Work Text:
It was a rare night that both Cherry and Joe didn’t have to be working. They had planned this night ahead of time to be just them, not to be at S around other people. They were down at the abandoned drive in near the pier, half showing off whatever they had been working on, and half reminiscing on the old times there and enjoying each other’s company although neither would ever straightforwardly admit it outloud. Of course there was the occasional insult, bickering, and laughing at each other but it was kept a bit quiet so the few people who did live around the area wouldn’t hear.
A few hours after they had been there, they heard the sound of tires screeching then quickly driving off again. Cherry and Joe glanced to each other, stayed silent for a bit, then shrugged and went back to what they were doing. That was until Cherry was attempting a trick that put him close to the other side of the building that he heard crying, causing him to bail on said trick. Joe skates up beside him, about to open his mouth when Cherry shushes him. They both, abandoning their skateboards momentarily, follow the sound of the crying. As they round the corner, they are met with the sight of a small child, not far from the railing leading to the water. Both are in shock. Neither had expected this to be the result. If Joe was being honest, he fully expected it to be an injured animal. Not a human child. Joe was the first one to think of something to do. He got down on the child’s level and tried speaking to them.
“Hey there,” he said in the softest and most comforting voice as possible for him.
The child jumps, clearly startled by someone speaking to them.
“Good going, Gorilla. You scared them,” Cherry snarked at him.
The venom, whether actually there or not, in Cherry’s voice scared the child into scooting backwards more, away from them.
“Oh, you think you could do better? You weren’t even doing anything. You were just standing there!” Joe shot back.
Cherry and Joe kept going back and forth as the child keeps trying to back away from them. Unknowingly backing through the broken piece of the railing.
Cherry glances back at the child over Joe’s shoulder, his eyes go wide. “KOJIRO!” He screams already starting to move toward the kid.
Joe turns too, just in time to see the child starting to tip backwards. He reacts with quickly, reaching the kid just in time to grab their leg to keep them from tumbling into the water below. He carefully pulls them up and set them sitting on the ground, against the building, blocking the railing with his body.
“Are you okay?” Joe asks, eyes full of concern for the child.
The child doesn’t reply and instead tries to make themself as small as possible, curling in on themself. Cherry makes his way closer, slowly as trying to try not to startle them more.
“Where are your parents?” Joe tries asking, the next logical question.
This time he at least gets a reply. Well, not exactly. It was just a shoulder shrug but it was a better response than them getting more scared of him.
“Can you at least tell us your name?” Joe continues to ask, getting slightly frustrated because of the situation but trying his hardest to not let it show.
In a soft and almost unheard voice over the waves below, the child replies, “Kokoro.”
Joe gives a soft smile to the child, to Kokoro. “What about a family name?” Kokoro shakes her head and the hope for progress was gone.
A gust of wind blows by, creating a nice feel for Cherry and Joe but not for Kokoro as her ratty nightgown had gotten sprayed by the sea when she almost fell. She shivers slightly, trying not to. It isn’t that well hidden. Joe noticed and shrugged off his jacket, wrapping it around her, thankful he decided to still bring it even though he was wearing an actual shirt. She flinches as he does so, staying tense, but feeling grateful for it. It takes her a moment but she slowly starts to relax into it, seeing that Cherry and Joe have only been kind to her since meeting her, sans their bickering between themselves.
“We should get you to a hospital to see if they can find your parents,” Cherry says, speaking directly to Kokoro for the first time.
“Is it alright if I pick you up?” Joe asks. He really hoped she would say yes as he didn’t trust she would be able to make the walk with how malnourished she looked.
Kokoro nodded, and both men let out a sigh of relief. Joe picked her up gently, making sure to keep his jacket still wrapped around her. Cherry went to grab both of their boards, turning Carla into a backpack he could wear and putting Joe’s board on it as well.
They make the walk to the hospital. It wasn’t a far walk. When they were teenagers they picked the location partly by the distance to the nearest hospital for when bailing got them seriously injured. Upon entering the hospital, they got heads turned towards them. Two brightly color haired mean walking in with a small child raised some suspicions. Cherry walked forward to the front desk and explained the situation. The explanation combined with the sight of the bad shape Kokoro was in, she was rushed to a room and a physical checkup began.
The check discovered Kokoro was not only malnourished as suspected but also dehydrated, covered in bruises, had small scrapes mainly on her hands and legs, and some dirt on her. Within minutes of them finding all of this, nurses were surrounding Kokoro, taking the jacket she was wearing, tossing it over to the side, then overwhelming her while trying to put in an IV, feeding tube, blood pressure cuff, heart rate monitor, cleaning her with a sponge, and bandaging some of the worse scrapes. While doing so, another nurse pulled Cherry and Joe out of the room to get the story of what happened officially along with getting her name. For the second time that night, they repeat the story, a tad fed up with it. The nurse leaves them again to go search if there was a missing child alert out for Kokoro. Cherry and Joe are kept out of Kokoro’s room while the nurse searches. When the nurse returns, she tells them there is no missing report out for her, and that the hospital will try finding a family member to take her but if they cannot find anyone, or if no one wants to, she will end up in a foster home. Cherry’s eyes immediately widened at the talk of a foster home. He knew firsthand how terrible those could be and the uncertainty it would leave the child with.
“If you could excuse us for one moment, it would be most appreciated,” Cherry said to the nurse, already pulling Joe aside out of earshot of others.
“We have to take her in,” he says point blank to Joe before Joe even had time to question. “I will do what it takes, talk to who it takes. I’ve already made a name for myself and so have you. We can do this. She has already had a rough start and a foster home, or god forbid an orphanage, would make it worse for her. She has even already taken a liking to you, for some reason.” He couldn’t hold back from throwing in a slight jab at the other.
Joe sighed but knew Cherry would not let this go if he refused. Plus he had also felt a protective feeling over the young girl after catching her from falling off the railing. “Alright,” he agreed with a nod. And that was that.
Both went to find the nurse to tell her, already knowing this process would not be easy. They found her while she was currently on the phone with someone. They waited until she was done.
“Thank you, goodbye,” the nurse ended the call then turned back to Cherry and Joe. “Mr. Sakurayashiki and Mr. Nanjo,” she greeted then sighed. “I should not be telling you two this but… The girl you brought in, I just finished talking to a relative of hers. They don’t want anything to do with her and have said her other living relatives do not either. If everything follows as expected, once Kokoro is healthy enough to not need a feeding tube anymore, they will be sending her to a foster home. Based on her current condition, I’d expect a week or two.”
“What if I- er- we, were to adopt her?”
The nurse turned her gaze strictly to the pink-haired man. “Adopt her? Well, if you are not already registered to adopt or at least foster parents, it will be a long process involving home checks, classes, and interviews. It is not something to take on on a whim. It could take years as the courts favor the blood-related parents more.” Cherry’s face falls upon hearing this.
“Thank you. Would you mind giving us any resources on it that you have on it?” Joe picks up, with a smile on his face.
“Yes, of course, Mr. Nanjo. I’ll be right back with it,” says the nurse as she scurries away to find them.
“Kaoru, look at me,” Joe says softly, just like he would when he needed to calm Cherry down when they were teens. “As you said, we can do this. As much as neither of us may enjoy it, we know someone on the inside workings of the government that could help speed things along.” Cherry nods. “Come, let’s say goodbye to Kokoro, then once we get the papers we go back to my place to start fully brainstorming this.”
Cherry and Joe walked side by side back to Kokoro’s room. Entering, she saw them and perked up a bit. She had just met them and already she found a bit of comfort in them as they tried helping her. Not ignoring her, not reeking of alcohol and passing out on the floor, not jabbing her with needles, and not shoving a thing tube through her nose and down her throat. Joe picked up the jacket that had been discarded by the nurses and carefully wrapped it around her again.
“Keep the jacket, it is yours now. We will be back for you, we promise. Stay strong,” Joe told her, even though he knew she couldn’t fully understand all of it.
It was not easy for either man to leave the hospital room, Cherry already blinking back tears he refused to let fall, knowing Kokoro was going to be subjected to a foster home. He hoped it was at least a decent one. They met with the nurse, collected what she had for them, and she also slipped them her phone number so they could stay in touch about updates with Kokoro. It was risky but for this little girl, it was worth it.
Back at Joe’s apartment, they began researching and signing up for what classes they had to take, finding all of the documents they had to have (and making a list of what was missing), and finding an agency to go through. Serious thought was put into it but at 9 am the next morning, a phone call was made to a certain blue-haired politician for help with this. It was nowhere near easy, both with convincing Adam and then the hoops he had to jump through the get this process started, but it happened. The paperwork was expedited, Cherry and Joe were already taking all of the classes at the soonest they possibly could, setting up the spare bedroom in Joe’s apartment into a baby/toddler bedroom, and baby-proofing the apartment. Within only three months, Cherry and Joe were told they were approved to adopt Kokoro. They didn’t waste any time. They both took off work the next morning, which thankfully was already a Saturday, signed the final paperwork ahead of time, and went down to the meeting place to pick Kokoro up. With that, they had taken the first step into parenthood and there was no looking back now.
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A little actual backstory for Kokoro and how she ended up where Cherry and Joe found her:
(TW: alcohol abuse, child neglect, death)
Name: Kokoro
Age: 2
Birthday: December 23rd
Eye color: Golden
Hair color: Purple
Kokoro’s life started out quite pleasantly. She was a happy baby living in Tokyo alongside her twin sister, mother, and father. All could not go well for long. One late night there was a break-in. During it, her father and her twin were both killed. After, her mother decided it was too much to stay in the same city and decided to move to Okinawa. That helped slightly but not nearly enough. Eventually, her mother turned to alcohol to take the edge of the grief off leaving her passed out or suffering from a hangover more often than not, Kokoro having to fend for herself at the young age of two. By some miracle, she survived it. One of the evenings after Kokoro had been crying all day, her mother was fed up with the crying and the fact that each glance reminded her of what she had lost so she put Kokoro in the car. She drove until she was under an overpass near the pier and left Kokoro there before speeding back home only to get lost in the alcohol once again.