Chapter Text
“Is this alright? Are you comfortable?”
“If I wasn't comfortable I'd tell you, idiot.”
Alec frowns from the bedroom doorway, arms crossed over his chest. Fiore was being snappy in her responses to him- she had been snappy the entire day- and someone who knew her less might think that was perfectly in character behavior. Alec knew better. He could see the tension in her small shoulders, the nervous flicking of her eyes. Always too watchful, like she was waiting for something to jump out and surprise her.
“I know this situation is unprecedented,” He states matter-of-factly, because it is. It was more than unprecedented, the situation bordered on genuinely bizarre. Alec was not supposed to go home from a reality TV show with a child under his care. There is no world in which that made sense, and he knew that. The way the events unfolded felt so surreal he was still not entirely sure he was living in reality. Could this be a dream? Could this be another mind-bending virtual reality challenge unbeknownst to him?
It wouldn't make sense. He had been voted out of the game before this happened- There was no reason he would be in a challenge right now. He could imagine the proposal amongst the show staff though- New challenge idea: See how badly Alec can fuck up parenting for the second time. They could make an entirely new reality show out of it honestly. Surely the viewers would eat up his repeated embarrassments ravenously.
“Yeah, well,” Fiore kicks over her suitcase. The sound of it hitting the floor is loud. “Nothing in my life ever makes sense so what's new. It's whatever. Who cares.” She says it like someone who cares much more than they'd like to admit.
Alec can't shake the memory of what her parents had looked like. Cold expressions, stern faces, mouths set in thin lines that said we made up our minds already. The staff telling him someone wanted to speak with him at the loser's motel had been a surprising thing (there should be absolutely no one from the outside world that would want to speak to him ) but the pair who had handed him paperwork with little introduction and stony eyes had been more surprising than even his low expectations accounted for.
“Take her,” they'd said.
“You said you wished you had a child like her,” they'd added, when he could only stare dumbly at paperwork that detailed the legalities of parental custody changing hands.
That was 2 years ago, he'd wanted to reply. It was a stupid thing I regret saying, he'd wanted to insist.
He took one look at them and he knew if he didn't accept, they would give her up elsewhere. Maybe not today, but inevitably they would. Somewhere worse. An orphanage. A group home. Drop her with the nuns she hated so vehemently, and never return to pick her up again.
The arguments had died on his tongue before they could leave his mouth. He adjusted his glasses. He asked where to sign. Fiore's parents showed no remorse for giving her up so easily. If anything, Alec saw relief in their eyes when he agreed without a fight. It had disturbed him. Even he, who knew how it felt to have a child you felt incapable of caring for, could not imagine relief at the idea of giving his son up.
Giving his son up had been the right thing to do. Giving his wife up had been the right thing to do. He still grieved losing them.
When he looked the pair in the eyes, when he saw the seemingly genuine relief at handing Fiore over without so much as an argument, he couldn't help but think: perhaps giving up Fiore was the right thing for them to do too.
In the present, Fiore is still looking around the empty guest bedroom like she expects something to bite her. She looks small in this room, dwarfed by furniture meant for adults, but Alec didn't have the time (or funds) to set up a more fitting room for her. He put it on a mental list that he would need to look into how much a child's bed actually costs. He would also need to think about repainting the room's walls- Currently a drab blue-gray. Yellow maybe. Fiore liked yellow.
She had brought very little with her- Just a single suitcase and a backpack with a unicorn decal that glittered when it moved. Alec hadn't been sure if it was things she chose to bring, or if it was just what her parents gave her before sending her off. He didn't ask. He had a feeling asking her wouldn't go well when it was all still fresh.
“Well.” Alec pauses, realizing he is genuinely at a loss for what to do. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“Yeah,” Fiore replies too curtly, avoiding his eyes as she looks pointedly down at her tipped over suitcase.
He hesitates before he leaves. He knows he should be doing more, he just has no idea what that more is. He barely knew how to be a parent to his first child. Why did he ever think taking in Fiore was a good idea?
Because the thought of leaving her with people who looked at her so coldly made you sick.
He blinks and shakes off the thought. It didn't matter. She was here now, and she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. He would learn. He would adapt. He could do that. Perhaps there was a book on parenting he could read. He presses his lips together thoughtfully. Perhaps there was a book about sudden adoption of unstable 8 year olds, somewhere out there. In his experience there were books about nearly anything if you looked hard enough. He should conduct some research.
—
Alec was in his office, several google searches deep into an attempt at researching adoptive child care that had led him to results that were not as beneficial as he had hoped. He's startled out of his focus on a particularly perplexing article on the similarities between child parenting and training cats when he hears his office door hit the wall a little too hard. As expected Fiore is standing in the doorway when he turns towards the sound. “I'm hungry,” She states bluntly.
Alec notes the red puffiness under her eyes, but he doesn't pry about it. He swivels his chair around to fully face her. “Hm. I could cook something?” He's not all that confident in his ability to do so, but it's probably something he should learn. It's what a proper guardian would do.
“No way,” Her nose wrinkles in disgust, “I still remember how that went in season one.”
“Yes, I did not do a very good job then, did I?” He responds coolly. The cooking challenge during their first season had been genuinely nightmarish, but it calls to mind Fiore's laughter at their combined inability to cook. “It's been two years since then, how do you know I haven't improved?”
That amuses her enough to put a familiar smirk back onto her face. “Because you haven't.”
“I have not,” He agrees, unable to suppress a chuckle at her attitude returning.
She looks down, smothering her own smile. She picks at a stray thread on her sleeve. “Can't we order takeout or something?”
Alec considers and then relents with a nod. “Let's order something.”
A phone call and decent hit to Alec's bank account for delivery fees later they have chinese takeout strewn across the kitchen table. Fiore props herself up on her knees in her chair to be tall enough to reach across the table, and Alec can't help but think again about how small she is. “Here,” She says, throwing something at him while he's still mid-thought. He fails to react in time, feeling the light impact of something hitting his chest and falling to his lap. “Fortune cookie,” Fiore states simply, already ripping open her own.
Alec picks it up by the corner of its packaging, plastic crinkling under his fingers. “Do you really think these have any merit to them?” He asks, opening the plastic carefully to not break the cookie held within.
“Psh, no.” Fiore has already cracked her cookie into two asymmetrical halves, raining crumbs across the table. “But the fortunes are funny.” She rips out the tiny slip of paper, bringing it close to her face. “ Hate is never conquered by hate, it is conquered by love. See? That's not even a fortune!” She laughs tossing the paper away to take a crunching bite into the cookie's shell.
Alec takes his turn to open the cookie. Whatever happens next, you are on the path you are meant to be, the tiny paper reads up at him. He blinks. That was… not expected. He doesn't get a chance to finish processing the message before the paper is snatched out of his fingers.
Fiore laughs when she reads it. “Come on, what even is this crap?” She tosses it carelessly to the side, leaning across the table to reach for a carton of rice. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Alec hums in response, eyes still trained on the crumpled scrap of paper now dropped to the table. He doesn’t believe in things like a higher power, he’s not a religious person, but that message was sticking with him. He sighs and turns back to the actual food. It was one hell of a coincidence, at the very least.
You are on the path you are meant to be. He glances up at Fiore, tries to ignore the way she is spilling rice all over the table, and rolls that sentence around in his mind. Maybe he was on the path he’s meant to be. It’d be nice to believe so.