Work Text:
"Blood runs thicker than water"
Or at least that's what Franklin always heard as a kid. The saying never really occurred to him as something important when he was younger. Now, in his twenties, it made more sense. Family was important, after all.
Blood was thicker than water.
Sometimes he'd think on the way he was treated as a child. He was frequently teased at school, pushed around and called names that he would never have the fortune of forgetting. This led to him rarely attending school, though it wasn't like home was much better. At home he was constantly babied and treated as fragile, or entirely ignored as if he were not there. As much as he hated thinking of it, even his dear sister Sally was guilty of this at times.
It had happened again just earlier, Sally walking off with the others and simply leaving Franklin with the promise that they would "be back soon". Franklin sunk back into his wheelchair.
Blood was running thinner.
That day, he spent a lot of time isolated with his thoughts. The others had left again, to explore the old Hardesty house. Franklin was a Hardesty, yet they'd still abandoned him. He was foolish enough to believe Sally would maybe take him with them, but she didn't even stop to say goodbye to him before they left.
Water may have well been thicker than blood.
He fiddled with the bandage on his arm, picking at the threads. They'd picked up a hitchhiker earlier. A lanky figure with black hair and a red mark streaked across his face, contrasting his pale skin. Franklin had thought about him a lot in the past hour or so, more than he'd like to admit. The man was intriguing as far as Franklin was concerned. Franklin was the only one who had properly spoken to him, he understood how it was to be ignored. He found the way the dark haired man spoke too fast and stumbled over his words, to be interesting, despite the man not making much sense when he spoke.
Franklin recalled how the man had stolen his pocket knife and sliced his own hand open. Franklin still wondered how somebody could do that to themselves. The hitchhiker wasn't in the van much longer after that. Before he was kicked out, he had run his own blade deep across Franklin's arm, the razor rusty. Sally cleaned him up.
Water was thicker than infected blood.
Thinking about this, Franklin realized that the cuts meant something more. The hitchhiker had stolen his knife to slash his own hand. The mans blood was on Franklin's knife. The hitchhiker then sliced Franklin with his razor. Franklin's blood was on the man's razor. He had connected the two. He had bonded them through blood. Franklin remembered the old saying.
"Blood runs thicker than water"