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thetomorrowshow · 3 months ago

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Whumptober 22 - Bleeding Through Bandages

title: misfortune placed these worlds in us

fandom: limited life smp

welcome back to my bad boys au!! i never expected to write more of it lol now i need to name it

cw: blood and injury, implied/referenced abuse

A string of whispered curses is all that escapes Grian’s lips, as he clicks on the dim overhead light.

He isn’t usually the one who gets hurt on missions—usually, it’s Jimmy. Jimmy may be the best shot in all the gang, but he’s clumsier than anyone Grian’s ever known. It’s honestly fitting that the first time they met, Jimmy was bleeding to death from a bullet to the lung.

But now Grian’s been hit, and if he doesn’t stop it from bleeding, the others will insist on calling the mission here and heading back to the manor, which cannot happen. He already had to let himself get captured—a bullet in the thigh isn’t going to stop him.

Before he does anything—thrown into this locked closet as he was—he spits out his ear piece from where he’d been hiding it in the back of his mouth. Hopefully it still functions.

Then he shimmies his trousers off and sets to taking care of the wound.

The closet they’d put him in is by no means empty—it’s a janitor’s closet, well-stocked with cleaning supplies and essentials, and Grian grabs a roll of toilet paper off the shelf and wraps it around the bullet wound.

The bullet hadn’t gone in far, buried maybe an inch deep into his flesh. If he doesn’t try to pull it out, he should be good to go in an emergency. He can clean it and remove the bullet later—for now, he just needs to staunch the bleeding.

Even wrapping it around five times doesn’t stop the blood that blooms through the paper, so he tosses the roll to the side and roots around on a shelf, digging through the cardboard box there for any sort of rag. There’s nothing there, but the box beside it has a collection of dirty rags, some kind of polish smeared on them.

Is it worse to put this on the wound, or let it bleed freely?

Screw it, it’s got toilet paper on it. Grian puts the rag atop the toilet paper, ties it around his leg. It’s almost tight enough to be a tourniquet, with how short the rag is, which maybe should help? Grian doesn’t know enough about wounds.

He doesn’t get hurt a lot, but when he does, it rarely affects him. Mumbo has always bemoaned his high pain tolerance, ever since they were in high school together and Grian could walk away from a fight without even noticing the bruises and cuts all over him.

That was how he’d gotten a place in the Bad Boys, actually. Sixteen years old, at a corrupt high school and living with an abusive roommate, Grian had fallen into gang fights too young and had eventually gotten picked up by one.

Too many kids got lost to violence like that. Grian was just one example, amid countless others. As soon as he had enough rapport in the Bad Boys, he’d helped to establish the standard that they didn’t work with anyone under eighteen. In the past five years, Jimmy has been the only exception.

Jimmy’s eighteen, now, and he’s chosen to stick with the Bad Boys in light of his recent adulthood, likely to get closer to getting his own apartment.

Everyone has a motivation for joining up—Grian’s had been protection. He’d made far too many enemies in high school, and he’s certain that his old roommate would have no qualms about killing him if he wasn’t associated with one of the most powerful gangs in the area.

Jimmy’s reason is his sister.

The only time he talked about her was when they first met him. Grian and Joel were fleeing a successful mission, only to find Jimmy on the ground, struggling to breathe around the bullet hole in his chest. He’d mentioned his sister, how much she meant to him, how he needed to get her safe.

As far as Grian knows, he hasn’t managed it yet. Jimmy always looks like he’s carrying a bonfire in his chest, his shoulders weighed down by the logs he keeps feeding it. He’s angry and tired and frustrated, but he never talks about why he feels that way. He just spends hours shooting at practice targets and sparring and moping around the manor, a plastic flosser always jutting out from his mouth. He leaves on weekends, presumably to go home, and always comes back in a worse mood than before.

The only thing that softens the sharp edges of his personality is feeling useful—like being on a mission. That had quickly propelled him into the strike side of the gang, despite his youth. Grian and Joel, already a team, had decided to show him the ropes, and it had turned their team of two into three as they became the only people who would tolerate Jimmy.

He isn’t a bad kid. He isn’t a bad kid at all, he just doesn’t know how to keep a lid on his emotions. He probably didn’t get a lot of attention growing up, poor kid.

Grian shakes himself from his thoughts, checks his watch. Almost midnight. Joel and Jimmy should be doing the final sweep now—they’ll be able to let him out of this closet, then they can pick up any remaining valuables and head out.

It isn’t often the three of them get assigned to a stealth mission. Grian’s not bad at them, but Jimmy’s terrible at sneaking and lying, and Joel’s more suited for sniping, so they usually handle intimidation or company deals. Grian had been relieved for the change of pace—until he was spotted. Now he just has to sit in this closet, waiting for either his team to track him down or the enemy to move him somewhere more secure.

Hopefully his team arrives first.

Grian rubs his earpiece off on his shirt, tucks it into his ear. He’s only had to stick it in his mouth once before, and it had luckily still functioned that time. He can only hope he’s had the same luck.

“Hello?” he whispers, tapping twice on it to activate the mic. “Red to Green and Yellow. Do you copy?”

“We copy,” Joel crackles back immediately. “Thought you were gonna stay silent.”

“Yeah, well. Got myself into a bit of a sticky situation. Check any closets down the fourth hall, yeah?”

“Why, did you leave something?”

“Yeah. Me.”

Jimmy unmutes just to laugh at him.

“I’m flipping you off so hard right now,” Grian says, not actually flipping anyone off. He pulls his trousers back up over his bandaged leg, buttons them. “Yeah, they grabbed me and locked me in here. They thought I was leftover from the recon mission, though, and not the start of a new patrol.”

“So the cover isn’t blown?” Joel asks.

“Nope. They’re even less on their guard, actually.”

“Cool. I’m actually heading down that hall right now. Yellow’s on the second floor, still.”

“Almost done, here,” Jimmy announces. “I’ll be back down soon.”

Grian stuffs the roll of toilet paper into his pocket and stands up, shaking out his feet. It definitely hurts to put weight on his injured leg, but he can walk it off.

The lock clicks and the door swings open just as he’s reaching up for the pull switch on the lightbulb. Joel grins at him, eyes sparkling with mirth behind his lowered sunglasses.

“Little bird locked in a cage?” he asks innocently. Grian shoves him, follows him out. He grabs Joel’s gun from the holster and clips it into his own (where his gun was confiscated from him upon being shoved into that closet).

“Hey!” “Use your spare.”

Jimmy joins them in the stairwell at the end of the hallway, and together they go down the flight of stairs. The rub of his jeans against his leg chafes his injury, but Grian just grits his teeth and rolls with it. They’re almost done, anyway. Just a quick check of the ground floor, then off to the van.

Most of the lights in the building are off, but some reason, there’s one flickering light at the bottom of the stairwell. Grian glares at it, then moves forward to take point—but Joel stops him, grabbing his sleeve and turning him around.

“What’s this?” Joel gestures to his leg.

“It’s nothing,” Grian says easily, shifting to try and hide his leg. Did it bleed through his jeans already? Maybe it’s worse than he thought. . . .

“You’re bleeding, you idiot, did you get hurt?”

“It’s barely a scratch. Come on, we’re—”

Too late. Joel unbuttons Grian’s jeans (Jimmy wolf-whistles obnoxiously), tugs them down just enough to see the dirty rag—now soaked with blood.

“Did you get stabbed?” Joel asks, dumbfounded. “Why are you walking on it?”

“It’s fine,” Grian says. “We can finish the mission, don’t worry about it—”

“You need to get back to the manor, there probably isn’t anything down here—”

Grian casts his eyes around, looking for any sort of way to distract Joel—

Jimmy’s looking on, chewing on one of those constant flossers, and seemingly without his notice, there’s blood trickling down his arm. Perfect.

“Timmy’s bleeding, too,” Grian says, nodding toward him, and Joel immediately drops Grian’s leg to turn toward Jimmy. Grian uses that opportunity to pull his trousers back up.

“What? You too? Am I surrounded by self-sacrificing morons—?”

“What?” Jimmy glances down at his arm. His eyes widen for a fraction of a second, then he hides it behind his back. “No. No, I’m not.”

Joel glares at him. “Mate, I just saw it. You’re bleeding.”

“I—” Jimmy glances around, something almost panicked seeping into his expression. “I—yeah, but it isn’t from this. It’s just—it’s just a little cut, don’t worry about it.”

Joel isn’t having any of that. He tugs Jimmy’s jean jacket off, rolls up his shirt sleeve.

Just above Jimmy’s elbow is a white bandage, wrapped around the bicep. Even in the flickering light, it’s clearly soaked through with blood, some of it seeping out around and dripping down his arm.

“What? When did this happen?” Joel asks, confused. Grian wants to know the same thing—Jimmy didn’t report running into any trouble. Was he just carrying bandages on him?

“It’s from yesterday, I’m fine,” Jimmy says. He looks like he wants to talk about it as much as he wants to eat a lemon. He looks like a tiger trying to sleep that keeps getting poked. He looks like he wants to bite Joel’s head off.

“Sorry, but I’m gonna need more information than that.”

“I fell, okay?” says Jimmy. He rolls his shirt sleeve back down, slapping Joel’s hands away. “I tripped, tried to catch myself on a wall, and caught my arm on a door hinge. It isn’t deep. Let’s keep going.”

It worked as a distraction, apparently, because Joel just shakes his head and mutters something about needing to be careful, before leading the way into the basement. But, for all it got him, Grian just feels like something’s squirming in the depths of his stomach.

Jimmy’s lying.

He won’t meet Grian’s eyes, he would barely even look at Joel. His temper, usually subdued on a mission, had flared briefly, and his hands are still clenched into fists.

He’s lying.

He didn’t fall onto a door hinge.

He probably got into a fight.

You’re supposed to report if you get into any fights with rival gangs, but most people don’t do that. Sometimes it’s embarrassment, sometimes it’s out of fear of punishment, sometimes it’s because they don’t want to be stopped from retaliating.

With Jimmy, it’s probably the latter.

So when they get back to the van, and Joel’s driving them to the manor, Grian speaks up.

“Tim, who’d you get in a fight with?”

Grian sees him stiffen in the front seat. Usually, Grian sits there, but Joel had banished him to the back in order to put his leg up.

“I—I didn’t.”

He’s definitely lying.

“Sure, and I totally didn’t get shot in the leg.”

“Wait, you got shot?” Joel demands. “I thought—geez, Grian, you should have told me, I thought it was just a stab wound or something—”

“Timmy—”

“I didn’t get in a fight,” Jimmy says hotly, turning to look out the window. “I swore I wouldn’t, remember?”

“Yeah, well, that injury wasn’t caused by a door hinge,” Grian scoffs. “People don’t fall onto door hinges, what kind of excuse is that?”

“You weren’t there! And I said—I tripped, and—”

“Sure. You just tripped badly enough that—”

“Grian?” Joel interrupts, a note of warning in his voice. “Shut up.”

The surprise of the command is enough to cause Grian to fall silent. Jimmy keeps looking out the window, uncharacteristically quiet.

No one speaks for the rest of the ride. Grian gets settled into medical and Jimmy disappears, likely for his usual bed (or, perhaps, for the gym, where he can beat on the punching bag until he’s too exhausted to be angry).

“What was that about?” Grian asks, once he and Joel are alone (and he’s hooked up to some IV fluids, his leg properly stitched up).

Joel rubs a hand across his face. “Jimmy’s definitely lying,” he says. “But . . . I don’t think he fought anyone, either. Jimmy would tell us if he got in a fight, wouldn’t he?”

“I mean, maybe. You never know with Tim.”

“Look, Grian—” Joel sits down next to him. There’s something oddly solemn in his face, something that gives Grian pause. “I—I had a friend in high school,” Joel starts. Grian restrains the snarky comment that rises to his lips.

“His name was Oli. Every time I saw him, he had a new bruise. And every time, he made up some excuse—that he walked into a door, or tripped down his front steps, or . . . or tripped, and fell onto a door hinge. Things like that, you know? It was like that every day. Until CPS got called on his family, and I never saw him again.”

The letters CPS sink deep into Grian’s mind. He gapes. Joel shifts uncomfortably.

“He still lives at home, doesn’t he?” Joel says. “He’s just a kid. And whenever he ever mentions his sister, it’s about getting an apartment so he can get her safe. I just—”

“You—you think his parents . . . what, hit him?” Grian asks, cringing.

An awkward sadness weighs down Joel’s shoulders as he shrugs. “I think . . . I think it’s possible. Really, really possible.”

That isn’t rare. In this profession, it’s not a surprise to hear of child abuse.

But . . . Jimmy?

How could anyone hurt Jimmy?

It . . . it adds up, if he thinks about it. It adds up, because isn’t Jimmy always coming in after the weekend with new bruises? Isn’t he always grumbling about clumsiness and accidents? Hasn’t Grian confronted him several times about getting into fights, and each time Jimmy had just argued with him until they both stormed out of the room?

Grian feels sick just to think of it. If Jimmy’s not safe at home, how bad had it been to incite him to seek out gang protection?

“If you’re right—and I’m not saying you are—we should help him with that apartment,” Grian says. Joel nods his agreement.

“Yeah. And soon.”