There Is No Excuse For How Long This Took. - Tumblr Posts
🪐 — ELIS HOWELL for stede !
If his hands shook at all it was more due to feeling amped up a bit from the previous encounter than the drink. Unfortunately his hands shook when he didn’t drink these days. Which was why he had removed himself from his work. A surgeon whose hands shook because his body was craving a drink was no use to anyone and that was even if he could stop the daily drinking to start with.
Still. He could help this stranger who he’d gotten punched for nothing. He had similar deeply ingrained etiquette as well.
“And I insist you allow me to render you aid, sir,” the Welshman urged with a pointed expression, hands moving to hover near the man, worried he might fall over. “Please. I’m a doctor,” Elis added. One of the other regulars seated at the bar loudly huffed and rolled his eyes at that. The innkeeper shot him a stern look and pushed a clean rag across the bar top. Elis took it and offered it to Stede.
“Here. Your nose is bleeding. Pinch at it with your fingers against the septum wall — that’s the cartilage between your nose. And don’t lean your head back, you don’t want to flowing backwards. It doesn’t actually appear broken so you lucked out. But come to my room. I can patch up the side of your forehead. Head wounds bleed a lot but I promise you’ll make it,” he added dryly, trying to make a bit of a joke as he held out his hand to gesture towards the door to the hallway of rooms, one arm near Stede in case he got a little dizzy.
HE DOESN’T WANT TO MAKE A FUSS, especially over an injury that wasn’t truly all that grievous, in spite of the blood that’s seeped into his previously flawless starched lace collar. oh it hurts, to be certain, & stede knows well that he has a rather low tolerance for pain. but he will be fine, just so long as he has something solid to hold onto until his feet grow steady again. & he is grateful for the bar, leaning against it to steady himself, expecting to be left alone to nurse his wounds. yet the man who had started it all hovers stubbornly nearby, his hands raised as if to catch stede if he falls. it seemed a strange kindness for someone he didn’t even know, though his profession may have had something to do with his desire to help. ❝ a doctor, you say ? ❞ he asks, inquisitive brow raising as he looks the other man over. to stede’s eyes, he looked — & smelled — like little more than any other drunk in the tavern that night. ❝ i imagine it’s quite rare to find your kind in a place like this. ❞ but he speaks with confidence as he relays his orders, a clean cloth pressed firmly into stede’s hand. & although he is a pirate now, & a captain to boot, not required to take any man’s orders in a free port such as this, there is something in the doctor’s tone that makes him acquiesce, pressing the rag as he’s been instructed against his nose & pinching. but that only makes the pain sharper, & stede winces, keeping his grip light. he can only hope he is applying enough pressure to stem the bloodflow. he hesitates at the idea of going elsewhere with a strange man he scarcely knows, but for as lightheaded as he is feeling, he is also grateful for the chance some care to his wounds, minor as they may seem. ❝ well, if you’re sure it’s really necessary, doctor. ❞ stede’s voice is distorted slightly by the cloth pressed against his nose, his tone gone nasal & muffled as he pulls himself away from the bar to follow the stranger’s gesture, only swaying slightly on his feet. ❝ i’m stede, by the way. ❞