bk_forever | FAKE Ficlet: Family

Title: Family
Fandom: FAKE
Author:

badly_knitted
Characters: Dee, Ryo, Bikky, Carol.
Rating: PG
Setting: After Like Like Love.
Summary: All four of them are orphans, but they found each other and became a family.
Word Count: 500
Written For: Prompt 126: Orphan at

anythingdrabble.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.

Looking at his little found family, the family he’d never dreamed he’d have, Dee couldn’t keep from smiling. Like called out to like, he supposed; they’d been drawn to each other out of a mutual yearning to belong, to not be alone.

They were all orphans, one way or another. Carol and Bikky had both lost their moms at an early age, then their dads way too soon; Carol had been thirteen and Bikky just ten. Ryo’s parents had been brutally murdered when he was eighteen, so perhaps he’d been the most fortunate, having a family until he was almost grown. As for Dee himself… well, he’d never known his birth parents in the first place, having been abandoned naked and helpless in an alleyway scant hours after birth.

Dee had grown up in an orphanage, loved and cared for by a nun who’d raised him as if he was her own son. Ryo and Carol had each been taken in by their aunts, and Ryo himself had given Bikky a home, taking on all the responsibilities of parenthood despite being a single man with a demanding job.

It had taken a while for Dee to worm his way into Ryo’s affections, but he’d succeeded, gaining himself not only a life-partner but also two children, even if Bikky wouldn’t have been his first choice. In that respect Ryo had been the sensible one, seeing not the unruly street brat with criminal tendencies that Bikky was, but the young man he could become. He’d turned out pretty decent, all things considered. Carol certainly thought so, or she wouldn’t have married him.

From four lonely, mismatched people they’d grown into a family comprising two loving couples, still a little mismatched but none the worse for that. Perhaps in the end it was their differences that made them fit together so well, puzzle pieces with wildly different shapes that nevertheless meshed seamlessly to form a complete picture. That idea appealed to Dee.

Now here the four of them were, lounging beside the pool at Bikky and Carol’s beachside California home, as the young couple broke the news that they were about to follow family tradition by adopting. They’d already gone though all the rigorous checks required by social services, and had been approved. Shortly, if all went smoothly, their family would be doubling in size to include two mixed race children, a brother and sister, aged seven and nine, who’d been in a group home for almost three years.

“It’s a big step,” Ryo said. “You’re both still young. Are you sure you’re ready? The kids are going to need a lot of attention.”

“We know,” Bikky assured him, “but there’s two of us to take care of them and Carol’s mostly working from home. They’re good kids, they just need the love of a family, and we can give them that. Don’t forget, I learned how to be a dad from you.”

“He’s right, babe.” Dee grinned. “They’re gonna be just fine.”

The End