Chapter Text
Leo knew he was screwed the second a police cruiser pulled up to the park he was hanging out at in Corpus Christi. He should've known better than to be out like that in the middle of a school day, but he had spent all night traveling from Dallas trying to get to an old safe house a former foster brother had told him about. He had just wanted to spend a few hours outside before going to the house. Of course Leo knew about the reputation of Corpus Christi being a staunchly conservative city. He knew it was risky to try to run there. But he was desperate.
Leo had burned through every placement option in Houston that was willing to take him, so DFPS decided to move him to Dallas— something about there being more homes that are “better equipped to address his issues.” AKA can deal with the fact he's depressed, traumatized, and disabled. The thing they don't say is that there aren't really any extra certifications a foster home has to go through to take in high-risk placements. They just need to say yes. Leo once overheard a foster family once talk about the extra stipends they get for fostering him, money to pay for services that aren't covered by Medicaid and for being his caregivers. He rarely saw any of those supposed services though.
His most recent placement had been awful, to put it lightly. They assumed Leo's a high-risk placement because he's violent. Which yeah there's the whole situation with his mom, but besides that he has no history of violence against others. By and large, the things that landed him on the list are his self-destructive tendencies and inclination towards running away. All of this to say: the fosters decided it's in his best interest to not let him have a door, lock away all of his braces and mobility aids except for when he was going to school, make him quit all of his meds cold turkey because they thought it was poisoning his brain, and restrict his access to any common area of the home. He would've preferred to be locked up in a psych ward again than be treated like this. And he hated that place. All of this on top of the usual corporal punishment, constant berating, and strictness of course. So Leo ran.
A very quiet three hour drive back to Houston later, Leo is where he is now: handcuffed in the police station waiting for his social worker to pick him up. The officer is going on about him being a delinquent and needing to apply himself unless he wants to die young. Leo can't bring himself to care, the handcuffs are digging into his wrists and pushing them out of place.
“Read my file, dying young would be great,” Leo snaps back.
It doesn’t take more than a glance at the behavioral section of his file to see that Leo Valdez is certifiably extremely mentally ill. The thing about being a foster kid is that if the foster parents find out about any injury that leaves a lasting mark, they have to report it to DFPS with photographs and an explanation of its cause. Nearly every one of the countless reports that Leo has on file is an incidence of him getting caught self-harming or after a suicide attempt. Abusive fosters don’t report the injuries they cause for obvious reasons, and it’s easier to keep painting Leo as the unstable, high-risk, problem placement. Anything else that falls outside of that range is usually blamed on his fragile skin and his shitty balance. No, that’s not a belt mark! He just fell into the doorframe and the wood cut him. Just ignore the clear outline of the buckle.
If all the injury reports didn’t give it away, the psych assessments diagnosing him with C-PTSD, persistent depressive disorder, major depressive disorder, nonsuicidal self-injury, generalized anxiety disorder, conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, ADHD, dyslexia, and autism do the job. His social worker’s been fighting to get CD and ODD removed from his file for years now, but psychiatrists keep insisting they stay because of his history of running away from placements and his supposedly aggressive tone with his caregivers. Unfortunately for Leo, it’s another reason that most people assume he’s violent. Even with his social worker’s insistence that Leo’s behaviors can be explained as a reasonable response to trauma or being autistic, the reputation still follows him. Even when they don’t read his file, the fact that he’s Brown, disabled, and in Texas is enough to make him guilty.
Leo tries to soften his tone, “Can you please loosen these? There's a note about not using wrist restraints on me in my file.”
“Hmm, too bad it seems like your file was lost. You're gonna have to wait until your social worker gets here, unless you wanna talk,” the policeman taunts, holding Leo's hefty file in front of him.
“Come on sir, they’re partially dislocating my wrists. I have Classical Ehler Danlos Syndrome, there’s information about it on the first page. I'm nonviolent. The cuffs just hurt. I can't talk if I'm in too much pain to think. Please,” Leo explains in his best people pleasing tone.
“Let me think about it— No. Quit your bitching and wait like everybody else does,” the officer replies shortly, “You don’t get special treatment.”
“Can you at least give me back the braces I was arrested with? They're not dangerous, I promise. Just helps with the pain,” Leo tries to bargain.
“No. One more word out of you that isn't about why the fuck you ran to Corpus Christi and who you were going to, I'm booking you,” the officer threatens, “Resisting arrest isn’t a pretty charge, kid.”
Leo shuts his mouth and keeps sitting there as still as he can manage. His shoulders are killing him from the awkward position, and his hips and ankles are starting to hurt from the chair he's sitting in too. He doesn't dare try to ask if he can transfer to his wheelchair. He's pretty sure that the handcuffs have dug cuts into his wrists, but he can't differentiate the sources of the pain with them feeling fully dislocated now.
He tries to grit through it and closes his eyes to rest, even though he knows he's in too much pain to sleep. All he can do now is pray that his social worker doesn’t take too long, but they’re across town from his office and this is a busy time of year. As he shakily breathes through the pain, he daydreams of the sunlight on his face again. God, I got so close this time.