A/N: This is a prompt fill for Whumperless Whump Event 2024! Expect 3 more chapters throughout July 2024 based on other Whumperless Whump prompts. I post everything a little earlier on AO3, but I'm trying to get everything posted here by the end of the prompt day as well.
TWs: References to alcohol abuse, child abuse, self-harm, and an eating disorder. Description of injury and vomiting.
Keith is sixteen now, and he hasn't needed anyone for a long time.
Today he saw a couple of his old high school bullies for the first time since transferring to the garrison program. He could take them easily then and now, even three-on-one like the cowards intended, but he's memorized the garrison student conduct manual cover to cover, and even off-campus violence can lead directly to expulsion. He's already on thin ice after letting emotion take over and punching a fellow cadet in class during his first month, and he's fresh out of warnings.
So, he doesn't engage, instead darting toward what he thinks is a shortcut along a side street. It's going well, the neighborhood looking more and more familiar as he sprints, wary of the footsteps echoing far behind him but still audibly following.
And then he spots a deer trail on the other side of a wire and post fence running along one side of the street, and he makes a jump for it, launching his body into a front flip immediately before he grabs a hold of the top level of the wire to direct his momentum.
His body easily clears the fence, but he quickly realizes that the fence is not, in fact, made of simple wire and posts. There are definitely barbs that he hadn't noticed in his rushed initial assessment, and now his right palm feels like it has the gouges to show for it, not that he gets the chance to check.
The unexpected pain catches him off-guard, and rather than landing safely on the other side, he tumbles down the hill, instinctively bringing his arms up to guard his head.
On the plus side, he's made it down the hill in record time with no head injury, and he can no longer hear the footfalls trailing after him.
…but he's paid for that win with the gouges he can now confirm are thoroughly marring his right hand and the sting along most of his left forearm. After he pauses for a shaky breath and brings himself to look at it, he sees how fast it's leaking blood, staining the dirt beneath him. It's most definitely not a "slap a band-aid on it and move on" kind of wound.
He doesn't want to push himself to his feet and continue his walk home, but that's something he needs to fix as soon as possible, so he does it anyway.
The car isn't in the driveway, but that doesn't always mean they're not home, so Keith is still on high alert as he turns his copy of the key in the front door, making sure to swing it open in the specific way that he knows stops it from obnoxiously squealing.
His current foster father hates that sound, and Keith's back is still healing from the day he discovered that fun fact, leaving behind just enough of an ache to remind him.
Luckily, no one's home yet. Good thing too, because the both of them hate any mess he causes, and the way his forearm is uncontrollably leaking blood certainly constitutes a mess.
In another stroke of luck, the cuts on his right hand have already clotted over in the time it took to finish getting home, and the hand is reasonably usable albeit a little painful while attempting fine movements. While he can do most things with either hand reasonably well, his right has historically done better work when it came down to stitches, and with the way the bleeding still stubbornly refuses to slow down now, this is the time for stitches.
He's been in this home for just under a month, and it's not the worst home he's passed through, but it doesn't rank very highly either. There are no other kids, which can be a pro or a con depending on the family, though it's decidedly a con with this one as it leaves them more free to focus on his every fuck-up. It's balanced out by the fact that both of them work and he's allowed to stay in his dorm most of the time, so there's been minimal interaction since he moved in on campus a few weeks ago. Chris doesn't insist on Keith calling him "dad" like some of his past foster parents did, but he also doesn't shy away from corporal punishment. Really, he seems to get joy out of it, singling out any behavior of Keith's that he can to justify laying his hands on him.
Maggie prefers not to be addressed by him at all, and that's a request he's happy to fulfill. She bangs on his door every morning when he's home and requires him to show face to prove he's not sleeping in before she leaves for her shift, and she pushes him to lead the prayer around the dinner table every third night they actually eat together, but she also lets him eat dinner with them every night he's home and makes sure his school meal plan is paid ahead every week, which is more than some families ever did. She never does any hitting herself, but she's not afraid to sic Chris on him if Keith breaks one of her rules—previously verbalized or not—so she's not someone to trust either. She'll be the one to notice the bloodstains if he's not thorough enough with his cleaning after he gets his arm taken care of, but there's no sense in wiping it up while he's actively dribbling more on the hardwood floor.
The downside of this home being on the newer side for him is that he hasn't had much spare time to explore safely and get to know what he's working with… so he's disappointed but not too terribly surprised to find a severely depleted and very basic first aid kit in the bathroom stashed in a drawer in the vanity. There are some flimsy band-aids, but nothing to stitch a deeper cut and nothing to wrap it securely either.
He'd been spoiled by the year he'd spent with his last foster family—with the trauma nurse mother who went by Liz and her two accident-prone biological kids, there was never a shortage of medical supplies, and he'd learned a lot by watching and by practicing when he could sneak away with some of the supplies, not that he'd needed to do so often in that home. There was the occasional after-school scrap, but he'd generally gone unharmed during that time. It was one of the nicer homes, but he'd never counted on it lasting, and it hadn't once they'd realized he'd planned to pursue education that wouldn't have him returning home every night and participating in the family like he'd been trying to before his acceptance.
Nobody there was upset with him on the occasions he got himself hurt, but he'd learned several families before that not to need medical attention if he could help it. He's seen some of the bills throughout his years in the system, and the insurance plan that follows him from temporary home to temporary home covers nearly the entire cost every time, but that isn't always enough. Sometimes a letter in the mail requesting a thirty-dollar copay is the line between him being fed dinner or being sent straight to his room for the night. There's no predicting who will be upset with him for it and who will understand, so now he avoids it completely until he's been shown it's safe to ask, and this family hasn't shown him firmly one way or the other.
It's okay, though. He's not helpless anymore, hasn't been for years. There's always something to work with, and the something he comes up with in this case is the sewing kit Maggie keeps next to her favorite armchair in the living room. It's not quite what he's used to, but there are a few needles that look similarly thick as the medical-grade ones he's used before, though the straightness of the needle is a change he'll have to work around. There's an ugly yellow spool of thread that looks untouched, and it's a risk—because it will definitely be noticeable going from completely unused to used, he thinks—but it's a gamble he's willing to take. Surely, she won't notice it among all the more used colors she clearly prefers.
One thing left: the booze Chris doesn't know he knows about, though why he thinks Keith is so clueless, Keith can't hazard a guess. It's not hidden well at all, right at the front of the drawer of the TV console. He'd found it during his first week while intending to snoop through their collection of movies and had the sense to never bring it up, but he remembered the veritable rainbow of labels hidden away. He grabs one from the back now, hoping that's where the less important bottles go.
His last couple times, he'd been lucky enough to have the luxury of piping hot water to sanitize things, but Chris kept the water heater on the lowest setting (not that he'd found that out while snooping), and he isn't about to bet on having enough time to boil water over the stove. The Svedka should do him fine this time.
His haul fits easily on the bathroom vanity once he shoves the useless first aid kit back where it came from. He rests his bad arm over the sink for ease of later cleanup, grabs one of the Dixie cups from nearby with his other hand, and twists the cap off the alcohol to fill the cup, giving the needle a quick rinse under the tepid mimicry of hot water the faucet offers before leaving it to rest in the cup while he washes his hands.
He should sanitize the thread too, he thinks. He hasn't in the past and things turned out okay, but that had been packaged and sterile and intended for use on human skin, and this thread is none of those things, so he unravels a generous amount and lets it drop into the cup of Svedka too, using the needle to poke it all under the surface of the liquid.
He lets the faucet run over his wound, turning the water as hot as it goes and hoping it's enough to clean it out safely. There's no way he can use enough of the alcohol as he thinks he'd need to sanitize the wound that way without Chris noticing, so the hot water alone is going to have to do.
Part of him thinks the needle and thread need longer to get through the makeshift sanitization, but he's on limited time if he's going to have a chance of finishing and hiding all the evidence before anyone else shows up. He pulls the needle out of the cup, waving it back and forth to help it air dry before looping one end of the thread through.
The key to stitches, he's found, is to go to that space in his head that almost stops him from being present. It's a balancing act—he needs to be able to see what he's doing and remember the process to follow, but it's best if he can force all physical and emotional feeling out until it's over. It's not impossible to get through the stitches when he's fully there, but it's a hell of a lot harder having to juggle the sensations involved, and for what?
He gives his thigh a quick slap with his good hand, gauging how well he's managed to get himself into the headspace he's seeking. Satisfied with the somewhat dulled feedback, he presses on, finding the right angle and making the first insertion.
This one is always the worst. Mentally he's fully expecting it, but somehow that doesn't stop it from being a shock to his body, drawing out a hiss he doesn't expect from himself. He doesn't flinch and mess the whole thing up, though, and that's all that matters.
With that bit of confidence rebuilt, the rest of the pattern runs on autopilot, though he has to continually adjust the angle for the straight needle, and when he's easing his way back into reality after pulling the last stitch tight before tying it off and snipping the excess, he can't help but notice how much sloppier his stitches turned out this time.
But they seem to be holding, and that matters more than what they look like. He'll take an ugly-looking wound over one that's causing him to slowly bleed out any day.
He doesn't allow himself too long to admire his handiwork since he doesn't know how long he has left to deal with all the evidence. He makes quick work of the bathroom, twisting on the faucet and using his better hand to redirect the water all over the inside of the sink to rinse away the blood that had dripped during his little self-surgery. He turns the pressure much lower before running his arm under it as well, rinsing away the suspicious scent of cheap booze and making sure to get as much of the blood off as he can without scrubbing at the sensitive skin.
He finishes cleaning the floor and buries the paper towels he used at the bottom of the kitchen trash in record time, and Chris and Maggie still aren't home even as darkness firmly settles outside, but that's okay. He prefers it this way anyway. It gives him time to imagine life getting better, maybe making all this worth it someday.
Two more years and he can legally work without the authorization his foster families are never willing to sign over in fear of his part-time minimum wage income reducing their own benefits. One more year and he qualifies for the garrison program to stay in the dorms during break periods instead of going back to whatever home he's in by then. Two more days until this shitty break is over and he can go back to campus and forget every bit of it.
Keith is sixteen now, and he hasn't needed anyone for a long time.