Chapter Text
Chan knew the risks (or so they were called). He had done the research, scoured the internet until he found himself clicking on repeating articles. Looked at schools, daycares, potential therapists. He’s saved and saved, carefully counting until he had more than enough points to cover the costs. His papers had gotten approved and all he had to do was schedule an appointment whenever it suited him.
But even as he drives up to the facility, even as he sits down and talks with Mrs. Jones and discusses the fine print and necessarily details of the paperwork, even as he questions a bit why they’ve rendered society down to this, he finds himself drawn to the dimmer halls, where the marks on intelligence and wit are not as high, where the colourful rooms are a bit muted than others, where the points gradually get lower and lower until he's almost to the end of the hall.
Mrs. Jones is sufficiently flustered at Chan’s wanderings, his questions about the children in the neat but more sparse rooms always ending in “but I think you’ll a child much more suitable to your profile this way”, where windows are dirtier and the clothes are not as new, more ill-fitting than the children with higher points.
He stops in front of the room with the only 300 Points sign on it, two profiles hanging on the door matching the two children seated in the corner on the cot who look like they fell asleep in the middle of conversation, leaning against each other like they’re the only thing the other has.
Mrs. Jones comes to a stop behind Chan, clearly trying to handle how out of breath she is from Chan’s fast walking. “Sir, really, I don’t think-“
“This one?” Chan taps the laminated paper reading Han Jisung on the door. “Anything more you can tell me beyond this?”
Mrs. Jones reluctantly unlocks her tablets and starts scrolling through the many, many files until she reaches one, scanning it quickly. “I’m afraid not, sir. Quite literally, what you see is what you’re getting. But I really do think-“
Chan raises a hand, forcing her to stop mid-sentence.
Too loud.
Too anxious.
Too troublesome.
Returned 20XX/12/15, sixth placement unsuccessful.
At six years old, Han Jisung has been considered more trouble than he’s worth, notes clearly stating that despite his low cost (Cost, Chan mentally scoffs), he will be doomed to return to the facility again and again.
“I’ll take him,” Chan says firmly.
Mrs. Jones splutters. Chan cuts her off before she says another sentence about how he should look elsewhere, look down a different, brighter hall.
The facility worker they send in to fetch the boy has the misfortune of being the one to wake him up.
What no one expects is for the other little boy in there to also wake up…and start screaming.
A full on fight brawl erupts in mere seconds before Chan’s eyes and before he realizes what he’s doing, the door to the room is banging against the wall, glaring red letters flashing brightly in his mind as he scoops up the other child and holds him close, before the facility worker can react.
Lee Felix.
Attachment issues.
Felix pounds his little fists on Chan’s back until he stops screaming and bursts into tears, curling into Chan’s chest, holding on tightly. Chan hears little garbled words that he thinks are don’t leave me, don’t leave me, don’t leave me.
He has no second thoughts as he turns around to Mrs. Jones and enjoys the satisfaction at seeing her not-so-subtle I told you so look vanish into shock when he says, “I’ll take them both.”
~~~
Chan carefully herds Jisung and Felix into the house, setting down the single bag that holds the few possessions they’d had between the two of them, and the files Chan has decided he’ll read later but maybe won’t.
The pair are quiet, wide-eyed, holding hands the entire time Chan navigates them through taking their shoes off and showing them the house, where they’ll be sleeping, where the kitchen is, the backyard.
Dinner is quiet. Felix and Jisung eat most of what Chan gives them. Chan pretends he doesn’t notice that Felix and Jisung swap the vegetables until Felix has all the broccoli and Jisung has all the carrots.
The next few weeks are difficult, to say the least. Chan never bothers to read Jisung’s file, able to see everything he went through himself as he grows up. Felix’s file he did read after a couple of weeks, not understanding completely why Felix was considered to have attachment issues until he read the slim file completely.
Needy.
Too attached.
Returned twice within the week.
An entire page filled with details upon details that suddenly have the lightbulb switching on in his mind.
Felix is clingy, that much is certain. He’s never more than a few feet from Jisung (and neither is Jisung from him) and Chan had learned the hard way to never, ever have the two of them in separate rooms unless they were instigators of it. But Chan never thought that Felix was needy.
He closes Felix’s file and never opens it again, dumping it in a desk drawer he never uses to gather dust.
All Chan sees is two little boys who need a whole lot of love and care and he is nothing if not determined.
It takes time. A lot of time and effort and maybe a few tears along the way. But Chan finds the rewards he reaps worth every tantrum, every gentle conversation, every sleepless night running over words he’s said and if they were the right ones. Every step he takes to help Felix and Jisung with their respective troubles and traumas, he doesn’t ever stop. Doesn’t ever say they aren’t worth it, are too much. Doesn’t ever think to say the words, “You’re going back to the facility.”
No, Chan has a big heart and more than enough love for the two little ones he’s taken under his wings.
Jisung is eight when he shyly asks Chan to teach him how to ride a bike. Felix decides he wants to learn how to ride a skateboard, like he’s seen Chan as a child do in some old videos he’d dug up one evening, having shown them to the boys on a whim.
There’s a few falls, a few scraped elbows, and maybe a tree at the end of the street in Minho’s lawn that suffers some temporary damage to its bark, but soon Jisung and Felix are zipping around the neighborhood with the other children, laughing and smiling.
Felix still likes to cling and hug and cuddle. Him and Jisung have graduated to bunk beds instead of the single double-bed they had slept on for a couple of years, too afraid to be apart from one another until recently, but they didn’t want to have separate rooms, not yet.
Jisung still has episodes where everything is too much. Too loud, too tumultuous, too scary. There has been more than one episode where Chan has caught Jisung suffering silently when they were out and about, long red scratches trailing up his arms because he was still hesitant to tell Chan about when he’s having a hard time. But they’re learning and growing, bit by bit.