Jason settles between Tim’s knees while propped up on his own. He sets to work cleaning up the new blood, using a dampened washcloth he’d grabbed along with the kit to get the worst of the mess up. Once he gets an eyeful of the wound, he feels his shoulders sag slightly. He hadn’t even realized how tense he had gotten until the moment he wasn’t anymore. Somehow he had been expecting something so much worse, despite Tim’s insistence.

“I’m okay,” Tim whispers, quiet enough to not startle Jason out of his thoughts. It’s so soft and earnest that Jason can’t help but smile back at him.

“I know,” and he does—now—but it’s nice hearing it from Tim. Tim’s voice is strong, despite its volume, and it only takes a quick glance to see that there’s plenty of color to his cheeks. He’ll be fine. He’s nowhere close to death, and still Jason can’t help the anxiety, because it could have been worse. It could have been just like last time, and Jason hadn’t been on patrol last night.

“Jay.”

“I know,” Jason repeats, and he offers Tim a pathetic smile of his own reassurance. It’s anything but; thankfully, Tim says nothing, and Jason gets on with disinfecting the wound, probably for the second time. Better safe than sorry and all that when reapplying steri-strips.

He redoes both strips, so that they’re nice and neat. The wound will heal well, assuming Tim doesn’t somehow unglue the pieces again, but Jason made sure to apply them properly, and he knows from personal experience how well they can hold up when done correctly.

“Thank you,” Tim says after a moment of inspecting Jason’s work.

“Sure,” Jason grumbles, sounding as put upon as possible, but Tim only rolls his eyes in response.

“C’mere.”

“Why?”

“Just come here,” and Jason does, only to be pulled into a kiss. He huffs a laugh against Tim’s lips and melts into the contact, though he’s careful to avoid putting pressure on Tim’s stomach.

“Shithead,” Jason breathes as he pulls away, and he looks Tim over again, making a note of all the things that prove he’s truly alive and well. Everything from the color of his skin to the brightness in his eyes to the response that slips past Tim’s lips with ease,

“Asshole.”

“Replacement.”

“Infant.”

“Baby.”

“Gross,” Tim wrinkles his nose, “I can’t believe you just did that.”

“You set yourself up.”

“I’ll kick you out,” Tim warns, “Don’t look at me like that, I will.”

“Good luck,” Jason leans in for another kiss, and Tim, despite all his posturing, returns it without a second thought.

#jaytim #timjay #jason todd #tim drake #dc comics #blitzwrites #blitz

[blitzturtles]

Title: An Honest Run (Ao3)

Rating: Teen and Up

Fandom: Batman, DC Comics

Pairing(s): JayTim

Summary: Tim presses shaky fingers against his side, watches as large spurts of blood gush out too quickly for his liking. He knows it’s bad, can feel it in the way he’s forced to lean against the wall of the alley too heavily, and in the way his legs threaten to give out underneath him.

Notes: TW: emetophobia, blood/injury/mild gore, and medical usage of morphine/IV pain medication.

-

Tim presses shaky fingers against his side, watches as large spurts of blood gush out too quickly for his liking. He knows it’s bad, can feel it in the way he’s forced to lean against the wall of the alley too heavily, and in the way his legs threaten to give out underneath him. It’s all he can do to keep upright, to hold pressure and wait for the inevitable, when either help comes, or he passes out from blood loss.

Someone’s talking—no, yelling—in his ear. Loud and bordering on frantic, but he can’t parse the words, can’t make sense of what’s being said. He catches his name—or variations of it—but not much else. There’s another voice, interspersed between the desperation and his own ragged breathing, of someone far calmer. He listens to her as his head lolls back against the rough brick and his vision begins to swim.

He hears his name again. Thunderous in his ear, despite the pounding of his heartbeat. His eyes snap open, and he looks around sluggishly. Confusion overtakes reason, and he forgets, for a moment, where he is, but there’s no one around. Just a disembodied set of voices—several now—all talking at once, overlapping one another, unending. It’s dizzying, and he wants to tell them to stop. To be quiet for just a moment, so he can close his eyes, but he can’t get the words out. They’re stuck in his throat, unable to go any further.

He finds himself on the ground with no recollection of how he got there, body slumped over against a dumpster, and head aching in a way that tells him he didn’t go down gently. It’s not a long fall, but it’s enough of one to make the situation worse. Nausea rises up where his words would not, and it builds and builds until he’s certain he’ll be sick.

Vomit splatters across his legs. He leans forward just enough to keep it from winding up down his front, but not an inch further. He draws in a deep, aching breath, winces at the sour taste in his mouth, and does his damnedest to remember what he’s supposed to be doing. It’s something important; something vital, but it’s gone from his mind like the rest of his thoughts.

His eyelids slide shut. A moment of clarity flashes through his mind, and he thinks, pressure. Except his hands are too weak. The tips of his fingers have gone numb, and there’s no strength left in his arms to try and force his hands into cooperation.

He tries to look at the wound, tries to assess the damage for things like depth and the possible organs that may have been hit, but that’s beyond him as he confuses his right and his left and then realizes he doesn’t remember much of anything about the human body. He can barely remember his name, and there it is, again, impossibly louder, before two hands find his face. They don’t hold still, patting and turning and twisting until they find what they’re looking for, and Tim doesn’t make so much as a groan as he’s jostled about.

And suddenly he’s floating, and the nausea rises up again with his stomach twisting violently. He weakly tries to push away, to warn of what’s to come, but the other man only holds that much tighter and says something that makes no sense. Tim flails and pain rips through his side, spreading out from the wound like a spider’s web until it’s entangled every part of his being, and he is nothing but pain. He forgets the nausea, forgets the pressure, forgets to breathe.

He barely registers being set down, much less anything that’s spoken over his head, between the man in the driver’s seat and his rescuer. It’s a quick back and forth, a promise and an empty threat spoken between father and son before Tim feels like the carpet’s being ripped out from underneath him, and he grasps desperately for anything he can hold onto, finds a handle somewhere and digs his nails so deep he’s sure it will leave imprints.

Everything after that is a blur, of colors and sounds and constant, unending movement. He’s lifted again, with all the ease in the world, as if he weighs nothing at all. The world is dark and dreary, all grays and not much else, save for the flash of blue, then white, and then nothing.

The next time Tim opens his eyes, it’s to significantly less pain, though the world around him is still a blur, and he feels fuzzy, weak. He tries to sit up anyways, but finds it nearly impossible as something snags his arm, and it gives out from underneath him. He falls back against a pillow—one he’s sure hadn’t been there before—with a quiet huff of air and looks to his left arm, only to find an IV taped firmly to the inside of his elbow.

“Good morning, sunshine,” and the voice is so instantly recognizable, that Tim doesn’t need to look, but his gaze snaps over to Jason automatically, like he can’t help himself, and there the man is. He looks like hell, and Tim says as much when he’s able to find his voice.

“You’re one to talk,” Jason says with ease, though he rakes his eyes over Tim like he expects him to disappear completely. It would be more unsettling, to be watched in such a way, if Tim were capable of being unsettled, but the lingering fuzziness makes it too hard for him to care. Or to overthink. It’s about the only time his mind is quiet, when he’s hopped up on pain medication and god knows what else, and even then it’s questionable as to whether it’s truly quiet or simply muted. There’s a distant humming that might well be the usual, unending inner dialogue that he keeps, just softer.

They lapse into silence. Tim’s too busy floating to notice the length of it, and Jason’s too busy thinking enough for the two of them.

“You almost died,” Jason starts, quiet, as if speaking the words out loud might somehow change the way the night’s events have played out.

“Could’ve joined the club,” Tim mumbles out before he can think better of it, and before he can stop himself, because his filter is gone like this. He says the first thing that comes to his mind, even if it’s not what he means to say.

“That’s not funny,” Jason nearly growls the words out, but that’s somehow funny, because Tim’s laughing. A short, startled sound at first, that quickly grows into a full on fit of giggles. One that only ends because pain comes knocking and reminds him that there’s only so much morphine can do.

“It’s a little funny,” and it is, in a really macabre sort of way. He’d almost died in some alley, covered in his own blood and vomit, and slumped against a dumpster. Okay, so maybe it’s not funny at all, but Tim’s high and unable to handle the existential crisis that comes with another near death experience, so he’d rather laugh about it than have a breakdown.

Jason thumps him in the shoulder. A gentle, barely there touch that conveys both irritation and affection. He settles himself in a nearby chair and hesitates a moment before he takes one of Tim’s hands in his own. It’s clean now, free of the crimson that had surely stained it before, though Jason looks as if he expects it to be there anyways.

“Let’s try not to make another run at it for a while,” Jason says in lieu of the hundreds of other thoughts going on behind his eyes. Tim can practically see them, all spinning together into a violent storm of anxiety. Given the bags under Jason’s eyes, Tim thinks he’s probably been up since before Tim had gotten himself knifed.

You should sleep, he tries to say, but what comes out instead is, “Sleep,” and Jason blinks at him, slowly, then nods.

“Good idea, princess.”

And again his mouth betrays him, because he means to say something intelligent like, I meant you or you could use it more than me, but all that comes out is, “You.” He’d be more upset about it, too, if it weren’t for the laugh that bubbles forward and out of Jason, seemingly startling both of them, which only makes Jason snort, and Tim huff in mock irritation.

“You can try again in the morning,” Jason says, patting him with feigned reassurance. It’s almost enough to get under Tim’s skin, but he can’t quite bring himself to care. Besides, he likes the way Jason’s shoulders have eased up some, and he doesn’t quite look like he’s seen a ghost. There’s still dark bags under his eyes, but one step at a time is all Tim can really manage.

“I will,” and he will, dammit. If Jason doesn’t sleep on his own, he’ll find some way to force him. Perhaps rope Dick into it, since he’s out of commission for—he doesn’t actually want to know how long. He suspects it’s an upsettingly vague ‘awhile’ from Jason, and a far more upsetting ‘several weeks, at least’ from Alfred.

“Whatever you say, Timmy,” Jason says with a mock annoyance that’s entirely betrayed by the way he squeezes Tim’s hand and leans forward enough to brush Tim’s hair free from his face, so that he can press a kiss to Tim’s temple. It’s hard to not relax then, to not feel safe and secure. It makes Tim feel warm and calm, or maybe that’s the morphine drip. Either way, sleep sneaks up on him far too quickly for him to fight off, and he closes his eyes with a quiet, uncommitted hum.

#jaytim #timjay #dc comics #jason todd #tim drake #blitzwrites #blitz

[blitzturtles]

Title: Still I Try (Ao3)

Rating: General Audiences

Fandom: Batman

Pairing(s): JayTim

Summary: He stares at the far wall unblinkingly, and time passes in a blur, moving both too fast and too slow. He wants it to be night. Dark enough out to justify suiting up, but the sun is still high in the sky, shining through the blinds, taunting him.

-

Jason’s thoughts are going a mile a minute. They’re too fast for him to wrangle. He can barely process the words passing between his ears before one sentence ends and the next begins, and they leave a taste in his mouth, bitter, lasting.

He stares at the far wall unblinkingly, and time passes in a blur, moving both too fast and too slow. He wants it to be night. Dark enough out to justify suiting up, but the sun is still high in the sky, shining through the blinds, taunting him.

He can’t say what set him off. A dream, maybe. He had been asleep for approximately two hours when his eyes had snapped open, the surfaces of each burning the way they still are now, but he doesn’t actually remember having any dreams, let alone a bad one.

“Jay?” The voice is quiet, a muffled sound against his chest from where Tim lays on top of him. Jason holds his breath a moment, as if Tim will simply fall back asleep. And he might have, if Jason weren’t so tense, muscles wound tight and body uncomfortably rigid.

Tim pulls back to look up at him. Hazy blue blinking slowly. Once, twice, three times before Tim opens his mouth again. Nothing comes out at first. He frowns, and Jason has to bite back a laugh. Tim’s cute like this. Groggy and barely functional. Brain moving at about a tenth of its usual speed. One day he’s going to record it for prosperity.

“Don’t laugh at me,” Tim grumbles and his eyes narrow slightly. There’s no suspicion, just pure accusation, and Jason nearly loses it, only barely clings to his composure.

“I would never,” he says, which is a lie. He’s laughed at a sleep-addled Tim more times than he can count.

Tim huffs at him, clearly offended, but he says nothing else as silence stretches on.

There’s a moment where Jason thinks that Tim has passed out on him again, but then Tim speaks up, “Bad dream?”

“D’unno,” Jason admits, “I—just can’t sleep,” which is the truth. Whatever it is that woke him up doesn’t matter, because it isn’t the reason that he can’t sleep now. No, that honor goes to the mess that’s inside his skull.

Tim hums. A quiet, contemplative sound, and his eyes slide shut before he opens them again. There’s a playfulness gleaning in them when he says, “I could tell you all about the meetings I had yesterday.”

“The fact that it’s ‘meetings’, plural, is enough to turn me off, thanks,” Jason wrinkles his nose for theatrics more than anything, and he gets a huff, this one amused, from Tim.

“You never know, I might just bore you back to sleep.”

“You could do that without talking about meetings.”

“Ass.”

“Nerd.”

Tim rolls off of him in a puff, lays flat on his back and stares up at the ceiling. Jason watches him with mild interest. Contemplating what’s going on in Tim’s head is a much more pleasing set of thoughts than what’s been going through his own for the last hour or so.

“I can tell you about the case I’m working on? Or you can tell me about whatever you’ve been working on.”

“You first.”

“You’re a child.”

“I know,” Jason grins. “But you love it.”

“For some reason,” Tim sighs, dramatic and unnecessary. Jason snorts a laugh in response, and Tim loses his attempt to fight back a smile.

“Come on, Timmy. Spill the beans. What has my Replacement been working on?”

“It’s really not that interesting.”

“It’s got you stumped.”

Tim pauses, nods, “Fair.”

“So tell me all about it. Spare no detail.”

“Fine, but you’re not allowed to interrupt constantly.”

“No promises.”

Tim groans, “Whatever.” He goes quiet again, seemingly debating on where to begin before he launches into the details. Starting with a seemingly minor explosion on Firth Street. One that no one had thought much off until the many incidents that had followed. Each just similar enough to catch Red Robin’s attention and raise an eyebrow, but all so seemingly random that narrowing down the responsible parties has turned out to be quite difficult.

At some point, Tim climbs off the bed to retrieve the folder he has with all his notes and collected evidence, and it’s only a short while after that that the two end up on the floor with everything spread out between them. Jason can’t help being thoroughly enthralled by the mystery. It’s a good one. The first they’ve had in awhile, and it’s all but lost on him that neither of them are getting any sleep now.

#jaytim #timjay #jason todd #tim drake #blitzwrites #blitz