Chapter Text
‘Alright, that’s it. You can not be left unsupervised.’ I yanked the shampoo bottle from the kids hands. Seriously I am not calling poison control in the middle of the night. The kid was sputtering and coughing up bubbles like an idiot.
‘Jesus, do I need to muzzle him? He acts more and more like some kind of dog every second I’m around him.’ I squirted some shampoo into my hand and beckoned the kid over to the edge of the tub. The kid glared at me and barked something in his language.
‘Did he just fucking yell at me? I literally just reset your dislocated shoulder, and you’re going to yell at me? Fuck that.’
I opened my mouth to yell back but before the words even formed on my tongue, I faltered. The boy was sitting back in the tub, the water line coming up to just under his nose. His eyes were downcast, no longer holding that little sparkle of wonderment I’d seen when I first showed him into the bathroom. His face was a deep red color, was the water too hot? My mind briefly wondered if he’d gotten sick but I quickly shook that thought from my head, no way was I going to jinx that.
Was he embarrassed? I mean, yeah, it’s not fun to have someone helping you bathe but tough shit kid you tried to eat soap. Closing my eyes I took a deep breath to center myself, no good would come of me snapping at the poor boy.
“Alright dude. I get it. I don’t want to be here either but we’re just gonna have to make this work. Honestly, I probably should’ve been helping you from the beginning to make sure you didn’t try to move your shoulder.” I tried my best to keep my expression neutral, but I doubt I was able to mask all of my irritation. “Just let me wash your hair and then you can use the washcloth to get yourself clean.” I coaxed him towards me again, and after a moment of deliberation where I could see the kid's brain working overtime, he begrudgingly shifted in the cramped tub so that his back was facing me.
‘Finally.’ I scooped some water into my hands and lathered them with a dollop of shampoo, rose scented, and began working it into his hair.
To call his hair a rat’s nest was an understatement. His hair was caked in thick layers of grime and dirt, streaks of brown ran down his skin as some of the shampoo dribbled down into the water making it turn a murky dark color. I couldn’t even run my fingers through his hair. It was just a thick wad of mats and dirt stuck to the back of his head. I was trying really hard not to judge. Honestly, I should probably receive a medal for my ability to hold back my gag reflex. The kids stench was one thing but now seeing the source of it, all the caked on junk and dirt, and lord knows what else? I barely bit back my various noises of disgust. I didn’t know this kid's story, I didn’t know why he hadn’t bathed for so long, the least I could do was contain my judgement. If he was going to be staying here for a while- and god wasn’t that a thing to think- we needed to trust each other. I gently guided his head down to rinse the soap out, and then I washed his hair until the water stopped running brown.
Honestly the more time I spend around him, I can’t help but wonder what happened to him. I mean, he’s a young-ish kid that doesn’t speak the language, washed up, dirty, and severely injured, found unconscious in a random creek in some little midwestern college town. That literally feels like the plot of a shitty true crime documentary. Maybe he’s here on vacation and just got separated from his family? I mean, this town isn’t exactly screaming “tourist destination” but I don’t know what Europeans are thinking. At least, I think he’s European? He looks white, that’s for sure, but I can’t pinpoint his language from anywhere. Somewhere “north”? My teeth worried on my lip, the more I dwelled on what his possible backstory could be I just felt the knot in my stomach wind itself tighter.
Jesus, what if he was kidnapped? I mean that would explain his injuries and general poor hygiene. I was brought out of my darkening thoughts by a short pained grunt, and looked down to see the kid glaring at me from over his shoulder. Tch, what a brat.
“Jeez man, it’s not like I’m trying to yank your hair, it’s just so matted. What’d you even do to get it this way anyways?” I mumbled under my breath as my fingers weaved through his locks and caught on yet another huge knot. I worked through some of the bigger ones as gently as I could, using conditioner to help with untangling some of the smaller mats but it only worked for so long. The bigger ones are hopeless, I need a wet brush or something.
“I could always just cut it out…” I mumbled to myself as I let my hands absentmindedly roam over the boys head searching for the next mat. The hair by the nape of his neck was the worst, it was just one thick ball of knots, like a rat king had formed at the back of his head.
“I don’t really want to do this, but if we can’t get these knots out I might have to cut some of your hair.” I rinsed the kids hair from the conditioner- he looked so pathetic and scraggly soaking wet with half his head full of matted hair. Of course, he didn’t say anything back, and I wasn’t expecting him to, he just reached up and scratched at the back of his head like he was inspecting what I’d been doing for the past fifteen minutes. A shiver ran down my spine, something brushed against my arm, itchy, like a bug bite. I scratched at my arm, but the itchiness didn’t go away, it got stronger.
“Ah fuck. Ew.” There was a small black dot crawling around on my hand. I slapped my arm, killing the small insect that’d somehow managed to crawl up. Where’d it even come from? I shook my head and turned back to the kid ready to finger detangle as much as I could, there were a few larger mats I was determined to free tonight. I sat back on my haunches and grabbed the biggest chunk of hair I hadn’t managed to detangle yet.
My blood turned to ice. I’m such a fucking idiot. God no, I’m such a fucking idiot. Please no, don’t do this to me. I grabbed the kid by his head- ignoring his small grunt at the rough handling- and held my breath trying to ignore the sinking feeling of dread that was threatening to overwhelm me.
‘Please no, no, no, anything but that please.’ I prayed to whatever deity was listening.
Turns out God likes playing jokes.
The kid had fleas.
—
The kid was back sitting on the sofa- freshly washed, clothed, and de-flead- that had been dreadful. The last time I had to deal with fleas was with one of the barn cats my parents had adopted and promoted to house cat. Her name was Poppy. She was a small rotund little ball of orange fluff with white mittens and an ear piercing yowl. It took the joint effort of my dad, my youngest brother, and myself to wrangle her into the slap sink to wash the fleas out of her fur. By the end of it everyone was soaked to the bone, bleeding, and drained.
I wasn’t too far off from that now. The kid plays dirty, and bites.
Hard.
I can tell how many teeth he’s missing from the swollen bite mark on my wrist. It’s six, he’s missing six teeth. I cussed bitterly under my breath as I poured antiseptic over my wrist and wrapped it. The kid had run off as soon as I made sure he had at least put on the sweatpants I managed to scrounge up for him, and the sling I’d scoured from the deepest darkest corner of my medicine drawer. Now I was feeling slightly better about spraining my shoulder last month from hauling in a shipment of lab equipment by myself. It was only a couple of boxes of glassware, I wasn’t expecting the box to weigh half my body weight in beakers.
I took a glance at my phone, crap, when did it get so late? It’s almost midnight, I have class in the morning. I shuffled out of the bathroom with a barely suppressed yawn and craned my neck to peer into the living room. As I suspected, the kid was laying on the couch again. I tiptoed over to him, carefully to avoid the floorboards I knew were creaky.
A small smile spread across my face as I took in the sleeping child. I didn’t blame him for passing out, I felt about ready to curl up on the floor and pass out. He was laying on his back with his face wedged in between the cushioned crevice where the arm of the sofa met the back rest. Somehow he’d managed to tangle himself in the crocheted throw blanket he’d been so fascinated with earlier. I pulled back the blanket slightly to make sure he wasn’t laying at a weird angle for his shoulder. I couldn’t help myself from tucking in the blanket more securely around his small frame. His face looked different now, it wasn’t the blank slate of unconsciousness or the furrowed untrusting grimace he seemed to always have plastered to his face. He looked marginally peaceful now, like an actual child instead of a snarling beast. I gingerly ran my hand over his hair, still horribly matted in places, maybe he was still a bit beastly.
“I’ll help you with this tomorrow. It’d be a shame to cut off so much of your hair.” I brushed a single loose strand back out of his face and then moved to shut off the table side lamp plunging the room into darkness. Moving slowly through my apartment back to my room, I collapsed into bed and set my alarm for the next day.
God I wasn’t going to be home until late, and I had to leave earlier than usual to do the lab set-up for my professor. I felt like crying from the growing mental to-do list my brain conjured up.
Why’d I even care about the kid so much anyway? Honestly, I should just call the police or CPS or something and have them deal with this whole mess. Maybe it was just my overtired brain but the thought of handing the boy over to some random strangers made my heart clench painfully.
Y’know what, it’s too late for this, I’m not going to try and dissect that right now. That’s a problem for tomorrow Freya.