Chapter Text
New York, New York, 1984, winter.
It’s fucking freezing.
The temperature is below zero and Ches only has a ratty old leather jacket to protect himself from the blistering wind that slithers its way through the city and a nearly finished cigarette to keep his insides from turning to ice.
He hasn’t sunk to the point of begging yet, and doesn't want to join the hundreds of others on Skid Row. He’ll never get to the point of selling his one possession, an old guitar his mama had given him before she finally lost her fight with the bottle.
It’s hard work being an orphan immigrant.
He pulls the jacket tighter around himself and trudges through the streets. The best part of the city is how easy it is to be ignored, to go unseen by the millions of eyes within it.
Still, even ghosts need to eat.
He digs in his pockets and finds a few tatty dollars. A ten, five ones and a hell of a lot of change he doesn’t bother to count. He shoves it back into his pocket and tosses the burnt end of the cigarette away, finally deadened.
“Fucking hell.”
Enough for a cup of coffee and a quick bite to eat, if he’s lucky. With the way the market has been rising, he’s sure coffee will rise to a whopping three dollars.
But taking that into account, he still needs to find shelter and the shelters are all full (he’s checked). The landlord at his mama’s old apartment had threatened to call the police on him the last time he’d seen him skulking around so he’s officially without a place to even sneak into for the night and the last place Ches wants to end up is the system.
He could go on tangents about how little the government cares about wayward children, especially if they were misplaced.
Not that Russia would have been any better.
He swears under his breath as he ducks into an alley, out of the harshly blowing wind that kept whistling past. Leaning against the freezing cold brick wall, he drops his head down against the wall and sighed heavily and long through the gap left from his missing tooth.
“Fucking tired..” He mumbled, the pressure of the many days without food or sleep catching up to him. He closed his eyes with the intent of opening them again but he could already feel his body slowly slipping down the wall, grunting when his ass made contact with the sleet-damp ground.
It’s dangerous to sleep in the cold, he knows that, but it’s impossible for him to stop himself from letting go. The winter air wraps around him and his body relaxes, mind finally slipping away.
It’s so warm.
He can hear his mama.
She sounds so close..
He is nestled beneath the birch tree of his childhood.
“Oh my god, that’s a kid.”
“Is he even alive?”
“Kid? Kid, are you okay?”
Ches wants to keep sleeping. Why are those damn voices trying to wake him?
“Уходить..” He mumbled, throat feeling raw and cracked. The pain makes him shift, trying to tuck his face away from the cold.
The voices don’t go away, they just get louder — excited — and then he’s being forced up and his eyes are peeling open as his brain tries to catch up.
“You’re safe now, kid, just stay with us, okay?” It’s a woman, her accent is thick and screams of uptown Manhattan.
Ches could have sworn he was in the Bronx but if he’s honest, he lost track days ago.
“Where.. what..”
“What’s your name? Can you tell me your name? My name’s Elina, we’re taking you to the hospital, okay?”
Ches wants to argue, desperately, but the cold is down in his lungs and his eyes are falling closed again. He feels himself being moved and laid down on something soft, so much better than the concrete and brick he’d just been laying on.
He supposes a few minutes of this is fine, as long as he wakes up again, he assures himself as his strength leaves him, as long as he wakes up again.
He wakes up to beeping.
Ches identifies the smell of hospital before his eyes even open. He’d spent enough time in them when his mama’s health had started to deteriorate that he could navigate one of the halls with his eyes closed — all hospitals are exactly the same without all the pomp and circumstance.
“Mama..?” He swears he sees his mother leaning over him, her dark brown eyes soft and gentle, the lingering smell of her favourite cigarettes. He turns his head to her but as his vision rights itself, the mirage disappears and leaves behind an unfamiliar woman who just watches him sadly.
“Hello, there. How are you feeling?”
Ches closes his eyes and shakes his head, like shit, he wants to say. He doesn’t, just observes the woman with the straight brown hair and kind, dark eyes. He knows he’s been caught, he hadn’t even had the strength to fight back earlier.
“My name is Alina, I’m your social worker for the time being. What’s your name?” She asks and Ches just watches her before finally uttering his name. His birth name is awkward on his tongue, a language he does not speak, but the woman smiles and tells him it’s pretty.
Ches smiles back but he feels like he’s fumbling, his head is fuzzy and warm.
Sick.
“Do you have any contact information for your parents? Since we didn’t have a n-“
“My mama’s dead.” Alina goes quiet. “My dad doesn’t give a shit about me, never met him before.”
“When did your mother pass?” Alina tries to keep professional but Ches knows it’s shocking how easily he can say the words.
The second day after her death had been the worst but it’s all numb now.
“About two weeks ago.”
Ches looks around the hospital room and the tense part of himself he had yet to acknowledge went soft and limp with relief when he saw his familiar guitar case leaning against a corner.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” The brown haired looked back at Alina, at the softness in her eyes. There was no pity there, just a weariness that said this was not first and it wouldn’t be the last time she said those words.
Ches doesn’t know why that makes his chest ache.
“Yeah… yeah.”
Slapped with a chest cold diagnosis and officially an orphan in the eyes of New York, Ches found himself being shuffled in the back of a car with a black duffle bag and his guitar.
Alina attempts to speak to him at first but upon realising that the boy doesn’t have much to say, they ride in silence. Ches itches for a cigarette the whole way as they travel to uptown New York, through the streets and past the suburban homes. Each are cookie cutter and soulless until they pull into a cul-de-sac, parking in the driveway of a large, three story house. It’s blue with grey trim, neat and orderly in appearance.
There are window boxes with flowers he can’t identify, Ches doesn’t know how they’ve survived the cold weather.
“Since we couldn’t find any other placements for you, we managed to get in touch with Anna — she runs a group foster home and she had some room to take you in.” Alina explains as they get out the car, Ches finding himself almost weak under the weight of both guitar and duffle but he shoulders on and doesn’t let it show.
When’s the last time he ate?
He’ll be damned if he could remember.
Alina’s knocking on the door and Ches is more than surprised when a woman with short blue hair answers. She looks between them with a blank expression before stepping aside and welcoming them in.
“Nice to see you again, Alina. You must be-“
“Ches.” The boy interrupts habitually. He likes his birth name, really, but it’s private and the last person he wanted to speak it was a stranger. He doesn’t want her to ruin the memory of his mama saying it, if he could help it.
“Ches?”
“Like «чеснок», it’s a.. preference.”
Anna sloppily repeats the word, enough that Ches has to smile.
“What’s it mean?”
“Ah,” he rubs the back of his neck. “My mama used to call me it — it means garlic shoot.”
Anna smiles warmly at that, as if the memory is fond to her as well though Ches doesn’t understand why.
No more is said as they sit down.
Ches observes the living room while the two women speak, letting his eyes roam over the setup and decor, adding to memory the scrape on the floor and the marker on the corner of the wall. The little signs of life he can see, no doubt from past children, their lasting mark on a temporary home.
“Okay, I’ll be going now.”
Ches’ eyes snap up to Alina, who’s standing and smiling at him.
“I’ll be back in two weeks for a checkup but in the meantime, Anna will take good care of you.”
Dread sets in.
Ches is used to being left with strangers, some more dangerous than a woman as tiny as Anna, having a mama who sometimes valued the needle more than her own son had left him more predicaments than he could count but this was different.
A sober choice.
He’s heard stories of foster parents, of the things they do.
“Alright.” Because what else can he say? Even if they all pretend the elephant isn’t there, the truth is that he really doesn’t have a say in the matter. Once you’re in the system, you’re stuck, until they boot you out the moment you’re too old or sick or whatever to be counted anymore.
“Any questions?”
Don’t leave me.
“Nah, I’m fine.” He smiles and then Alina is gone and it’s awkward and tense on Ches’ end. He can feel it in his chest like a twisting knot, serpentine as it wraps around his lungs and heart, he wants to fidget to loosen in but barely manages to stay still.
When will the other shoe fall?
“I know adjusting will be a little hard for you but, I’m sure you’ll do fine. The other kids are at school right now, there’s a total of four of you. Come on,” Anna stands, dusting imaginary dirt off of her pants, “I’ll show you to your room.”
Ches follows her down the main hall and up a flight of stairs, mostly prepared to find a room with a set of twin beds for the lot of them when the door opens and he’s met with a relatively empty room. There’s a twin bed in the corner with brown comforters and sheets, matching curtains that stand out against the white walls.
“You can decorate however you want, I’ll take you shopping in a few days.”
“Thanks,” All Ches could think about was laying in the bed, about sleeping and the warmth that would cocoon him. He awkwardly shuffled before he turned and looked at Anna who was already watching him.
“Go on and lay down, Ches.” She smiles and leaves him, and the weight of everything seems to hit him the moment he’s alone.
His mother is dead, he’s all alone in the world and now he’s stuck in the system.
Closing the door, he drops the duffle bag down near the dresser and gently rests his guitar in the corner, he doesn’t even take off his shoes, as old and tattered as they are, when he goes and throws himself down on the bed.
He sinks into the plush mattress and nearly weeps as he feels his body lose the weight it’d been carrying, his rest in the hospital had been interrupted with poking and prodding, but he had a feeling Anna wouldn’t be doing anything similar.
Toeing off his shoes, he crawled up to the head of the bed and squirmed awkwardly under the covers, sighing blissfully.
He slipped off into a dreamless sleep.
Ches awakes to talking outside of his door.
The voices are muffled by the thick wood but he can tell it’s a pair of boys. His head is fuzzy from sick and sleep, but he can’t help but try and make out their conversation though the fuzziness in his head makes it hard and all he can do is lay there and try not to fall back to sleep.
It’s dark between the crack of his curtains.
Sitting up, Ches scrubs a hand through his hair. It’s in desperate need of a wash, far too greasy for his liking. He’d been wiped down at the hospital but it wasn’t a replacement for a real bath. He smells like disinfectant and he’s already started to pick up the smell of Anna’s house.
He turns his nose into his shoulder as if he could pick up the scent but it’s evasive and he gives up on the endeavour.
Grey eyes fall on the bedroom door as the talking goes quiet, but one quick look to the bottom of the door shows that the others are still there.
Finally, after what seems like a tense forever, there comes a knock.
Ches clears his throat and sits up straighter, blinking the lingering sleep out of his eyes.
“Come in!”
The door opens and two boys pour in.
“Hey!”
“Move it, gordito!”
There’s a boy with strawberry blonde hair, it falls over his eyes and hides them but Ches thinks they’re brown. The other is tall and big, he could bench press Ches if he wanted to.
Even then, the smaller of the two shoves at him and pushes his way to the front as if he couldn’t have just stepped around him. He smiles, revealing his perfect teeth and his — as Ches expected — round, brown eyes.
“You must be Ches. I’m Lordi. This is Bob,” He jerks a thumb to the other. “And this,” He steps aside and time stops.
Ches can’t breathe.
He can’t breathe.
“Is Sebastian.”
Ches is certain he’s looking at an Angel.