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In retrospect, Stede should have known something like this would happen.
He’s in the exam room with Louis, who’s being his usual stoic, snarky self (no one who wasn’t his parent would know he was nervous about the surgery) and he’s doing his best to be reassuring without being overbearing. He’s brought himself plenty to occupy the time: at the pre-op appointment, they’d said it would be a few hours, and Stede knows himself well enough to know he needs something to fiddle with or he’ll be consumed with anxiety the whole time and cause a scene.
He has two paperbacks, a kindle, snacks, his phone, a notebook, and a variety of crafts—embroidery, knitting, cross-stitch, and even a tie whose lining has gone a bit frayed that needs repair—to keep himself busy. It’s all stuffed haphazardly in a bag, because Louis had asked if he had a charger right as they entered the exam room and Stede had had to unpack it all to find the cord at the bottom. So it’s a mess! He’ll repack it once Louis is inside, he tells himself, the bag on his lap. He’ll have plenty of time in the waiting room.
So when he stands to get out of the way of Louis’s gurney as they start to wheel him out, he of course has to stand and shuffle around—the space isn’t made for three adults and a gurney holding his nearly-adult kid—he shoves it behind himself hurriedly.
And then they wheel Louis past him, and he can’t follow—of course he can’t, this is a hospital and he’s going to be in the waiting room like a good parent—and he collapses back in the chair, body zinging with the adrenaline of my child is going somewhere and I can’t follow.
And zinging with something else, too.
“Ah!” Stede leaps back up, pain shooting through him, and something crashes to the floor. “Shit!”
A single clementine rolls between his legs as he reaches back to clutch at his bottom, desperately searching for the source of the pain, and a distant part of his mind also screams in horror at the idea of food on this particular floor.
Another sharp stab of pain lances through him as he twists, groping at his rear, finding—
“Ah!”
There’s a reason the pain is a stabbing one, because there’s a size three knitting needle stabbed into his arse.
#
Ed’s taking a fucking minute. He’s taking a moment to stand and breathe and stare into the mirror like a sitcom doctor, because he’s just finished a consult with one of the Badminton brothers—Nigel, the whinier one—and nobody riles him up like those fuckers.
Nigel’s getting a stent in, which is why Ed’s involved: they’re both two heart attacks in, but it’s Nigel’s turn this month to actually do something about it.
Ed’ll do a good job: he’s a good fucking surgeon, brilliant, celebrated. But fuck if he wishes he had picked literally any other career. Maybe something in a cubicle. Or on a boat. Or—
The bathroom door bursts open, and a whirlwind of a man barrels in.
“Oh god, oh fuck, oh god oh shit—” he’s chanting, and Ed sidesteps before he gets run down.
The guy is grabbing for his ass, and oh fuck, there’s blood on the seat of his pants what the fuck? Ed hasn’t had to deal with an ass emergency in—years. Decades, maybe? Not since his ER rotation. Plenty of them in there, but mostly of the “please get this out of there” variety, rather than the kind this guy seems to be having.
Shit.
He’s gonna have to deal with this, isn’t he?
The guy’s maybe hyperventilating, shallow, fast breaths making his nostrils flare and chest heave—nice chest, Ed thinks idly, as his brain slips back into diagnostician mode—and he’s headed for the...
Mirror?
Ed watches as he turns and examines the seat of his pants, reaching for—
“Oh, shit, bro!” he breathes, and the guy shrieks a little, the pitch going even higher when his fist jerks around the fucking metal rod sticking out of the back of his pants.
Because yeah, Ed had been so distracted by the blood—which isn’t that much, objectively, but is still too much to be coming out of the back end of a grown man.
“How the hell did you get yourself stabbed in the ass?” he asks, stepping closer, and the guy moans, fingers closing around the metal again. “Wait, don’t just—fuck, don’t just yank it, man!”
“Ahhhhh,” the man moans, letting go. “Oh, god, it’s so deep!”
“Just hold on,” Ed says, trying to sound calming, using his best Fang voice. “Hold on, yeah, let me just—can I touch you? Can you unbutton for me?”
“Please,” the guy says, hands fumbling for his trouser fastenings, pretty belt loud zipper in the quiet of the bathroom. “Oh god, I need—”
“I know, man.” Ed eases closer and crouches down. “Okay. Let me just—I’ve got you.” He sits back on his heels, hands on the man’s hips. “Tight fucking pants, man.”
The man yelps as the metal stick shifts.
“I’m Ed, by the way,” Ed says. The stick’s poking out from the guy’s ass about three inches, and he pulls the waistband of the trousers out until he can ease the fabric out of the way. He’s wearing teal silk boxers, skin-tight, and Ed takes a deep breath. “Do you trust me?”
“I—I think so,” the guy says. “Stede.”
“What?”
“My name.” He holds a hand out awkwardly behind him. “Stede Bonnet.”
Ed stares at the hand for a moment, then takes it and shakes it gently. “Okay, Stede Bonnet,” he says, and stands to give his hands a thorough scrub in the sink before holding them under the dryer, because he’s not going to give this guy an ass-infection if he can help it. “I’m going to pull it out.”
“Oh my god,” Stede groans. “Oh, Ed, please, be gentle!”
Ed crouches down again, takes a deep breath, focuses on the slightly furry, pale, flat but muscular stabbed butt cheek in front of him, and—
“AH!”
The stick was in further than Ed had thought, actually, a couple inches into the muscle, and the hole it leaves bleeds sluggishly, then stops. Stede pants, and Ed’s about to stay something reassuring—what, he’s not sure—when the door to the bathroom bursts open.
“What the fuck is going on in here?”
#
Stede’s vision is tunneling, a bit, but when the raspy, angry nurse starts yelling at his rescuer, he has to turn around and intervene. “Excuse me,” he says, and oh, his bits are all just—out there, aren’t they, boxers torn and around his thighs. “Can I help you?”
“I don’t fucking know,” the man says. “Edward, I’ve covered for you for plenty before, but this—in the patient bathroom—not even in a stall—”
“Iz!” Ed snaps. “Get me a sterile dressing and tape.”
“What the fuck were you doing?”
“I had an injury,” Stede says, as prim as he can make it when his trousers are still hanging open. “Ed was attending to me.”
“In the bathroom?”
“Iz!”
The man turns even redder. “We’ll be talking about this later, Edward,” he says, and turns to stomp back out the door.
Ed turns back to him, and oh, he’s—maybe the most beautiful man Stede’s ever seen? His eyes twinkle, creases in the corner deepening. “Let’s get you patched up,” he says. “Then maybe you can tell me what happened?”
Stede thinks he might be possessed by some kind of benevolent spirit, because what comes out of his mouth is, “How about over dinner?”
#
Ed brings him to an exam room, tapes up his rear, reassures Izzy that he wasn’t fucking in the patient bathroom—texts him there’s nothing less sexy than a man bleeding from the ass—and brings him back to the waiting room.
Later, after Stede brings Louis home and gets him settled with Mary, Ed takes him to his favorite sushi bar and they lean side by side as they chat long into the night.
And a few weeks later, Ed gets to see that ass up close and personal again, bent over on Ed’s bed. He runs his thumb over the pinking scar on the cheek, and impales Stede on a different sort of rod.
(His dick. It’s his dick.)