Chapter Text
He keens as his forehead presses on the cool floor. His legs feel distant, numb and dim. He kicks them out, trying best he can to flip onto his side but it feels like someone took a cattle rod to his side and he chokes. His socks slide on the rain slick pavement and he crashes back to his front, his hand jarring against the hole still bleeding in his side.
A scream catches in his throat, extinguished in a harsh huff. He blinks blood and rain from his eyes, and the sky is a dim dark black above him and there’s no one to help. His hands twitch again, dipping into the curve of his stomach and another cry punches out of him.
His hands are tacky with blood now, cloyed between his fingers like gum and rusting around the veins hot in his wrist. It takes all his effort to lift his hand into his vision, the edges fuzzy and red and it takes him too long to realise it’s shaking so hard he’s seeing more than double.
He flexes his fingers, watches the blood crack and break along his joints and alarms scream absently in his thoughts that the fact it’s dried means he’s been alone entirely too long.
A laugh cracks through the night as he realises his dad sent him away to stay alive and it hasn’t even worked.
Blood comes up, hot and tangy on his tongue and it coats the inside of his mouth and makes him gasp. He sucks in a breath, the hot evening air caught between his teeth and sticking there. He can’t get enough, and it’s choking down his throat and he recognises that this is bad.
This is really bad.
The street light flickers.
His head aches.
His throat aches too, a different kind of ache, burning and hot and thick. Like he’s swallowed a shard of glass and it stuck itself across his windpipe. Breaths come in thin wheezing gasps, and he tries once again to flip onto his side. He can’t bite down a scream as he shifts too slowly, his legs useless but there is no one around. Besides, he’s always made a scene of things.
There’s a broken bone somewhere, maybe two but his body is so consumed in pain it’s difficult to tell any of it apart. But he remembers something snapping, something sending shockwaves of pain up numb nerves. The stab wound is the pulsing centre, but beyond it are rings of bruises, lines dragged into skin by jagged rings and nails, a cluster of throbbing nerves where his arm was twisted up behind his shoulder and wrenched until it felt like it was going to shatter.
The part of him that was drilled through paramedic certifications is screaming at him to do something, do anything to help but his brain is fogged and all he can think is he really doesn’t want to die in an alley.
He promised his mom. He promised her he wouldn’t die. He promised her she’d never have to find him dead behind a dumpster. He promised her he’d make it home this time.
He promised her he was alive.
And that, out of anything else, gets him. He blinks again, realises his eyes had been shut all along and the bright glare of the streetlight just beyond him is suddenly all he can see. It floods his vision and feels suddenly too warm, the feeling of being out in the open sending buzzing fear down his spine.
His phone is a dark stain on the pavement. He makes to reach for it, fingers shaking so hard against the ground he can hear the vibration echo in his head. His hand breaches the ring of light from the street lamp just as the stab wound stubbornly reminds him it exists and he has to just lie and breath and pretend he’s fine for a moment longer.
Lie and breath and pretend. He can do that. That’s all he does anyway.
Lie and breath and pretend.
And then he goes again. And again. And again and again and again until bloody fingers drag the corner of his phone to his lips and it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, smashed and smudged with his blood.
It’s cold on his cheek, so cold it burns a crease in the stripes of blood that leak from his brow. It’s a gross crimson, beading on the glossy screen and he wonders briefly how long he’ll have to go without it. The police will want it after this. That’s fine he thinks distantly, the thought swimming up in the crashing waves of pain strangling his mind. It’s not like he has anyone to call.
‘Hey—’ he chokes and spits a glob of rotten blood from between his teeth. ‘Hey, Hildy.’
Hildy’s voice is a blessed cool in the night, the robotic intones weirdly calming as he breathes heavy through his nose so he doesn’t throw up all over the speaker. ‘Hildy call Captain Nash.’
Calling Captain Nash.